I think, if humans are able to travel .99% the speed of light, the sheer technological requirement for this would mean that our technology was very advanced. Surely these humans would be able to find a way around inter-stellar dust/atoms.
I'm sure different ideas have been discussed, and these may seem foolish but just a few ideas might be.
Whatever energy source is generating enough energy to propel us at near the speed of light could project a beam or some sort of pulse directly in front of the craft. If we were traveling at .99% the speed of light, these pulses would be within close distance of us, the more we fired, as long we were traveling in a straight line, the more protection we would have.
If we could somehow solve the issue of head-on collisions, collisions from the side, either directly into the side or at an angle become a problem as well, but perhaps we could have a system to divert these particles around the ship.
In the future, we may have armor or materials that are self-healing, what about reactive plating that explodes outwards when it feels the impact? Could this work fast enough?
Our ships may even be bio-mechanical, meaning the ship could be an organism, if its vital info were written into DNA sequences, it could heal large parts of the ship, but we are worried only about small holes. If an atom were to simply pass through the ship, as long as it didn't hit the reactor or any crew, no harm done right?
Perhaps the safety approach might by a circle circular craft, what I mean is, a giant circle, with the front of the circle (a huge area) facing head on. If possible, absorb/destroy particles coming from the front and hitting head on, if not possible, just let them pass right through and focus the crew in the center in a specially armed area. This ship would also have artificial gravity. Also, the spin of the ship itself might deflect atoms hitting on the sides? A system of inter-locking circles rotating at extremely high speeds, with the center of the ship being where the crew and energy sources were located.
What about super-heating the area where the particle were to hit, or having a layer of liquid or something?
Aside from those ideas, if we can warp space-time, we can travel through space by moving the space around us, shrinking and expanding, and particles won't hit us at a high velocity as our actual speed won't be very high, correct?
Other ideas might be, de-orbiting a moon and using it as a space-ship, though we would need mass amounts of energy. What about propelled huge objects like moons or planets, what about a planet with a giant inner layer of armor and living space surrounded by oceans (difficult but possible to engineer), what would happen when an atom collided with the oceans? Would it explode? Or a space rock.
If Possible, have a layer of protective armor that counter-rotates against the rotation of the planet so that it always faces one direction, this layer of armor would absorb/protect, and if it were self-healing would heal after an impact, it would also contain the explosion and loss of water?
Basically, a giant engineered planet, with a solid inner core, or solid inner core around a molten inner core surrounded on all sides by giant oceans, and on the front side of the planet (the direction it was traveling), a counter-rotating armor plate. The armor plate would have parts that stretched around the entire planet, so that it could "rotate" but would only entirely cover the front part.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram