5 Faster-Than-Light Travel Methods and Their Plausibility

[Bke]

Pretty sure they determined that if you could manipulate the warp bubble in a certain way (a way that they would be able to if the warp bubble is possible to begin with I believe), that they would need orders of magnitude less power. An amount that might actually be feasible someday in fact.

Interesting. I cant seem to find anything about it, maybe you could find a wiki link? I never really dove deep into this part of theory (space travel etc), as interesting as it is, education behooved me to study more immediately pragmatic things.

 

[Rhykker]

Here's my 6th theory: Portals!

And portals are connected by... wormholes

 

[Akisa]

The biggest problem with the idea of warm drive... erm... since you're folding another part of space towards you and what may well be ftl speeds... what prevents you from actually warping a floating ice chunk that happened to be in the spot you targeted the warp into the hull of your ship... or vice versa, your ship winding up just where a stray micro meteorite is travelling.


See that's the one thing sci-fi always over looks... the reality. We know from physics that e=mc2... so basically an object weighing as little as a gram, moving at super luminal velocity will basically impart the energy of a fricken hydrogen bomb upon whatever is unfortunate enough be in it's way. There's particles all up in space. some as large as a gram, some smaller . I mean even on the atomic level, ftl speeds turn molecules into grenades.

Now while wormholes and warping space is plausible, the other fly in the ointment... how the hell do you generate the energy required to do that because the only things occuring naturally that have that ability are black holes and maybe neutron stars.


As you know blackholes are more or less where physics says 'fuck that I'm goin' home'. LOok if we had the ability to generate energy on that scale we'd never need to leave the planet. We could bloody well just move our planet through space at will. SUre maybe not at super luminal speeds, not even half as fast but hey, what's the hurry, not like we have to worry about running out of food, or breathable air. Heat wouldn't be a problem since we'd also be able to create an artificial small scale sun... heck we could re-purpose the moon as that and take it with us. Seems fantastically unfeasible...according to physics... that scenario is far more plausible than warp drive.

Besides... wouldn't it be totally be bitcin to be rockin around the cosmos on a fricken planet. I can just see it now ,, grazing some poor inhabited planet and shouting at them "'Ey I'm drivin ova here!" through the planet to planet universal translator.

The thing about the warp drive is that you're not actually traveling very fast, you're just folding space so that the distance is shorter. For example if you're going only 5mph but you fold the space in front of you that 50 miles become 5 miles, you're still only going 5mph in your little bubble.

As for bending space, everything that has mass bends space. The sun and earth each bend space allowing objects to continually orbit around them. Even your body creates a bend or gravity well, just not to any significant degree. It's the fact we need to bend the space in front of us to contract and bend the space behind us to expand is the goal of the warp drive.

 

[Jadak]

Plus Stargate also has hyperspace (pretty much every faction's FTL ship), Jump Drive (Atlantic series finale) and warp (the Alteran ship in the void between galaxies). All they are missing is slipstream.

I don't recall that Alteran ship using warp, just flooring it to get as close to lightspeed as possible using their sublight engines, hence the relativity effects.

 

[Zontar]

Plus Stargate also has hyperspace (pretty much every faction's FTL ship), Jump Drive (Atlantic series finale) and warp (the Alteran ship in the void between galaxies). All they are missing is slipstream.

I don't recall that Alteran ship using warp, just flooring it to get as close to lightspeed as possible using their sublight engines, hence the relativity effects.

Oh, you're right.

I do seem to recall someone using it for getting threw space though.

 

[jaibryan]

why wasn't something like the mass relays mentioned? i know we would need to build them which would mean we would have to shoot ships to unknown destinations once we build the first one to set up the network.

 

[Bluestorm83]

I didn't jump on board the Atlantis train -- it was too far-future for me. What I loved about SG1 was that it was grounded in real-world, modern military tech. I did return to the franchise for Universe, though, and quite enjoyed what it tried to do. It had its faults, for sure, but by Season 2 they improved it a great deal.

Yeah. This. With season one of Universe, I powered through it despite the way I hated it, because of my love for SG-1. It was all relationship drama and shit. I called it "Fornigate," and that stupid play on words was really my only enjoyment of the series. When Season Two started to actually deal with SCIENCE FICTION instead of quasi-spiritual boredom sex fueled NOTHING fests, I was like, "Oh snap, this could actually start to be really g-" aaaaaaand it was cancelled.

 

[Gary Thompson]

why wasn't something like the mass relays mentioned? i know we would need to build them which would mean we would have to shoot ships to unknown destinations once we build the first one to set up the network.

The mass relays are entirely based on element zero, the made up element everything in Mass Effect is based on.

That's like asking why magic wasn't mentioned.

 

[jaibryan]

why wasn't something like the mass relays mentioned? i know we would need to build them which would mean we would have to shoot ships to unknown destinations once we build the first one to set up the network.

The mass relays are entirely based on element zero, the made up element everything in Mass Effect is based on.

That's like asking why magic wasn't mentioned.

it's just an exotic element like mentioned in the article. replace element zero with some other undiscovered element and bingo.

 

[Jacco]

Can't argue with that. I can't remember another show which balanced technological development using alien tech in a means which felt like something that could almost happen. Hell, the only thing I felt was really inconsistent between it and the spin-offs is the fact that the Lucian Alliance was framed as a legitimate threat when in SG-1 they where at best a nuisance distracting from a real crisis. That's the only major criticism I can think of for the whole franchise.

The shows had active Air Force advisors on set full time to offer advice and maintain realism in every aspect from military protocol to technology use and development.

Let me say that again. The US Air Force had ADVISORS on set full time to provide assistance to the producers. Every episode was released with the Air Force's blessing.

Given what you said, what does THAT tell you?

hahaha

 

[Zontar]

Can't argue with that. I can't remember another show which balanced technological development using alien tech in a means which felt like something that could almost happen. Hell, the only thing I felt was really inconsistent between it and the spin-offs is the fact that the Lucian Alliance was framed as a legitimate threat when in SG-1 they where at best a nuisance distracting from a real crisis. That's the only major criticism I can think of for the whole franchise.

The shows had active Air Force advisors on set full time to offer advice and maintain realism in every aspect from military protocol to technology use and development.

Let me say that again. The US Air Force had ADVISORS on set full time to provide assistance to the producers. Every episode was released with the Air Force's blessing.

Given what you said, what does THAT tell you?

hahaha

Ha, yeah I've made that joke plenty of times. But they couldn't have been that good at their jobs, they forgot the Canadian flags at the base (of all bases in the lower 48, they set it in the one which is a joint base. It does explain why Canada never needed a big reveal like the other nations, or why we didn't have a shit fit like China pretended it would in the show).

 

[Rhykker]

Can't argue with that. I can't remember another show which balanced technological development using alien tech in a means which felt like something that could almost happen. Hell, the only thing I felt was really inconsistent between it and the spin-offs is the fact that the Lucian Alliance was framed as a legitimate threat when in SG-1 they where at best a nuisance distracting from a real crisis. That's the only major criticism I can think of for the whole franchise.

The shows had active Air Force advisors on set full time to offer advice and maintain realism in every aspect from military protocol to technology use and development.

Let me say that again. The US Air Force had ADVISORS on set full time to provide assistance to the producers. Every episode was released with the Air Force's blessing.

Given what you said, what does THAT tell you?

hahaha

Ha, yeah I've made that joke plenty of times. But they couldn't have been that good at their jobs, they forgot the Canadian flags at the base (of all bases in the lower 48, they set it in the one which is a joint base. It does explain why Canada never needed a big reveal like the other nations, or why we didn't have a shit fit like China pretended it would in the show).

Sorry, what's that about Canadian flags? I know a lot of the show (all?) was shot in Canada (Vancouver?) Is there anything else I should be proud of, as a Canadian? Hidden patriotism?

 

[Zontar]

Sorry, what's that about Canadian flags? I know a lot of the show (all?) was shot in Canada (Vancouver?) Is there anything else I should be proud of, as a Canadian? Hidden patriotism?

No, it's just that the base itself is shown as being all American when it's not, so it's odd that for a show which seems to have gone pretty far by sci-fi standards of being realistic in its portrayal of the military and technology that they would forget that the base they use as the main setting is one which is filled with soldiers from a country that isn't the US (hell, the main operations room has a big-ass flag of both countries handing on one side each. Unlike movies where they never show it, it's hard to walk there in real life without realizing it's a joint base)

 

[Darkness665]

They just made significant progress on the shield necessary to safely travel through space.
The rest will happen in time. Maybe some more of it will happen in your life times.

 

[Groverfield]

Jump drives work on wormholes, and slipstream is a hyperdrive with a pilot instead of a computer, which is why it's often thought of as dangerous, or utilizes superhuman pilots (such as farscape.) Also, StarTrek's Warp Drive, while supposed to be a warp drive, is often portrayed as a hyperdrive more than on space warping... maybe that's why Kirk could hit warp 10 within the solar system and only go back in time not visiting all points in the universe at once and evolving into a gecko, also probably because they have that subspace thing which might as well be the slipstream.

 

[iseko]

The question to me has ALWAYS been a "if." Like, "if" we can possibly build a machine that can safely transport someone lightyears away in a reasonable amount of time and "if" it is practical. One of the biggest obstacles is relativity. Sure, someone might make it to planet X in their lifetime, but what if it is like thousands of years in the future when they get there?

Would not be a problem with warp drives. It has applications trowards time travel (in theory). But it could be used as a means for faster then light travel without the problem of time slowing down (for the person traveling relative to its surroundings). So you could reach proxima centauri in about two weeks. These two weeks would be experienced equally long for the people travelling as well as the people left on earth. Theoretically at least. There are a lot of obstacles for this to work. The first being power. A warp bubble would require more energy then is present in our solar system. A warp ring would require roughly the yearly energy produced in north america. Which is considerably less but still way to much for us to generate.

The whole time dilation problem presents itself when you are actually reaching the speed of light. Faster then light travel is always looking for a way around that by not ACTUALLY moving at the speed of light. Faster then light travel that is being researched just implies: arriving faster at the destination then light would by traveling the conventional distance (e.g. worm holes: short cut; warp drives: move space around you).

 

[Rhykker]

...maybe that's why Kirk could hit warp 10 within the solar system and only go back in time not visiting all points in the universe at once and evolving into a gecko...

Ah, Voyager. My favorite of the Treks, but man were some episodes just terribly silly.