The Mechanics of Faster Than Light Travel

Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:06 pm by Arania

Ok, currently, my current two methods of FTL travel are:

1) hyperspace tearing
well, any uber geek knows how that works... just watch stargate, or Wing commander

2) Bubble drive

Well, i know what ur thinking, bubble throwing me at the speed of light?
actually, the system works by concentrating a large amount of energy to create a MASSIVE warp in space, effectivley creating a Timespace bubble around the ship.
The jump drive then uses a slightly larger amount of energy to slowly alter the bubble's location in space, and the ship is, thechnically, propelled, FTL.
The ship itself, relative to the bubble is travelling at speed 0, the SPACE, having no mass or limitation on speed, can travel at many times the speed of light.
Upon reaching its destination, the bubble disintegrates, dumping the ship back into realspace.

As for the energy requirements:
Originally, it was powered by Zero-point energy cells, but i have since shifted to the use of UCE, or universal cosmic energy.
UCE is a particle-level design that carries immense energy, but also helps to maintain the stability of the spacetime continuum. With the right equipment, UCE can be turned into energy to power the jump drive

Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:27 pm by Sirius

If you go through the theory of folding of space (which I favor), technically you are not going faster than the speed of light. But if you do look at the math,

V= Dleta S/Delta T where V= velocity, delta S is change in position (displacement), and Delta T is change in time, your average velocity would be very high.

It might be hard to physically rip through space though...

Tue Nov 09, 2004 10:50 am by Megistos

kimk has the right idea. The only practical method as far as I can imagine would be to take a "shortcut" through a higher dimension. The challenge would be not only in being able to do so, but also finding a dimension in which the distance is shorter.

Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:17 am by Indy11

And that is our limitation at present. We only are rubbing around the 4 dimensions we know. We don't know what others may be so how do we find them?

Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:50 am by [SGC]Jack

Hmm you think if we put our heads together to try and solve this problem,or part of it, we could win the nobel prize? Ok ok I know, not likely, but maybe it would help if we thought about our world as 2D, and then think of how a person in a 2D world would go about finding a third dimension. Im just thinking out loud here, but i think there is a lot more to come in this thread.

Edited by - [SGCJack on 11/9/2004 11:51:23 AM

Tue Nov 09, 2004 12:12 pm by The REAL Freelancer

Black Hole travel?
Just go through a black hole at the speed of light and come out somewhere else.

Slingshot?
Just use a star's gravitational pull to slingshot you out into space at huge speeds?

Man, I gotta get out more

Before ANYBODY asks....
I had my username BEFORE the game even existed. Thank you.

Tue Nov 09, 2004 1:41 pm by [SGC]Jack

Hmm, the so called "spaghettification" that comes with entering a black hole would most likely prove fatal, and once caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole(tell me if im wrong here) theorectically once past the accretion disk time slows down, so even though the hole may transport you somewhere instantaneously, it may take centuries to enter the hole. Also, no one really knows where black holes lead. And the singularities could cause many unforseen problems. As for the slingshot, that may get you going fast, but i doubt it would be near the speed of light. I guess the black hole idea would work in a story, but it is a lot like the moe stable wormhole idea that has been used many times.

Tue Nov 09, 2004 3:07 pm by Saiyan

I once sat down for four hours trying to design a faster than life propulsion system. Needless to say I failed

but I think it would be possible but not in the conventional - "Warp 9 Mr. LaForge" context more like a series of explosions gradually increasing speed to higher and higher levels.

Tue Nov 09, 2004 3:30 pm by Nickless V2

funny how you call warp conventional Sayian.
You make it sound like it's in every car these days

Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:25 pm by mustang

What? You don't have a warp drive in your car?

Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:33 pm by Esquilax

I have always found it interesting that many sci-fi shows and games use the term "subspace". This is probably an easy way of explaining the "alternative fifth dimension" that Indy mentioned.

Wed Nov 10, 2004 12:30 am by ElectricBrain

There's always taking advantage of particle entanglement. Good stuff. Read up on it on Google.

Wed Nov 10, 2004 12:44 am by zazie

TACHYON (Mod, Admin, Ex-Mod ?) should appear in this thread to give us some explanation on his name

THAT would be interesting

Wed Nov 10, 2004 1:50 am by Griffon_26

Meh, you can't accelerate to light speed. You can't just...go faster and faster till your at light speed. The only way to "beat" light is to cheat, using quantum entanglement or wormholes or whatever you like. But you can't just "get propelled up to huge speeds". If you want to know why then I'll tell you but I can't be bothered now and I'm sure most people know.

Wed Nov 10, 2004 3:15 am by Saiyan

What? You don't have a warp drive in your car?

Sadly no, I got the 1.8 Hyberdrive standard

(

)

Important Message

You are browsing the archived Lancers Reactor forums. You cannot register or login.
The content may be outdated and links may not be functional.

To get the latest in Freelancer news, mods, modding and downloads, go to
The-Starport