Scientists claim warp drive is possible

[jaws]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

How plausible is the Mass Effect method of justifying FTL for science fiction purposes? Baset on what i have read on project Rho so far it seams fair enough unless you start shooting FTL ships at planets.

 

Details for this available by reading the Codex entries here:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/file/930279/50930

 

Considder The following entries:

~Element Zero ('Eezo')~

~Mass Relays~

~Mass Effect Fields~

~Mass Accelerators~ (not really FTL but same principal)

~FTL Drive: Appearance~

~Starships: Thrusters~

~Communications~

[Comic]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

How plausible is the Mass Effect method of justifying FTL for science fiction purposes?

 

For fiction? Perfectly plausible.

 

For real?

 

Hits the same problems as any FTL scheme, eventually.

 

The Firefly approach to FTL seems the most plausible means to deal with the topic: can't fly FTL, but can find a solar system with enough planets in it to make a space opera plausible.

 

Just don't look too close at the process of getting from Earth to the new solar system, and all is fine.

 

Well, Firefly's physics wasn't perfect, or even great.. but it's fiction.

[Maur]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Actually they never described any of the details of getting from Earth to the new system. Only that it had happened and now here they were...

[megaplayboy]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Actually they never described any of the details of getting from Earth to the new system. Only that it had happened and now here they were...

 

I think it had something to do with the moon exploding and sending the colony out into space at faster than light speed.

[L. Marcus]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Bad megaplayboy! Bad! *thumps ear of mp*

 

There was a fleet of big ships in the opening sequence of Serenity. I took them as generation ships.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Bad megaplayboy! Bad! *thumps ear of mp*

 

There was a fleet of big ships in the opening sequence of Serenity. I took them as generation ships.

 

That would make a lot of sense. It wouldn't matter if it took centuries or millenia, then.

[Nyrath]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Actually they never described any of the details of getting from Earth to the new system. Only that it had happened and now here they were...

Which is an approach that saves an author all sorts of grief from nit-picky fans.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Since there's not a lot of friction in space (or gravity between systems), a generation ship would just have to carry enough fuel to accelerate to, say, 0.001 c, and decelerate again when coming close to the destination. If the destination star was, say, 50 ly away, it'd take about 100,000 years to make the trip. You'd still have to deal with the energy costs to maintain cryogenic stasis, systems monitoring, etc.

At .01 c, it'd take more like 10,000 years, and at .1 c, about 1000.

 

Still, the energy requirements are pretty clearly beyond what we're capable of now. Perhaps a 22nd century global culture with fusion/solar tech could come up with the energy sufficient to begin such a massive task.

 

But, aside from the joys of space exploration, what exactly would the benefit be in exchange for these massive costs? Exploring and settling a new world would cost probably the equivalent of a century's worth of global GDP (I'm just pulling these numbers out of my nether regions, BTW). What would we gain in exchange for that?

[Maur]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Well, as you get to higher fractions of C you won't need nearly as much power for maintaining the systems as the passage of time inside the ship would be reduced.

 

v (fractions of C) Time to travel the distance (50LY) Internal time felt

0.001 50000 49999.975

0.01 5000 4999.749994

0.1 500 497.4937186

0.2 250 244.9489743

0.3 166.6666667 158.9898669

0.4 125 114.5643924

0.5 100 86.60254038

0.6 83.33333333 66.66666667

0.7 71.42857143 51.01020306

0.8 62.5 37.5

0.9 55.55555556 24.21610524

[megaplayboy]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Well, as you get to higher fractions of C you won't need nearly as much power for maintaining the systems as the passage of time inside the ship would be reduced.

 

v (fractions of C) Time to travel the distance (50LY) Internal time felt

0.001 50000 49999.975

0.01 5000 4999.749994

0.1 500 497.4937186

0.2 250 244.9489743

0.3 166.6666667 158.9898669

0.4 125 114.5643924

0.5 100 86.60254038

0.6 83.33333333 66.66666667

0.7 71.42857143 51.01020306

0.8 62.5 37.5

0.9 55.55555556 24.21610524

 

except, of course, that the relative mass of the vessel increases relativistically as well, so your energy savings basically disappears.

[Maur]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

I didn't realize a stasis pod was mass dependent for powering it. Yes, it takes more energy to speed up or slow down, but not to keep the lights on inside the ship which is all I was referring to...

[Zeropoint]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Cryogenic stasis pods aren't a good idea for REALLY long trips . . . while the body is in cryogenic suspension, it can't repair the normally-negligible radiation damage that everyone deals with at all times while alive. Even if you completely shield against outside radiation, there are still radioisotopes in the human body. You'd need to wake people up and have them active at intervals, otherwise they wouldn't survive being thawed.

[Maur]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Well, one might be able to get around that. We've got bacteria here on Earth that we've resurrected from being frozen in the ice caps for 25,000 years that came alive as soon as the ice was thawed from around them.

[Clonus]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

For fiction? Perfectly plausible.

 

For real?

 

Hits the same problems as any FTL scheme, eventually.

 

The Firefly approach to FTL seems the most plausible means to deal with the topic: can't fly FTL, but can find a solar system with enough planets in it to make a space opera plausible.

 

Just don't look too close at the process of getting from Earth to the new solar system, and all is fine.

.

 

Honestly it isn't. It's just as impossible to put that many shirt-sleeve environment bodies in one system as it is to travel faster than light. Not only does the cube-square law have to not apply to the light from the suns, and not only do they have to come up with a method for multiplying an object's gravity manyfold without increasing mass or using any energy to maintain it but the planets actually have to be stationary.

[Nyrath]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Honestly it isn't. It's just as impossible to put that many shirt-sleeve environment bodies in one system as it is to travel faster than light. Not only does the cube-square law have to not apply to the light from the suns' date=' and not only do they have to come up with a method for multiplying an object's gravity manyfold without increasing mass or using any energy to maintain it but the planets actually have to be stationary.[/quote']

Do they have to be stationary? You can have an arbitrary number of planets at the same distance from the primary star if they are in a Klemperer rosette. Thus all the planets could be in the ecosphere.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Do they have to be stationary? You can have an arbitrary number of planets at the same distance from the primary star if they are in a Klemperer rosette. Thus all the planets could be in the ecosphere.

 

I follow the explanation for why the Larry Niven style rosette is unstable, but I don't see how the alternating light and heavy bodies makes it any more stable. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Without me having to read the entirety of W. B. Klemperer's paper?

[Clonus]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Do they have to be stationary? You can have an arbitrary number of planets at the same distance from the primary star if they are in a Klemperer rosette. Thus all the planets could be in the ecosphere.

 

The 'verse is described as having more than a hundred habitable bodies. Disregarding the implications of being able to toss around planets that way suggesting the war should have been something out of Lensman, the very fact that they could mislay an entire world doesn't fit with that kind of linear arrangement.

[Markdoc]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

The 'verse is described as having more than a hundred habitable bodies. Disregarding the implications of being able to toss around planets that way suggesting the war should have been something out of Lensman' date=' the very fact that they could mislay an entire world doesn't fit with that kind of linear arrangement.[/quote']

 

It's just one of those things it doesn't pay to think about: there isn't any way I can think of that it makes sense, any more than the "sensor defeating cloud in space" did, or the fact that a planet-spanning war hinged over a battle for some valley. A valley?

 

If you want a comprehensible explanation assume the 'verse was created by incomprehensibly advanced aliens who also transported all the humans there.

 

cheers, Mark

[Nyrath]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

The 'verse is described as having more than a hundred habitable bodies.

Well, there doesn't seem to be quite that many on the map included with the Serenity RPG

[megaplayboy]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Probably just a plot hook so they can fill in the blanks in further seasons.

 

But if there were too many people on Earth (which would have to mean tens of billions, at least, if we're starting from the year 2500), then shouldn't a lot of those worlds be pretty heavily populated?

[Clonus]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

It's just one of those things it doesn't pay to think about: there isn't any way I can think of that it makes sense, any more than the "sensor defeating cloud in space" did, or the fact that a planet-spanning war hinged over a battle for some valley. A valley?

 

I'm giving them a pass on that. The battle wasn't in any way pivotal. It was just the last battle to be fought and turned into a pointlessly heroic last stand.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

Probably just a plot hook so they can fill in the blanks in further seasons.

 

But if there were too many people on Earth (which would have to mean tens of billions, at least, if we're starting from the year 2500), then shouldn't a lot of those worlds be pretty heavily populated?

 

I was under the impression that the Core Worlds were heavily populated. And if the frontier worlds were close enough to supply the food, the Core could be more densely populated than Earth could be.

[The Weapon]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

I didn't realize a stasis pod was mass dependent for powering it. Yes' date=' it takes more energy to speed up or slow down, but not to keep the lights on inside the ship which is all I was referring to...[/quote']

 

 

You can keep a lot of lights on for a long time with the difference between a kilogram at .8 and .81 c.

[The Weapon]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

That would make a lot of sense. It wouldn't matter if it took centuries or millenia' date=' then.[/quote']

 

 

If you don't have FTL then controlling a planet in another system is pointless. By the time the military gets there the policy their government wants them to enforce, if they want them to do anything, has hopelessly changed. Hell they might not even remember they were sent. Or (and this is not an original idea) those in charge of sending them might simply pocket the money knowing by the time the force is identified as "missing" from the action they'll be long dead.

[Nyrath]

Re: Scientists claim warp drive is possible

 

But if there were too many people on Earth (which would have to mean tens of billions' date=' at least, if we're starting from the year 2500), then shouldn't a lot of those worlds be pretty heavily populated?[/quote']

I vaguely remember some references to a sudden need to rapidly vacate Earth (global climate collapse, sun going nova, something like that). This means that only the nations with a high enough technology base can move significant fractions of their populations to the new 'verse. The rest sadly perished with Earth.

 

So the initial population of the 'verse would be quite small compared to the population of Earth.