Fortunately, Full Thrust does not specify how FTL travel works and enables one
to use different versions. In the Star Wars universe you can jump to
Hyperspace as soon as you clear a heavenly body. In the Alderson (Mote in
God's Eye) the Alderson Tram points are dependant on the mass of the two
stars. For the Moties it turns out that the emergence point was inside a low
mass red dwarf, for Earth it was outside the orbit of Jupiter... In the
Babylon 5 universe you can open a jump point anywhere... Now according to one
of the FT books, you can jump to FTL at any time but the closer you are to any
physical object, the worse it is for you and
them...
> Fortunately, Full Thrust does not specify how FTL travel works and
Don't forget the Robotech version "the fold generator" (much like a recent
movie: Event Horizon)
momentarily folds space-time so that point A (travel from) and point B
(travel to) are physically the same point in space that way travel... is
fast... you could effectively travel faster than light...
CMC
[sorry, attribution lost]
> momentarily folds space-time so that point A (travel from) and point B
is
> fast... you could effectively travel faster than light...
Sounds like the old Heinlein idea, described in detail in "Starman Jones".
> Chris McCurry wrote:
is
> fast... you could effectively travel faster than light...
Isn't this the same as in DUNE?
Does anyone know if they every said how long distance travel is accomplished
in Space: Above and Beyond?
> From what little I've noticed on the show, it appears they use "Jump
> Does anyone know if they every said how long distance travel is
I think that they used Wormholes. I think it was mentionedin the first episode
that they would use a newly discovered wormhole (I don't remember if that's
what they actually called it) to attack the chigs while the rest of the fleet
would use the other wormholes. I could be wrong. Its been over a year since I
saw it.
> Isn't this the same as in DUNE?
I don't really remember. It's been so long...
But thinking about it, I can only think of three truly different ways to
travel at high speeds in S.Fiction. Every thing else is just a variation of
one of those themes:
1) hyperspace / warp space / worm holes / etc.
2) Folding / warping (changing the reality of space time)
and
3) conventional travel straight line, (if one believes: the light barrier is
just another barrier than every thinks can not be surpassed. Much like
the sound barrier back in the way days. < we just don't know how /
theoretically>)
if any one can think of something else that's no related to any of these (is
truly different) please let me know...
I have been thinking about this for years now and have not come up with any
other theories..
thanks
CMC
> On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Chris McCurry wrote:
> >>accomplished in Space: Above and Beyond?
I believe they used wormholes.
Later,
> Chris McCurry writes:
@:) But thinking about it, I can only think of three truly different @:) ways
to travel at high speeds in S.Fiction. Every thing else is @:) just a
variation of one of those themes:
@:)
@:) 1) hyperspace / warp space / worm holes / etc.
@:) 2) Folding / warping (changing the reality of space time)
@:) 3) conventional travel
I think you're right. Basically you either traverse some space to get from A
to B or you don't. If you do, you either traverse normal space, your option
(3), or you traverse some other kind of space, your option (1). If you don't
traverse any space to get where you're going, you either stay put and move the
universe, your option (2), or
you stay put and _don't_ move the universe, which is something of a
degenerate case because you don't go anywhere.
The closest thing I can think of that is any different from any of
these is some kind of teleoperation/astral projection scheme, but then
you're not really going anywhere, I guess, so it doesn't count.
I too would be very interested to hear any ideas that are somehow
different from these apparently catch-all transportation methods.
> On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Andy Skinner wrote:
Would I be wrong If said that even energy has to obey Einstien's
speed-of-light speed limit and that this energy transmition method would
not be considered "Fater" than ligher travel?
Later,
> Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:
Does converting yourself to energy or a signal and transmitting that and
reconstructing at the other end count? I know the transmission has to travel
some way. I'm not all that big on science fiction, so I am not familiar with
who has done what.
(I like Star Wars and stuff like that, for the fun of it, but it more the
fantasy of it that appeals to me. I happens to be set in space, with a lot of
techological stuff. In case you're wondering what I'm doing on such a list if
I'm not a science fiction fan.)
> Would I be wrong If said that even energy has to obey Einstien's
This is true but you must always consider the fact that maybe Einstien is
wrong...???
hmmmmmm?
Great people have been wrong before you know...
think about it...
CMC
> Does converting yourself to energy or a signal and transmitting
This too would fit into one of the three outlined before
due to the fact that, yes, the transmission would have to travel some how.
is sounds like TRON.. or more easily related startrek...
CMC
> On Sept 11, 1997 you wrote:
> 3) conventional travel straight line, (if one believes: the light
This is a bit of a misleading statement, comparing the sound barrier to the
light barrier. People knew of many things that could surpass the sound barrier
before it was ever done. It was much more of an engineering problem (How do we
make things strong enough to withstand poorly
understood, non-linear and very strong forces...). With faster than
light travel there is a bigger problem. No one has ever observed anything that
gives any evidence that counters the notion that the speed of light is an
absolute limit. Lately there has been some discussion of neutrinos possibly
travelling faster than light, but none have yet been observed doing so. If
they were, things could get very interesting in particle physics. Sorry about
the length, but you seemed a bit cavalier in your treatment of the light
barrier...
> if any one can think of something else that's no related to any of
I have one. How about an omnipresent/quantum-mechanical like system.
This would work by being everywhere in the universe at the same time, right up
until you wish to become "detected" (ie. "seen"). Of, course, the science
fiction part is how you would maintain your coherent existence in such a way
as to allow you to actually have consiousness.
For the uninitiated, our universe behaves much like this on scales smaller
than say, an atom. You don't really know "where" an electron
"is"
until you manage to detect it (if indeed the concept has meaning). It is a bit
like the needle in a haystack idea, but everytime you place the needle in the
stack, it gets mixed up again, so you have no idea where the needle is until
you find it again, and even then you have no way of knowing it was the same
needle. However, if you are the
needle/electron things change in ways I that I haven't a clue about.
> I have been thinking about this for years now and have not come up with
I'll keep on it, and post any "new" ideas I find...
> thanks
> Dean Gundberg wrote:
your close dean,
the RMN found a way to use gravation pulses, which in the HH universe travel
FTL, to send messages. The RMN would mount this system on remote sensor
drones, which would send a message, containing data on the enemy fleet, over
these gravatic pulses, kinda like morse code.
basically it gave them real time sensor data on an incoming force, as apposed
to waiting for whatever prevous data transmission media to give them a sensor
lock on there opponents
> At 03:35 PM 9/11/97 -0400, Joachim Heck wrote:
There's Harry Harrison's "bloater drive" from "Bill the Galactic Hero"-
the distances between the particles of the ship are enlarged hugely, while
keeping the ship's stern fixed at the point of departure. Relatively tiny
star-systems can be seen appearing to float through the ship. When the
bow arrives at its destination, it is fixed there. The stern is released, and
the vessel is "de-bloated"....
> At 01:52 PM 9/12/97 +0100, micheal wrote:
> Aren't the effects of gravity supposed to be effective immediately
From what I understand Gravity is not instantaneous and in fact follows waves
of a speed of c. In an alderson universe, Alderson waves coincide with gravity
waves but must be joined by other energy releases. Therefore, a black hole
with no mass to consume must get something to eat to generate the alderson
point as illustrated in the story "He fell into a dark hole."
> Chris McCurry writes:
@:)
@:) >>Would I be wrong If said that even energy has to obey Einstien's
@:) >>speed-of-light speed limit and that this energy transmition
@:) >>method would not be considered "Fater" than ligher travel?
No. Although, since this is SF we can always assume a faster than light signal
(subspace or whatever).
@:) This is true but you must always consider the fact that maybe @:) Einstien
[sic] is wrong...???
@:)
@:) hmmmmmm?
@:)
@:) Great people have been wrong before you know...
@:)
@:) think about it...
OK, I've thought about it. The probably that Einstein's theories of relativity
are wrong is extremely small. Likewise, it is incorrect to suggest that
Einstein's theories invalidate Newton's theories. Newton's mechanics were not
wrong, they were only specific to a particular set of conditions (in
particular they only work for
relatively slow-moving objects). Actually Ptolomey wasn't really
"wrong" either, although people like to laugh at his epicyclic explanation of
planetary movement. In reality he came up with a pretty good tool for
predicting the locations of the planets. Copernicus and Kepler just had
fancier math.
These kinds of statements turn up frequently on the various sci.space.*
newsgroups and become very aggravating after a while. People compare the light
barrier with the sound barrier, they say new science invalidates old science,
they think that impossible things must be true just because it would be nice.
But that's just not the way things work.
Hope this message doesn't sound to mean-spirited, but this topic
really irks me.
> Transmission as tachyons? I don't know anything about tachyons
As far as I remember they are proposed partacles that should happen. I just
don't think they've been observed.
> Aren't the effects of gravity supposed to be effective immediately
Great so you do something like blow a Sun up, and that's the signal to attack?
:)
Again this is something that I've never seen anything tested. ANyone out there
read any more recent literature on the theory?
-Michael
> Andy Skinner writes:
@:) Transmission as tachyons? I don't know anything about tachyons @:) except
they were supposed to move faster than light. I don't even @:) remember
whether they were theoretical, hypothetical, or @:) fictional.
They used to be mostly theoretical and I think now they're considered mostly
fictional.
@:) Aren't the effects of gravity supposed to be effective immediately @:)
across distance?
Actually no, or at least that's what I hear. Gravity is probably transmitted
by particles like the other forces.
@:) So could you postulate some sort of gravitational signal that @:) would be
instantaneous?
No but - there are certain weird situations in which things appear
to happen faster than light. In particular there's this quantum thingie (can
you tell this isn't my field?) where you take apart an object (usually a
particle) and the parts retain a certain relationship to each other that they
got from being the same particle
(spin or charm or something - I get the impression it's a conservation
law). Anyway the idea is that this relationship is continuously maintained no
matter how far apart the particles are moved. So if you move them a billion
light years apart, and change one, the other changes as well, instantaneously.
Sounds like FTL communication to me.
Unfortunately it's not. But don't ask me why I just read this stuff
in Scientific American - I pay taxes for other people to understand
it. If anyone here is a quantum physicist and can tell me why no information
is transferred in the above situation I'd love to know.
@:) I really gotta be quiet. I don't know what I'm talking about.
Never stopped me.
> On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Andy Skinner wrote:
Transmission as tachyons? I don't know anything about tachyons except they
were supposed to move faster than light. I don't even remember whether they
were theoretical, hypothetical, or fictional.
Aren't the effects of gravity supposed to be effective immediately across
distance? So could you postulate some sort of gravitational signal that would
be instantaneous?
I really gotta be quiet. I don't know what I'm talking about.
:-)
> At 08:57 12/09/97 -0400, you wrote:
Indeed. It's spin. The idea is you take a neutron (I think it was) and split
it into an electron and it's opposite, a positron I think. A consequence of
this fission process is that one spins clockwise and the other spins
anticlockwise. You can then separate them. If you use (I think) a magnetic
field to affect the spin of one, it also seems to affect the spin of the other
simultaeneously. Whether this is FTL or at the speed of light was being
argued, but I *think* it has actually been done experimentally rather than
just being a theory. Going form that to an
efficent telecoms system is another kettle of fish though. Note that
another side effct is that such communication would have no maximum range or
suffer from interference. Sorry if I'm a bit vague on this but it was just
happening when I dropped out of a physics degree..
> Unfortunately it's not. But don't ask me why I just read this stuff
In essence the information isn't transferred. The change in spin of the
particle isn't information, it's just physics. You might as well ask why does
heat travel from warm to cold objects, or why the colours of the spectrum are
arranged the way they are, or every chemical reaction loses a
tiny piece of mass/energy. Some things there are no explanations for,
they are just THE WAY THINGS ARE. Only when you place some significance behind
the change in spin does it become a piece of information. It's not actually
unusual in quantum physics (or even newtonian physics) to have thinsg which
seem impossible. For instance, I've been waiting for years for someone to
explain where the matter that gets sucked into black holes goes. Indeed, I
always thought near light speed travel would be impossible in 'normal space'
because as you approach light speed, your density increases, therefore I
always thought that at some point close to C you would become dense enough to
attain singularity and 'drop out' of the universe. Anyway..
> @:) I really gotta be quiet. I don't know what I'm talking about.
But surely, the first person to think something up never knows what they
are talking about. Becuase no-one has ever told them :).
TTFN
Jon
> Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:
Really? I thought gravity was just bent space, and bending space is just
something mass does.
How's that for scientific?
> Aren't the effects of gravity supposed to be effective immediately
> From what I understand Gravity is not instantaneous and in fact
If I remember my Honor Harrington right, wasn't one of their secret weapons
the ability to communicate over distances before unthought of almost
instantaneously with the use of a gravitic device? Also they were able to
identify enemy ships that were very, very far away with their gravity
signature.
But then again it could have been a dream ;-)
Hi there! Don't forget Improbablity Drive as used in The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy. I forget all the details but the ship's drive changes the odds of
you being in a certain place and then there you are.
David Best
> ----------
> David BEST writes:
@:) Don't forget Improbablity Drive as used in The Hitchhiker's Guide @:) to
the Galaxy. I forget all the details but the ship's drive @:) changes the odds
of you being in a certain place and then there @:) you are.
Yeah, actually that's pretty much the same as something somebody
else mentioned - with the IID you are, for a brief instant, actually
in all points in the universe at once. Then the probability goes down
everywhere else and you are where you are, which is somewhere else, and you're
there.
> Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:
If you can call a 13(?) dimensional tensor(matrix) "space". They call it
"bent" because the geometry is no longer Euclidean. The shortest distance
between two points is no longer a straight line. Without a doubt, mass if one
of the least understood phenomena in the universe. The question being (if it
has any meaning, that is): What is mass?
> How's that for scientific?
> Deeply in Love with Dot wrote:
> Indeed. It's spin. The idea is you take a neutron (I think it was) and
Just saw this on The Learning Channel. they had it down as occurring
*instantaneously* over any distance, and that it has been done in a lab (one
of the particle accelerators rings). I find it interesting that most sf books
I've read have FLT flight as routine, through whatever means, but have trouble
with communications. Honor Harrington and Miles Vorkosigan series come to
mind.
In message <8625650F.00690B5A.00@notes.vastar.com>
> "Chris McCurry" <CMCCURR@vastar.com> wrote:
> But thinking about it, I can only think of three truly different ways
I'd say wormholes fall more into category 2, and how is 'warp space' different
from 2 as well (it's name suggests it's warping spacetime at any rate).
There are radically different types of wormholes. A lot in science fiction are
just "open wormhole at A to B, and travel through it", where end B is created
magically hundreds of lightyears away.
Traversable wormholes OTOH are (very briefly) where you 'grow' a quantum
wormhole up to practical size. At this point, both ends (end 'A' and end 'B')
are still next to each other.
Both ends can be moved independently, but obey all the
normal laws of physics - ie, they cannot travel faster
than light. So you can't travel to worlds you haven't been to before
instantly, but you have to set up a wormhole link first (which may take
hundreds of years).
> 3) conventional travel straight line, (if one believes: the light
The sound barrier was not seen as impossible to pass - it
was widely known that bullets did it all the time. It was just the difficulty
of keeping the plane in one piece as the speed of sound was approached.
> if any one can think of something else that's no related to any of
To add:
4) Time machine (ignoring the fact that FTL drives are time machines anyway).
Travel to your destination taking a year and a day while in cryofreeze. Travel
back in time one year, and hey presto, it's only taken you one day to travel
that distance (which could be a light year).
5) Newtonian physics. E.E. Smiths inertialess drives are an example. Ignore
relativity altogether, and just keep on accelerating to really fast speeds.
In message <341969B5.4ECA@avs.com>
> Andy Skinner <askinner@avs.com> wrote:
> Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:
Gravity is more of a 'state' of local space, rather than anything that can be
transmitted (basically, a measure
of how bent space-time is by mass).
You do have postulated 'gravitons' though, which are theoretical particles
which are exchanged in gravitational interactions. They're thought to travel
at lightspeed.
Also,'gravity waves' are another postulated feature, these being created by
fast moving (relativistic) massive bodies. These probably travel at lightspeed
as well.
(I've just grabbed those two from a dictionary of physics, so I can't give any
more info!).
Excerpts from FT: 13-Sep-97 Re: Faster Than Light Travel by Samuel
Penn@bifrost.demo
> "Chris McCurry" <CMCCURR@vastar.com> wrote:
I think he's referring to an actual change in space (like the Navigators in
Dune, who caused two points in space to coexist briefly) vs. a
different dimension which happens to have a 1-to-1 correlation with the
'normal' universe, like GW's Warp, Pournelle's Alderson Drive, and Niven's
Known Space hyperdrive. Though I do think worm holes would go in the warping
of space time, not the hyperspace section; I thought transit time in a
wormhole was basically zero? (Which seems to be a common factor in the second
method....)
> To add:
Or the Gateway ships, which had mass dampeners... though I'm still not sure
how that equated to FTL travel. Sure, you can bring the ship's mass to zero,
but that still doesn't let you go faster than light. Hmm,
gotta go back and see if he explains that... well, maybe. ^_^
In a message dated 97-09-13 23:18:13 EDT, you write:
<< > 5) Newtonian physics. E.E. Smiths inertialess drives are
> an example. Ignore relativity altogether, and just keep
Or the Gateway ships, which had mass dampeners... though I'm still not sure
how that equated to FTL travel. Sure, you can bring the ship's mass to zero,
but that still doesn't let you go faster than light. Hmm,
gotta go back and see if he explains that... well, maybe. ^_^
> [quoted text omitted]
Yes, mass dampeners are the same as inertialess drives. The light barrier is
really an infitite energy barrier. The faster you go, the more mass you have,
the more energy it takes to push you faster. This keeps up until you get to
the point that it will take infinite energy to get that last KPH. Also it
would take you infinite time to reach light speed, the faster you go, the
slower the time dialation (Tau factor) so no matter how long you accelerate,
you never get there. Just take it from me, only a SF writer could make it a
simple matter to go FTL this way.
> > Actually no, or at least that's what I hear. Gravity is probably
Just to confuse things a little further, if you actually believe Heisenburg's
Uncertainty Principle, it's entirely possible those two are in fact one and
the same just looked at a different way..
TTFN
Jon
Whilst talking about gravitons and gravity waves, Jon said:
> Just to confuse things a little further, if you actually believe
Uh no. They are the same thing and that phenonema is called the
wave-particle duality, but The Uncertainty Principle is something
else. (It states that you can not know both the position and the momentum of a
wavefunction to an arbitrary degree of exactness.)
Cheers,
> There's Harry Harrison's "bloater drive" from "Bill the Galactic
Ha ha ha...
That's hilarious
But, I kinda think that could fall under the distortion of space idea...
because you are distorting the space the ship occupies <I think> (making it
bloated)
CMC
[snip]
> But thinking about it, I can only think of three truly different ways
IIRC (it was a LONG time ago that I read them), Brian Stableford's "Hooded
Swan" series was pretty unique in that it had at least three different types
of FTL drive in use in the same setting! All I can remember is that
one of them was called the P-Shifter (probability shifter), I think the
other two were more like the usual Hyperspace/Warp types; I just mention
this because it is a very unusual idea to have different races using TOTALLY
different FTL methods in the same book....
----Or you can just cease to exist in one location and reappear
somewhere else i.e. quantum jumping on a macro scale. This is actually
possible, its just that the probability is infinitessimal. Now if we can just
figure out how to get all the subatomic particles in this ship to become
excited in such a way that the probability equations resolve simultaneously to
locate them now one light year away ( all with the same xyz translation
preferably
- otherwise the paperwork gets messy ). The point about this is you
travel from a to b without passing through anywhere in between and so the
speed of light is not a limiting factor. Its been about 10 years since I did
any quantum mechanics or statistical thermodynamics and so they are somewhat
rusty now.
Craig
. From: Joachim Heck - SunSoft <jheck@East.Sun.COM>
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Date: 11 September 1997 13:19
Subject: Re: Faster Than Light Travel
> Chris McCurry writes:
@:) But thinking about it, I can only think of three truly different @:) ways
to travel at high speeds in S.Fiction. Every thing else is @:) just a
variation of one of those themes:
@:)
@:) 1) hyperspace / warp space / worm holes / etc.
@:) 2) Folding / warping (changing the reality of space time)
@:) 3) conventional travel
I think you're right. Basically you either traverse some space to get from A
to B or you don't. If you do, you either traverse normal space, your option
(3), or you traverse some other kind of space, your option (1). If you don't
traverse any space to get where you're going, you either stay put and move the
universe, your option (2), or
you stay put and _don't_ move the universe, which is something of a
degenerate case because you don't go anywhere.
The closest thing I can think of that is any different from any of
these is some kind of teleoperation/astral projection scheme, but then
you're not really going anywhere, I guess, so it doesn't count.
I too would be very interested to hear any ideas that are somehow
different from these apparently catch-all transportation methods.
-joachim
> IIRC (it was a LONG time ago that I read them), Brian Stableford's
Check out Vernor Vinge "A Fire on the Deep". In this there are 3 different
areas of the galaxy broken into the transcendent, the beyond, and the
slowness. In each area the way actual technologies work are different. In the
slowness for instance you can't travel faster thal light. In the transcend
just about anything is possible. Dependant on which area you're civilisation
is in you can be more or less technologically advanced. The only problem is
that high tech stuff doesn't work in the lower areas of space. Therefore no
transcend techs in the slowness etc. This creates some interesting
possibilities. Its a book thats well worth a read.
> IIRC (it was a LONG time ago that I read them), Brian Stableford's
I remember reading an article in Scientific American by a Russian cosmologist
who theorized that the universe was fractal in nature, with certain stable
zones where the laws of physics were constant (but not the same everywhere),
and zones of instability where physics was a bit odd, and "baby universes"
were being formed all the time from these instable zones. I remember he had
some nice computer diagrams illustrating his theory. Unfortunately I lent my
copy out to someone who never returned it and now I forget who I lent it to (I
think I have lost way too many books this way)!
Anyway, I don't remember any evidence supporting his theory (other than his
computer models) but it was very interesting nonetheless. Could provide some
very interesting FT scenarios where fleets from different stable zones battle
it out.
> -----------------------------
> ngilsena@indigo.ie wrote:
> Check out Vernor Vinge "A Fire on the Deep". In this there are 3
Second that, about the book being well worth reading. The Galactic comms
networl is deliberately modelled on the Internet, complete with Flamewars,
disinformation, spam, and worse....
Basically, we're in the Slows at the moment, but not the Unthinking Depths,
where intelligent life is impossible (whether biological or cybernetic). In
the slows, AIs are marginal at best, the doubletalk generators will cease to
function, and any ship that gets caught in the Slows, even by only a few Light
Years, is trapped for years until it can ascend.
The technology in the Transcend OTOH is soooo advanced that it's not so much
technology as Magic, in the Clarkian sense. Fortunately, the transcendent
entities are about as interested in Galactic Empires as we are in Ant Heaps.
Only the most juvenile, immature or intellectually