12-13-2018, 07:15 AM | #11 |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
I tend to assume Alcubierre drives for any setting I come up or help with. They're as close to real science as FTL can get, and it's reasonable enough to throw in various unresolved issues in the science to keep things interesting.
Warp bubble isn't perfectly insulated from the outside universe? Well, you're going to release a rather impressive burst of radiation when you arrive, so you'll need to pop back into realspace a good distance from any planet you aren't actively seeking to sterilize. Another factor I've seen put to good use is that your warp drive needs more power than your reactor can output at once, so, you need to wait for capacitors to charge. Does prevent rapidly jumping in and out of systems. The nice thing about an Alcubierre drive is that you'll have the same velocity you went to warp with, and it's probably a good idea to give yourself plenty of room to match the local system, preferably without skimming some planet's atmosphere. |
12-13-2018, 10:04 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
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http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Settings/V...s/TheVerge.php I attempted to make it "hard superscience" - there could be physical effects and technology that seems miraculous to us now, but it still must obey the laws of physics. One of the laws of physics I wanted to keep was "the local conservation of X" where X is energy, momentum, angular momentum, electric charge, or (in the non-relativistic limit) mass. The "local" part is important, as it is not only always observed in our measurements in modern science, but it is a mathematical prediction based on the existence of certain symmetries of motion (like, the laws of physics are the same no matter where you are, or which way you are facing, or what time you are measuring them). Without local conservation, you also cannot simultaneously conserve energy, momentum, and angular momentum. One consequence of local conservation is that something massive (like, say, a spacecraft) cannot just disappear from one spot without leaving its mass behind, and it cannot reappear somewhere else (like around another planet) without sucking up some already existing mass. It also invalidates most forms of warp drive (which blatantly violate conservation of angular momentum in any event, even on a global scale). One reasonably well researched, if still speculative, method of going rapidly between distant places is the wormhole, which does obey the local conservation of all the usual conserved quantities. It also leads to some interesting limits on the technology. For example, closed loops of transport across interstellar distances are discouraged, in order to avoid time travel (which will destroy at least one of the wormholes in the loop). And you need to make sure that the mass of stuff going through the wormhole each way is balanced. The conservation of momentum across a wormhole also lets you make the wormhole mouth itself as your spacecraft - so all your valuable stuff(engines, sensors, weapons, generators) can stay home, as can all the crew. Taking this to its limit, I decided to see where I would get if I let wormholes largely replace spacecraft entirely wherever possible. What I ended up with was a network of worlds connected by train lines that go through the wormholes, without anyone needing to get on rockets at all. You can handle massive levels of trade between worlds in this fashion, and even have people living on one world and commuting to work on another (although there are some limits on how fast you can go between worlds based on your rate of decompression in order to avoid the bends). Luke |
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12-13-2018, 11:09 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
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I've become a big fan of jumps and/or pseudo-velocity drives to cut down on the tendency of spaceships to be WMDs. Jumps means you don't need high velocities, and you reasonably can handwave them to compensate for relative motion of each end automagically. Pseudo-velocity drives mean you can't build up massive real velocities and kinetic energy, yet the drives still let people get places in decent time and without having to track every 0.1mps of delta-vee.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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12-13-2018, 11:17 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
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12-13-2018, 11:19 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
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12-13-2018, 11:21 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
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12-13-2018, 11:24 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
The total velocity for the destination orbit must be met within the setting, meaning that stars with very strange motions may be avoided by anyone but surveyors.
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12-13-2018, 12:22 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
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12-13-2018, 12:26 PM | #19 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
This feels annoyingly arbitrary to me, though certainly it's necessary to avoid the problems ericthered points out. Personally, I'd rather use a square root, such that a small sphere's "hyperspace shadow" will have a radius less than that of the sphere.
Last edited by Michael Thayne; 12-13-2018 at 02:47 PM. Reason: Whoops grabbed wrong quote. |
12-13-2018, 02:28 PM | #20 |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
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Re: FTL Assumptions [Space]
And in a galactic version of the Geneva Conventions, it has been deemed that anybody employing such tactics will see every planet they own being sterilized immediately. MAD works, man.
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