Warp Drive Question

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by davester65

Okay, I know warp drives are supposed to work by folding or warping space, compressing space in front of the ship and stretching it behind it. The question I have is how would one do that? .

Try vacuum fluctuations as technobabble. You have flat round plates of finely nanostructured material at the front and rear of the ship. Probably with something complicated linking them.

The plates act to "pump" vacuum fluctuations from in front of the ship to behind it. All done by means of quantum mechanics too complicated to explain at TL8.

Spaces collapses as the fluctuations and their virtual particles are sucked up in front and expands as they are pumped out behind. Call it a pump drive.

The implications of such a technology would be that ships would be cylindrical and travel in straight lines at FTL with no forward or rear pointing sensors. They would have to drop out of FTL to extend sensors and maneuvering engines on arms beyond the front and back discs to see where they are and change course.

This probably leads to a mothership/carrier paradigm with a big FTL ship and smaller STL ships that are released when the destination or likely combat are reached.

Some other sort of propulsions system would be used at STL speeds. If you can get close enough to interesting worlds it could even be hard science-y.

You could have lots of little ships or 4 to 6 ships almost as long but narrower than the carrier. These would be what Traveller calls a Tender ad Battleriders.

This could also end up with something similar to Battletech and its' Jumpships and Dropships.

The FTL ships should probably avoid combat due to its' all import quantum pump discs and the limits on sensor/weapon/reaction engine placement they create.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

Not necessarily, the kinds of energy that could hypothetically be required are staggering.

Seems to depend strongly on the details. That's true of Alcubierre's original metric, but other people have modified the metric to require much less energy. A mere three solar masses -- but wait, there's also a 700 kg solution -- and a modification of the 3 solar mass one that needs only a few milligrams of negative mass. Oscillating the field can also supposedly reduce the mass requirement. The amount of energy required doesn't seem to be a settled question. It depends on the exact shape and behavior of the warped area. Any solution to GR that we know of that allows FTL requires negative energy, but we don't really understand exactly how much or how it has to behave.

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Seems to depend strongly on the details. That's true of Alcubierre's original metric, but other people have modified the metric to require much less energy. A mere three solar masses -- but wait, there's also a 700 kg solution -- and a modification of the 3 solar mass one that needs only a few milligrams of negative mass. Oscillating the field can also supposedly reduce the mass requirement. The amount of energy required doesn't seem to be a settled question. It depends on the exact shape and behavior of the warped area. Any solution to GR that we know of that allows FTL requires negative energy, but we don't really understand exactly how much or how it has to behave.

Yes I know, this is why I said could and not would.

[davester65]

Interesting, so negative mass may be needed to make it work. I'm not sure where I got the idea that an artificial gravity field would work. Maybe something I read about gravitational lensing, assuming that even means what I think it means. Or does that have to do with gravity bending light, not space itself? Or do they really know which is really being bent?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by davester65

Interesting, so negative mass may be needed to make it work. I'm not sure where I got the idea that an artificial gravity field would work. Maybe something I read about gravitational lensing, assuming that even means what I think it means. Or does that have to do with gravity bending light, not space itself? Or do they really know which is really being bent?

Gravity doesn't "bend space". Gravity is bent space, distorted by the presence of mass. Light's path is altered by passage through the bent space, and under some circumstances, this is detectable.

[davester65]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Gravity doesn't "bend space". Gravity is bent space, distorted by the presence of mass. Light's path is altered by passage through the bent space, and under some circumstances, this is detectable.

Okay, thanks. That helps clear things up a bit.

[SRoach]

Something else you might want to read is "Warp Speed" by Travis Taylor.
He's an actual rocket scientist who decided to try his hand at writing fiction.
Avoid the second book, it's very Mary Sue.
I mean, the main character in the second book gets abducted by greys, and parleys that into a full, posthuman, upgrade package for him and his new girlfriend. (Actually, I think the upgrade might have been her idea.)