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Old 05-23-2013, 08:36 PM   #1
isf
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
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Default Transhuman Space and Star Trek

Inspired by Shadowjack's excellent Federated Space take on Star Trek (Specifically on transporters and warp drives*); what do people think would happen if those techs were added to Transhuman Space? Transporters first, then a period of stutterwarp capable ships (10% lightspeed at start, up to 90% pre-transwarp) and finally transwarp drives [slow FTL at start]

I'd like to keep the tl^ to minimum; is it reasonable to allow other space warping based technologies like shields and expensive and large FTL comm?

I think that the first stutterwarp ships would be both AI probes sent out to survey nearby stars and splinter groups heading out to get away from other people and/or to explore.


*Transporters; warp a bubble around objects in a transporter pad, sight to sight, one way, stopped by physical barriers at rest relative to barrier].

Stutterwarp: mobile transporter field; inertialless reactionless drive, stops relative to any significant mass [at rest as above], limited to near light speed.

Transwarp drive: sustainable warp bubble, stops relative to any significant mass [at rest as above], combination NAFAL/FTL drive.

From the wiki: tech notes
Quote:
Transport was the origin of the warpdrive in this setting. The early "stutterwarp" (inspired by the one in 2300), developed during the Terran Empire, is essentially a transporter that transports itself. Because the range-per-cast is short, the drive has to be cycled rapidly to get anywhere; breakdowns are frequent.
The later "transwarp", developed independently by a number of people (but first by what would become the Federated Worlds), is a variation that, in layman's terms, lets the bubble be maintained indefinitely. Thus, your starship can rampage all over the place at fantastic pseudovelocity—until you hit something that disrupts the bubble, and then you're back in normal space again, at a dead stop. Long-distance travel is a continual start-and-stop affair, carefully jockeying the drive across gravity gradients and around the higher-concentrations of spacedust, and recalculating your location after the last inadvertant bounce-and-scatter.
Quote:
It's a spacewarp device. It wraps the subject "on the pad" in a "space-time bubble", then "casts" the bubble in a straight line, somewhat like a particle accelerator. For a fraction of a second, the bubble moves faster-than-light, and can pass through ("ghosts") through limited quantities of normal matter. And then the bubble "bursts", and its contents are deposited, hopefully at the target location. Because this is a space-warp, the subject doesn't experience any movement—in fact, they even arrive "at rest" relative to the largest mass at the landing site. (Thus explaining why you don't smack into the planet as it moves through its orbit—you arrive at rest relative to it!)

Because mass bends space-time, the more mass there is in the path of travel, the less accurate the casting is. The bubble can't burst where there is already significant mass, but "bounces" in an essentially random direction, until it finds an open location. So you can't beam into a solid object, and beaming through more then a couple of walls kills accuracy. On the other hand, it's a standard trick to aim your casting below ground level, so the bubble bounces and precipitates to the surface—off target, but safer than having the bubble burst prematurely, dropping the subjects at altitude…
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Last edited by isf; 05-24-2013 at 03:39 PM. Reason: edited for transported details
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