4 ms·

Ok, so Warp Drives have many technological hurdles to accomplish, but currently all assumptions are on expansion and compression of space-time at faster than li

Ok, so Warp Drives have many technological hurdles to accomplish, but currently all assumptions are on expansion and compression of space-time at faster than light speeds. Let's say we want to travel in 1 hour to the nearest star 4 light years away. That would require compressing roughly 6.5 billion miles/second of spacetime into this bubble! All matter in those 6.5 billion miles will be sucked into your passenger area of the warp bubble and decompressed back to Earth spacetime. This would be a weapon of galactic destruction. But that's not the real issue, how exactly would we be able to warp spacetime faster than light at such large distances? The main engine would have to already be breaking the speed limit as part of its technical specification, which becomes a paradox, trying to use the solution as the foundation. Find an alternative solution to breaking the speed limit, and we can overcome the paradox.

simcop2387 6y ago
It might not let you go FTL, but this would seem to imply that you could get going extremely fast without a reaction mass to perform the acceleration. That alone would make shorter interstellar trips like the one to proxima centauri feasible as far as time goes.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Well, any reactionless drive also hase massive implications for making mankind multiplanetary, even without taking any interstellar implications into account. You could move huge amounts of cargo and personnel just with a heavy electricity source (solar panels, nuclear reactor) but without having to care for the even more massive amounts of fuel otherwise needed! It would make interplanetary and orbital settlement not just possible but easy.
  - nobodyandproud 6y ago
    > It would make interplanetary and orbital settlement not just possible but easy I don’t know about “easy”, but it removes a logistical wall. I wonder if this sidesteps the time dilation effects of high speed travel.
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      If you can protect the ship from interstellar dust it will indeed get really fast to destination from the crew PoW duets time dilatation, nog for those on the outside. No way around that with just moving very fast.
jandrese 6y ago
Any technology advanced enough to travel between solar system is advanced enough to destroy them. It's order of magnitude more difficult to make the trip than it is to blow up everything when you get there.
mabbo 6y ago
> All matter in those 6.5 billion miles will be sucked into your passenger area of the warp bubble and decompressed back to Earth spacetime. This presumes that we're doing the moving all in one big operation, doesn't it? What if each nanosecond, the warp bubble is moving forward by a small fraction, slipping through without imparting any momentum on the matter it passes by.

simcop2387 6y ago

It might not let you go FTL, but this would seem to imply that you could get going extremely fast without a reaction mass to perform the acceleration. That alone would make shorter interstellar trips like the one to proxima centauri feasible as far as time goes.

m4rtink 6y ago
Well, any reactionless drive also hase massive implications for making mankind multiplanetary, even without taking any interstellar implications into account. You could move huge amounts of cargo and personnel just with a heavy electricity source (solar panels, nuclear reactor) but without having to care for the even more massive amounts of fuel otherwise needed! It would make interplanetary and orbital settlement not just possible but easy.
- nobodyandproud 6y ago
  > It would make interplanetary and orbital settlement not just possible but easy I don’t know about “easy”, but it removes a logistical wall. I wonder if this sidesteps the time dilation effects of high speed travel.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    If you can protect the ship from interstellar dust it will indeed get really fast to destination from the crew PoW duets time dilatation, nog for those on the outside. No way around that with just moving very fast.

jandrese 6y ago

Any technology advanced enough to travel between solar system is advanced enough to destroy them. It's order of magnitude more difficult to make the trip than it is to blow up everything when you get there.

mabbo 6y ago

> All matter in those 6.5 billion miles will be sucked into your passenger area of the warp bubble and decompressed back to Earth spacetime. This presumes that we're doing the moving all in one big operation, doesn't it? What if each nanosecond, the warp bubble is moving forward by a small fraction, slipping through without imparting any momentum on the matter it passes by.