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Unless you could somehow make an Alcubierre warp drive. Of course…even if that was possible, it’s conjectured that the colonists already at your destination wo

Unless you could somehow make an Alcubierre warp drive. Of course…even if that was possible, it’s conjectured that the colonists already at your destination won’t appreciate you boiling the atmosphere when you hit them with blue shifted radiation. https://www.universetoday.com/93882/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside/#ixzz2FaZsXDuM https://www.universetoday.com/93882/warp-drives-may-come-wit...

throwaway11460 3y ago
Ah, so that's why they never warp near planets in Star Trek :)
- perardi 3y ago
  [pushes up glasses] They implied they avoided that because warping into a gravity well would cause some vague catastrophe. Of course, the real reason was far more sinister: it’s way more dramatic to slowly creep up on the planet while listening to the captain’s log monologue to start the episode.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    If nothing else, if you miss just a little dropping out of warp inside a planet, must be a Very Bad Thing in-universe. The ramifications would be seen even out-of-universe. ;-)
    - eru 3y ago
      Planets are tiny compared to the vastness of space. So you would never accidentally warp inside a planet.
      - cameron_b 3y ago
        If we’re talking about the known universe, the odds of your near-light navigation accidentally clipping a not-mapped-yet planet are certainly not zero. Our gaze into the heavens is much better at spotting stars than their dark orbiting bodies, and we have fingers left over from one hand counting the number of observation platforms observing deep space from above our shimmering atmosphere.
        eru 3y ago
        It doesn't matter whether we can see those dark orbiting bodies: we observe minuscule gravitational impact on the stars, and that places a very sharp upper limit on the amount of mass that's outside of the star in a solar system. The sun contains roughly 99.8% of the mass of the solar system, and is by far the largest object in it. But you wouldn't hit the sun randomly either. Space is just so damn large.
        StevePerkins 3y ago
        Indeed. We can't even agree on whether or not there's an extra Neptune-sized gas giant out beyond the orbit of Pluto, and that's right here in our OWN solar system!
        eru 3y ago
        So? Even ten extra Jupiters or thousand extra suns would take up only a tiny amount of space compared to the size of the solar system out to Pluto: The distance from the sun to Pluto is about 5.9 billion km. The radius of the sun is about 696,340 km. The ratio of radii is about 8,473. Cube that to get the ratio of volumes, and you get 608,263,848,559 for the ratio of volume in a sphere out to Pluto vs volume of the sun. (Doing the numbers, I'm actually surprised: I had expected the ratio of radii to be bigger than 8,473. But I'm not surprised that the sun barely takes up any space.)
        denton-scratch 3y ago
        > The radius of the sun is about 696,340 km Arguably, the entire heliosphere is part of the Sun's atmosphere, and it reaches well beyond Pluto. If I were in a relativistic spaceship, I think I'd want to apply the brakes well before slamming into the heliosphere. What do you call the heliosphere of a star that isn't the Sun? The stellosphere?
        denton-scratch 3y ago
        Replying to self (sorry). "Stellosphere" is wrong, because "stella" is Latin, and "sphere" is from Greek. It should be "asterosphere", but that's a word I've never seen nor heard.
      - BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
        Sure, if your probability distribution looks at every point in the universe equally. But we're talking about introducing error in a situation where you're _trying_ to drop yourself right next to a planet, so the areas nearest to your target have a much greater probability.
        eru 3y ago
        The volume of space up to only geostationary orbit is about 177 times bigger than the volume of the earth. Given that Star Trek's impulse drives are already traveling at up to around 0.9c, parking somewhere between the earth and the moon (which is about 1 light-second out), the ratio of space to volume of earth becomes 219,648. That ratio growth with the cube of the distance to the planet.
VanillaCafe 3y ago
> Unless you could somehow make an Alcubierre warp drive. Even if you can make it, even though it's theoretically possible that the warp bubble could move through space faster than the speed of light, it's a separate and completely open question as to how you might actually get it to move that fast to begin with.
api 3y ago
> it’s conjectured that the colonists already at your destination won’t appreciate you boiling the atmosphere when you hit them with blue shifted radiation. There's a general principle known as Jon's Law (not sure where the name comes from) that any powerful space drive is by definition a weapon of mass destruction. You see this in The Expanse when incredibly powerful fusion torchship rockets (a major part of the Expanse 'verse) are attached to asteroids and these are used to kinetically bombard inner planets. The results are far worse than a nuclear attack, from kinetic energy alone. Anything capable of traveling close to the speed of light would be "death star" level planet killer. We're talking smashing through the crust and boiling off the atmosphere or if it were massive maybe even fragmenting the planet. Obviously anything even wilder like an Alcubierre Drive would be likewise. Anything capable of going to the stars within a human lifetime could annihilate worlds. Even present-day chemical rockets could be pretty destructive. Get something massive that won't burn up (like a rod of tungsten) up to interplanetary velocities and you can approach the yield of a small tactical nuke from just kinetic energy. This has been studied at least on paper by militaries. I think the phrase "rods from God" was used by DARPA at one point for the rod of tungsten idea. This is glossed over in the vast majority of space sci-fi. Nobody even asks in Star Trek what happens if you point the Enterprise at a planet and say "warp 9, engage!" I'm guessing it would go poorly for the Enterprise but even worse for the planet.
- ahazred8ta 3y ago
  Larry Niven's Known Space gave us the Kzinti lesson: "a reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive." -- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaust https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaus...
  - thro1 3y ago
    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/KnownSpace https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/KnownSpace (Be warned: it's a deep hole) Casual Interstellar Travel: Most hyperdrives just need to be Neptune’s distance from a star to work - two light hours; the Q-II needs to be five - Pluto’s! This means it can get you from any given human world in Known Space to any other in no more than eleven hours, but also no less than ten hours for any world outside the system. There’s no intermediate setting. With most hyperdrives, a pilot can leave the helm unattended most of the time. If one does so in a Q-II for more than two minutes, they’re almost certain to crash into a star. It doesn't have an on-off switch, either, it has a grip that has to be kept or the drive turns off.

throwaway11460 3y ago

Ah, so that's why they never warp near planets in Star Trek :)

perardi 3y ago
[pushes up glasses] They implied they avoided that because warping into a gravity well would cause some vague catastrophe. Of course, the real reason was far more sinister: it’s way more dramatic to slowly creep up on the planet while listening to the captain’s log monologue to start the episode.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  If nothing else, if you miss just a little dropping out of warp inside a planet, must be a Very Bad Thing in-universe. The ramifications would be seen even out-of-universe. ;-)
  - eru 3y ago
    Planets are tiny compared to the vastness of space. So you would never accidentally warp inside a planet.
    - cameron_b 3y ago
      If we’re talking about the known universe, the odds of your near-light navigation accidentally clipping a not-mapped-yet planet are certainly not zero. Our gaze into the heavens is much better at spotting stars than their dark orbiting bodies, and we have fingers left over from one hand counting the number of observation platforms observing deep space from above our shimmering atmosphere.
      - eru 3y ago
        It doesn't matter whether we can see those dark orbiting bodies: we observe minuscule gravitational impact on the stars, and that places a very sharp upper limit on the amount of mass that's outside of the star in a solar system. The sun contains roughly 99.8% of the mass of the solar system, and is by far the largest object in it. But you wouldn't hit the sun randomly either. Space is just so damn large.
      - StevePerkins 3y ago
        Indeed. We can't even agree on whether or not there's an extra Neptune-sized gas giant out beyond the orbit of Pluto, and that's right here in our OWN solar system!
        eru 3y ago
        So? Even ten extra Jupiters or thousand extra suns would take up only a tiny amount of space compared to the size of the solar system out to Pluto: The distance from the sun to Pluto is about 5.9 billion km. The radius of the sun is about 696,340 km. The ratio of radii is about 8,473. Cube that to get the ratio of volumes, and you get 608,263,848,559 for the ratio of volume in a sphere out to Pluto vs volume of the sun. (Doing the numbers, I'm actually surprised: I had expected the ratio of radii to be bigger than 8,473. But I'm not surprised that the sun barely takes up any space.)
        denton-scratch 3y ago
        > The radius of the sun is about 696,340 km Arguably, the entire heliosphere is part of the Sun's atmosphere, and it reaches well beyond Pluto. If I were in a relativistic spaceship, I think I'd want to apply the brakes well before slamming into the heliosphere. What do you call the heliosphere of a star that isn't the Sun? The stellosphere?
        denton-scratch 3y ago
        Replying to self (sorry). "Stellosphere" is wrong, because "stella" is Latin, and "sphere" is from Greek. It should be "asterosphere", but that's a word I've never seen nor heard.
    - BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
      Sure, if your probability distribution looks at every point in the universe equally. But we're talking about introducing error in a situation where you're _trying_ to drop yourself right next to a planet, so the areas nearest to your target have a much greater probability.
      - eru 3y ago
        The volume of space up to only geostationary orbit is about 177 times bigger than the volume of the earth. Given that Star Trek's impulse drives are already traveling at up to around 0.9c, parking somewhere between the earth and the moon (which is about 1 light-second out), the ratio of space to volume of earth becomes 219,648. That ratio growth with the cube of the distance to the planet.

VanillaCafe 3y ago

> Unless you could somehow make an Alcubierre warp drive. Even if you can make it, even though it's theoretically possible that the warp bubble could move through space faster than the speed of light, it's a separate and completely open question as to how you might actually get it to move that fast to begin with.

api 3y ago

> it’s conjectured that the colonists already at your destination won’t appreciate you boiling the atmosphere when you hit them with blue shifted radiation. There's a general principle known as Jon's Law (not sure where the name comes from) that any powerful space drive is by definition a weapon of mass destruction. You see this in The Expanse when incredibly powerful fusion torchship rockets (a major part of the Expanse 'verse) are attached to asteroids and these are used to kinetically bombard inner planets. The results are far worse than a nuclear attack, from kinetic energy alone. Anything capable of traveling close to the speed of light would be "death star" level planet killer. We're talking smashing through the crust and boiling off the atmosphere or if it were massive maybe even fragmenting the planet. Obviously anything even wilder like an Alcubierre Drive would be likewise. Anything capable of going to the stars within a human lifetime could annihilate worlds. Even present-day chemical rockets could be pretty destructive. Get something massive that won't burn up (like a rod of tungsten) up to interplanetary velocities and you can approach the yield of a small tactical nuke from just kinetic energy. This has been studied at least on paper by militaries. I think the phrase "rods from God" was used by DARPA at one point for the rod of tungsten idea. This is glossed over in the vast majority of space sci-fi. Nobody even asks in Star Trek what happens if you point the Enterprise at a planet and say "warp 9, engage!" I'm guessing it would go poorly for the Enterprise but even worse for the planet.

ahazred8ta 3y ago
Larry Niven's Known Space gave us the Kzinti lesson: "a reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive." -- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaust https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaus...
- thro1 3y ago
  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/KnownSpace https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/KnownSpace (Be warned: it's a deep hole) Casual Interstellar Travel: Most hyperdrives just need to be Neptune’s distance from a star to work - two light hours; the Q-II needs to be five - Pluto’s! This means it can get you from any given human world in Known Space to any other in no more than eleven hours, but also no less than ten hours for any world outside the system. There’s no intermediate setting. With most hyperdrives, a pilot can leave the helm unattended most of the time. If one does so in a Q-II for more than two minutes, they’re almost certain to crash into a star. It doesn't have an on-off switch, either, it has a grip that has to be kept or the drive turns off.