so I''m trying to think of the various modes of space travel seen in sci-fi as well as new ones here''s what I got Star Wars/Star Trek/FTL Traveling through normal space but cheating at relativity. Star Trek actually based a lot of physics/stories/plot devices based on their engines. Not on subject, but important for me to remember. SW hyperspace, I haven''t bothered to look up an explanation, but they still move through normal space. ST warp drive, similar to twin paradox, except they do it on purose. The drive shortens space. Why they don''t suffer time distortions I don''t know. As far as I know, ship clocks are adjusted because of traveling via impulse drive because that takes them near .25c which is fast enough to mess with time. Characteristics: depending on technology, it may be easy to fire ftl engines up at will. Star Trek takes a few seconds to lay in a course. Star Wars seems to take longer. In SW, you are untouchable once you''re ftl, but again that is probably a technology issue. In ST, they fight it out at any speed. Stargate/wormholes/gates Imagine 3D space as a piece of paper, fold the paper, punch a hole, travel from one side to the other. Characteristics: for plot device sakes you usually need a certain amount of energy and a device and/or a fixed loci. Sometimes you need to enter the loci and/or device in the proper way either to survive(a la Wing Commander movie) or get to the appropriate destination. There are often rules on devices, energy, and loci for the size of the ship. Usually instantaneous. Babylon 5''s Hyperspace/Freespace''s Subspace You enter into a different kind of space. Characteristics: can be entered if you have a device or engine at any point or fixed loci and the required energy. It could be there are different rules about entering whether you''re going intra- or inter-system. Often there are rules for when in the different kind of space. misc. Dune''s Navigators use Spice, but I don''t know how, anyone know if it is different from the others mentioned? Can you think of anything I missed?

The dune navigators fold space, so that your destination and source are adjcent.

you didn't mention Sublight travel... takes a long time to get anywhere but still a method.

then theres near light travel, which can get you there quickly although the time displacment effect means the a long time has passed for everyone else. In other words traveling for an hour at near light speed means the months have passed in normal space.

you could have ships travel at infinite velocity meaning instantaneous travel to any point in the universe.



[edited by - TechnoGoth on July 18, 2003 1:22:20 AM]

Just nitpicking, the heighliners in Dune used 'Holtzmann engines' to fold space. The Navigators used the spice to enable limited prescience so they could find a safe route (i.e. not through any stars or blackholes ).

Theres also a very interesting form in a book called 'A Fire Upon The Deep', I think it was called supra-light (but could be wrong). I'd have to dig the book out to explain in more detail coz I can't remember details off the top of my head. The ships were able to actually fight at these speeds but it was kind of weird (and really well written actually). IIRC the ships often couldn't see each other and had to slow down a fraction (if they were ahead), or leave trails of slightly slower drone bombs to catch the following ship. Lots of playing with red-shift and stuff I think. In fact altogether the universe described in the book is pretty neat (there's different zones of technology throughout the galaxy and AI/automation is heavily used, in fact there are 'gods' which are super-intelligent programs on the edge of the galaxy. huh )



[edited by - JuNC on July 18, 2003 5:53:36 AM]

[edited by - JuNC on July 18, 2003 5:56:23 AM]

Not forgetting of course Event Horizon...

How about a ship that travels inside a time bubble. Time passes much faster inside the bubble than outside. i.e. you have a ship that travels at .5 speed of light but time inside the bubble time is 100x faster than normal time, so over all the ship travels at 50x speed of light (when viewed from outside).

Not very useful for transporting people since inside the bubble a 100 light year trip will still take 200 years to complete but only 2 years to the outside world. Maybe good for transporting non-perishable goods between stars.

In the anime Cowboy Bebop, space travel was facilitated via commercial Hyperspace gates. Since the whole show had a space cowboy theme, these gates were a scifi version of a highway with toll booths. I''m not totally clear, but I think the space ships never made any real speed as a percentage of light. In fact, there was an episode when they ran low on fuel and money and had to float between planets the old-fashioned way.

Speaking of the old-fashioned way, may I mention the low-gravity highways that naturally exist all throughout space. The speeds involved are pathetic, however they require only a slight amount of inertia to enter, then the gravity of all of the neighboring bodies takes over and carry the ship/pod/probe down a scenic route.

Personally, I never bought the hyperspace/second-space thing. I can accept it if the show has other things to offer, which Babylon 5 had a lot to offer. I''d be much more inclined to accept that Einstein''s laws have subtle falicies that technology exloits (I believe this was PROT''s explination in K-PAX). Then its simple enough to attach a fancy surname of german origin to a chronometer, explain away expanding-mass-decreasing-volume with gravity producing machines or something, and just kind of wing it. Provided you don''t actually go into details and pay attention more to the content of the story/gameplay, the player can ignore it.

Oh, and I rather liked the JUMP thing. I.E. instant jump from point A to point B. Thats harder to explain away though.

There is also "hyperspace skipping." The ship doesn''t enter hyperspace once and stay there for the remainder of the journey, but instead makes something more akin to a dotted line, flicking in and out of it many times, because the difficulty/feasability of plotting an accurate course through hyperspace in one try warrants stopping to readjust or recharge. Depending on design taste the time between each entry may be momentary or take hours, if the calculations are ultra-sophisticated or a charging of "hyperspace capacitors" is needed.

quote: Original post by JuNC
Just nitpicking, the heighliners in Dune used ''Holtzmann engines'' to fold space. The Navigators used the spice to enable limited prescience so they could find a safe route (i.e. not through any stars or blackholes ).

Theres also a very interesting form in a book called ''A Fire Upon The Deep'', I think it was called supra-light (but could be wrong). I''d have to dig the book out to explain in more detail coz I can''t remember details off the top of my head. The ships were able to actually fight at these speeds but it was kind of weird (and really well written actually). IIRC the ships often couldn''t see each other and had to slow down a fraction (if they were ahead), or leave trails of slightly slower drone bombs to catch the following ship. Lots of playing with red-shift and stuff I think. In fact altogether the universe described in the book is pretty neat (there''s different zones of technology throughout the galaxy and AI/automation is heavily used, in fact there are ''gods'' which are super-intelligent programs on the edge of the galaxy. huh )

I love Vernor Vinge''s writing, including his award winning "A Fire Upon the Deep." Sad to say I have read that particular book three times yet I cannot remmeber how the ships acutally travelled. I know the Ship had to calculate it''s next jump and in the mean time it was practically "dead in the water." When the next jump was calculated the ship "hops" to it''s next destination and repetes the process. Of course this would happen many times a minute.

As to how it hops, I am not quite sure. But anyways it is a damn cool book. I recommend interested people check out "A Deepness in the Sky" first however. It is a prequel and helps develop Phram Neuman in more detail as well as giving a HUGE sense of scope to the wild galexy.

I''ll look up how the ships hopped in his books.

Here is another method of travel Vernor Vinge used in one of his earlier stories. First of all a scienctific genius created method of "bubbling" physical matter so that it is taken out of the flow of time. Time stops inside the bubble rendering it indestrucable. The spaceships used heavy duty nukes for rapid movement acomplished by detonating a nuke and bobbling up while the blast knocked the bobbled odbject (spaceship) really far, very qucikly. Fallout was not an issue in the story due to the setting that it took place during. Cool stuff.

quote: Original post by RolandofGilead
Can you think of anything I missed?

So, no, then. Other than failing to specifically mention that when jumping into hyperspace it might be instantaneous(Asimov) and probably untraceable. Similar to Babylon 5 as you couldn''t get near large bodies in hyperspace and with Asimov you couldn''t jump too close either. Also, as mentioned once with Star Wars, jumping often takes calculations, which for some universes require the ship to stop.

the ships in vinge''s book were designed by some ancient star faring race. they used a 2 dimensional sheet of warped space bounded on its edges by extremely long cosmic strings as their engines. the sheets were in the shape of wings and the faster the craft traveled the bigger the "wings" would get. they did something like folding/warping space i believe though the rest of the details have escaped me a bit. they did achieve the ultra fast speed by flitting from point to point. also i believe that the wings provided a completly inertialess environment in the craft so that extremely high slower than light speeds were possible as well as ridiculous accelerations without squishing the pilot. read the book anyway, it is incrediably detailed and engrossing.

-me