A New Traveller Universe (Favorite Star Drive)

[TKalbfus]

I was thinking about starting a new Traveller Universe, a 3d one this time. This universe has Ancients, Extrasolar humans, and Interstellar Governments. I was wondering what your favorite Star Drive is and whether there are any better ideas. All the Star Drives allow travel at the same rate as the Jump Drive, they all require hydrogen as fuel, but they use it differently. Here are some ideas of mine.

Wormhole Drive: This is what I consider to be a true Hyperdrive. The Wormhole drive establishes a temporary wormhole behind the ship (as that is usually where drives in ships are placed), the wormhole has a gravitational field that pulls the starship it and then slows it down as it exits. Wormholes are easier to establish far away from gravity wells and harder to establish closer in. The wormholes don't last long, just long enough for the starship to fall through them. There is a chance that some other starship can follow you through, but just a chance, its basically an initiative contest between the wormhole and the following spaceship.

Warp Drive: This drive warps space by creating a strong repulsive gravitational field around the spaceship. the General Theory of Relativity applies here, time is sped up within the warp field, with this acceleration of time, so to is the speed of light, a regular manuever drive then accelerates the starship to hundreds of times the speed of light outside the warp field. As it accelerates, the special theory of relativity slows down time counteracting the general theory's speeding up time within the warp field, this way, faster than light speeds are achieved.

Any other ideas?

 

[Granpafishy]

One I was thinking of is based off of Meson Tech. The "engine" would produce a phased field around the ship, enabling the 'ship' to 'bypass' space. Thurster plates are used for movement as they will then be pushing agains the 'universe' at the edge of the field.

 

[mad13142000]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Wormhole Drive: <snip>

The problem with the wormhole drive is that the process of transiting a wormhole will invert the physical makeup of the passing object...What it effectively means is that if you grow up on Earth with all of its' right handed molecules, you will be mirrored when you come out the other side - you will have to go find left-handed molecule food to eat...Although your ship stores will have the corresponding mirroredness, fresh food on planetary stopovers would become a problem if you don't wish to loose alot of weight...

-MADDog

 

[Richard Saunders]

Hello.
Why can't you just do two worm hole jumps for each trip???.

How about inertialess drive (lensman series).
Bye

 

[Qwerty]

I'm not sure if this model of nth dimensional is used any more but quite a few years ago I read about "higher" dimensions nested beneath our "reality" of 3D space owing to lack of the necessary "energized" state to maintain them. (Basically anytime after the 1st few nanoseconds of the big bang.) I always assumed the J-drive "unfurled" one or more of these nested dimensions by altering the properties of the matter within the effect field. Instead of X-Y-Z space ships in jump have Pi-Om-Nu (for example) dimensional measures. From outside the ship disappears from "space" in a flash of light and from inside the rest of the universe disappears since nothing else is using those dimensions but the ship and its contents. Physics works normally during a jump because everything onboard still has the same dimensional reference. The energized state is artifical and when the field collapses the ship is returned to normal space.

 

[TKalbfus]

The problem with the wormhole drive is that the process of transiting a wormhole will invert the physical makeup of the passing object...What it effectively means is that if you grow up on Earth with all of its' right handed molecules, you will be mirrored when you come out the other side - you will have to go find left-handed molecule food to eat...Although your ship stores will have the corresponding mirroredness, fresh food on planetary stopovers would become a problem if you don't wish to loose alot of weight...

This wouldn't happen. The best analogy is of space as a sheet of paper, you fold it up and you punch a hole through the double thickness with a hole punch. An objects starts on one side at one end of the sheet of paper, goes through the hole and ends up at the other end of the paper but still on the same side of the sheet. To get reversed, the object has to end up on the other side of the paper. Wormholes connect two locations. These wormholes are fleeting and appear outside of the 100 AU radius distance limit of a solar mass star. There is no theoretical reason for this except to give the PCs an excuse to use their starships. (Otherwise wormholes can appear at the surface of a planet and connect to the surface of another planet and people could jump right through.)