Alternate Ship Design Systems

[TKalbfus]

Drakon said,

"Also, another problem with the particle pair thingy is that antimatter has positive mass, just like regular matter. So even particle pairs won't do the job for you."

I didn't mention antimatter, what I did mention was negative matter. You create antimatter and matter when a positive photon hits a virtual particle pair canceling out the negative counter part leaving two positive particles one particle is say a proton and the other is an antiproton, this is a reversal of the E=mc^2 formula which works both ways. If the photon for some reason contained negative energy, you'd end up with the negative counterparts of the proton and the antiproton. These negative counterparts attract the same charge and repel opposite charges since the possess negative momentum. Negative mass protons would form a ball with a massive positive charge that would repell a similar ball of negative mass antiprotons with a negative charge. Negative matter is often called exotic. Whatever its called, this negative matter would have the density of an atomic nucleus and so would take up very little space. In a maneuver drive, this ball of negative/exotic protons would equal the mass of a starship plus its cargo and occupants. The ball would attract positive protons of opposite charge which would tend to erode this ball of negative matter, to prevent this from happening energy would have to be expended to maintain this ball of negative/exotic matter.

To maneuver the exotic ball is spun up to create a magnetic field while an electromagnet firmly attached to the ship is aligned in one of three orientations:

When the south magnetic pole of the electromagnet is brought close to the north magnetic pole of the exotic matter, the ship repels the exotic matter because opposite charges repell the negative mass, but the negative masses opposite charge also attracts the positive mass pulling the ship along and keeping it at a fixed distance from the negative ball.

Rotate the electromagnet 180 degrees and the ship will go into reverse.

Rotate the electromagnet 90 degrees and the ship will stop accelerating.

This is the basics of a reactionless manuever drive.

 

[Anthony]

I believe I mentioned the alcubierre warp drive, which is what the drive you're describing is. Ignoring such problems as requiring the equivalent of planetary masses in positive and negative energy, and the fact that the technology to build a warp bubble pretty much also implies the ability to travel in time and create artificial universes, the warp bubble is necessarily surrounded by boundary conditions that will destroy any object passing over the border (we're talking gravity levels that rip nuclei apart), which is not exactly implied by Traveller drives.

 

[Jamus]

I dont think ftl travel is possible.

 

[TKalbfus]

Jamus said,

"I dont think ftl travel is possible."

Does not matter. The implicit assumption of Traveller is that FTL is possible. I prefer more realistic theories of FTL rather than less realistic ones. Star Frontiers had a wildly unrealistic FTL assumption, for instance, it assumed that all velocities were not relative and that all objects that exceeded 0.5% or whatever of the speed of light went FTL. I think the FTL system by Robert Forward in his book "Timemaster" was fairly realistic as far as FTL systems go. Basically his ships had a maneuver drive like the one I described above, and it also carried one end of a wormhole along with it. The negative/exotic matter which allowed for this "reactionless" maneuver drive also allowed for the creation of stable wormholes that stayed continously open, this of course also led to time travel. Robert Forward's Universe preserved chronological consistency, or its characters didn't chance that it didn't. One way they worked around it for instance there was an organization that worked to sabatage his projects, so the main character in the story allowed a time differential to develop between the two ends of his wormhole and had an agent in the future who would report on when and where an act of sabatage would occur, but he wouldn't give away the result on whether it suceeded or failed, so the main character would saturate his installation to be targeted with security personelle to minimize the chance that the act would suceed. Chronology is perserved because his agents reported on sabatage attempts regardless of whether they succeeded or fail, but he wouldn't tell which, he just told the time and place of the attempt.

 

[Jamus]

Does not matter. The implicit assumption of Traveller is that FTL is possible.

Absolutely incorrect.

Traveller assumes that interstellar travel will be possible through jump space travel which is in no way connected to ftl travel. a ships velocity in real space is meaningless in jump space as the two do not follow the same laws.

 

[Straybow]

Getting from *here* to *there* faster than light travels the distance between *here* and *there* is FTL travel, by definition. It matters not whether you travel through normal space or disappearing socks and coathangers space.

Originally posted by Drakon:
So 1) I don't see a problem with ditching manuvering drives, and 2) Even if their is a problem the same technology should be able to deal with it, by using defocus drives for manuvering.

And the difference between "grav tech" and "defocus drive" is what, exactly? None. The result of "defocusing" the metric of space would be a gravitation-like acceleration, the same as grav tech by most any other explanation.

Accomplishing this might take a radically different application of the ftl warp, requiring 2 drives.

 

[Jamus]

Getting from *here* to *there* faster than light travels the distance between *here* and *there* is FTL travel

Symantics, if you move from here to there without actually moving ie folding space then you have not moved faster than light though you have changed location. distance traveled is not the issue, velocity of the ship through real space is the issue.

IMTU FTL is achieved by sacrificing a pig on the black alter<j-drive> of Yog Soggoth and invoking the names of the great old ones....thats about as plausable as the rest of the theories i have read here so far.

 

[DaveChase]

Gordon Dickson used something he called a shift drive in his works.

Computers calucated positions and then shifted ship to the new location. Of course he did not give lots of detail because it was a vehicle (literal and written) that helped move the story along.

This shift drive could be just the folding of space mathmatically (spelling so that you move from one point to another and only suffer slight disorientation when crossing the threshold.

I think that what ever device/tech you use to determine how the characters get from one point to another should reflect what you want to have happen in your story (RPG). IF it does not matter how they get there just that they do then teleports would work.
Or if you need the time for recover and character development then traveling a week or more between points is an option.

Now it is fun to build and design ships (tech) to play with, I got admit that.

When I run a game system (purchase) I just use what is in the book and move on.
When I ran my own futuristic game called Futura where there was 150 Galaxies part of vast governement called UGP (Universal Galactic Patrol) we did not carry how you got from place to place. If you could afford it you got there as fast as possible (assuming you were at a high tech planet). Some times it took you a month to get from 1 galaxy to another, so you better have made plans for it.

The point being, that the device(Tech) should help the RPG along and not detrack from the game.

(Um, could some one bring over the extension ladder, please. I would like to get off my soap box

(What do you mean, Hope I packed a lunch ?)

Dave

 

[TKalbfus]

Spacefolds, warp drives, hyperspace travel are all examples of FTL. Whether you define travel as moving continously in real space or not its still FTL because velocity is measured relative to normal space. Lets say a spaceship folds space, moves a few meters and then unfolds it. Light travels along the "surface" of space following the "folds", so to the external observer the space fold drive starship will appear to teleport to some distance away, to a physics lawyer this may not by FTL, but to a layman who measure distance traveled in time elapsed, it is FTL.

The Timemaster wormhole is not your typical FTL drive as the starship itself does not go FTL, onlythe person who steps through the wormhole does. The starship takes many years to get where its going, but through the effects of special relativity, which carries through the worm hole, the people on Earth need no wait so long. The timemaster spaceship can accelerate at 100-g for instance, (there's no one on board) and travel 10 light years in a week of relative time. You just have to accept that you would also be steping 10 years into the future as well as 10 light years away when you go through the wormhole.

 

[DaveChase]

So, from your description Tom we have at least to sub categories for FTL drives
Those that are influenced by time and those that are not
If you shift/fold to a new location (via your FTL) then there is no time lost so you are just there
If you have a time of travel then you have relativity then you will have to worry it things are the same as when you left. (Depending on the scale this can be confusing

Question on your last statement: if there is FTL and you step into the wormhole and appear 10 light years away, how does that make it 10 years in the future? Does this mean that if you 1 second later step back through the wormhole that another 10 years have past so that in the space of say 10 seconds you have missed 20years of stuff?


Dave

 

[Straybow]

I'm missing that as well. Once the ship reaches the destination and opens the wormhole, travel to the destination 10LY away is governed by the wormhole metrics, not the GR effects of a past course of travel by the wormhole host ship.

 

[Jamus]

Ieee Ieee Cthulu Fhatgn!!

just kidding.

ok while I concede that if you fold space and move a mass 3 parcecs in a week you have moved from point A to point B faster than light so true it could be called FTL. however since the ship itself moved outside of space/time it in fact did not ever achieve an acceleration or velocity in excess of light speed so the ship can not be called a FTL ship.. symantics, I know.

My stance is a ship may not travel at LS or FTL speed in RS as doing so would destroy said ship let alone all the complications with time and what not. Jump drive however is mathimatically possible, it is more plausable that a ship could fold or shift space than reach or exceed the speed of light.

IMO

 

[TKalbfus]

Question on your last statement: if there is FTL and you step into the wormhole and appear 10 light years away, how does that make it 10 years in the future? Does this mean that if you 1 second later step back through the wormhole that another 10 years have past so that in the space of say 10 seconds you have missed 20years of stuff?

If youstep back through the wormhole you travel 10 years back into the past returning about 2 seconds after you left. You could have a conversation with someboady on the other side of the wormhole, sound waves travel through as does light. One person would be 10 years in the future and the other would remain in the present. At any time either person can step through the wormhole and join the other person on the otherside going either 10 years into the future or 10 years into the past, but remember the two are also separated by 10 light years except as measured through the wormhole. There is no FTL communication except through the wormhole. The person at the future end of the wormhole doesn't know what the person on the otherside is going to say before he says it, because while it has already occured , the information about what was said takes longer to reach him through the normal universe than it would by traveling through the wormhole. The exception being when the wormhole ends are brought close together again.

Its entirely feasible to have a "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" to quote the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy. All you really need is a wormhole and you can establish a restaurant on an ancient planet circling one of the last stars to glow in a future universe unimaginably ancient.

 

[DaveChase]

Tom,
You lost me on that explaination

Maybe I am just to old to understand

The wormhole that you just described is not a FTL it is a Time/Space distortion. A very stable one but still just a Time distortion.

Dave

 

[TKalbfus]

A worm hole is a time space distortion that allows for FTL, it is a space time warp in the classic sense. Space is warped into a funnel and then a tube which then connects to another funnel that opens up to another part of space time. The two ends don't have to be traveling at the same speed and they don't have to exist at the same time. The a wormhole is a single object made out of the curvature of space which opens up in two different areas in space and time. Upon formation wormholes a very small and travel tiny distances, they are constantly opening and closing faster than a light ray can travel through it. To stabilize a wormhole its necessary to stuff it with exotic matter. ideally this exotic matter would be dark and non-interacting with normal matter so as not to block passage through the wormhole. You can also thread the wormhole with charged particles. These charged particles can be made to circulate and produce a magnetic field which can be oriented in such a way such that the North Magnetic pole points out through one end and the south magnetic pole through another end. When approached from the outside the wormhole would seem to have only a North magnetic polarity without a south pole and the south pole of a magnet they brought with them would always be attracted to this wormhole opening no matter from which direction they approached it. Also the magnetic fields lines of force would obey the inverse-square law in diminishing with distance much like radiation and gravity from a spherical object. With an electromagnet, a spaceship can drag this wormhole opening around bringing it wherever needed. A spaceship can travel to distant stars with it all while staying in contact with homebase right through the wormhole.

In a Traveller campaign, wormhole spaceships should be large and allow passage of a spaceship of up to half its d-tonnage. For example if a wormhole spaceship is 1000 d-tons, it can allow a 500 d-ton spaceship to pass through the wormhole it carries along.

 

[Anthony]

Well, assuming you don't mind your starships being the mass of a small planet, you can have wormhole starships. Pretty much all vaguely realistic methods of FTL travel require black hole level matter densities, and to be made practical in size, will need to be vastly massive.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Drakon said, </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />"Also, another problem with the particle pair thingy is that antimatter has positive mass, just like regular matter. So even particle pairs won't do the job for you."

I didn't mention antimatter, what I did mention was negative matter. You create antimatter and matter when a positive photon hits a virtual particle pair canceling out the negative counter part leaving two positive particles one particle is say a proton and the other is an antiproton, this is a reversal of the E=mc^2 formula which works both ways. If the photon for some reason contained negative energy, you'd end up with the negative counterparts of the proton and the antiproton.</font>[/QUOTE]

First off, I understand how pair production works. There is no (obvious) collision with anything. The photon just "becomes" a proton/antiproton pair. This can occur in a close approach of a heavy atom, such as lead, and I think there are other methods as well.

It should be noted that a photon and an anti-photon is the same thing. The same particle. There is no (known) difference between the two particles.

As for 'negative energy', well that gets problematic. There are some evidence that it exists, like the Casimir effect, but that it is tied to a particular particle, that is another question. John Baez did a real interesting job explaining what such a particle would be like, and how difficult a negative mass/energy particle would be to detect, let alone utilize.

These negative counterparts attract the same charge and repel opposite charges since the possess negative momentum. Negative mass protons would form a ball with a massive positive charge that would repell a similar ball of negative mass antiprotons with a negative charge. Negative matter is often called exotic. Whatever its called, this negative matter would have the density of an atomic nucleus and so would take up very little space. In a maneuver drive, this ball of negative/exotic protons would equal the mass of a starship plus its cargo and occupants. The ball would attract positive protons of opposite charge which would tend to erode this ball of negative matter, to prevent this from happening energy would have to be expended to maintain this ball of negative/exotic matter.

Okay, you got electric charge in this, but the gravitational effects seem ignored. Now, I am probably going to mix up the explaination as it was given to me, but the central point is that if you mix negative and positive mass together, you get a gravitational runaway effect. One of the masses is attracted to the other, while the other is repelled by the first one. And they start accelerating, and as far as I know, there are no known forces to slow it down. So you have one mass chasing the other at ever increasing speeds, throughout time and space.

So, having this ball of negative protons, even if it existed, would not make for a decent manuvering drive.

To maneuver the exotic ball is spun up to create a magnetic field while an electromagnet firmly attached to the ship is aligned in one of three orientations:

When the south magnetic pole of the electromagnet is brought close to the north magnetic pole of the exotic matter, the ship repels the exotic matter because opposite charges repell the negative mass, but the negative masses opposite charge also attracts the positive mass pulling the ship along and keeping it at a fixed distance from the negative ball.

Rotate the electromagnet 180 degrees and the ship will go into reverse.

Rotate the electromagnet 90 degrees and the ship will stop accelerating.

This is the basics of a reactionless manuever drive.

Well I have briefly touched on some of the problems regarding this idea. The mass of your negative energy ball is pretty big, and that could be a limiting feature.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Anthony:
I believe I mentioned the alcubierre warp drive, which is what the drive you're describing is. Ignoring such problems as requiring the equivalent of planetary masses in positive and negative energy, and the fact that the technology to build a warp bubble pretty much also implies the ability to travel in time and create artificial universes, the warp bubble is necessarily surrounded by boundary conditions that will destroy any object passing over the border (we're talking gravity levels that rip nuclei apart), which is not exactly implied by Traveller drives.

There has been some further research, by Chris Van Dem Brock et.al. on Alqubierra's drive, and the total energy requirements look to be a lot more reasonable now, than when it was first proposed.

The shielding effect, to me is not a bug, but a feature. Yes, spagettification at the boundary walls is a problem but only for incoming objects, such as missiles and the like.

And you are right that it MIGHT include time travel or building baby universes. I don't buy time travel or Everett, although mostly those objections are more aestetic than based on any real world physics to date. I just think that time travel, for some reason not yet discovered is impossible. That time does not function that way. And while isolating the universe from a small piece of it might be doable, I doubt there are entire universes out there, completely separate from this one.

 

[Drakon]

Two additional points:
1) a lot of the worm hole theoretical research is applicable to warp drive. What you are talking about in both cases is "metric engineering" and a lot of the research on either is applicable to the other. So you could come up with a universe in which you have both, wormholes and warp drive. Something like cars and trains on earth today.

2) Time Travel. Tom has it sorta right. If the other end of your wormhole is 10 years into the future, you would be able to hold a conversation with the other end, with yourself from 10 years later. This assumes that Hawking's chorological conjecture does not take hold, that the reflected buildup of energy from the past to the future and back does not blow the thing up.

But there is nothing to say when the worm hole opens. Even if you can predict the place, I don't know of any time constraints on the theory as to when it will open. The "true time" between the two ends could even be zero. So when you talked to someone 10 light years away, it could be in your own "normal time"

The answer really depends on how long either end has been opened, and how the ends of the wormhole were moved. They will get "unsynced" if either end approaches relativistic speeds, but as for backward time travel, that might be a bit of a stretch.

And ultimately not sure it would be relavant. Does it matter if the other end is 10 years into the future or not, if they are separated by 10 light years?

3) I said earlier that I don't buy time travel. The problem can be as simple as geometry. There may be only a single temporal dimension, and you cannot have loops in 1 dimension. It may be nothing more than that, than the fundamental nature of the geometry of the manifold.

On phrase did bug me, and that is referencing one's speed to "normal space" You don't and cannot reference it to the space. You can't see the space, or measure it or observe it. (Which is probably a good thing, in that if you could see the space, you might have a hard time seeing the objects embedded in it.) All you can do is observe objects embedded in that space and see how they behave, in order to determine the shape of that space.

Noting all the time that those objects are deforming that space while they travel through it. G=T

 

[Drakon]

Tom, I don't mean to pick on you. Your posts got this old brain creaking and has sparked some thoughts of my own. And I think I hit a big major snag in your explaination.

The energy of a photon is given by the formula E=hf. Where h is Planke's constant, and f is the frequency. Now, it looks like Planke's constant really is a constant, set at some fixed positive value. Which leaves frequency.

How do you get a negative frequency?