General purpose FTL thread

CasualBystander

Celestial
Warp Speed: What Hyperspace Would Really Look Like

What would warp drive look like?

A generalized glow is what some physics students think you would see.

The incoming radiation would all be upshifted so you would just see a general glow from the CMB (cosmic background radiation).

Light would be upshifted to x-ray/gamma radiation so you would need strong shielding.

And most of your propulsion would go to fighting light pressure (like air resistance becomes the dominant cause of fuel consumption at some speed above 25 MPH).
 

3FEL9

Islander
When the engineers get their sh** together and sort them EM-drives out.. Then you'll see

Only one Gee of constant drive is needed to reach c within a year..
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
A second point is speed of warp drive.

"Warp 9" STNG is 1512 times the speed of light.

It still takes 1 day to get to Alpha Centauri (4.3 light years).

Stars in general (in our part of the galaxy) are 5-10 light years apart.

It would take the Enterprise (which at 9/729 only traveled at half the speed of STNG and didn't use Warp 9 much) 3-20 days to get to the next interesting star (they used warp 6/216 or warp 7/343 most of time).

At 10 days per star plus the amount of time they pissed around down on planets they barely generated enough material for a full season of episodes in a year. Plus about 1/2 or more of the time the planet was just a mapping mission or delivering supplies and nothing interesting happened (those episodes were never filmed).

Realistically Star Trek should have only lasted for about 2 1/2 seasons.

When the engineers get their sh** together and sort them EM-drives out.. Then you'll see

Only one Gee of constant drive is needed to reach c within a year..

Well, that ignores light pressure (no idea how to streamline a hull to minimize light pressure).

If we ignore light pressure then around 0.9 C the "1 Gee" drive acceleration starts dropping rapidly.

But we probably could get to another planet in about 7 years or so (you have to spend 1 year slowing down or it becomes a "flyby" photo mission).
 
Last edited:

3FEL9

Islander
Solved it for ya.. powerful lasers pointed forwards will bounce of and away any incoming photons..

Light photon-photon scattering . Recently confirmed at CERN
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
Solved it for ya.. powerful lasers pointed forwards will bounce of and away any incoming photons..

Light photon-photon scattering . Recently confirmed at CERN
Is photon -photon scattering possible?

Very low photon cross section.

You would have to flood the front of the spacecraft with an intensity approaching prompt radiation (IE the photon shield would slow you more than the photon drag).

Low resistance space craft design would be cheaper and more effective.
 
Top