[Setekh]

Here's a question: just how many projected ways are there of interstellar travel?

I was just reading a book called Space by Stephen Baxter and the ideas it proposed on interstellar travel were fairly interesting. In Space, humanity learned to travel to the stars on the backs of another race called the Gaijin ('foreigners' in Japanese, the race that discovered them), who have been using a network of points around their part of the galaxy called 'Saddle Points'. Each Saddle Point, focused around areas near large gravity wells (typically stars) were quantum-linked to exactly one Saddly Point elsewhere, and the explanation was that two quantum-linked objects, given enough energy, could produce replicas of any items (ships, people, whatever) on one side or the other by recording the items quantum state (thereby destroying the item), and then reproducing an item with the exact same quantum state (all the same atoms and their positions, etc.) on the other side. This required a tremendous amount of energy.

Anyway, it worked practically like this - spaceship enters a Saddle Point Gateway at Point A. Gateway reads the ships quantum state, destroying the ship; Then the ship's quantum state is beamed, at lightspeed, to Point B, where another Gateway is waiting to receive the signal. Ship is recreated, down to every last quantum state, at Point B.

However, the signal from Point A to Point B only travels at lightspeed - hence, if Point A was 1000 light years from Point B, when the ship was recreated at the other side (complete with crew), the captain and everyone else would be the same age, but one millenium hence. If they made the round trip, they would return to their point of origin 2000 years into the future, though they themselves would only have grown a few minutes older.

So, that intrigued me. There are dozens of other projected and imagined methods of interstellar travel around - subspace, hyperspace, sublight travel by 'normal' space engines (eg. the Shuttle), being launched out of a cannon at relativistic speeds, Linear Displacement Systems (gooooo IW2!), antimatter engines - what do you guys all think? Are there any others I've missed that you guys would like to have a go at explaining?



[This message has been edited by Setekh (edited 10-07-2001).]

[Nico]

look at that already  

[Thorn]

I've seen some pretty neat ideas for drives on TV, one of which was a very small craft which would deploy a huge sail, the sail would catch the particles and whatnot emitted by the sun and fly off....
Only problem would be stopping  

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Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard kids! Be evil!

[Culloden]

1. Well, there's NASA's probe 'Deep Space 1' which has succesfully tested a Xenon fueled 'Ion Drive' which can provide 10x the thrust per pound of fuel than a typical chemical engine, although it has a truley dreadful accelertion time.

2. Then there are the Russians, who are experimenting with ships propelled by Solar Sales which would be pushed along by subatomic particles in the Solar wind kinda like a normal sale catches the wind. I'm not sure how big the sales would need to be, but theoretically, they could propell a ship at 1/10 the speed of light. This would make a journey to the nearest star last a short 40 years.

3. Of course, there are wormholes, which theoretically do exist, although very small (with a diameter less than hat of an electron. In theory, if a device could be made to 'pull open' one of these wormholes, they could become a pratical form transport although such a device woiuld require a tremendous amount of energy.

[Thorn]

 

Originally posted by Culloden:
2. Then there are the Russians, who are experimenting with ships propelled by Solar Sales which would be pushed along by subatomic particles in the Solar wind kinda like a normal sale catches the wind. I'm not sure how big the sales would need to be, but theoretically, they could propell a ship at 1/10 the speed of light. This would make a journey to the nearest star last a short 40 years.

Thats what I was talking about. From what i heard, it would have to be a huge sail.

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Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard kids! Be evil!

[Culloden]

I'd guess that for a ship the size of the space Shuttle, you would need two sales each with an area of around 2-3km squared - possibly larger to get it up to the speeds I talked about above.

[Stryke 9]

Wormholes. Direct connections to far distant points in space via a somethingth-dimensional rip. You don't even have to sit through the few seconds of wierd animation that Subspace offers, you just go through and you're there- unless it closes halfway throuh, and then you're dead in both places.

[Thorn]

Depends on the.... weather (I guess). If there is any major solar activity (ie. flares) you wont be needing a very big sail...

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All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.

[Culloden]

Hmm...

I wonder what it would be like to be stuck in a collapsing worm hole.

[Stryke 9]

Like getting stuck in a tree-shredder. Burt since there's no "in-between", just (theoretically) the two points, you'd probably simply get sliced in half.

[Culloden]

*Remembers FS1 End Cutscene*

[Fozzy]

I wish SG-1 (Stargate) was real  

[Nico]

 

Originally posted by Fozzy:
I wish SG-1 (Stargate) was real  

You won't fit a colossus through that tho   (exepted if there's bigger ones in the series of course)

[Nico]

lol, I just noticed I didn't put the link in my first post :þ
 http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/warp.htm

[Eishtmo]

On the sail idea, there is a pretty good idea of using laser sails instead of solar ones for deep space travel.  The laser is huge, and based at home and the ship is push the ship to a good chunk of the speed of light.  The problem is that its hard to stop once you get there.

I've actually followed research into real starships (no warp drives) for a while now.  Here's some of the stuff I've found:

Starship Design Project
Warp Drive When?
Stellar Windjammers
Space Colonization

Most of those links should work.  My apologies if they don't.

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Visit Warpstorm.  Do it now.

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I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.

[Dark_4ce]

Yeah, I watched this one documentary on Discovery on space travel, they mentioned the sails aswell as wormholes. Then it also spoke of another system where the ship moves near lightspeed via pulsed nuclear explosions. Simply put, a nuke is set of behind the ship, and the ship is propelled forward, then another one is blown behind it, and another and another, thus making a sort of pulsed nuke drive!

[Nico]

 

Originally posted by Dark_4ce:
Yeah, I watched this one documentary on Discovery on space travel, they mentioned the sails aswell as wormholes. Then it also spoke of another system where the ship moves near lightspeed via pulsed nuclear explosions. Simply put, a nuke is set of behind the ship, and the ship is propelled forward, then another one is blown behind it, and another and another, thus making a sort of pulsed nuke drive!

Better have a good hull  

[Carl]

 

Originally posted by Thorn:
Thats what I was talking about. From what i heard, it would have to be a huge sail.

25 miles across and 1000th the width of a paper bag.

[Carl]

 

Originally posted by Setekh:
Each Saddle Point, focused around areas near large gravity wells (typically stars) were quantum-linked to exactly one Saddly Point elsewhere, and the explanation was that two quantum-linked objects, given enough energy, could produce replicas of any items (ships, people, whatever) on one side or the other by recording the items quantum state (thereby destroying the item), and then reproducing an item with the exact same quantum state (all the same atoms and their positions, etc.) on the other side. This required a tremendous amount of energy.

i doubt anyone would do that because they would die just to have their quantum clones sent across the galaxy.

[RoachKoach]

if u accelerate a body at 9.8m/s sq. for 1 year (365x24x60x60 secs) u should be moving at the speed of light - or i think a little faster. Tell me if im wrong.