OT: Handwavium-low methods of FTL travel?

[Puke]

gravity is currently expected to propogate at FTL speeds by about half the scientific community. There is currently a large divide on the topic, and a great deal of experimentation being done.

The experiments show conclusively that there is relativistic effect acting, but they are ambiguous to the point that the reasearchers havent decided WHICH relativistic effect is acting.

[NullAshton]

Yeah, gravity follows the light speed rule too. Of all the things found so far, we haven't found anything that allows you to send information or matter faster than the speed of light. You can make wormholes and move it at lightspeed to your target, but that's not really going FTL. You're just altering spacetime.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

jeffel said:
One thing I haven't seen mentioned (or not directly) is the Alcubierre drive

It is the closest thing to non-hand-wavey that I know of.

It still requires the ability to manipulate "strange" matter, so there is a decent amount of hand waving. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to violate General Relativity, so there is a bonus there.

That sounds like acceptable hand-waving. However, my math is a little weak to be following the formulas they have - What are the energy requirements like?

Let's see if I got this right - Basically, the drive pulls space from the front of the ship to the back of the ship?

[Suicide Junkie]

jeffel said:
One thing I haven't seen mentioned (or not directly) is the Alcubierre drive

It is the closest thing to non-hand-wavey that I know of.

Its main problem is the inability to control it from the inside.
So you pretty much have to have a slinger and stopper base at both ends of your trip.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

About how difficult would it be to hand-wave that restriction away?

(Cause otherwise, interstellar warfare would be near-impossible.)

[Puke]

not impossible, just harder and with more casualties. if you dont have a stopper for your ship, then you have a planet that acts as a stopper for your projectile.

or maybe the slinger creates a field that dies before it reaches the target, and the ship "falls out of warp"

[Renegade 13]

NullAshton said:
Yeah, gravity follows the light speed rule too.

That seems to be an inaccurate statement. It hasn't been proven either way how fast gravity propagates. Hell, we don't even know what works to transmit gravity, or even why mass and gravity go hand in hand.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Puke said:
not impossible, just harder and with more casualties. if you dont have a stopper for your ship, then you have a planet that acts as a stopper for your projectile.

or maybe the slinger creates a field that dies before it reaches the target, and the ship "falls out of warp"

Hmm...I think that second method would be more desirable. So invasions would be possible, just slower.

[Glyn]

You all are still thinking within the box.

Don’t worry about moving the ship. Just relocate the galaxy relative to your ship. Simple?


There is a theory that some time in the future computers will be powerful enough to simulate reality. Sometime after that point there will be more so many simulated realities that the odds of an individual actually being a member of the one true reality will be vanishing small. Now the neat thing about existing in a simulated reality is that by making a small change or patch to the simulator reality you could relocate an object such as a ship to a new location within that simulated reality. All you need is a way to hack reality. (The “Well of Souls” used a method where they patched the equations of reality to move the supper computer moon about.)

[Urendi Maleldil]

Here's a star drive classification chart that I've used before to help come up with ideas. It classifies every single drive system in sci fi.

http://www.projectrho.com/stardrv.txt