Favorite type of FTL?

[Dooey Jo]

How to do this? Er, ah, ummmm, well, how about I leave that as an exercise for the reader, while I make my escape.

Oh that's easy. Just say that we currently have an incomplete understanding of physics (the universe is big and scary and actually cares very little for your silly "causality"). Of course, it just amounts to rewriting "impossible" as "wildly improbable"...

[John of the Dead]

I was always partial to the jump gate system from Wing Commander, which is closest to #2. As was mentioned earlier, for dramatic purposes it makes control of space-ways a tactical concern.

[Catman]

Nothing irritates me more than people using stupid claims of 'realism' to buttress their preferences.

Hence why I said "elegance" in reference to the space folding in Dune.

Realism is elegent. I suppose it's the difference between a stupid claim and an understandable claim, but I prefer more 'realistic' FTL devices, merely because it damages the realism of everything else less. If ships can travel at a billion kilometers per second, it raises a lot of questions, like... how do you engage an enemy like that? Can you deploy projectiles at that speed? What happens if it runs through a planet?

I voted for The Warp though, so I'm happy to throw reality out the window when it's faced with an extremely useful story device. I like FTLs to be internally consistant with the story and relative level of technology in the media, and explore the implications of that technology. I dislike Star Trek 'warp' stuff, because it's never consistantly displayed.

Interesting.

I have three, one of which is theoretically possible in the real universe. That one is the Tipler machine (T-machine) from Poul Anderson's Avatar - basically a neutronium cylinder rotating at near lightspeed, which distorts spacetime in such a way that you can go anywhere and anywhen, if you know the route. This was based on a paper by - guess who?

The next one is the Bergenholm inertialess drive.

But my favourite is the Infinite Improbability Drive - which actually has some basis in theory as well. Treating the ship and everyone in it as a single quantum particle, there is some possibility that it could make an instantaneous quantum jump to the other side of the universe. The probability is vanishingly small of course - but what was that drive called again? Laughing

Interesting. How do we get the Neutronium?

That is because the Tipler machine is a time travel machine, and according to Einstein's relativity a time machine is synonymous with an FTL drive.

Wow.

Well, if anyone actually comes up with a working interstellar drive, it certainly won't be stuff we can reliably guess at.

Or that writers will ever include anywhere.

[Covenant]

Catman, I'm not sure what I said was interesting, but I most certainly didn't invent The Warp!

As for consistancy, that's kinda the basis for my definition of realism, as well as the amount of construction required on other fronts to keep it standing. I would much prefer a drive to be based on a single new idea, such that casuality doesn't actually exist, or that there is indeed a higher or lower set of dimensional space that we can travel through from point A to point B, than a whole crapload of them.

Not a big fan of FTL that requires magic fuel and magic technologies just to power the magic engine, which itself creates a magical field that has massive unexplored implications, requires secondary magic to make it go, and only ends up really being used to get me from A to Z.

[Catman]

It's obnoxious.

And I wish that we could just find out what a real, possible drive is, but we'll have to do with bullshit drives instead for stories.

[Stark]

Well, if anyone actually comes up with a working interstellar drive, it certainly won't be stuff we can reliably guess at.

Or that writers will ever include anywhere.

Why do you keep saying that? Are some laws of physics more 'writer proof' than others? Is any FTL concept thought of somehow disqualified by the cosmic fiction censor? Or are you just indulging in inane 'oh it'll happen JUST YOU WAIT and nobody can predict it' crap? It sounds like you honestly think it's inevitable and that we just have to get 'advanced enough', when the sad fact is it's never going to happen. If you think it is, you might as well believe in god and solid putty stars too.

Get this - we don't have FTL, not because nobody can imagine a crazy enough idea, but because it's IMPOSSIBLE.

[SirNitram]

Should we locate negative energy and casualty turn out to be more resilient than we think, we know how FTL works, or at least three damn likely results. The math works, we just can't yet prove the material exists in reality(Or can be manufactured), and we don't know whether reality can withstand some frames of reference seeing things out of order.

But the idea that FTL will be completely unknowable? Poppycock.

[Catman]

Well, if anyone actually comes up with a working interstellar drive, it certainly won't be stuff we can reliably guess at.

Or that writers will ever include anywhere.

Why do you keep saying that? Are some laws of physics more 'writer proof' than others? Is any FTL concept thought of somehow disqualified by the cosmic fiction censor? Or are you just indulging in inane 'oh it'll happen JUST YOU WAIT and nobody can predict it' crap? It sounds like you honestly think it's inevitable and that we just have to get 'advanced enough', when the sad fact is it's never going to happen. If you think it is, you might as well believe in god and solid putty stars too.

Get this - we don't have FTL, not because nobody can imagine a crazy enough idea, but because it's IMPOSSIBLE.

NO. Just acknowledging that if a interstellar drive is possible, none of us will have a clue NOW what it is, and will probably just make shit UP.

I know that either way, whether or not it is possible, none of us will have any wayof knowing about it NOW.

I'm not hoping out of desparation that it will happen. It probably will not.

Nobody can predict it, but I'm not implying that any technology will get developed, it may not. I'm just implying that whether or not humans develop a way to get to other stars, we can't know about it now.

And it will not be completely unknowable.

Jesus, I'm not holding this hope that any FICTIONAL drive will somehow get developed, just admitting now that maybe no fictional drive will ever do what will PROBABLY be done someday.

And why would it be faster than light? If it's a wormhole, it probably won't involve moving faster than light.

Why bother with all this when we can't know what will gradually get discovered? There's plenty of POSSIBLE stuff that we won't know about, or guess at, although it's easy to just assume that what happens onscreen will just be fictional.

Let GO of this "I wish a fantasy wormhole FTL drive will be developed" concept, I'm used to the idea that at least it won't be like what we see
pretty much everywhere in scifi.

But how do YOU know what will be developed in the next thousand years?

It can't just be predicted.

And in so many words, I've tried to acknowledge that.

[Stark]

So you're saying both 'I know it's impossible' and 'oh but you DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL BE DEVELOPED'? Make up your mind.

Please, discuss with us your wormhole travel theories. How will you pass through the wormhole without being totally destroyed? Or is that another thing that's 'impossible' but we 'can't predict what will be developed'?

Since you missed it, saying something will happen despite a lack of evidence and a pile of counter evidence is just like a religious mentality. You're not the only scifi fan to have the vain hope of FTL, of course, but honestly, you're either being realistic and FTL is impossible or you're not and all stupid drives are pretty much the same.

[SirNitram]

NO. Just acknowledging that if a interstellar drive is possible, none of us will have a clue NOW what it is, and will probably just make shit UP.

Total nonsense. We can accurately predict what kind, if any, might be possible, by analyzing which ones rely on the smallest number of 'breakthroughs' that upend our understanding of the universe. For example, to enable Saxton-interpretation Hyperspace, we need only find negative energy, and prove that casuality doesn't give a damn if some frames of reference see things out of order(Because as I understand it, there's no preferred frame of reference.), and as long as one.. Say, the time-traveller.. Sees it in the right order, it works out.

That's one impossible uprooted, and one unknown supplied. Compared to 'The Warp' from 40k, that's a shitload more likely.

Stark is right, you're trying too hard to have it your way despite being dead wrong.

[Ariphaos]

You're not the only scifi fan to have the vain hope of FTL, of course, but honestly, you're either being realistic and FTL is impossible or you're not and all stupid drives are pretty much the same.

Relativity permits FTL to remain causal so long as it does not occur within a light-cone. The simplest example is matter emitting light on opposite sides of our particle horizon - even though it's impossible for us to see, the expansion of space itself drives the relative speeds of some of these photons past the speed of light.

Things like the Alcubierre metric work by abusing this principle. So it, in a sense, is 'better' than potential solutions which say, claim to stay true to Minkowski spacetime and yet permit wormholes.

[Catman]

Oh, good. Thanks for the explanation, Xeriar.

[Stark]

Things like the Alcubierre metric work by abusing this principle. So it, in a sense, is 'better' than potential solutions which say, claim to stay true to Minkowski spacetime and yet permit wormholes.

I'm aware of this, and as Nitram says the fewer steps required to get to the magic makes for 'better' fantasy... but it's still just fantasy. It's still handwaving away huge problems that are apparently insoluble and then claiming it's 'realistic'. As D-13 mentioned, the closer you stay to 'sensible' with your tech the less technological oversights you get that make no sense - many FTL concepts have staggering utility as weapons, but in stories are simply used to get from A to B.

[Rye]

Event Horizon's "Hell" was a total rip off of 40K Immaterium though, that was what really struck me about that movie.

No, 40k's warp and EH's Hell were ripoffs of christian underworld mythology.

They even had the British dude turn into a "Chaos Daemon" at the end and start looking like Pinhead.

Right, like how the Exorcist was based on 40k too.

It's the cloest we'll everget to a real 40K movie though, unfortunately.

Given there's a WoW film coming and warhammer and 40k mmorpgs, I wouldn't go that far.

"It's a realm of pure chaos!" i mean could they have been more heavy handed, i was waiting for the Black guy to say "Oh Holy Throne, save us!" or something.

They probably had the same inspirations, e.g. christianity, HP Lovecraft, scifi, etc, there is no evidence however that EH ripped off the concept from GW, though.

My preferred FTL is either "blink of an eye" translocation like BSG or B5-style hyperspace. Hyperspace I feel is a cool cheat since it's just a different part of the universe that corresponds to points in realspace.

Also, LOL @ catman pretending he understoof what Xeriar said. If I don't get that shit, I doubt nublet here does.

[Catman]

I wasn't pretending, although I still struggled somewhat around his post.

[SirNitram]

Things like the Alcubierre metric work by abusing this principle. So it, in a sense, is 'better' than potential solutions which say, claim to stay true to Minkowski spacetime and yet permit wormholes.

I'm aware of this, and as Nitram says the fewer steps required to get to the magic makes for 'better' fantasy... but it's still just fantasy. It's still handwaving away huge problems that are apparently insoluble and then claiming it's 'realistic'. As D-13 mentioned, the closer you stay to 'sensible' with your tech the less technological oversights you get that make no sense - many FTL concepts have staggering utility as weapons, but in stories are simply used to get from A to B.

Actually, the math works for Alucubierre, and it doesn't fuck Casuality up the ass, so it's not 'impossible', it just requires a material we don't see.

Plus, I beleive long-term views of the universe show FTL to be inevitable; as in galaxies will be going apart faster than light cast by one can reach the other one. But the probability of tapping into the expansion of the unvierse for a practical drive is low.

[Catman]

So you're saying both 'I know it's impossible' and 'oh but you DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL BE DEVELOPED'? Make up your mind.

Please, discuss with us your wormhole travel theories. How will you pass through the wormhole without being totally destroyed? Or is that another thing that's 'impossible' but we 'can't predict what will be developed'?

Since you missed it, saying something will happen despite a lack of evidence and a pile of counter evidence is just like a religious mentality. You're not the only scifi fan to have the vain hope of FTL, of course, but honestly, you're either being realistic and FTL is impossible or you're not and all stupid drives are pretty much the same.

Jesus.

It's not ONLY impossible... But I don't know how, in real life, you could go to another star system quickly. I'm just not going to assume that it's completely impossible, or that Jumpgates or Warp Drive ARE possible, they're not.

And how the hell can we be sure of any of this if we have never seen
any real drives and just have in mind the magical fictional ones?

Frak it. I paid too much attention to the implausibility of Warp Drives, and I didn't pay ENOUGH attention to how you could keep from getting destroyed in a wormhole, for example. Yeah, Jumpdrives are fictional, but this becomes about focusing on fictional engines and not about any that could exist, but that no one will discover until after we're long dead.

Fictional drives are bullshit.

I already know that.

The only thing I did wrong about this is that I paid too much attention to one of the fictional drives, and not enough to another.

I don't even think that FTL *IS* any real, valid way to get to other systems.

Whatever *IS* isn't going to be figured out or guessed at anytime soon.

[SirNitram]

Whatever *IS* isn't going to be figured out or guessed at anytime soon.

Are you familiar with Debating Rule 6?

[Catman]

Just acknowledging that if a interstellar drive is possible, none of us will have a clue NOW what it is, and will probably just make shit UP.

This is a mentality I have seen pop up before, but I don't like it at all. Sure, our predictions of the future probably (certainly) aren't going to be 100% accurate, but we can have a pretty good idea of what might happen, what is probable or improbable to happen, and what will certainly not happen. That is what science and engineering are all about.

For a simple example, I don't know exactly what future airplanes will look like, but I can say they will probably still have wings. I don't know exactly what a future spaceship will look like, but it will probably have a rocket and fuel tanks of some sort (which may be very big, depending on the intended use of this ship). These things are simply needed - the field of aerospace engineering and the basic dynamics of motion are pretty well understood today, so it is reasonable to assume these basics will at least hold true.


(Actually, interstellar drives are possible, but FTL drives are not. They are not the same thing; an interstellar drive might be a generation ship, etc, taking its time to get to a new star. But, the laws of physics do give us a pretty good idea of what these things may be, enough that we can speculate designs down to pretty detailed levels.)

And why would it be faster than light? If it's a wormhole, it probably won't involve moving faster than light.

My understanding of a wormhole is it is also problematic. Creating one will in the first place is non trivial, and even so it will be very small (at least for realistic energies), and will collapse almost instantly, certainly before any macroscopic object can get through.

It might also bring up causality problems, since if it goes through space, it can jump through time as well (one side simply needs to move at a different speed, I think). It may also create a preferred reference frame, where one side of the wormhole is more 'right' than the other, which poops on special relativity.

I'm afraid my own knowledge is not good enough to go into more detail here, but unless I am grievously mistaken, a wormhole is no more realistic than a warp drive. Both are impossible in the real world.

But how do YOU know what will be developed in the next thousand years?

It can't just be predicted.

And once again, I disagree with this mentality pretty strongly. We can't know for sure, but we do have a pretty good grasp on the basic laws on the universe, and from these, several things can be extrapolated. Science simply isn't a revolutionary field - the knowledge of 3000 AD will surely be built upon the knowledge of today.

Well, okay. They're both unrealistic. And I was focusing too much on the impossibilities of warp and barely focusing on the wormhole. There's the mistake of my assumptions.

Trying too hard to consider that a bunch of things will pop up in the future isn't going to make it better either.

[Ariphaos]

I'm aware of this, and as Nitram says the fewer steps required to get to the magic makes for 'better' fantasy... but it's still just fantasy. It's still handwaving away huge problems that are apparently insoluble and then claiming it's 'realistic'. As D-13 mentioned, the closer you stay to 'sensible' with your tech the less technological oversights you get that make no sense - many FTL concepts have staggering utility as weapons, but in stories are simply used to get from A to B. :)

Well, your valid points aside (the weaponry angle - FUCK quantum torpedos, ram the warp bubble through the target!), there's another issue here.

Earnshaw's theorem states that magnetic levitation in a static field is impossible. In 1842, the idea of superconductors and computers was beyond the comprehension of the time. These devices are both built, remotely, on 19th century technology, but they're not obvious extensions. They make magnetic levitation possible.

Earnshaw's theorem is still true, we just got around it by creating machines and substances capable of violating the precepts upon which his theory is based. These were -impossible- in 1842. Superconductors wouldn't be seen for 70 years, computers later, and taking advantage of these took a few decades on their own.

So I tend to find running around saying IMPOSSIBLE! IMPOSSIBLE! to be...

Inelegant.

What we -can- comprehend, now, is a few potential means by which, 'if we can do this, FTL may follow'. If you find you -must- explain your fantasy physics in your Sci-fi, thinking it through is certainly better than not.

[montypython]

Damn, I thought that I could edit these.

Well, if you need a further explanation form this, it's that I think that a Wormhole drive is more realistic.

Which is like saying pink magical fairies are more realistic than blue magical fairies.

My personal favorite is the Maeda drive. Ship is converted into pseudomaterial which moves at c to its destination, with time not advancing for the crew during the transition. Yeah, I'm plugging my own piece of handwavium--I'm entitled (though I'm pretty sure others have come up with the same thing before me). Of course, it's not FTL, so it's useless to you.

As long as something is not truly ruled out by science (like the ether theory), its not really handwavium.

[SirNitram]

Damn, I thought that I could edit these.

Well, if you need a further explanation form this, it's that I think that a Wormhole drive is more realistic.

Which is like saying pink magical fairies are more realistic than blue magical fairies.

My personal favorite is the Maeda drive. Ship is converted into pseudomaterial which moves at c to its destination, with time not advancing for the crew during the transition. Yeah, I'm plugging my own piece of handwavium--I'm entitled (though I'm pretty sure others have come up with the same thing before me). Of course, it's not FTL, so it's useless to you.

As long as something is not truly ruled out by science (like the ether theory), its not really handwavium.

It actually is, especially if it uses materials that don't exist(Which is what handwavium means). Wormholes require large amounts of a specific, quantifiable handwavium: Negative energy. Two other options for FTL become possible if you assume casualty will allow it and you have negative energy, and at much, much, much lower costs.

[Catman]

Probably good to separate the two.

[rhoenix]

SF author Geoffrey Landis has catagorized almost forty different types of FTL drives found in various SF novels here:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket ... stardrives

Ah, Nyrath - thank you for your comments. However, I was and am using your site rather often for many, many aspects of my writing.

So, thank you for creating and maintaining your site the way you have. I picked my favorite three in the OP based purely on selfish desire.

[OmegaGuy]

I like time/space travel combination drives, like in Doctor Who.