146
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Accepted
What realistic way could limit an FTL drive to only travelling between stars?
A guy named Arioch has a webcomic called Outsider (highly recommended, BTW) with a simple and elegant solution to this problem. Ships in that universe use a drive that jumps them through hyperspace, ...
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120
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How to prevent superluminal traveling idiots from wrecking half of the universe?
But in most stories, FTL doesn't actually follow Newton's 1st law; everybody knows that once your hyperdrive fails, you're dead in the water. Otherwise, the Enterprise could hit warp 9.9 and easily ...
- 3,559
89
votes
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Are there any ways to allow some form of FTL travel without allowing time travel?
As you said, any FTL drive is implicitly a time machine. Let’s review the reasons why. As a prerequisite you need to understand spacetime and the ideas of space-like and time-like intervals.
first ...
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82
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Law enforcement in FTL civilization
Use real world examples?
Criminals could 'run away' to the Americas or wherever in the 1600s. In that case, how would the Spanish crown capture them? What about outlaws that fled to the territories ...
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78
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How to prevent superluminal traveling idiots from wrecking half of the universe?
1. Space is mostly empty
If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime
Well, not necessarily. There's so much empty space between anything interesting in the ...
- 3,667
73
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How much would we learn from observing an FTL starship fly by?
Hmm.
Let's try to understand what we actually see.
"Deep space telescopes notice as an object appears out near the orbit of Jupiter":
That's either one biggg object, or at least a veeery luminous ...
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71
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Why are certain spaceships capable of warp at a moment's notice while others require some preparations?
The older Warp drives are ballistic. Like a bullet fired from a gun.
You have to set the direction and impulse at the beginning, and thus need to have your settings exactly right, or you miss your ...
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65
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Does knowing a technology exists make it develop faster?
I would think so. Innovation is probably the hardest bit and duplication is much easier. We see it with computers all the time now. Some small company comes up with a new idea that is "obvious" and ...
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61
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How can I justify a Type III civilization using planetary jump drives instead of FTL starships for galactic commerce and travel?
There are two broad reasons why the jump drives are only used on planets. The first reason is that some property which planets have but spaceships lack is required for the jump drive to work ...
- 2,161
58
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How can I justify a Type III civilization using planetary jump drives instead of FTL starships for galactic commerce and travel?
Jump drives are just plain huge
The reason they move entire planets around instead of smaller ships is because, by the time you've put all necessary equipment for a functioning jump drive into your ...
- 7,389
58
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Accepted
Why are certain spaceships capable of warp at a moment's notice while others require some preparations?
The Dreadnoughts are taking advantage of a breakthrough in FTL communication technology, and they continue to sync with the networks and plot the coordinates while already at warp.
For this to work, ...
- 7,011
58
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Accepted
How long can it really take to calculate a hyperspace jump?
An arbitrary example of a calculation with suitable complexity, that matches the complexity of a hyperdrive jump, which cannot be pre-calculated but which can be calculated and shared to multiple ...
- 26.3k
55
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Why are certain spaceships capable of warp at a moment's notice while others require some preparations?
It still takes 72 hours, a tiny tweak in the order of events makes it seem instant.
After a few decades of CEOs cutting talent from the engineering department and using the savings to pay their own ...
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54
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What realistic way could limit an FTL drive to only travelling between stars?
It is common to require that FTL only operate at some distance from large mass. So, the ship must withdraw (say) beyond the orbit of Neptune before engaging. Likewise, ships will arrive at this ...
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52
votes
Accepted
Interstellar war without co-ordination, is fine timing important at these scales?
This is a fascinating question that will have a substantial impact on your story. I love it! Let's get some basic observations out of the way, which will include some restatement of your limitations....
- 129k
52
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What plausible reason could I give for my FTL drive only working in space
The traditional answer to this question is "FTL drives don't work within gravity wells", which is sometimes justified by saying that they require a region of "flat" spacetime to operate reliably. If ...
- 7,389
49
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What might stop people from destroying navigation satellites that are used for FTL plotting?
Their area is not included in the FTL grid.
Your satellites are sitting in the depth of space where there is no reason to stop (besides, the exact location won't be public knowledge). So any ...
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46
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Accepted
What are plausible faster than light methods for a far advanced civilization that aren't a warp drive
Let's set the technobabble aside
You can name your drive/engine/motor/causal-difference-generator anything you want. It's important (don't ignore it), because what you're really going to do is choose ...
- 129k
43
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What realistic way could limit an FTL drive to only travelling between stars?
Make the aiming difficult
If the lowest precision of coordinates you can aim at still has an error margin greater than the typical size of a solar system your method would not be usable for ...
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43
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Effects of being hit by an object going at FTL speeds
I'm not sure on what happens when the spear reaches its FTL speed, but you're going to have issues while the spear is accelerating to FTL speed. Because it is constantly hitting something, namely &...
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39
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What might stop people from destroying navigation satellites that are used for FTL plotting?
The FTL beacons are stars.
Artificial pulsars to be precise. Some were already pulsars and their rotation speed adjusted and a couple were made from scratch.
This was no mean feat, even in your ...
- 305k
38
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Standardisation of Time in a FTL Universe
Is there a theoretical method of inferring a "universal" time that FTL travellers can use for their clocks to maintain a constant time?
Generally, no. There is no universal time, period. Relativity ...
- 2,130
37
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How much would we learn from observing an FTL starship fly by?
Obviously exciting things:
FTL is possible without the need for chunks of exotic matter than weigh more than the visible universe.
Interstellar travel appears to be possible and practical.
There ...
- 78.4k
37
votes
How long can it really take to calculate a hyperspace jump?
Simulation of the galaxy.
When you're doing FTL jump, thanks to the lightspeed lag, you are always operating on the information about your target system that's outdated from years to decades and ...
- 9,088
36
votes
Accepted
How to resolve the transporter conundrum in a FTL spaceship?
The real answer is "whatever you want." We have no known physics for what happens past the speed of light, so you are writing your own rules.
However, if we are to use our own intuitive laws to try ...
- 133k
34
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What might stop people from destroying navigation satellites that are used for FTL plotting?
Backups and "secure mode"
StarLink satellites go up 60 at the time
There is no reason to deploy just one navigation buoy (*). You can deploy 2, 4, 64, 1024 at the time. These backups sit ...
- 43.9k
34
votes
How do we create an interstellar communications system?
Send USB thumbsticks through wormholes
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -- Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981
You're not going to get information to ...
- 15.4k
33
votes
Accepted
Science-based FTL drive
TL;DR: "Scientifically correct" (according to current established science) and "faster-than-light travel" cannot be used in the same context without some form of negation. What you are asking for is ...
- 29k
33
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Does my concept for light speed travel pass the "handwave test"?
It is more than good enough for science fiction. This is actually what the Mass Effect is all about in the videogame series that bears that name:
Mass effect fields are created through the use of ...
- 142k
32
votes
Accepted
Which current networking protocol would be the optimal choice for very small FTL bandwidth?
Contrary to the OP’s concern at the start, this is not a dumb question; it is actually a very good one. Most of the answers this post has received are pretty much wrong, and in this group that means ...
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