# A Space Math Problem For You



## jjabrams55 (Feb 11, 2015)

So you have a torch drive ship (it's a scifi one, so it will take a looong time to run out of fuel, it's compressed handwavium).

Here's the problem. You use wormhole bomb to travel through space really far. Wormhole bombs do this:








How it works: First it makes a wide sphere of destructive blue energy that is 10,000 KILOMETERS wide. Which vaporizes anything it hits. If it hits another worm bomb, it will start a cascade effect of another explosion of the same intensity. After the explosion a wormhole is created that is ALSO 10,000 kilometers wide in it's place.

Looks like this:








That is what you travel through to go anywhere you want to go. Only problem is that it closes in 60 seconds.

Here is the problem. You have humans on board who only tolerate 1g easily. You also have an extra water submerged star-bridge for your officer crew, but who knows if even that will be enough?

The question? Can 1g acceleration cross 10,000 Kilometers in 60 seconds? I doubt it. You are a little past 10,000 kilometers away (you didn't want to die in the intial explosion).

Likely you will have to go much faster, but the question is, can the crew survive the high g, even while submerged in the water bridge?

How much g acceleration will you need to cross 10K in 60 seconds or preferably less? Let's presume that your ship can go 50 g max (but that would likely kill you, or should, even submerged in water).


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## Remedy (Feb 12, 2015)

If I understand what you're saying. Water submersion allows humans to withstand more g-force than normal? But might not be enough for 50Gs.

Could you not submerge them in something else? Something like ballistics gel? Or doesn't it work like that?

Edit: I just found this. Very interesting. Perhaps it will help: 
http://creation.com/g-forces-space-travel-problem


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## jjabrams55 (Feb 12, 2015)

Remedy said:


> If I understand what you're saying. Water submersion allows humans to withstand more g-force than normal? But might not be enough for 50Gs.
> 
> Could you not submerge them in something else? Something like ballistics gel? Or doesn't it work like that?
> 
> ...



Hmmm... seems the safest scifi starship would be one that used self-teleportation to reach places it wanted to go. Only using thrusters when absolutely needed (like orbital maneuvers).


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## Dennis E. Taylor (Feb 12, 2015)

So, the short question is: what acceleration will allow you to travel 10,000 km in 60 seconds?

The formula for distance is d=.5*a*t^2 (distance equals one half aye tee squared)

Solving for a, you get a=2d/t^2 (acceleration equals two dee over tee squared)

a = (2*10,000) / (60*60)
a = 5.5 km/s^2

561 G

Strawberry jam, anyone?


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## Vince W (Feb 12, 2015)

The way I see it you need to be accelerating towards the wormhole as the explosions are taking place. You would need to time your crossing so you first weren't destroyed by the shockwaves and then still cross the wormhole event horizon before it collapsed.


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 13, 2015)

Without a tank people can take 15G for short periods. It's been well documented. Somewhat more than 2G for long periods is easy if lying down unless you are morbidly obese!
Very much more than 50G possible in a tank if the density is the same as your body (suitable liquids are available that are LESS dense than water, you need to sink in it under the surface. Water is too dense.
Your lungs and stomach etc all need to be liquid filled too. Amazingly there ARE breathable liquids! But they are wrong density. Quite reasonable to assume the problem can be solved.
Pre-breath nitrogen free atmosphere.
Chill, Drug and sedate the people so that:
1) It's less frightening
2) Less oxygen needed, so the breathable liquid doesn't need to work so well. It would have oxygen rather than air to avoid nitrogen.
3) Less muscle movement.

I don't know if 560G works, the structures may be the limit if the people are in tanks, tranked and liquid filled as above.

I predict that post tank recovery is unpleasant and fasting before and after is likely required. People will not like it.

Also you'd need an Orion drive, the regular torch/plasma/ion drive even if augmented by 20km linear accelerator can't do that sort of acceleration.


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## Zoe Mackay (Feb 13, 2015)

Why can't the ship be moving to begin with?


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## Venusian Broon (Feb 13, 2015)

Re: Robert's suggestion,

By my very rough, on the back of a beer mat calculations*, if you gave the ship a constant acceleration of 1G from a standing start then it would take about 9 and a half hours to reach a velocity of 10,000 km/min. Obviously you may want to either crank up the acceleration of the ship to cut that lead time down and also perhaps get a higher velocity before you set off your bombs to give you more leeway when entering the warp (again by my dodgy equations, a 2G acceleration will cut down the time to get to that speed by half, so you can extrapolate yourself with even higher ones!)


*i.e. may be quite wrong 

EDIT - yes my hangover is getting in the way of my thinking...Yep I think I'm wrong by a factor of two in the above: 1g should get you to 10,000 km/min in 4.7 hours, 2g in half that time - 2.4 hours roughly etc...


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