Shifting Gears (400)

[Avid Scifi Fan]

Hi All,

I'm revisisting the physics and style of writing space travel for my book. These space adventures require travel between galaxies, so this is what I've come up with:

Ion thruster (sub-light used within a star system)
Hyperdrive (faster than light used within a galaxy)
Wormhole drive (travel between galaxies)

Background: Maggie is the ships AI computer and the ship is like her body (she can be moved to another ship, so the two aren't always connected)

I would envision narratives, like the ones below, being broken up with various other character events going on while the "time" is passing. I plan to use these blurbs as a way of indicating to the reader where and when they are traveling and at what speed (3 gears if you will: slow, fast, ludicrous speed).

*******
Maggie closed her cargo bay ramp and slowly floated up off of the hangar deck. She turned around and fired up the ion thrusters to head out of the hangar into space. Maggie’s fusion cores hummed to life as the massive ion thrusters thirsted for power. She picked up speed and the planet, with the Central Command station in orbit, quickly shrank into the blackness of space behind her and blended in with the stars in the background.

After she reached a safe distance from the planet and the Central Command station, she brought the hyperdrive engines online. The antimatter reactors roared to life to meet the incredible power demands of the hyperdrive engines. As she accelerated forward, the color of the stars in front of them Doppler shifted through the light spectrum from yellow to blue, and into blackness. With the increased speed, the black void in front and behind her grew until only a small thin rainbow band was left around the sides of her hull. The only sign of motion was out the side cockpit view ports as the passing stars swung back down through the electromagnetic spectrum from blue to yellow to red, and then disappeared again.

Maggie headed on the shortest course out of the Centar Galaxy in the direction of the Dantonus galaxy, her shields shimmed in the darkness as they deflected stray particles and radiation.

As Maggie reached the Centar galactic edge and the stars became fairly sparse, she adjusted her alignment with the Dantonus galaxy. When her course steadied out, she activated the intergalactic wormhole drive. The wormhole drive groaned ominously and began to form a conduit through the very strings that bind the galaxy together. The unimaginable amount of power required for such a task, could only be met with the singularity generator. The singularity generator, the strongest of all power generation equipment available, throbbed to life. The raw gravity and energy field could be felt pulsating throughout the entire ship. When the power demanded by the intergalactic wormhole drive was met, a wormhole appeared in front of her. After the wormhole stabilized, Maggie accelerated into it and streaked forward as she passes the opening into the hole. Once in the conduit of the wormhole, the very fabric of space is compressed and distorted such that forward progress within the wormhole is multiplied a trillion fold. The walls of the conduit shimmered with the look of a high energy plasma vortex, providing the only sense of motion through the wormhole.

*******


Need an oppinion on this thought: Should I only introduce the travel once with this much detail in the story and there after simply refer to the use of ion thrusters, hyperdrive or wormhole? or should I describe it a few times (might get too repetative).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Fusion is as good as it gets. Where you going to get antimatter from?

You'll only get colour shifts using sublight speeds (Ion Drive). If hyperdrive is possible at all, you can't perceive light. Given enough power, reaction mass and really long accellerator for Ion Drive you can accelerate to a serious proportion of C and see Doppler shift. Not for very long (maybe less than a year, depends on acceleration) as you run out of reaction mass even if you had limitless power. Making the ship bigger to carry more stuff for the Ion drive doesn't work!

Hyperdrive can be anything you want as long as you don't explain it. But whatever it might be, no visual effects unless an illusion in brain. The distance to nearest Galaxy is of the order of the long axis of a Galaxy, so any Civilisation able to traverse Galaxy in reasonable time using some unknown Hyperdrive principle can do Intergalactic travel. Distance though between our local cluster of Galaxies and next is orders of magnitude more.

The idea really of a Wormhole is that it makes two places be at the same place, it also appears to need more energy than in the Universe to open one, so a believable worm hold would take no time to transit and be opened for less than femto seconds. Perhaps, because we don't really know. Since the idea of a Worm hole is to fold / pinch space to make two points at same place, it's hard to imagine seeing anything at all traversing one, even if transit isn't apparently instant.

But it depends if SF or Space Opera or Fantasy set in Space.

Otherwise it reads much better than last version. Except Dialogue would make it more interesting, it's a fairly boring narrative.

Explain only what is needed for Plot. Only describe travel effects once (if really needed), unless plot needs it.

 

[Avid Scifi Fan]

Fusion is not as good as it gets. You get more more energy out of the total eimination of particals that you would from a fusion reaction that merges two atoms into one resulting in alot of mass left over. Remember, from Einsteins equation E=MC^2 the mass is the weight change between your two starting atom (say hydrogen isotopes) and the resulting atom (in this case Helium). Where as the antimatter reaction would yeild the entire atom as the weight change, which is orders of magnitude above a plain old fusion reaction.

As to where you get the antimatter, it would have to be made. Probably produced using energy from either the fusion reactors or the singularity generator and then stored somewhere. I'll give it to you that the singularity generator is pure science fantasy as this would be well beyond the other two.

The thing with hyperdrive, it violates the whole faster than light rule anyway you slice it.

Assuming some advance civilization could somehow do something the travel faster than light (otherwise your stuck where you are), your velocity relative to the stars you pass would be the Cosine of the angle relative to yourself. This means a star perpendicular to you has no forward speed and the light came in from the side at C.

So if this barrier of C were removed, a vessel traveling forward at 100 time the speed of light would have about a 1 degree window perpendicular to the direction of travel that falls within the limits of C. Thus the rainbow band on the side and the rest is dark.

I agree. Even for travel within most galaxies at 100,000 light years across the hyperspace travel would still have to be several orders of magnitude above above that. Making the rainbow band thinner than a sheet of paper (i.e. invisible). So in some ways, I yield to your arguement of reality and phycal limits. But giving the reader something to visualize I may make the rainbor band disappear after the acceleration process and leave the sense of motion with the shimmer of the shields (that just seams a bit boring).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Fusion is not as good as it gets. You get more more energy out of the total eimination of particals that you would from a fusion reaction that merges two atoms into one resulting in alot of mass left over.

There isn't any better fuel than hydrogen, thus Fusion is as good as it gets. Fine, have Antimatter fuel like Star Trek if you want a more fantasy type SF.

The thing with hyperdrive, it violates the whole faster than light rule anyway you slice it.

No, it depends how it's done. But however it's done you probably can't see any light/Electromagnetic sources. Doppler is an effect that will only work up to light speed. After that something else (unknown) happens.
I'm not a physicist, but being an RF Engineer as well as Programmer and other skills I do have to know a lot of Maths and physics.

could somehow do something the travel faster than light (otherwise your stuck where you are), your velocity relative to the stars you pass would be the Cosine of the angle relative to yourself.

Yes, any Interstellar travel other than a Generation Ship coasting, needs a Hyper or Jump drive. We don't know how to do it (yet?). But we do know you'd not be in regular space, likely no radiation from any star would reach you, or else we would see a discrepancy of loss of radiation from stars. It's interesting that we see the opposite effect. The observed universe seems to have too much energy!

Your rainbow & normal spectrum effects are likely observable at the limits of sub light speed ion drive (as we do indeed see blue shift and red shift) which might reach 0.7C

Concentrate on Story, Plot, Characters, not the mechanics of Travel.
Yes, it's your story, so if the story is good and demands it you can have anything even if it seems to contravene physics, but my own inclination is that there is no value in fantasy descriptions that don't add to the Story/Plot /Characters.
Maybe the Starship can't carry enough hydrogen (as water oddly is handiest way!) for Fusion power needed for Worm hole generator (!), so there is a vast factory converting a Gas Giant via Fusion to Energy and using this to inefficiently make antimatter as a more compact fuel (fun stuff to contain, makes a Tokomak simple) to improve power to weight of Starship. But it seems like an pointless complication. I use the Occam principle. Just because Star Trek was daft and had Antimatter power, Replicator, Holodeck and Transporter beam (all four might as well be magic for all the science sense in them) doesn't mean anyone else has to have them. Stars run quite well on Hydrogen Fusion to be the power source for everything ... But then again it's fine to copy Star Trek ideas if the story works.

 

[sahlmi]

Hi All,

"Time" stopped for me as soon as the blue began in this particular paragraph:

After she reached a safe distance from the planet and the Central Command station, she brought the hyperdrive engines online. The antimatter reactors roared to life to meet the incredible power demands of the hyperdrive engines. As she accelerated forward, the color of the stars in front of them Doppler shifted through the light spectrum from yellow to blue, and into blackness. With the increased speed, the black void in front and behind her grew until only a small thin rainbow band was left around the sides of her hull. The only sign of motion was out the side cockpit view ports as the passing stars swung back down through the electromagnetic spectrum from blue to yellow to red, and then disappeared again.

Similarly within the following paragraphs.
A.McCarthy said it perfectly: "Concentrate on Story, Plot, Characters, not the mechanics of Travel." [my emphasis]
Yes, this is scifi and some of that can, and for some preferably, be included, but not at the sacrifice of the above quote, I feel.
This example was too much 'sacrifice' to me.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think you'd get away with this in a hard sf book, but not in a lighter book, so it depends what market you're writing for?

 

[sahlmi]

I think you'd get away with this in a hard sf book, but not in a lighter book, so it depends what market you're writing for?

Is it really ok to completely stop a story this way in hard sf? At least to this degree?
I don't read hard scifi, so this is an honest question. But it would explain why.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

really ok to completely stop a story this way in hard sf?

I think opinions are divided on that, and also what actually *IS* Hard SF and how scientifically accurate it has to be. To me the original and this one is more like Space Opera than Hard SF, so definitely needs more action & dialogue here (Enjoyable Hard SF probably MUCH harder to to do than really enjoyable Space Opera). EE Doc Smith 1930s is to me classic Space Opera, but again opinions differ as to what Space Opera actually is (we had great thread lately about it though!). I think even with Hard SF, mere explanations are better in an appendix?

 

[ShotokanXL]

I did like the idea of describing things as from the ship's point of view, making it more like a person than a vehicle. There were a few close repititions that need revising and I have to admit that I thought the descriptions of the shifting of light etc kinda killed the flow stone dead.

I don't know anywhere near enough physics to comment on the science of hypothetical speeds, but I can't see the need for 3 "gears". Sublight for in system travel, yeah. But if you have a drive that can fold the space between galaxies, could you not just just the same drive to travel between the stars within a galaxy?

It kinda reminds me of Elite

In system drive, hyperdrive, galactic jump drive.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I can't see the need for 3 "gears". Sublight for in system travel, yeah. But if you have a drive that can fold the space between galaxies, could you not just just the same drive to travel between the stars within a galaxy

Since we have no real idea how any FTL / Hyper / Jump / Folding / Wormhole thing might work, it's not unreasonable in fiction to have three systems:
1) Sub light, travel up to about 30 light days or 1/10th of a Light Year distance.
2) Interstellar, up to 100,000 LY perhaps, maybe only 10K per jump, accurate, but must be far enough away from Stars, so if you don't know a system accurately you can't jump as close.
3) A long distance 50,000 LY to 1 Million LY jump system, but inaccurate, so not safe inside a Galaxy.

The unknown FTL / Hyper / Jump / Folding / Wormhole thing can be for 2 & 3, or different implementations/Engines of same (as yet unknown to us) principle or use different Science (as yet unknown to us). Best to have almost no description of Gears 2 & 3, after all someone might figure it out next year. Item one can even be done today without Fusion Power (though it's nicer) using Solar (slow!) or conventional Nuclear power. 2 & 3 likely need massive short pulse of power unless (2) is by Warp Bubble travel. You can't "see" out of a Warp Bubble and it creates a radiation shock wave probably that pretty much might even sterilise a Planet, if it actually works. Hence needing (1) type drive.

 

[ShotokanXL]

Since we have no real idea how any FTL / Hyper / Jump / Folding / Wormhole thing might work, it's not unreasonable in fiction to have three systems:
1) Sub light, travel up to about 30 light days or 1/10th of a Light Year distance.
2) Interstellar, up to 100,000 LY perhaps, maybe only 10K per jump, accurate, but must be far enough away from Stars, so if you don't know a system accurately you can't jump as close.
3) A long distance 50,000 LY to 1 Million LY jump system, but inaccurate, so not safe inside a Galaxy.

The unknown FTL / Hyper / Jump / Folding / Wormhole thing can be for 2 & 3, or different implementations/Engines of same (as yet unknown to us) principle or use different Science (as yet unknown to us). Best to have almost no description of Gears 2 & 3, after all someone might figure it out next year. Item one can even be done today without Fusion Power (though it's nicer) using Solar (slow!) or conventional Nuclear power. 2 & 3 likely need massive short pulse of power unless (2) is by Warp Bubble travel. You can't "see" out of a Warp Bubble and it creates a radiation shock wave probably that pretty much might even sterilise a Planet, if it actually works. Hence needing (1) type drive.

Consider me educated

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It depends - does the story actually stop or carry on from the AI point of view? In any other pov I'd agree this is too slow but the AI pov makes it less clear cut. But it would need to be a short section, regardless of market...

 

[Avid Scifi Fan]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll have to work on shortening the technobabble, to a more simplistic description as not to slow the main story.

As Ray mentioned, I have the three drives to cover the major diferences in distance scales between inter planetary, inter stellar and inter galactic. Although I could conceivably just write my "space opera" in one galaxy and cut it down to two. After a while even with the possibility of hundreds of millions populatable planets within a galaxy, a galaxy could get quite crowded. Especially if a bunch of them are traveling about in hyperspace. I figured it may be more realistic to spread te numerous aliens out a little further using different galaxies.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I'm hearing it sounds like this description is painful enough as written and should only be used once to introduce the concept (if at all). After that simply say "they jump into hyperspace...or the wormhole" as not to lose the momentum of the story.

 

[ShotokanXL]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'll have to work on shortening the technobabble, to a more simplistic description as not to slow the main story.

As Ray mentioned, I have the three drives to cover the major diferences in distance scales between inter planetary, inter stellar and inter galactic. Although I could conceivably just write my "space opera" in one galaxy and cut it down to two. After a while even with the possibility of hundreds of millions populatable planets within a galaxy, a galaxy could get quite crowded. Especially if a bunch of them are traveling about in hyperspace. I figured it may be more realistic to spread te numerous aliens out a little further using different galaxies.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I'm hearing it sounds like this description is painful enough as written and should only be used once to introduce the concept (if at all). After that simply say "they jump into hyperspace...or the wormhole" as not to lose the momentum of the story.

Crowded galaxy? Accoring to the late Douglas Adams, the universe is an empty place

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Basically, yes. We all have detail in our worlds that we need to know to write it but that don't enhance the reading of it. The trick is to keep the story flowing and not bogging it down with information, no matter how cool it is. And where information is needed, keeping it embedded in the character experience is an easier read. But it all takes practice - often the words and grammar are the easy bit, it's the storytelling that's a killer.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

After a while even with the possibility of hundreds of millions populatable planets within a galaxy, a galaxy could get quite crowded.

We have no real idea if our galaxy has
no other intelligent life
1000+
15,000+
3,000,000+
(numbers of Advanced Technologies)
Only a small proportion of planets with life are likely to be at an Electronics / Space Tech level at same time.

It's totally up to your Storytelling skills if you want Millions of Galaxies traversable easily...

 

[ShotokanXL]

We have no real idea if our galaxy has
no other intelligent life
1000+
15,000+
3,000,000+
(numbers of Advanced Technologies)
Only a small proportion of planets with life are likely to be at an Electronics / Space Tech level at same time.

It's totally up to your Storytelling skills if you want Millions of Galaxies traversable easily...

This is one of the things I liked about both Asimov and Herbert. For the most part, humans are the only intelligent life out there (not counting machines) and it's just that in the age the stories are set they have spread out and created Empires.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

But I like proper Aliens like James White does. Sector General Series. Federation World etc. Or Babylon 5
I read an explanation by Asimov as to why he only has humans. I forget what it was.

 

[ShotokanXL]

Oh, I agree. "Footfall" by Larry Niven (and Jerry Pournell?) is one of my favourite depictions of an alien culture.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

More so than Footfall: Niven's Moties or more so his Ringworld Series

Yes, Jerry Pournelle on Footfall and The Mote in God's Eye