The Hyperdrive

Well, in my opinion, yes, this is funny. But I am about to talk, so I shouldn't be talking. And no, I don't know what that means.

Scrunching space up in front of the ship and expanding in back would get my vote for most easily done. Wormholes stay open for fractions of a microsecond, and while you can hold them open on one end with dark matter/energy (which does exist, we have created some), the other end would collapse on its own. And just accelerated to c is not feasible, you would have infinate mass, and who knows? You might become a black hole traveling at light speed. Of course, until I do it myself, I shall never know, and frankly, I still don't know about gravity. You can't show me proof of anything. I leave you with these thoughts.

Oh, and about the dimensional thing. If a 2D person was thrown into a 3D world (and I am not counting time), and saw a person, first he would see a perfectly 2D cutout of the tip of the nose, and as the person moved forward, they would see a expanding blob of 2D, and this would be all the 2D slices of the nose. It would continue from there. Similarly, if we say a 4D (again, just spatial dimensions) person, we would probably see a blob that was constantly changing shape, size, color, texture, etc. I know, this is totally unrelated to what you asked, but hey. Take what you can get 😄

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There are no true experts, only fools who believe they know everything. Believe me, I'm an expert on this.

(This message has been edited by Scalebone (edited 05-05-2003).)

What you require is a B.S. Drive (and no I am not referring to a B achelor of S cience degree)

If it sounds good, then it makes a good BS drive; if it doesn't, then it probably won't.

Sort of like Graphics for this game. I can take a box and attach slender box wings and and add a cone and a vertical slender triangular box. I can then give it a nice gray shade. It will fly in the game, but boy will it be ugly.

On the other hand I can build a ship that looks like it has lots of curves and I add textures that make the thing look cool. It too will fly in the game.

Which would you rather have, a box that I call a starship or one that actually looks like a starship?

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Ivanova: "I can only conclude that I am paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate."

People say Einstein's theory disproves faster than light travel, but that we can go near the speed of light. My question is this: What if you're in a ship going 0.99999999 the speed of light and you throw something toward the front, or heck even walk toward the front. That would certainly be faster than light.

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Be the shoe
What's the problem with repairing the ozone layer? We've got space shuttles and Saran Wrap...FIX IT -Lewis Black
I have a fever, and the only perscription is more cow bell -Christopher Walkin
I'm up an unsanitary tributary without an adequate means of transporation. -My drafting teacher

Quote

Originally posted by Icetray:
**People say Einstein's theory disproves faster than light travel, but that we can go near the speed of light. My question is this: What if you're in a ship going 0.99999999 the speed of light and you throw something toward the front, or heck even walk toward the front. That would certainly be faster than light.
**

Yes, it would hit the speed of light, but at that instance, it would gain infinite mass, and you would be sucked into it, along with the rest of the Universe. Thats what the exuation states. E=mc^2. Its basically like dividing by 0. As soon as that happens, it cant exist any more and everything (ie the Universe) gets completely screwed 😛

ewan

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(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/ewan/")Ewan's Lair(/url) | (url="http://"http://dreamwave.evula.net")Dreamwave(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.northernswamp.com")Northern Swamp(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.com")EVula's Lair(/url)
"In this world gone mad, we won't spank the monkey - the monkey will spank us!"

Hey, Icetray, I play Ratchet +Clank all the time too. I'm a big fan. Big Al's is on Metropolis, however 😛 .

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There are doors I haven't opened,
Windows I've yet to look through.
Going forward may not be the answer.
Mabye I should go back.

Quote

Originally posted by Icetray:
**People say Einstein's theory disproves faster than light travel, but that we can go near the speed of light. My question is this: What if you're in a ship going 0.99999999 the speed of light and you throw something toward the front, or heck even walk toward the front. That would certainly be faster than light.

**

You throwing something forward would provide a negative force on the ship, thus decellerating you and the ship to match. Thus, no change. It doesn't exactly work like that. You just can't forget Newton's laws.

Quote

Originally posted by Icetray:
**People say Einstein's theory disproves faster than light travel, but that we can go near the speed of light. My question is this: What if you're in a ship going 0.99999999 the speed of light and you throw something toward the front, or heck even walk toward the front. That would certainly be faster than light.

**

Actually, the laws of physics as described by the theory of relativity gives a more complicated solution. Its described under the time dilation equation.

Basically, the faster you go, the harder it is to get something to go faster than you. So if you walked towards the front of the ship traveling infinitely close to c, you would never be able to go faster than c. Take a course in modern physics to actually have it explained well.

So in your case, the object would be going (guestimate) 0.9999999900000000001c.

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"If you can't feel the Force, you're not pushing it." -Prof. Li on the "Force"
Got g?
(url="http://"http://www.badastronomy.com/")Real astronomers use kilometers. Hardcore astronomers use centimeters.(/url)

No, if you throw something forward from near the speed of light, it doesn't pass c.

Similar question, what if you are travelling at .9c to the right, and someone else is travelling at .9c to the left? Don't you see them coming towards you at 1.8c? No. That's the whole idea behind relativity, the speed of light is constant, but to make that work with the idea of a fast object turning on its headlights, you have to make space and time variable, relative to the observer. I could write up the equations for you, but if I remember correctly the two objects travelling towards each other at .9c each relative to a stationary observer only approach each other at about .94 or .98c due to the fact that at such high speeds the objects get shorter (to the observer) and time passes at a different rate for them.

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

Quote

Originally posted by random lunatic:
You throwing something forward would provide a negative force on the ship, thus decellerating you and the ship to match. Thus, no change. It doesn't exactly work like that. You just can't forget Newton's laws.

While it is important to keep in mind the conservation of momentum and Newton's laws, this doesn't help us escape from his question, that is answered by length contraction and time dilation.

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

Time for an equation! (yayy!)

            (b)V(/b)1 + (b)V(/b)2
(b)V(/b)sum = ---------------
             (b)V(/b)1 x (b)V(/b)2
        1 + ---------
               c^2

So to add two velocities, say 0.75c + 0.50c, we don't just ADD them. We take (0.75c + 0.50c) / (1 + (0.75 x 0.50)/c^2) = 1.25c / 1.375 = approx. 0.91c.

-Vaumnou

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Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"

(This message has been edited by Vaumnou (edited 05-06-2003).)

(quote)Originally Posted by Jules:
**Yes, it would hit the speed of light, but at that instance, it would gain infinite mass, and you would be sucked into it, along with the rest of the Universe. Thats what the exuation states. E=mc^2. Its basically like dividing by 0. As soon as that happens, it cant exist any more and everything (ie the Universe) gets completely screwed:).

It is all just imagination.

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"You gotta ask yourself a question, do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?"
The galaxy is about to become apocalyptic: (url="http://"http://3114.spyw.com")3114:A Nova TC(/url)
**

(quote)Originally posted by thedecline:
**
but it is pretty fun to talk about and use big words. 😄

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- Warning- High levels of extreme sarcasm

(This message has been edited by TheRedeemer (edited 05-06-2003).)
**

Aah, but then you get into time travel. What is fun about this, is I once read how to build a time machine. Disassemble Jupiter's mass, reassemble it with you inside it (or else you get sucked in) to something a sphere with a diameter of about, say, five feet. Then, you go really slow, everybody else goes fast! Yay! That's the real way to warp :D. To everybody else, you are moving faster then the speed of light, even if you are going at (guestemite) 80 mph.

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There are no true experts, only fools who believe they know everything. Believe me, I'm an expert on this.

Well no matter what I still find it hard to believe that going faster makes you have more mass. I just don't see the connection :frown:

gyrospin: I thought Metropolis was on Novalis? Oh well. Even if it's not Novalis is my favorite plant. Partly becuase of sounds cool and how it's spelled Nova lis. 😉

:edit: oops well I missed celebrating my 300th post. So...um....301 posts wohoo :redface:
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Be the shoe
What's the problem with repairing the ozone layer? We've got space shuttles and Saran Wrap...FIX IT -Lewis Black
I have a fever, and the only perscription is more cow bell -Christopher Walkin
I'm up an unsanitary tributary without an adequate means of transporation. -My drafting teacher

(This message has been edited by Icetray (edited 05-06-2003).)

I like Novalis because of it's music track. Oh, to get a Skill Point shoot down the bomber that flies over the landing pad with a Devastator round or Visibomb.

:edit: Sorry, I'm getting off track. smacks head Hyperdrives!

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There are doors I haven't opened,
Windows I've yet to look through.
Going forward may not be the answer.
Mabye I should go back.

(This message has been edited by gyrospin (edited 05-06-2003).)

(quote)Originally posted by Icetray:
**Well no matter what I still find it hard to believe that going faster makes you have more mass. I just don't see the connection:D

-Vaumnou

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Did you know that 63.8% of quoted statistics are made up on the spot?
"He's too late. SEE?!? THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!! Hurry up!"
**

In Star Wars, Hyperspace is another dimension where the laws of physics are different.

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One day, when the galaxy is mine

A little plug for the works of Charles Sheffield and Robert Forward. Modern physics and wonderfull wacky ideas....negative matter, vacuum energy, quantum foam, casimir-effect-stabilized wormholes...

Oh, and boo on Star Trek for a debased imitation of physics that echoes buzz-words but fudges concepts. We won't even talk about Star Wars. (Did anyone else notice and mourn that Voyager crossed a goodly portion of our own galaxy without really encountering anything of the actual structure? Instead of spiral arms and core, Type II populations and supernovae remnants, all you got was "planets" like beads on a string, floating around without even stars to call a home.)

Was it Keith Laumer who created the memorable "Bloater Drive?"

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Butterfly
My husband gave his promise
He would return in the joyous season,
When robin red-breasts rebuild their nests.

EVN history-related hyper questions:

How, exactly, were the Hypergates built? I presume you need one at each end in order to travel ... so how was the one at the far end built? They didn't come up with hyperdrives on ships until much later, right?

And what's the deal with the hypergates in Polaris space? When were they built? Wasn't Polaris space totally separate from Fed space for its entire history? And why don't the Polaris people activate their gates?

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"How, exactly, were the Hypergates built? I presume you need one at each end in order to travel ... so how was the one at the far end built?"

Generally, the popular way in science fiction to build a hypergate link is to build a gate on one side, send people through it, and then have them build one on the other side, leaving them unable to return until they finish.

That or build a two hypergates, cut one in half, and send the two halves through the full gate then stick 'em back together on the other end ^_^

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