Faster Than Light conundrum Help appreciated

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Not sure if this belongs in tech or writing or movies and tv or games, so i put it here.

I am writing a Sci-fi book, and I need a few ideas for FTL travel options and restrictions. I plan to expand to have 25 races but they can share some tech. Right now I only need 3.
Human drive- Low tech possibly slower than light or faster but not to much faster.
Alien1 drive- Pretty advanced and fast, but it needs to be advanced enough that i can have other less advanced races with les effective drives.
Alien2 drive- Less advanced that alien 1 but still much faster than humans.

Also I have this idea of humans tera-forming planets that they hadn't even explored, like sending out probes to tera-form so they could go to the world years later. But i need some sort of way for this tera-forming to work. I already know it will use genetic material from earth so everything will be very similar. i am just having trouble getting some concepts.

The final issue I am having is that i want to keep time travel out of the real of possibility. But every FTL option means tim travel and i need a way to make a ship travel across the galaxy in a few weeks-months. with out going back in time.... and it frustrates me so much that no FTL ideas seem to fix this issue.

Any help would be much appreciated.
thanks
-Z

Well when you're talking about faster-than-light travel, you're already in the realm of science fiction...key word: fiction. So take as many liberties as you wish with it lol. I'd say the warp bubble thing would probably be the closest to a "realistic" option, since as far as I know it's the only possibility currently being investigated by NASA for that kind of space travel (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive).

I saw warp. and i see the whole idea of teleporting (wormholes) cool. But one thing i read on a page was to let other people give you the limitations of a FTL drive. I am trying hard not to copy something to much but i think humans will use warp. My issue is making sure that once a civilzation gets FTL that they just unlock everything. There needs to be limitations. For me i feel giving humanity warp would mean boom they can go anywhere anytime as fast as they want.

If we are talking field drives(drives that bends spacetime), then I have a few suggestions...
A field drive is a drive that affects spacetime in order to move the ship without it itself accelerating, so it can travel "faster" than the speed of light without contradicting E^2=(mc^2)^2+(pc)^2
Warpdrive, or Alcubierre drive, uses negativ matter(matter with anti-gravity properties) to bend spacetime and creates a "bubble" of spacetime being expanded behind the ship, while contracting it infront of the ship, which moves it forward.

One problem: The "bubble" will take up high energy particles between your point of origin and your destination, which will be released when the ship stops. It is no limit for how many high energy particles that can be collected this way, which means that the released radiation can destroy an entire starsystem and possibly more.
An other problem: The warp drive could turn into a black hole.
Diametric drive means to create a local gradient in spacetime. This can be done by having positiv energy at one end of the ship, which will cause spacetime to bend "downwards"(or creates a negative curvature if that explanation explains it better), and negative energy at the other end that makes the spacetime bend "upwards"(positive curvature).

Pitch drive works in a similar manner, but does not require two different fields, but only one field that creates the slope by itself.

Last edited by Exploronaut on 28 Jun 2013, 4:48 am, edited 3 times in total.

A bias drive alter the properties of space itself like for example the gravitational constant, to create a local gradient in space that moves the spaceship. This could fit as an Alien1 drive or an Alien2 drive, and it means that Scotty got no excuse.

A disjunction drive works by seperating a field from what the field reacts to, which wil result in "forces on the part that normally reacts to the field."(Link:disjunction drive)

I do not know wether these drives would catch high energy particles to, and I would be gratefull if any one could tell me if that is the case.

Last edited by Exploronaut on 27 Jun 2013, 4:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

A wormhole drive(as proposed by dr. Rodney McKay, link: Stargate Atlantis: Season 5 Episode 20-Enemy at the Gate) creates a tunnel of warped space that can be used for instantaneous travel from one point in space to another, and also through time and to other universes. This could be used for an Alien1 drive.


Wormholes would be very unstable, so it would be necessary with negativ energy in order to keep the wormhole open while you travel through it.
Or you could just use a hyperdrive, which means that the spaceship "jumps" into hyperspace(a dimension outside ordinary spacetime) and jumps into space again at another point.

Or you could use a quantum rod(08:00 in the vid):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_XG--VMryI[/youtube]
Or maybe a duality drive, that uses a principle of quantum mechanics that is that a particle can be at two places at once. It basicly causes the spacesip to be at two places in the universe at once, and then you can decide which of those places you want the ship to be in.
And I mean that this should be at the "Art, Writing And Music" forum, by the way.

Last edited by Exploronaut on 27 Jun 2013, 2:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

There is something called the "Alcubierre drive." It's based on General Relativity, but is very far from being confirmed as possible, let alone practical in the near future, but it's interesting. And, it theoretically allows travel at any speed (even greater than light) with no time dilation.

One way of thinking about it is that space-time is fluid, in a sense -- basically meaning that parts of space can move around relative to other parts of space. So, the problem with time when moving near c can be avoided if you can drag a little puddle of space-time from along with you as you move.

It would be sort of like being in a boat that' in a current on the ocean. As the current moves, you move, even if your velocity with respect to the water that's directly around you is zero. Your water speed in this analogy is what causes the time dilation. So, if that's zero then there's no time dilation. (Where this analogy breaks down is that you are actually creating the current in front of yourself and scooping it up from behind.)

Wow all the great Ideas thanks guys! I knew i could make up ftl drives but then they all would travel in time.
And i am glad someone knew who knew about stargate ^^

More FTL ideas:
Transwarp(Star Trek) and infinite improbability drive(The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy) works by causing the spaceship to be at every point in space at the same time, and then you choose one point to arrive at.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCf53ses22w[/youtube]
A quantum slipstream drive(Star Trek)/Slipstream drive(Andromeda) bends "quantumspace"(subspace) around the ship, and creates something simular to a wormhole, except that it is not a tunnel between two points, but are being created as the ship travels.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shb1IsoUMzs[/youtube]
When it comes to the timetravel issue, you could just write that it is not possible to travel back to before you created the time machine, which gives limited timetravel, or you could write that the laws of causality prohibits timetravel, warped space or not.

One warning to everyone about teleportation as shown in Star Trek, which means that it should not be used, heisenberg compensator or not:

An RPG called "Traveller" handles this nicely. Book 2, page 4 says...

Tech level (TL) determines what kind of space travel is possible. This list is a vastly simplified version, and does not take into account the displacement tonnage of the ship.

At TL-6 or less, no space travel is possible.
At TL-7, orbital space travel and orbiting satellites are possible (current real-world condition).
At TL-8, interplanetary travel becomes possible.
At TL-9, interstellar travel at 1 parsec per week (Jump-1) becomes possible.

At higher tech levels, longer jumps are possible, up to 6 Parsecs at TL-14 (Jump-6). This is the maximum allowable velocity under game rules. The "Jump" takes place in a hyper-spatial something called "Jump Space".

So, the OP could set the Humans at TL-9, Alien 1 could have TL-11, and Alien 2 could have TL-10.

More can be read about the Traveller RPG at This Website - more links are provided at the end of the page.

That was a big thing for me. Is that once you get wormhole drives you could go anywhere instantly and i wanted to create time lapses between jumps. I am thinking i will use a warp drive for humans as we are already working on it. and speed has to to with better power sources.

In Traveller, a trip in Jump Space takes about 1 week (168 hours), both subjective and real time. Then there is another week of down-time for refueling, recalibration, cargo exchange, and recalculating new jump vectors. On the average, a ship may spend about 1/4 to 1/2 of its time between overhauls in Jump Space.

A ship is essentially out of touch with the "real" universe while in Jump, because there is also no FTL radio or "Ansible" - a message may take 3 or 4 months to go 6 parsecs if the only ship available is capable of only Jump-1. Less time if the ship is a military vessel or a governmental "Express" ship ("X-Boat").

Time-lapses are built into the system.

I had to go to Wikipedia for that one, only because the Atomic Rocket website is inaccessible from this network.


Basically, it seems to be saying that if you can't get an object to move through space at FTL velocities, move the space around the object instead! Of course, this would require vast quantities of Handwavium to achieve, and there are no known sources for this material other than in science-fiction.

Reference

S. Krasnikov (2003). "The quantum inequalities do not forbid spacetime shortcuts". Physical Review D 67 (10): 104013. arXiv:gr-qc/0207057. Bibcode:2003PhRvD..67j4013K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.67.104013.

Yeah, the negative-energy-density matter does seem a fatal flaw, but a previous near-fatal flaw was that the A-D would require insane amounts of (normal) energy -- and someone (Dr. Harold White) figured out how to reduce that by a factor of 10^24! So, one near-miracle has happened so maybe some smart person will come up with another.

White is apparently trying to do interferometer experiments involving a ring of capacitors (http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive), so I'd guess that some observable effect should (theoretically) exist even when only using normal matter/energy.

Reference

S. Krasnikov (2003). "The quantum inequalities do not forbid spacetime shortcuts". Physical Review D 67 (10): 104013. arXiv:gr-qc/0207057. Bibcode:2003PhRvD..67j4013K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.67.104013.[/quote]), so I'd guess that some observable effect should (theoretically) exist even when only using normal matter/energy.

White's work is important because Alcubierre's original equations called for a torus of exotic matter massing approximately as much as the planet Jupiter. White fiddled with the equations, and found that if you oscillate the edges of the warp bubble and assume a flattened toroid rather than a full donut, you can put a craft 30 meters across into warp with only 500 kilos of exotic matter. (Of course, we still have no idea how to make 500 kilos of exotic matter, but at one time we had no idea how to make carbon nanotubes, so...)

Perhaps your faster aliens have found other solutions - Alcubierre's drive works at 10c. That means that if Gliese 667c does indeed host life-bearing planets in its Goldilocks zone, it would still take 2.2 years to get there. The faster aliens might have a drive that goes faster, similar to the difference in Niven's Known Space stories between the standard FTL drive (three days per lightyear, no more, no less) and the Quantum II drive developed by the puppeteers (one lightyear every hour and fifteen minutes - the puppeteers themselves never flew it, because they're, ah, famously prudent).