General / Off-Topic So what would it take to make Faster than Light travel through space happen for real?

SeaFireliv

SeaFireliv
Ok so those who want to quip, "Stop comparing this game to reality" need not respond.

As I fly through space in this game/sim, it makes me wonder on the possibilities of this thing happening in reality... Let`s face it if we really want to get anywhere in space in a reasonable time frame we are going to need a Faster than Light system. What would it take to fly at Faster than Light through space and survive it? Just when I Boost the engines it sounds like a couple of nukes going off!

I`m no space expert, but several things come to mind...

1. Power and the engine to harness it.
2. A ship to withstand that power from the engine.
3 A way for the pilot to survive.


4. Also... is Faster than Light theoretically impossible?[blah]

What would it take, Commanders?
 
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twsharp12

T
Going the speed of light is not possible as understood by the laws of physics. Mass and energy are the same physical entity and can be changed into each other. Therefore you can't have mass and go the speed of light at the same time. You would need some sort of device that can warp space and time in order to "travel faster than light." If you can do that, then you can go anywhere almost instantly. At least I think. I'm not a physicist.


Also, due to relativity, if you could travel faster than light, you would have issues with aging at different rates. Someone on earth would age a lot faster than someone traveling at the speed of light, making it impractical.
 
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Marc JX8P

Marc JX8P
As I understand, the speed of light is a misnomer because it's actually the fastest way anything can travel - light included (photons can actually travel slower in an atmosphere or another medium). As you go faster, the issue is of course also that relativistic issues would become a problem. Therefore, the only solution would be some kind of meta-solution where the traveller circumvents the spacetime between him or her and the target by either compressing it before the ship or by employing some kind of stable wormhole. In both cases, we're talking about highly experimental theories and enormous amounts of energy.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
You are correct on all four points.

Point 4 is contested, there's a bunch of "theories" like the much-loved "Alcubierre drive" floating around, but by and large those theories aren't really conducive to actually building anything, sometimes because we don't even know if the necessary materials even exist.

And of course the very basics of space flight are in the way, we currently couldn't even pull off your #3, pilot survival, reliably within our own solar system. Outside the protective magnetic field of Earth, a slight solar hiccup would just kill any human caught in it, and it would probably be the same for anyone just near our gas giants. What does one do against radiation? Oh, that one is easy, you wrap it in mass; take the highest-density materials you can get (tungsten or uranium would be pretty excellent) and build a shelter out of those. Now add propulsion to account for the vastly increased mass.

Oh, and of course we don't have an energy source that would be anywhere near making any of it happen.
 

thirstyfish

thirstyfish
SeaFireliv said:
Ok so those who want to quip, "Stop comparing this game to reality" need not respond.

As I fly through space in this game/sim, it makes me wonder on the possibilities of this thing happening in reality... Let`s face it if we really want to get anywhere in space in a reasonable time frame we are going to need a Faster than Light system. What would it take to fly at Faster than Light through space and survive it? Just when I Boost the engines it sounds like a couple of nukes going off!

I`m no space expert, but several things come to mind...

1. Power and the engine to harness it.
2. A ship to withstand that power from the engine.
3 A way for the pilot to survive.


4. Also... is Faster than Light theoretically impossible?[blah]

What would it take, Commanders?
Click to expand...

This is a question better posed to a theoretical physicist.

And read this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/106861-DCello-s-Science-Guide-to-the-Galaxy?p=1661635
 

TERMINATRIXXX

Banned
T
There are some theoretical examples that objects / materials travel faster than light but from our actually knowledge it is simply impossible.
Even if we manage to get close to lightspeed, there are many more problems we can't solve with our current technology.

What does it take? Alot of energy, maybe.
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
You've obviously not seen our Cat when someone mentions Dreamies.... Einstein would have had a fit.

And moved FTL to OT as it's not about h=the game itself.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
A bit more seriously, I think the greatest chance we have of making any quantum leap forward with FTL travel is the possibility that there might be stuff out there that we don't yet know about.

By way of analogy, imagine you lived somewhere that you only had access to stone.
If you got the notion to build some kind of aircraft it might seem impossible simply because none of the materials you have access to are going to be terribly useful.
It doesn't matter how smart you are, stone components are going to be too heavy, they're not going to have the flexibility, resiliance or torsional rigidity required and they're not even going to allow you to make the tools you need to refine stone into more complex structures.

I'd like to think that a similar thing might apply to FTL travel.
Obviously, it's a little more complex than that because our understanding of physics and chemistry IS advanced enough that we probably "know what we don't know".
That is to say, even where there things absent from our own planet (such as chemical elements, for example) we can look at the periodic table and take a fair guess at where the spaces in it might be filled by elements present on other planets.

So, it's a long shot but I'd like to think that there are things out there, in the universe, which might allow for FTL travel if harnessed correctly.
And the problem there, of course, is we're stuck out in the boonies and we're probably going to need FTL travel before we can explore enough of the universe to discover anything useful.
Gotta love that Catch 22.
 

Arry

Arry
Faster than light travel may not be possible, unless you can use jump gates of some kind. I.E. a form of teleport (will not in this game according to the spell checker) system, but even such a system with only move objects at approximately the same speed as light. Plus said gates, would need putting in place.

However: There are rocks moving about the galaxy at far greater speeds than man can achieve, at this time. These rocks are moved by the simple force of gravity and Arthur C Clark wrote about sling shooting to gain speed and this is how I believe man should go about this. I would use greater and greater gravity fields to sling shot and increase the speed of desired object. If the last gravitational field is something like a black-hole, then said object could be moving at speeds close the the speed of light.
 

Wotthe Dickens

Wotthe Dickens
If it's currently not theoretically possible to travel faster than light, but theoretically possible to travel at the speed of light, then i'd travel at the speed of light and then run forwards.
:)
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Use an avatar would be a solution

9045054.jpg
 
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