Why doesn't heat increase the faster you go in supercruise?

[Schmack]

Guess it's time for the lore to kick in once more.

Apparently the Supercruise travel is an idealized form of Alcubierre Drive, with all the good things and none of the bad things
In Supercruise we dont travel faster than the light of speed so don't get anywhere near relativistic time effects.

The FSD is compressing the space around our ship and we travel in that bubble of compressed space at a fixed speed, probably around 100m/s (yea, remember that even a non-engineered T9 can get into supercruise ).
How big is the compression level depends of nearby gravitational wells.

So what we see as 30c does not means that we actually travel with a speed 30 times bigger than the speed of light.
That is only the apparent speed, set up in a reference system we can relate to.
If the ship would be telling you that we move with 100m/s in a compression bubble of 90 millions to 1 it could get confusing.

A bit over ten years years, not ten-thousand.

That said, longer trips would result in massive differentials. ~20 years for the ship to reach Sag A*, but ~27k years passing on Earth. ~28 years to Andromeda, ~2.5 million years on Earth.

Obviously they don't know about the neutron superhighway just yet.

 

[CptXabaras]

Doesn't space have a constant background temperature of some −270°C ? (other than the little fan heater in the cockpit to stop us all turning in to a snowman) just for the fact that our ships heat up in the first place is just poor ship design. Unless you're orbiting a sun, there's no logical way any ship could over heat with a −270°C backdrop. It'd be like trying to over-heat a V8 submerged in liquid nitrogen....

not how it works. In space. because of vacum and absence of air, or other mean for heath generated to transfer and be dissipated, our ships actually would overheat, despite the frozen outer temperatures. What our ship does probably is actively expelling heat for it not to build up. (that's why in silent running the ships heat, the vent are closed)

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

not how it works. In space. because of vacum and absence of air, or other mean for heath generated to transfer and be dissipated, our ships actually would overheat, despite the frozen outer temperatures. What our ship does probably is actively expelling heat for it not to build up. (that's why in silent running the ships heat, the vent are closed)

Okay I keep seeing people repeat this, and I accept it makes sense. But I have a question or observation.

During the Apollo 13 disaster the crew lost all ability to heat the cabin. You had several men huddled in close proximity, generating body heat, breathing out CO2 etc etc. Yet the cabin temperature dropped to nearly freezing.

Can you explain that effect to me? Clearly that extreme temperature drop (and the need for heaters in the first place) indicates some definite transfer of the extreme cold outside the craft, to within the craft.

 

[Zieman]

Okay I keep seeing people repeat this, and I accept it as fact. But I have a question or observation.

During the Apollo 13 disaster the crew lost all ability to heat the cabin. You had several men huddled in close proximity, generating body heat, breathing out CO2 etc etc. Yet the cabin temperature dropped to nearly freezing.

Can you explain that effect to me? Clearly that extreme temperature drop (and the need for heaters in the first place) indicates some definite transfer of the extreme cold outside the craft, to within the craft.

The craft exterior radiated more heat than the crew metabolism generated.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

The craft exterior radiated more heat than the crew metabolism generated.

Yikes that's some pretty bad insulation properties lol.

If say, the outside surface of your craft had a layer of ice, wouldn't the heat directly transfer into that ice via conduction the same as it would here on Earth?

 

[Zieman]

If say, the outside surface of your craft had a layer of ice, wouldn't the heat directly transfer into that ice via conduction the same as it would here on Earth?

I think it would.

 

[Morbad]

The craft exterior radiated more heat than the crew metabolism generated.

Yep. The Apollo command module has a surface area of almost 1200 square feet. They also had to keep the lunar lander habitable as a lifeboat. Three adult males engaged in mild labor and being moderately cold will be producing maybe 300-400w of heat total...that's not a lot of heat relative to the area radiating it.

 

[Ashnak]

* NEWSFLASH *​

Just now got the link on imgur, and had to follow it up with a search on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.06824

From the abstract:

Introducing Physical Warp Drives​

Alexey Bobrick, Gianni Martire

The Alcubierre warp drive is an exotic solution in general relativity. It allows for superluminal travel at the cost of enormous amounts of matter with negative mass density. For this reason, the Alcubierre warp drive has been widely considered unphysical. In this study, we develop a model of a general warp drive spacetime in classical relativity that encloses all existing warp drive definitions and allows for new metrics without the most serious issues present in the Alcubierre solution. We present the first general model for subluminal positive-energy, spherically symmetric warp drives; construct superluminal warp-drive solutions which satisfy quantum inequalities; provide optimizations for the Alcubierre metric that decrease the negative energy requirements by two orders of magnitude; and introduce a warp drive spacetime in which space capacity and the rate of time can be chosen in a controlled manner. Conceptually, we demonstrate that any warp drive, including the Alcubierre drive, is a shell of regular or exotic material moving inertially with a certain velocity. Therefore, any warp drive requires propulsion. We show that a class of subluminal, spherically symmetric warp drive spacetimes, at least in principle, can be constructed based on the physical principles known to humanity today.

 

[GraXXoR]

You can sit all day long under the bright sun and only get an increased cancer risk, but only few minutes in a sauna before loosing it.

Your point? What has a sauna got to do with sitting in the corona of a blue giant?

 

[GunnerBill]

No that's not true actually, the density of matter in space is certainly low enough to not cause any noticable friction on anything we can launch at the moment, but once you start approaching an appreciable fraction of the speed of light it becomes significant. The actual estimate is about 1 atom per cubic centimeter which is not something we would need to worry about for current speeds, but even an atom can cause damage when it's striking a surface at close to the speed of light.

Oh yes, just a point, a perfect vacuum is only a theoretical possibility, even removing all atoms from an area doesn't provide a perfect vacuum because of electromagnetic energy and planck energy and as we all know E=MC2 so it's still not a vacuum even with no matter. It's rather complicated but if you could achieve a perfect vacuum, that is no matter, no energy, even planck energy the temperature would be zero K, and that according to current theoretical physics, is impossible, nothing can be zero K.

Great post and nicely summarised. To add to what you say about vacuums I read somewhere that in a total vacuum atoms can and do randomly appear and then disappear. Some plancky quantum mechaniccy thing I guess!

--------------------

On topic and the subject of why the ship doesn't heat up etc I think the answer to that is in the name FD gave to the drive.

Frame Shift Drive.

Simply put how fast you are travelling is entirely subjective to your observational frame of reference. Standing still in your back yard? No, to an observer on the Moon you're rotating with the Earth at ~1000mph. The solar system itself is rotating with the galaxy at 448,000 mph. And the milky way itself as a whole is moving through space at 1.3 million mph!
Relative to our frame of reference there are galaxies travelling away from us at faster than the speed of light.

So my assumption is that FD have "hung their hat" on a drive mechanic that alters the reference frame of the ship relative to local space. The ship itself may not be moving very fast in it's "own" space but the FSD drives the new reference frame that surrounds the ship at very high speeds relative to the local reference frame.

Frame of reference - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So it all depends on how much heat FSD generates doing it's wizardry which may not be proportional to the "speed" you are travelling it.

 

[Boomtrooper]

Conduction is a very efficient way of transferring heat, which is what your V8 in LN2 example uses, convection would also be helping a lot.
In space the major method of transferring heat is radiation which is much less efficient and influenced by surface area. Space might be that cold but as Thermos have demonstrated vacuum is a great insulator.
Remember the old Space Shuttle, the reason it opened its cargo bay doors in orbit was to try and radiate the excess heat.

I thought that was just HAL being capricious....

 

[GunnerBill]

the old Space Shuttle

It's true it is old. But that's really sad

 

[Frankymole]

It does happen tho.

It's channelled into Ship Integrity deterioration.

 

[Frankymole]

So heck if I know what actually happens in space anymore. They say even Pluto isn't a planet anymore!

Are its five moons still moons?

 

[Heater]

There's no friction in space, It' s a vacuum. So you will continue accelerating forever if push is continually applied. It won't cost more power to push you just because you're going faster.

Then Why do the projectile weapons have a limited range and speed? asking for a friend.

 

[GunnerBill]

Then Why do the projectile weapons have a limited range and speed? asking for a friend.

I guess because no one is really interested in "beyond visual range combat". There may also be some computing issues if the range of projectiles was increased plus unless maybe you're talking only about rail guns against large ships I'm not sure how accurate say a Multi Cannon could be against a Viper MKIII at 200, 500, 1000km?

Projectile speed isn't limited because of the game - muzzle velocity is relative to the mass of the load and the explosive force of the charge that propels it*. Sure there's little friction to slow it down but the speed is what it is and once it's left the barrel it can't get any faster.

* And I think the length of the barrel.

Muzzle velocity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[aRJay]

Then Why do the projectile weapons have a limited range and speed? asking for a friend.

Speed has been explained using science by @GunnerBill range could be down to not wishing to clutter space with pseudo meteors so all shells self destruct in a similar mechanism to mines but with much less noise and fuss.

 

[Lysette]

I guess because no one is really interested in "beyond visual range combat". There may also be some computing issues if the range of projectiles was increased plus unless maybe you're talking only about rail guns against large ships I'm not sure how accurate say a Multi Cannon could be against a Viper MKIII at 200, 500, 1000km?

Projectile speed isn't limited because of the game - muzzle velocity is relative to the mass of the load and the explosive force of the charge that propels it*. Sure there's little friction to slow it down but the speed is what it is and once it's left the barrel it can't get any faster.

* And I think the length of the barrel.

Muzzle velocity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

yeah, the length of the barrel as well, because it influences the time in which the propelling pressure inside the barrel can accelerate the projectile.

 

[lysan]

The mansplaining in this thread is EPIC.

Please, continue to tell us all about how FTL tech in the year 3307 should work.

We’re nerds, we discuss EVERYTHING!

The theory
In 1905 Albert Einstein published his first Theory of Relativity, a paper that would change physics forever. The special theory of relativity describes the relationship between space and time and states that the speed of light in a vacuum is independent of the motion of the observer, the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers. In 1915 Einstein’s theory of General Relativity expanded on this and outlined how massive objects cause a distortion in space-time which presents itself as gravity.

The engine
The Alcubierre drive uses the same concept. The ‘bubble’ surrounding the ship is an area of space-time that is compressed in front of the ship and expanded behind it. As with gravity, you could create this distortion using a large amount of mass. Alternatively, thanks to Einstein’s E = mc2 (energy is equal to mass, times the speed of light squared), you could equally use a huge amount of energy.

Inside the bubble, space-time is completely flat, meaning the space travellers wouldn’t notice any strange, relativistic effects. The result is that the bubble of space-time is hurled across the Universe, with the travellers sitting comfortably inside their ship, speedometer still reading the same number.

you’re welcome

 

[GunnerBill]

The mansplaining in this thread is EPIC.

Please, continue to tell us all about how FTL tech in the year 3307 should work.

Oh give it a rest. We're having fun, are you ruling out contributing on the grounds of gender?