Hyperdrives

I have a question about hyperdrives. If they have safety measures that automatically drop you out of hyperspace if you get too close to a mass shadow, why are blind jumps so dangerous? How can you accidentally run through a star or anything like that, if your automatic overrides won't let you? Heck, in Wraith Squadron, they talk about practicing astronavigation, and it says that often the simplest way to plot a jump is straight to the star of whatever system you're jumping to, and that way if you miss your mark, the sun's gravity will pull you out. So what's the deal about the perils of unplotted hyperspace jumps?

 

I'm fairly confident that theres a thread about this somewhere already... so don't be surprised if this ends up locked...

 

*Acts of War*

 

Not sure about that Wraith squadron quote, but my understanding is that it's the gravity of an object that yanks people out of Hyperspace, not any safety mechanism. Problems arise because the gravity only takes effect in close proximity to the object. Not a problem if its a planet or moon where there is room to pull out, but it becomes an issue if you pop out right next to a star or a black hole. I suspect large meteor showers and asteroid belts also pose problems.

 

Yeah, but running into a star or through a planter are often mentioned as concerns. And, heck, if hyperspace is a different dimension, then why is going through a star a concern?

 

They are adjacent dimensions, realspace and hyperspace. Objects in realspace cast "shadows" into Hyperspace (objects = anything with gravity). As for the rest, I haven't slept in six hours, and that was a half hour nap, and before that, oh god I don't even remember




Icon teams are reading minds now, eh?

 

I know I did some long theories about this in another thread (actually two seperate threads that sort of became the same topic) but here goes my theory:

Realspace is the set of 3 dimensions that we see and interact with normally. These three dimensions move through time, a fourth dimension. Gravity acts as a force of drag or friction, causing mass to slow in relation to the rest of the universe as the univers moves along time, hence time dialation due to super massive objects.

Hyperspace is a dimension where realspace is compressed, allowing for the same amount of power to propel a ship vast distances relative to realspace in short amounts of time. Objects in realspace do not directly interact with hyperspace, but cast "gravity shadows" into hyperspace, relative to their actual locations.

Travel in hyperspace is made possible by the hyperdrive, a device which reduces gravitational friction of an object to the point it's engines can push it into and through hyperspace, then resumes the friction to drop it out of hyperspace at the destination. This friction is the limiting factor for speeds in hyperspace. The gravity shadows a ship encounters in hyperspace cause drag on the ship, limiting its velocity. The faster a hyperdrive, the more efficient it is at reducing this friction. Better drives, such as those on X-wings, can overcome more friction, thus they can plot courses that are closer to large gravity shadows than lesser drives.

Planets, moons, asteroids, and other very large objects create gravity shadows that are impossible for a hyperdrive to reduce enough to travel through- the hyperdrive would overload and the object would return to normal space, extremely close to or inside the object creating the gravity shadow. Thus, hyperdrives shut down in response to a large gravity shadow, both to prevent the ship from dropping out later and perhaps dangerously closer, and to prevent the hyperdrive from burning out.

HIMS becomes easy to explain with this theory. Hyperdrives have a limited amount of ability to reduce friction before burning out, and are designed to shut down early. HIMS is simply a set of small hyperdrives that do not shut down, but activate, reduce friction, allow the ship to coast through hyperspace on it's own momentum, and burn out, where the next generator in line takes over until the gravity shadow is passed or all the HIMS generators burn out.

Holonet also fits in, as it can allow for instantaneous communications: signals have no mass, and thus gravity friction will not affect them- thus no upper cap on speed, though the gravity fields can affect quality of the signal, especially nearby the sender or reciever.

 

I think I kind of understood that but I'm not sure