Tucson What would it take to create a real Hyper-Drive system?

Well, Gang:

Here we go again. This time we're talkin' Hyper-Drive. I believe we could start out with some straight foreward definitions, such as what constitutes Hyperspace the medium by which transportation ships traverse the Galaxy from point A and point B?

 

Gas lots and lots of gas

 

Sorry about thinking along the ST way but isn't hyper-space and warp speed the same thing and besides I think that they are already working on this problem with Ion engines...it just takes time to get up to speed but it increases the longer you travel...theoretically speaking the limit of speed achieved is unknown at this time IMHO

 

Let's take a look at definitions: 1. If we can equate worm holes with an extremely short punctuated type of Hyperspace then we would have the potential problem solved.

2. If we were to define Warp Drive as a manifestation of gravity then we could say that the warp drive is a weaker cousin of a Jump/Wormhole drive. The difference would be that the Warp Drive never leaves this universe. A similar concept would be the gravity drive used in the Flinx and Humanx Commonwealth novels by Alan Dean Foster. (Those of you who are familiar with Flinx and his MiniDrag Pip Know what I'm talking about.)

I myself have doubts about a true Hyperspace such as is shown in SW. Though with a universe of more than just four dimensions shown in the different proposed Grand Unified Field Theories, I can't utterly dismiss the possibility of extra dimensional travel either. I do find it easier to believe in a subspace as being sufficient to seperate an object from this Einsteinian Universe that each of us inhabits by virtue of an electromagnetic field that uses an electron screen. I would suggest that for anyone who is interested, they check out a book titled "Anti-gravity the dream made reality. The story of John R. R. Searl", by John Thomas JR. Also check out thesearleffect.com. John Searl's web site. more to come...

Vangarian

 

I myself think that in terms of speed, hyperspace is faster than the speed of light. According to the movie (tell me if i'm wrong) but did't Han boast that the Millenium Falcon goes "point five past lightspeed"? Maybe Einstein is right, and that means that ther is absolutely no way to attain lightspeed or higher. But in my own little theory of the universe (or lack thereof) is that we know next to nothing in terms of how everything goes. So I think that it is very much possible that hyperspace travel is possible.

Wow, I am such a nerd

I also read in the Star Wars Encyclopedia that hyperdrives are powered by "fusion generators" that harvest energy from contained fusion thingies (kind of like in the Spiderman 2 movie). That is what gives it enough power to get to that speed.

ALSO...

Wormholes are not used to get around. Setting aside the fact that wormholes are purely theoretical, there is no proof they even exist, they are completely random (according to the theory) and they can't be used for transportation because even if you could figure out a pattern for the wormholes and be at the right place at the right time, they exist for less than a millisecond (according to theory). And all of the information in the Expanded Universe tells us that the hyperspace lanes are in fact straight lines that explorers have discovered and sold the some Hyperspace Lanes database thing. That's why Han can also boast "It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than five parsecs" Meaning it was able to plot out a route to and from Kessel that was shorter than any other previously known route.

I can't say that I am right in any of this because I have no facts or proof of any kind, so just take it for face value: another theory.

 

Okay, here's my two bits...

First, a rule of physics: nothing can go faster than light, not even in science fiction.
Now, hyperspace. By definition hyperspace is just a different dimension. There is realspace and hyperspace. Think of realspace as a bunched up/wavy piece of fabric and hyperspace as all the air around and in between. So, to travel through hyperspace you must first poke a hole in realspace (using the fusion generators), travel via hyperspace to another point on the fabric, poke a second hole in realspace, and emerge at your destination. Because this "fabric" was all bunched up, just going straight through the fabric was a lot faster than going on the fabric, hence you appear to travel faster than light.
All the other gizmos in the hyperdrive prevent you from being crushed, getting out of sync with time, etc.
So, this is similar to what Vangarian mentioned above about wormholes, though wormholes would be existing holes in realspace.
Somehow though, the ships in hyperspace maintain a connection with realspace. Thus they can be pulled out of hyperspace by gravity wells or fly into a star.

This does differ from warp drive a little... Warp drive, as the name suggests, warps space so that (keeping with the fabric analogy) the ship is kind of surfing along realspace. (n.b. Since you are pulling the fabric of space here, it also means that you can rip space. Hence Starfleet having rules against travelling at high warps except in emergencies.)

Did I make any sense?

 

See that's where I disagree (no offense obviously). According to all the information we are given about hyperspace travel, it is simply going faster than light, while still remaining in the galaxy. I don't know anything about the Warp Speed stuff, but from what I can tell it is just going almost lightspeed. And don't get me wrong, I give Einstein kudos for being smart and stuff, but in my humble opinion (which is not one to be relied on), I simply think that we are wrong about lightspeed. I mean, before modern cars, people thought that the human body would implode if we went faster than about 20 mph. Same thing with the speed of sound: impossible untill proven possible.

My interpretation of that is that it is more time travel than going fast. In realspace, the ship is in fact traveling faster than light, but inside the ship, in that separate dimension that is intertwined with ours, they are not really going impossible speeds. So that could also fit with Einstein's lightspeed theory, but then it conflicts with another one of his: time travel. Oy.

In the comic Tales of the Jedi: The Golden Age of the Sith, Gav and Jori Daragon plot hyperlanes by spinning the dial and going in a random direction. They found one and sold it, but the route went right in-between 2 binary suns, and a shipment went the route and was destroyed because of its size. But this means that while in hyperspace, you are still in our dimension, but not tied down by the hinderances of it, namely the no-traveling-faster-than-the-speed-of-light rule.

I'm gonna go make a cup of coffee, go to my room and hack into my NES and make mods, all while counting in binary on all of my fingers. Why? cuz I'm a NERD!!!

 

Jello. Jello is the obvious answer to creating a hyperdrive.

 

Would that be red flavored Jello or green??

 

Ok AV, not a bad sell. Now lets set up an important understanding concerning Einsteins Light Speed Limit. It has to be in this Universe. That is the qualifier. There are three ways to change this. 1. Subspace where you isolate the ship from the normal Universe with a veil of electrons, (an electromagnetic field if you will). With this aproach you would have a zero apparent mass. 2. Hyperspace where you literally remove the ship from this Universe by jumping to FTL by entering into an artificial worm hole that has been generated by way of some form or another of gravity tunneling or if not that then a Tachyon Universe. 3. The Robert Lazar method of FTL using an exotic jump drive that harnesses and focuses the Strong Nuclear Force in a particular direction with emitter/amplifiers. This method would literally yank the space time continuum from far away and bring it into your face. Lets discuss these three for now, ok?

 

Oh Hell Yeah.

 

Ok, AV, let's qualify the speed limit with the conditional, (in this Universe). We can still punch holes. Let me share with you all a true photograph I saw as a child in 1959 around the fall season, back when my parents were doing fall cleaning. My mother pulled out all the old life magazines from previous years, including one amazing issue of April 19th 1954, with an incredible cover photo of the Operation Bravo H-Bomb going off. The original photograph was in black and white. It showed a Super Heated Ionized Plasma Dome ten miles across, with an unusual region of darkness in the center of the blast. My mother read to me the comment on the inside of the cover. "H-Bomb test: Operation Bravo. Scientists are curious as to what causes the region of darkness with white spots in the center. Some theorise the it may be the creation of exotic matter taking place." Years later I once talked to a friend of mine who was a member of a Titan II missle silo combat crew. He told me in no uncertain terms that the DoD never allowed actual movies of H-Bombs going off. He said that the only film footage allowed to represent H-bombs on tv and movie theaters was actually only A-bombs going off instead. When I asked him why he said he couldn't tell me because he was under oath and could get into serious trouble if he told me and his superiors found out. But he did say this that an H-bomb is so powerful and terrible that it is very frightening to see. Years after that I came across another person who was not under oath from the UoA science department. He told me that the region of darkness in the H-bomb blast photo I saw was in actuality a rip in the very fabric of space and time to another region of this Universe with the local stars/clusters/super clusters showing through from that region, hence the white spots. He also mentioned

 

Lime jello . . . with pink marshmellows.

Sorry to go off topic Vangarian. I'm just silly.

 

[image=http://img.timeinc.net/Life/covers/1954/cv041954.jpg]

I am guessing that that is the issue you were talking about. Wow.

So, what you are saying is that an explosion like this could in fact make FTL travel possible? If the funcion of a hyperdrive generator was to harness this reaction to propel a ship FTL, it could be possible.

However I am totally lost with the E/mc=c thing. Please dumb it up for me.

 

Cool. That Photo is what The Dod gave Life to use as the sanctioned replacement for the original. Life got into some serious hot water over that original Photograph of Operation Bravo. Unfortunately for me Mom and Dad tossed the original '54 issue. I asked Mom if she would reorder it, but when we received the replacement, it wasn't the same one. If you have ever seen "Trinity and Beyond you'll notice when they show the H-bomb sequence they never actually show the detination. The reason is because of the weird instantaneous formation of the Dome. Here again what is shown is an A-bomb mushroom cloud. Sadly I saw that same issue one more time back in Michigan in a rare collectable magazine store in Ferndale Michigan not far from where I lived in Royal Oak, Michigan. If I'd only had the ambition to stop by when the store was open I could have bought it on the next business day. Argh! Suffice it to say that if you were to ever see that original black and white photo, the sheer presence of it would cause the nap of your neck hair to stand on end. Its that hair raising! (Please pardon the pun.) At any rate yes Fusion is powerful enough to be used for Jump Drive/Hyperdrive, definately. As for E/mc=c. Treat C not as a constant but rather as a variable instead. The key is to raise the energy density in a given volume of space. When you do this, time races by faster by several orders of ten relative to the outside universe that watches from without the high energy density zone. As you head for the center of the zone of darkness, the density becomes too great to contain in this imediate vicinity and thus, Big POP! A kind of smaller version of Big Bang. Am I getting across?

 

not really no. Are you saying that (Energy / mass x speed of light = speed of light) the speed of light can change? It is not a constant, but if you change the amount of energy and matter that the speed of light can change, making it go faster?

 

Steps up on a soap box....

Only thing I'm going to say is Science is proven incorrect (or not totally correct) every so often. Modern science is only about 150 years old so it's still in it's infancy. I'm not saying Einstein is wrong but that light may not be constant or the fastest moving particles in the universe. Remember Einstein proved Newton correct and proved his gravitational theories, yet Einstein said that nothing can stop light from traveling, but if Black Holes exist, it will destroy light. hence gravity is more powerful that light energy?
Besides we only use interact in 4 dimensions, what about all the others? We really know next to nothing about the universe we live in.

End Rant.

 

The issue is not energy". A fusion generator would be nice to have, because lets face it, if you are going to be flying around the whole universe you won't be able to pull over to recharge. So the continous power supply would be nice.

There is no friction in space. If a soda was shaken then opened in space it would go forever. It wouldn't gain any speed its speed would be a constant. Nor would it decrease once it ran out of soda (fuel).

The issue become "how do you travel faster than light". And the answer is "Tachyon Particles". Now up to this point no one has been able to prove Tachyons exist but in theory they might. If someone could harvest Cerenkov radiation from a vacuum then that would prove their existence (Cerenkov radiation is left behind when a particle moves faster than the speed of light, which probably explains how ships in SciFi movies get tracked down).

So once Tachyons are proven to exist, and their power is harvested into an engine or drive. Then we start to see that development of a "Hyper-Drive".

The real concern should be on what kind of effect this would have on the body. Although there is no friction is space there is still inertia.

And going back to my opening statement.Fusion Generator? Why not a Tachyon Generator? Could it be done? Would you need a Fusion (or Cold Fusion) Generator to power a Tachyon Drive?

mmmmmm ...

 

And Vangarian brings up a good point ...

If the vessel; ship; craft ... whatever SciFi term you want to use had an electromagnetic field and some kind of tachyon drive (of some considerable size)it wouldn't matter how big the ship was:

No Friction is Space + ElectroMagnetic Field + Tachyon Drive = FTL Speed.

... in theory

 

I was just making a theory that fits with the Star Wars Hyperdrive. I wanted to use the information we have from Star Wars to make a theory that fits with it.

I realize that there might be other ways to do it (Tachyons, etc.) I was just talking in terms of Star Wars.

 

Interesting idea! I only have one bone to pick about the theory. C is a constant. I know you say treat it as a variable, but it doesn't make much sense to do so since c stands for the speed of light in a vacuum. Light has other speeds when gravity comes into play (i.e. stars, black holes), but this speed of light is defined as a specific speed of light, thus it cannot change.
How did this connect to the hyperdrive again?

I'm loving this discussion, by the way! Everyone's ideas are really interesting to read!

 

JediObiKat is right ...

Unless we are planning to purposely fly into/through a blackhole 'c' is still a constant. The speed of light is the speed of light.

Another interesting thing I just remember, a tachyon is smaller thant an ion. What significance that is I don't know.

 

I don't sound too nerdy do I?

 

Naw. Your just perfect.

Well lets see now about that constant c. Hmmm. If I remember correctly back in 1931 there was some testing going on in Pasadena, CA at a site that was dug. It was an underground tunnel that was exactly 1 mile long. The tunnel project was over seen by none other than Michealson himself, of Michealson and Morley fame. The actual test didn't start until after Michealson's death. These tests lasted for about a year. After wards they began remeasuring the length of the tunnel because of some unusual test results. But they always came up with one mile exactly every time. However as the results came in over the year they found a 22 mile per second variance in the measurements of light speed. They had two different cycles of variation that showed up. One based on a 28 day cycle. The other was based on a three month cycle. Ultimately they had to give the scientific community something so they gave them the average. I still agree with you JediObiKat because there was obviously some form of gravitational interference whether from the moon, sun or whatever while they were testing. Still it is interesting.

Now there is one topic that hasn't been really worked out. Inertia. According to John Searl, he has stated that with his invention (the levity disc) there is no discernable inertia inside his flying discs. Whether they are accelerating at AA Fueler 1/4 mile runs at under 4 seconds, making right angle turns, or stopping on the proverbial dime and giving you nine cents change from full all out hauling some major frieght. NO INERTIA! WHY? Because of the eletron screen. It seperates the real space of you and me from the subspace of the energized Disc device.

The interesting thing about a subspace field is that you can increase the ENERGY DENSITY within that field. When that happens you can cause the disc device to make some amazing tricks at ultra fast speeds or so it would seem from the observers point of view from outside the ENERGY DENSITY field. Now from my observation A V hit the nail on the head, when he was talking about time travel. The only difference is that your not really traveling that radically foreward in time. At least not like H.G. Wells time traveling. Its just that you can do alot more things within a high energy density field. Sort of like your time flow was on steroids while everyone else's wasn't. Now I've already received some measure of ridicule not long ago on what I'm about to share but what the hey what else is new. According to both my parents, they both told me that it had been anounced on public radio in 1942 that a navy experiement to defeat enemy radar was being tested that day. Later on that same day it was announced that the experiment was a failure because of adverse effects upon the crew members on board the ship. Some people say the ship was a Destroyer Escort. One man, Stanley Deo says the ship was in fact a mine sweeper with degaussing coils that were reconfiqured to ocsilate on three planes. According to Stanley Deo the ship made an eight hour cruise (there time) in about two minutes our time. This is how you can travel faster with out breaking the FTL barrier while in this Universe. Sort of. OK, OK enough mental meltdown for one night. More to come later...

Vangarian

 

But if we can enclose a vessel in a ElecroMagnetic Field in space where friction is nil, don't you think that would keep 'c' constant?