Long story short, I'm trying to calculate a realistic method of interstellar and 'FTL' travel to be contained within a small ship. I've considered a few possibilities such as a zero-point gravity fluctuation drive, impulse drives (for sub-FTL interstellar travel), a conventional cold fusion-based ZTT drive and the good ol' wormhole-based 'Stargate' theory. Of course, this is still based on the concept of having deep-space beacons dotted throughout jump locations to provide coordinates, rather than pointing the ship at where you wanna go, kissing your arse goodbye and hitting the hyperspace button.

Without going into tachyon theories and the general over-fucking of the theories of relativity, I was wondering about your preferred methods of getting from A to B very quickly. I myself am rather fond of the zero-point inertia-less Alcubierre drive, although this would be rather hard to condense into a ship the size of a conventional submarine. Of course, this would be very bad for anything in front of the warp bubble, but that's why these deep-space beacons exist. And then, once the FTL jump has been completed, the ship swaps over to two impulse drives for interstellar navigation, powered by the miniature cold-fusion reactor aboard.

And as a brief note below, I also like the idea of larger colony ships using subluminal mercury ion drives, in transit for centuries as opposed to using Alcubierre drives, seeing as an object of that mass would devestate anything within considerable distance of the jump bubble.

I, personally, am fond of my LSBR drive.

When something breaks lightspeed in normal space, time becomes irrelevant, correct?

I've done some thinking, and tachyons, in my mind, are proof that that's false, and that the light speed barrier is more like the sound barrier. The LSBR breaks that barrier and rides the temporal shockwave using modified impulse engines and shields.

My math says it should be able to hit warp 3.

788634 That's... that's a good theory. I assume, as with a sonic boom, that the outward effects of the LSBR drive are rather spectacular. Would it be a viable option for fleet-based travel, or single ship? I guess timings would need to be rather precise in order to avoid the celestial overfucking of anything within a close range of the jumping ship. Also, how exactly does the LSBR hit the lightspeed barrier in the first place?

why not simply use the stuff from Star Trek? little by little most of that is becoming reality no matter how you slice it.

cellphones (clam shell type) were the TOS flip communicator
Bluetooth head sets are the TNG tap a badge for communication
iPads/Tablets are the data pads we all saw in all of the various incarnation of star trek.
list goes on and on and on.

whats to say that the ideas behind propulsion systems can't be viable as well? all just as valid as any other idea really when you break it down to it's base root.

788664

It's only really good for long range transports and explorer type ships, on their own. I don't know what the bowshock would do to anything nearby, I don't know how I would go about calculating the risk, all I know is I wouldn't want to be flying next to it when it jumps.

Getting there's fairly easy, slingshot around a star at full throttle to reach .25C and then burst accelerate from there. Decelerating's a pain in the neck, though. Long story short, if you're dealing with a crewed ship, you want an energy based inertial dampener.

788682 I guess I'm just not fond of putting an antimatter annihilation engine in an enclosed space with my crew But certainly a good point, in any case. The propulsion system would mainly be for a much larger ship though, one capable of sustaining engines of that size, as well as the cooling equipment needed to maintain them. Along with these come the other system functions: reactors, hull strength, atmospheric production... these all amount to a ship too large for what I had in mind.

788697 Mhm. Well, it sounds like a hell of a ride travelling aboard an LSBR-driven ship. Riding temporal shockwaves is certainly an excellent way of getting the blood going, in any case!

you forget the smaller ships. like the Defiant, or even smaller ships/craft like the Danube Runabout from DS9 or the Delta Flyer from Voyager. Shtuttles seens from TNG and TOS would also be viable.

788730 Ah. I must admit, I've never really seen Star Trek, so I'm unfamiliar with the extent of the technology involved. I knew the basic propulsion theories behind the Constitution-class ships, but never any deeper than that. I shall go and examine those at once, good sir!

Why not just use warp, a la the Alcubierre warp drive? That's my headcanon for the root of pony magic, manipulating the quantum wavefunction and warp.

788717

Better than a cup of joe. Maneuvering at FTL would be interesting, to say the least.

788730

That's why the primary drive's a modified impulse engine. I don't disagree with the idea that Trek tech is potentially viable, in fact a good bit of it is theoretically sound, including the warp drive, sans dilithium.

788761 Aye, that's my basic idea. Of course, it comes with it's own difficulties, such as the particle 'bow-wave' it collects en route. Still, I plan to integrate short-range impulse drives for subluminal navigation. Warping straight into a system would be rather... apocolyptic, to say the least.

788764 The same could be said for hitting something

Me, I prefer to use a late 90s iMac, I network it with the controls of my XAO-18 frigate 'The Stairmaster', and use that to make the jump to lightspeed.

788777

It would make a perfect high-energy weapon, too, wouldn't it?

Also, with magic there to manipulate wavefunctions (mostly relevant to just my interests), the particles could be collected to recover energy!
I think I might be making pony magic a bit too overpowered...

788777

yeah... Again, I'm not well enough versed in FTL/temporal shock physics to say what would happen.

788794

Actually, what you're thinking is a wide field telekinesis. You can do that with shaped nav shields and an intake manifold.

788794 All in the name of SCIENCE, right? And yeah, jumping up to a system in Alcubierre-induced warp would be incredibly entertaining for everyone but the people in front of it. Also, casimir tech allows for a lot of fun regarding high-energy weapons. I'm planning on introducing casimir tech to allow for ship-operable mass driver weapons, such as railguns. Railguns are fun and shooty.

788802

Wut now

No, I'm really not. I'm not talking Star Trek.

788830

You mentioned pony magic playing with wave functions to collect energy from the partical wave preceding the ship. Don't the bussard collectors in front of the warp nacells do that?

It depends. A psi-based teleportation device would make the most sense for ponies. Another concept that I like to use are portal generators, but that is very soft scifi.

Well...
The only problem that I see with any of these is the causality violation which must take place (travelling back in time). On the official position of NASA (the best place to do research for science fiction), it does look like there are a lot of issues with this.
If you want to throw this all to the wind, well, you've already disappointed me. If you do end up using the stuff discussed here, and successfully integrate it into a plot, I might just end up sending you a third of my income for the next two years.
Either way the latter outcome is unlikely without a closed time loop.
788764
NASA seems to disagree with you. Especially because star trek lacked any spaceships with rings in the correct orientation.

792094 That's why I rather like the idea of using an Alcubierre drive coupled with a subluminal impulse drive for shorter jumps. Although it may be hard to integrate that concept with a plotline, simply because of the complexities surrounding it, I intend to make reference to the ship's propulsion whenever necessary. That's why I like to have all of this planned beforehand! Gonna have another look at theories regarding the use of exotic matter in Alcubierre drives, but this one looks the most likely. Aside from cryostasis and ion drives, that is, but the ponies would be long dead before anyone found them.

788764

No, just... no. This is the show that used sonic weapons IN SPACE. If any any point Star Trek technology resembled viable real-life science in any way whatsoever, it is purely by coincidence.

Also, there's no real evidence that tachyons exist, and most physicists don't think they do.

More on the general topic of the thread: If you want to stick to MLP canon and hard science, then a magic-based teleportation drive would be the most obvious solution ponies would use for long-distance travel. After all, even FTL warp drives pale in comparison to instantaneous travel. If that doesn't suit your liking (maybe you come up with some magibabble reason for why interstellar teleportation doesn't work), then Alcubierre drives or a wormhole generator are the only other remotely hard-science possibilities for FTL. Having an active system that removes particles caught on the edges of the warp bubble (and no, it would not be plausible to use them as fuel, ignore Star Trek) would solve the destroying-things problem. If you want to go soft sci-fi, well, then your FTL system becomes pretty arbitrary.

Of course, writing hard-science FTL wouldn't be complete without dealing with the time-travel shenanigans inherent in FTL travel. Given that more traditional time travel is also canon in the MLP-verse, it would lead to some interesting scenarios.

792259

Which generation are you talking?

Even so, there are trace gasses even in deep space, through which you can detect the wakes of other ships and even (If you move fast enough) take some damage.

Trek tech has proved viable in several ways, not all of it and certainly not some of the more commonly used stuff. Tricorders appear to be multifunction sensors (which we have). Computers using touchscreen or voice command (in the 1980s, impossible, now, I have a phone that does both). Energy based shielding's giving me trouble, but you know that'll be giving us trouble till we don't need it, then some genius'll come along and shout "Eureka!"

Your point?

792094 Good point, and that's true. But as I always say: A good scifi tech easy to imagine, carefully engineered, and broken.

Anyhoo, on the topic at hand: Heliostorm, You have a very good idea, and I imagine the core systems would have their own magical power source?

Also, I hate to be a pain about it, but yes, they're theoretical, and no, you can't disprove their existence, either. Anything that can move at FTL should be going back in time, but no, all I see happening at FTL is my doppler effect warped sensor shadow falling behind.

792499

Does it matter?

Space's "trace gases" consist of less than 1 atom per square centimeter. These atoms have effectively zero chance of bumping into each other in any consistent manner. A wake cannot propagate through a vacuum, and even if it did it would not do so at any appreciable fraction of the speed of light, making it completely useless for detection of anything. I don't know where you got the idea for this but this is not even remotely possible.

Tricorders are a magic wand that you wave stuff at and it tells you stuff about what you waved it at. Nothing that exists is remotely similar to that. Touchscreens were invented in 1965, Star Trek TNG (the one with all the touchscreens) aired in 1987. Speech recognition software was first made in the 1950s and took off in the 1970s. So both of those were existing technology decades before they ever showed up on Star Trek.

Also, I hate to be a pain about it, but yes, they're theoretical, and no, you can't disprove their existence, either.

This sentence just reeks of total ignorance of how science and logic works. No scientist EVER needs to DISPROVE something that has not been demonstrated. If there is no evidence for its existence, it is assumed to not exist; that's Occam's Razor at work, and a basic principle of logic. No one needs to disprove the existence of tachyons for the same reason no one needs to disprove the existence of Bigfoot.

I just used interdimensional travel. Here's a quick breakdown:

That is our universe.

This is the universe you are being transported to (Universe Y).
The universe Y in this extremely simple diagram is in proportion to our universe, as in, if you move a certain distance in Y, you will move X times as far in our universe. You could make time move slower in Y if wanted, to increase distance travelled over the same period of time.

How to get between each universe is up to you. Enjoy.