Sci-Fi FTL drive problem - Please help

Dear TV tropes,

I would like to request your help for a friend of mine. He has a tendency to latch on and become fixated on things in his environment or that he reads. Currently he in the process of recovering and no longer generates new fixations, but we are still finding ways to clear the things he has already fixated on. It usually takes the form of a contraindication or a something that “doesn’t fit” usually resulting in headaches or irritability.

So far we have cleared several of these fixations by finding solutions to these problems. The first few usually don’t work but by continuing to generate solutions one eventually “feels right” and the fixation disappears.

I was wondering if anyone could help me in this endeavour as a fixation relates to a story he was trying to make based on something he read. This problem is indeed pretty hard and I was wondering if anyone could find the problem to the solution.

P.S. Somebody has suggested that the Albecurrie drive may make the wormhole unstable. How might this happen? This would just be in a general sense about how this may relate to the movement of space time as mentioned above or in some other similarly general overall intuitive sense.

edited 8th Nov '14 4:16:18 AM by talz

The Alcubierre drive functions by distorting spacetime. A wormhole is a massive distortion of spacetime. Since both of these technologies hook into the same underlying principle, it's not really a big stretch that they'd interact with each other in some way. Interference from one FTL drive could easily destabilize the other.

Indeed; you've already noted that the Alcubierre drive can be effectively disabled via a device that causes uneven distortions in space-time, so it's not a stretch to imagine that the distortions of a wormhole (especially one operating right on top of the Alcubierre drive) could have a similar effect.

On the other side, if I recall correctly, one side-effect of the Alcubierre drive is that it effectively separates the ship from the space-time outside of the drive's "bubble"; this could perhaps destabilise the wormhole, causing it to collapse: thus using the Alcubierre drive effectively "resets" the wormhole drive.

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What do you mean by 'saved up'? What is collected by leaving the drive running that can be put to use later?

That's all very well, but keep in mind that such a nullifier isn't just going to leave everything else as it is. The target ship will not, for instance, simply find itself unable to move with its Alcubierre drive while everything around it looks and acts normally. Rather, everything around it would appear heavily distorted, and anything (lasers, missiles, escape pods, etc) moving in or out of the region affected by the nullifier would have their trajectories correspondingly altered. If the distortions are small enough (and not somehow counter-nullified by some defensive system), they could even rip ships and people apart wholesale.

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Limits between drives.

Heat, Energy, distance covered in a single instance of travel, and ease of navigation

Start off with energy. Either device will require a large amount of energy to run. I would imagine the wormhole drive requiring notably more to achieve its effect. The alternative comparatively may use less energy. If either drive requires any spin up or energy storage it will take longer to store up energy for a more energy hungry drive vs the smaller one.

Heat: A basic principle is the more energy you put through something the more heat it builds up. So say you make a jump with a wormhole generator and it uses more energy. The ship builds up a certain amount of heat. Shortly after the ship reaches its destination it needs to bleed off the heat over time preventing any immediate use of the second drive until heat has dissipated to a sufficient level. The smaller drive while not achieving the same effect as quickly and over the same distances generates comparatively less heat over time. The time between use of the two devices would be shorter if you started off with less heat and energy intensive drive to the more heat and energy intensive and vice versa.

Distance covered. The more hot and energy hungry drive has a specific trade off. Namely it can cover longer distances in a single jump more quickly via "tunneling through the bubble". Where as the other drive is better for use across shorter distances and is more useful on short runs. You could possibly say while the wormhole drive is like a tunnel through the bubble the Albecurrie Drive is more like making a bubble to scud more easily along the surface of the bubble that is space of the universe.

Ease of Navigation. It would be harder to make a long distance jump from one point to another without using known points especially if you are traveling through the bubble. Chances are that means others know them too limiting where large jumps can occur to certain points. Since the other drive is shorter ranged it is easier to navigate point to point for the other drive.

Other limitations like with theory on the Albecurrie Drive has the ship traveling via that method building up a large amount of energy from gathered particles as it travels. When it stops those particles have to go somewhere. So it could be like a giant particle gun dumping a lot of energy all at once. For the wormhole when it is "punched through" there could be a powerful particle fountain like effect that discharges a large amount of energy when the ship comes through. Both would specifically limit where these ships travel to prevent accidentally particle blasting a planet or something similar. Unless of course you have a method to deal with that issue or it is at least reasonably hand waved away.

edited 8th Nov '14 4:45:08 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Simple: pop the bubble. The universe is now a number of alternate universes, all formerly part of the 'original' one split off from the main one. They are now so 'small' (perhaps the size of ours IRL?) that using either drive is less efficient than normal-space propulsion.

But that's a little silly by my standards, so here's a better one:

The charge time and amount of 'scrunch/stretch' effected are proportionate to each other. Charge the drive up enough, and you distort or warp away an entire galaxy. The twin drives functionally become a doomsday weapon. It isn't an action any sane man would do, and impossible for an insane one to do without anyone noticing. If it's sociopathy playing out, it's still bad for business to have everyone thinking (or even suspect) you're a mindless terrorist.

Bam. Playing the trope to its absolute conclusion leads you to there not being a power limitation or technical solution, but a moral or pragmatic one.

Thank you for your feedback everyone, so far we're making good progress in this area. I look forward to hearing any further input or ideas on this subject that anyone may have.

Good idea Matt Striker, how might the two drives interact?

Meklar, the wormhole drive charges up by stretching space-time more and more as time passes. This gives rise to a "tail" of stretched space located outside or inside the bubble which can be left until needed, then directed by the wormhole drive to "reach out" and connect to another point in space. The stretches a small amount of space so no matter how far the drive goes it seems like the journey is the same length (eg. 500m) but from an "external viewpoint" you can see that this 500m section of space is being stretched so that although that length wouldn't have reached between the two points normally, it does now. Prior to activation this section of "charged up" space time has one open end tethered to the drive and will be pulled around wherever the drive goes.

Interesting point Ars Thaumaturgis. The Alcubierre drive forms a bubble which moves faster than the speed of light with space time moving FTL rather than the ship itself. The open end of the wormhole drive's "tail" follows the drive itself, with both located within the bubble itself. Might the separation you described still occur? Might something else occur when you try to charge the wormhole drive at FTL? How might this happen?

Tuefel Hunden IV, using the two drives in tandem looks like a possible idea. How would you prevent an enemy from arriving a bit off a hostile area recovering their wormhole drive then using it to escape as soon as a battle looks like its going south?

Deus Deno having the wormhole and Alcubierre drive feed into each other looks like a possible idea too.

edited 10th Nov '14 3:45:41 AM by talz

If the wormhole drive is an area of stretched space and the warp drive has scrunched up space behind the ship, the compressed area of space, instead of travelling towards the stretched out area of space at the front (like in a typical warp drive) will travel towards the stretched out area in the wormhole device. This could cause a wedge shaped area at the back of the ship to accelerate into the front and destroy the entire ship.

edited 10th Nov '14 9:04:44 PM by matti23

You guys are simple geniuses. That's all.

Talz: Deliberately build into the function of the engines in story for any of the factors that limit their function. If they have to let the long jump engine cool before they can use their short hop engine they are vulnerable to any enemy who has ready jump engines.

There are other things you need as well. You need at least three things to make a jump.

First you need to know where you are and where you are going. That means you need time to calculate a jump. It would likely be a bad thing to jump into a star, planet, moon, or other body. The short jump this is a bit easier comparatively speaking. The long jump requires knowing where your arrival point is at a very long distance so established points of travel from A to B work best. You could in theory do a blind jump but the risk would be large if you jump to an unknown point. It would be very difficult to say the least to detect what is at the location you want to arrive at. Hence the known location being what works best for those kinds of jump. Now for those long range jumps using any known possible points it is fully possibly to say mine them, guard them, or at least watch them.

You need time to feed the computers the data you need to make all of the calculations and link those to engines in a way that makes the jump possible. Such math would be complex to say the least and could possibly require various lengths of time to do. A good rule of thumb is the longer the jump in any regard the longer the calculation for a single jump. You could even apply that to the known point jumps. Even if you know where to jump you still need to make sure everything is lined up to prevent a possible disaster.

Next you need the energy to make the jump. Now depending on how you build the mechanics this could also take time to build up not only the energy but for the effect for a jump to take place to effectively build up. I would imagine some sort of spin up or building up of capacitor charges to fuel any jump short or long. Again the rule of thumb the longer the distance the more power you need the more time it can take. Now you can also add in the larger the ship the more power it takes. So big ships need a lot of power and time to build the effect to jump. Small ships can do the jump more quickly but they are the small ships. Coordinated jumps to maintain fleet coherency would paramount in that situation. Small jumps may be used to try and bail out of a battle arena for a short period but then you have ask why can't the enemy do the same and give chase? This leads into the next part.

Heat management. Anything ships do that use large amounts of energy will likely make a lot of heat. It will take time to vent that heat. Depending on the tech that can really put a damper on how fast you can go from arrival, calculation, spin up, and jump. If your ship is still hot from a big jump you have to bleed off enough heat before you can even spin up your engines for a short jump.

Put all of those together. Time to calculate jumps even with known destinations, time to bleed off excessive heat generated by the jump, and finally time to power up the engines enough for a jump. Stack them all together you could have a jump taking a fair bit of time depending on how you balance the factors in verse.

Oh one more thing to consider. The size of the equipment to make a jump possible. It could limit what ships can have a jump drive. If it takes a big beefy power system with a large drive component your not going to be outfitting fighter craft with jump drives.

Who watches the watchmen?

As for why the wormhole drive can't be used for long distance jumps, maybe as you stretch space time more it takes more energy, eventually approaching a limit needing infinite energy, much like the speed of light limitation on travel without an FTL drive.

Maybe somebody tried to get around the "back of your ship obliterates the front" effect by isolating the wormhole from the moving space time in the warp bubble, causing the wormhole drive not to move with the rest of the ship, ripping it out the back when the warp drive is active. Maybe it's a side effect of the wormhole drive needing to hold space time in a stretched form.

Sounds like your wormhole drive creates some kind of field or construct to keep the "space time tail" in shape. When you move (as thus so does the drive) it needs to act on new space time at the front and the space time at the back being left behind reverts to normal. At sub FTL speeds the drive can keep up, bending the new space into shape and keeping the tail stable, at high FTL speeds the drive cannot bend the new space into the correct shape fast enough and the front of the tail rushes towards the back of the tail, causing to two to collide. Eventually the tail disappears when it passes the back of the tail, leaving an insignificant sized stump, resetting the drive.

Just wondering generally how plausible everybody thinks this sounds in a general fashion.

Thanks for the help, you guys seem to be on the right track, we're nearly there! At this rate we could be finished pretty soon. Keep up the good work

Tuefel Hunden IV, the burst of energy from the drive is dealt with in two ways. Planets are usually shielded and ships usually exit warp facing away from the planet.

That doesn't really make any sense. From the wormhole's perspective, it doesn't cross a very long distance at all. That's the whole reason such a thing works in the first place.

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Keeping the wormhole generator running might take more power than any energy source could sustain. Therefore, to do it, you'd have to first charge a "capacitor" (or more likely a superconducting energy storage system) over an extended period of time which then feeds the generator. The capacity of your storage system would thus determine the time the wormhole generator can stay active.

Striker: That was my general thought for spin up time for engines and power supply.

Who watches the watchmen?

Terribly sorry to trouble you guys again, you've all been very helpful. As per the original post I was wondering if you guys could help with any more ideas?

How else can we prevent a wormhole from being carried by an albecurrie drive. What would happen? When I said the wormhole generated a bubble in the original post I meant that the wormhole seems to expand until it encompasses the whole ship.

Having a problem with the wormhole drives in my story being able to be left on indefinitely during a ships lifespan giving older ships the ability to jump farcically far. All the ships in a fleet may be able to converge on a few points when a war begins or some ships may become able to jump to an extremely far away galaxy. How can we prevent this?

Im a little confused. A wormhole is not a form of energy that can be stored. Its a sperical area of space (tunnel shaped in some higher dimension) which has been stretched to connect to a distant part of the galaxy with less distance. The ship then travels dowm the wall of the tunnel eventually arriving at the other end, having traveled less distance than conventional space would have required. If I understand your concept, the "wormhole drive" creates the tunnel ahead of the ship while it is traveling. Did I get that right?

Thats correct. The wormhole drive charging up refers to the drive stretching out an area of space like a noodle, gradually lengthening and being able to reach out further.

It could also refer to the machine itself preparing to create a tunnel, with more preparation time allowing it to reach further.

If you guys have any alternative mechanisms that kind of make intuitive sense (really only broad strokes are needed) and which are incompatible with a albecurrie drive I would also be quite interested

P.S. Thanks for the reply

edited 20th Dec '16 6:23:34 PM by Talz

If I remember correctly, an Al-drive creates a self-contained bubble of space-time that does not interact with the surrounding universe. It should be impossible for a ship in a bubble like that to affect the space in front of it in any way.

Ah, now that is an excellent point. Would that affect the wormhole drive which seems to be reaching through an extra dimension? In a 2d representation wouldn't the warp bubble be a circle whilst the wormhole appendage would be going under it then up again to meet normal space?

If the wormhole is being sustained by some other source than the ship, then the ship, within it's bubble, is traveling down one wall of the wormhole tunnel.The wall of the tunnel is normal space, represented in two dimensions. I think the A-drive's warp bubble is probably a hypersphere, therefore it would be represented as a 3-d sphere on that wall. It's warping the tunnel wall as it travels.

Thus, the ship gets two boosts to it's travel time: one from using a wormhole in the first place and one from using an A-drive while in the wormhole.

edited 21st Dec '16 7:26:21 AM by DeMarquis