Warp Speed Will Kill You

a lot things that reality today were impossible or 'impractical' some 300-400 years ago. Who knows what will become possible in 300 years? or even in a 100 years? there's no way to predict..
 
and in general, I dislike people saying something is impossible. Instead of looking for ways to make it possible, they prefer to dash dreams by proclaiming how they are impossible. That's not science, that's anti-science.
 
TehQuick said:
and in general, I dislike people saying something is impossible. Instead of looking for ways to make it possible, they prefer to dash dreams by proclaiming how they are impossible. That's not science, that's anti-science.
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Yeah. Everything is impossible until it isn't. There's no point in declaring something impossible, because odds are some day it's going to be possible.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
The used to say you would explode at supersonic speed. It's easy to claim anything that nobody can prove. The were wrong then, and nobody knows if this is wrong now...
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I'm sure I read somewhere that when the train was invented, people claimed that traveling over 30mph would instantly kill the passengers!
 
Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and just about every sci fi show/movie/book have nothing to do with what this guy is saying. The vast majority of the FTL drives take you out of normal space/time for travel over long distances in a fraction of the time it would take light to travel the same distance and to avoid relativistic effects.

The only thing this guy is saying has already been known for a long time. Yes, in order to reach the speed of light in normal space/time you would need shielding which would deflect any type of matter away from the ship. This would include anything from the size of an atom on up. The faster sublight speeds you reach, the stronger the shielding would need to be due to the increased amount of energy at impact. A rock the size of a pea traveling at half the speed of light would probably have more kinetic energy than current nukes. The same holds true if a spaceship moving at half the speed of light hit a stationary rock the size of a pea.

 
xxEIEIOxx said:
The used to say you would explode at supersonic speed. It's easy to claim anything that nobody can prove. The were wrong then, and nobody knows if this is wrong now...
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Yes.. but please.. it is they. For some reason reading what you wrote kinda bugged me lol.
 
The NX-01 didn't have shield technology, but they already had a deflector dish. When the voyagers deflector dish got stolen, they were pretty much stranded until the two shuttlecrafts retrieved it.

UnrealCpu said:
so how do you explain the guy who invented warp speed in start trek , i think his name was zefrin cocran or something. In the movie he made a old nuclear ballistic missile into a space ship that went to warp. Are you saying the missile was made special? materials
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It was just normal titanium. And the thing was a prototype that didn't even reach Mars.
 
Derangel said:
Time and Relative Dimension In Space. TARDIS. Its the Doctor's police box looking ship from Doctor Who.
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The best (and longest running) sci-fi series ever made.
At least the man quantified his statements by saying it's not possible with what we know now. Otherwise I'd call him an arrogant,closed minded fool.
 
srangara said:
1) People on this thread are having a really hard time reading what other people on this thread have already written

2) People on this thread are having a really hard time reading what other people on this thread have already written
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Did you know that in warp theory, the ship doesn't actually move? It's the space around the ship that moves.
 
Another blow-hard scientist not knowing what he's talking about. All he's doing is picking on a popular sci-fi franchise in order to get his 15 minutes of fame. Yawn. :eek:
 
Gotta love geekdom. I can just imagine some of you putting on your Starfleet uniforms and gathering together as some type of "super" geek mob and going after this guy. =)
 
CyclopsSlayer said:
Maybe this guy should have a talk with Dr. Michio Kaku.
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Exactly what I was thinking. BTW you are pretty well read in classic SF if you know about John Campbell, few kids today even know who Issac Asimov is , much less Campbell.
 
Ronbo said:
Exactly what I was thinking. BTW you are pretty well read in classic SF if you know about John Campbell, few kids today even know who Issac Asimov is , much less Campbell.
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how about Robert Heinlein:p
 
funny thing they said a similar thing about going faster than 100mph
 
Lunas said:
Don't you just hate when armchair scientists who see one episode and then immediately start bashing...
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Armchair physicist? As in someone who doesn't actually know what he's talking about, but watches things on TV and treats them as fact? :rolleyes:
 
TehQuick said:
a lot things that reality today were impossible or 'impractical' some 300-400 years ago. Who knows what will become possible in 300 years? or even in a 100 years? there's no way to predict..
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Heavier than air flying machines are impossible - Lord Kelvin
 
Typical of Ivy league...er whatever the British equivalent is....apparently Lord Kelvin never saw a BIRD during his lifetime :rolleyes:

He also didn't realize the ramifications of absolute zero when proposing the temperature scale. Course, he didn't know about atoms yet either, so we can give him a break.

Technically, hyperspace travel doesn't involve either the ship or the universe actually moving.... other than from the momentum of punching a hole into hyperspace and back out... because "moving" outside the actual physical universe isn't really "moving" at all.

Now HOW to actually navigate in hyperspace.... we have no fucking idea :rolleyes:
 
I am no expert on chemistry, but seems like having a high electronegativity would allow the use of a powerful E field to deflect the atoms around the ship. It would not take too much energy to maintain a strong E field unless a lot of work was being done, but these atoms do not weigh much so not much work involved in moving them.

I mean, if we can a ship that travels at speeds near c, then we ought to be able to build a very powerful E field too.
 
I won't reiterate, what most have already said, are the main points, I agree with them. But taking individual ST episodes as proof is folly. ST was written by many writers, and they constantly got the "science" wrong. Kirk said "We'll pivot at warp 2." But in Voyager they had to traverse space with subspace anamolies and avoid an ambush. Since they said they could not turn at warp, they programmed the course and let the computer fly it. Stopping, turning, and re-entering Warp on every leg.

They explained a lot in the Technical Manual that never made it into the show.
 
I have to agree with CaptNumbNutz all you would require is a electromagnetic bottle around your starship. There you go problem solved.;)
 
Blown Cap said:
This paragraph made me /facepalm...

"Some audience members at the American Physical Society event protested that Kirk, Spock and the "Star Trek" crew would all still live because of the starship Enterprise having shields. But Edelstein noted some of the existing difficulties with creating an electromagnetic shield with any resemblance to "Star Trek" technology."

So we've already overcome the "existing difficulties" of creating a warp capable ship that resembles Star Trek technology? I wasn't aware we had one sitting somewhere in a hangar just waiting untill we worked out the shielding problems...
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Toyota already took care of that part. It’s called the Prius Effect...
 
bigdogchris said:
This is implying that the object is moving at light speed. Warp theory is that space time around you is moving at the speed of light. The object within the 'warp bubble' is not actually moving.
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umm no.. the object is moving..

a warp field is created around the ship, essentially stretching space behind your and bringing points in front closer.. at the same time the impulse engines puse the craft forward inside the bubble.. there by appearing to go faster than the speed of light..

that idea is laughable (and i love star trek)..

tho hyper space travel is moderately possible..
 
bigdogchris said:
The Deflector Dish main purpose is to move debris out of the way. Plus long range sensors would help ship to navigate around any larger objects.
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Faster than light no left of right..

to change direction you have to drop out of warp , turn and re-engage the engines...
 
Inertial dampeners, deflector dish, metaphasic shielding, ablative armor, interphase cloaking, subspace bubbles.

I think we're covered.
 
You can easily survive warp speed if you had inertial dampeners installed. DUH!!!
 
Bottom line... how about we get beyond the chemical rockets stage of space exploration before we worry about what would happen if we were able to fly at 90% the speed of light OR warp space time in any fashion in order to aid in travel.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Bottom line... how about we get beyond the chemical rockets stage of space exploration before we worry about what would happen if we were able to fly at 90% the speed of light OR warp space time in any fashion in order to aid in travel.
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Looking through the history of science and technology we see that reality follows from dreams. In other words, we can work out details of could happen well before we are ready to implement the ideas. A classic example is that of Ada Lovelace who worked out the mathematics for the computer long before the technology was ever realized.

It seems that human's are mostly limited by imagination, and not really innovation. If we dream it, then perhaps someone will build it. But I say dream first, then build.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Bottom line... how about we get beyond the chemical rockets stage of space exploration before we worry about what would happen if we were able to fly at 90% the speed of light OR warp space time in any fashion in order to aid in travel.
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Can't we already do that with ion engines? They aren't as powerful as chemical rockets but they can last for a *very* long time. Constant Thrust = Constant Acceleration, so strap it on a nuclear reactor and you could potentially reach light speeds with it.
 
Sly said:
Can't we already do that with ion engines? They aren't as powerful as chemical rockets but they can last for a *very* long time. Constant Thrust = Constant Acceleration, so strap it on a nuclear reactor and you could potentially reach light speeds with it.
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Ion engines are the tortoise to the rocket engine's hare. Ion Engines last for a long time, but their thrust is very low compared to a chemical rocket.

As for getting to light speeds, there's a whole host of reasons why you can't do it with conventional physics. One is mass (as part of Einstein's famous E = MC² formula). As the closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass an object carries due to the energy required to move it. Nearer the speed of light, the object gets infinitely massive, which in turn requires in infinite about of energy to accelerate it. As for infinite amounts of energy, I don't think the Energizer Bunny counts. :D

I'm sure there are theoretical ways to get around it...but all of this is just theoretical.
 
Is there not talk of "bending" space in which the distance between two points is a shorter straight line.
 
DogChainX said:
Ion engines are the tortoise to the rocket engine's hare. Ion Engines last for a long time, but their thrust is very low compared to a chemical rocket.

As for getting to light speeds, there's a whole host of reasons why you can't do it with conventional physics. One is mass (as part of Einstein's famous E = MC² formula). As the closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass an object carries due to the energy required to move it. Nearer the speed of light, the object gets infinitely massive, which in turn requires in infinite about of energy to accelerate it. As for infinite amounts of energy, I don't think the Energizer Bunny counts. :D

I'm sure there are theoretical ways to get around it...but all of this is just theoretical.
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I never could understand that. It's just hard for me to think of Terminal Velocity in a vaccum (spellcheck) i guess.
 
Sly said:
I never could understand that. It's just hard for me to think of Terminal Velocity in a vaccum (spellcheck) i guess.
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Well, you have to think about mass in a term called "relativistic mass" versus at "rest mass".

I'm not one to explain it eloquently though. =)
 
Sly said:
I never could understand that. It's just hard for me to think of Terminal Velocity in a vaccum (spellcheck) i guess.
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space isnt a vacum, just an absense of o2, enough for us to live.. remember everything moves from hot to cold, from 1 state to another to balance itself.. air leaves shuttle? why well none outside and lower pressure outside it escapes to equilise..

there is enough energy in 1 square inch to power 100mill suns for 100mill years.. its not empty, infact one has to constantly apply energy to actually keep moving in space..

space is the wrong word, there is something there, just that we can move thru it and its invisible..
 
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