Spacescifi

Sure. You really don't need FTL comms or sensors. All you really need for efficient space travel is an FTL drive that translates your speed and trajectory to match your target. You really do not even need constant acceleration drives, but having them does allow for SSTO's. I like SSTO'S.

I actually decided against FTL comms. And I have given thought to civilizations, but my mine are unique in that each one actually has a purpose, and not merely to fill a role of good or bad guy. Each fictional space faring race has a purpose, and they are aware of what that purpose is. Humans? They are kind of the oddballs, in that they cannot agree on their purpose, or indeed, many other things. One thing unique to humans that is less common is their brand of religion. To the point that some alien religions humans view as a joke, given the alien ones seem more about sticking to certain ideals rather than any sort of deity. But travel times by necessity will be shorter since how else can a ship travel anywhere it wants in the universe? Really, that still won't make it easy. If you're interested, read my last post regarding the deck for spaceships. Taljs about the travel scheme I intend to use.

Spoken like a true Kerbal player. I am glad you appreciate the intricacies of space travel. So do I. I have no intention of throwing it all away. 1. Constant 1g acceleration engines will be a must, only because we have nothing that good for traveling across the void. 2. In spite of what some ardently say, it is NOT aways better to have decks aligned with main engine thrust. Particularly if the vessel only has a scifi 1g acceleration engine that cannot be throttled down. In that case, the only way such a vessel could reach orbit would be by taking off like a plane. Since 1g acceleration can take a ship up to space once it builds up enough forward momentum before flying upward. 3. Rotating roller coaster chairs will be standard for the crew, as that way if the ship is massive and it rotates, they will always face g-force with their backs. 4. The main reason why I do not need decks aligned with gravity is because my FTL method transates both trajectory and speed to match tje vessel"s destination. At a relative dead stop. Constant acceleration engines are mostly good for maintaing an orbit anytime you want. Also for rendezvous and docking. 5. So you see... I have not dumped all the intricacies of space travel. Just some modern limitations that would prevent the scifi from happening if allowed

I am not sure any modern technology is suitable for a setting where vessels can casually descend/ascend from 1g gravity planets. Let alone warp/FTL. Take NTR for example. What cab you do with it? Just cruise slowly between the planets. Landing and take off again requires nothing less than an SSTO. Again, hard with modern tech though not impossible if you make it lightweight enough. Problem is, in space, lightweight stuff we currently have is... not fully protectuve against space radiation. If you want that to be the case, and if you want big business with casual space travel... fiction is necessary.

Indeed. I tend to agree with you. How about this? A simple, less rules drive that is still quite powerful. Galaxy drive: You can jump however close or far you want to any point of light you see in space. Even if it is old starlight. Know that you are jumping where the star was when the light first was emitted that is hitting you at this second. So if the star is thousands of LY away, that is a thousands of years old position in space. Try not to get lost... you can even jump to other galaxies. Upon reaching your jump point, your speed and trajectory is shifted to match the target's, whatever it was. Important rule: To shift jump, your target must be a lightsecond or more away. So that rules out getting easy free speed tbrough missiles or railguns. Takes a while to cross a lightsecond with limited rockets and raiguns. No FTL sensors: Yet one could still detect relativistic starships movin in space if scanned from the side. All you need is starships on patrol in star systens that are known to have high speed celestial bodies or gravities. However controls those has all tje relativistic firepower they want... for free. EDIT: Actuallu this system makes relativistic attacks hard if not impossible. Every jump shifts your speed and trajectory to the current target, so you cannot simply stack on more and more speed at will. Furthermore the fact thay a target must be a lightsecond or more to shift-jump to means that stacking speed with missiles becomes kinda impractical for homeworld attacks. Even if your ship had constant acceleration for months on end it would have a difficult time utlizing such speed. For one, what are you gonna do? Shift to Pluto and just accelerate your way to Earth? A fleet can and would shift to you, intecepting you long before you arrived. The best you could do is shift above Earth and let loose some epic bombs and shift out again. That kind of thing would be hard to prevent. I suspect either a planetary shield or a truly awesome orbtial defense grid would be in order. Perhaps both. EDIT: This drive does allow for hopping around systems as well as long jumps. For no other reason than to find your way. Kind of have to since old light jumps get more precise the closer you get.

Energy is mass and mass is energy. So yeah. That works for me.

Good points. I am inclined to just make a ship with super levels of vacuum thrust in space. Basically it can casually reach a lightsecond per min speed in ten seconds of acceleration. Grav-neutralizers included, so no g-force is felt. About the only way to get it is by rotation.FTL can be a simple displacement jump drive. Since even if jumped a few light hours out, a sublight drive this fast could still reach anywhere within a readonable amount of time. Planets people care about would be artificially shielded So near luminal ramming could ve defended against. Missiles with the super vacuum drive woould be common. Shields are included on ships. Want gravity? Hover over a planet without orbiting or just land.

Weird. So originally I had a saucer design. You are telling me that if I place the engines antywhere on the hull of my ship and turn them on, they will become artifical gravity wells? Gravity is omnidirectional too. Awesome! Never thought of that. Might need g-force dampeners after all, since this only adds to the g-load of normal acceleration.

LOL. She would be ripping him off for such conjecture. I hope her conscience bothers her.

Nope. Alcubierre does not accelerate you. It just moves the bubble of space tbe ship is within. Iy is useless for changing speed and orbital trajectories. It merely gets a vessel closer in space to the target. Course corrections from there are made with rockets if you have nothing better. My idea literally compresses space vacuum like air and expels it out the back for forward acceleration.

I guess she figured tutoring was not her thing? Or perhaps this is just a side gig to see hoe profitable it is? A test-run? I dunno. Personally I would never nerd her help for $50. A lot of science you can get for free. Quora? Reddit? Kerbal Space Forums? Enthusiasts are the experts.

The drives we do have do not compete well with the demands of my space opera. So I invent. Simply put, modern technology cannot fulfill my demands. So I do not bother using it. As for the SVL, simply by increasing the powering up time for SVL time to 15 hours for your average vessel would make the attacks you describe harder. Advanced vessels could power up in 5 hours for SVL. Cheaper ones could power up in 30 hours. Dropping out of SVL cpuld be done rather easily, but going to SVL rewuires,a ship to power up first for it. Granted, if I allowed scifi cloaks like Star Trek, then whoever had them would dominate.

Star Trek claims they fuel warp drives with antimatter. Yet tbe current research says we would need not only a ton of energy literally, but also negative matter... which is a thing that looks good on paper but is not observed in real life. Sure. I am not strict about the wording. People call SW scifi when it is really just the hero's journey with a space opera veneer.

Well... in fiction you know quite well that not all space opera settings have it. The reason being that it is not a subject the maker wishes to discuss.

Not to me. We have a clue what antimatter does and what it is good for. Does not seem to be at all related to the intricacies of how vacuum works. Dark matter on the other hand we barely grasp, and they have said it has something to do with vacuum. It was a logical choice. Antimatter= Photon torps and warp drive (yet anyone who dives deep also knows they would need negative matter too). Dark energy: So vaguely known that scifi can play with this more than antimatter.

No legitimate reader reading for entertainment will care why it does not work in system. Okay they might... but the whole job of a scifi writer is to manipulate and focus what the reader cares about. They won't focus on minutia about why the drive cannot do this or that. They will focus reader attention where it is due. Plots and character. If a reader is looking for stuff to critiicize or find inconsistent they will ALWAYS find them.

I grant you that catching them at FTL would be tough. Yet modifications could make it easier, by playing with distance radius, making SVL travel only on a linear path, and requiring time to power up to use the drive each time. All you have done is shown me how to improve thw drive. I understand your true motive here. To prove that in depth scifi analysis shows up all scifi tech as wanting? Yes. I was aware of that. I even agree with you there. But that won't stop me. As for backwards time travel, not everyone is sold on that actually being true, even if it may look good on paper. Until it is proven via experimentation that going backwards in time is possible, it will be forever relegated to the reams of paper that become books.

You are not limited with FTL travel. Just cool your SVL generator and fly out again. 7 LY max to be safe yeah, but you can SVL again once you cool off. Good math by the way, but your average reader won't dissect the heat generation with math anyway. Time travel? No. Not doing that. Yet I am OK with going forward in time due to gravity like in the movie interstellar. Also, FTL sensors exist. 7 LY range. So any black hole shenanigans will likely be detected by a scout ship or probe in a nearby system anyway. They will be on high alert anyway. And the time it takes your ship to get here it can be intercepted and destroyed. There actually is a tactical difference between translocation space moving past yoy and just blinking there. Bliniking ia clearly superior. But with my drive, not only does it take time, but it can be detected. Now if you did make a whole fleet of 24 relativstic vessels via black hole and SVL, the homeworld defebse force can send whatever spare vessels it has after you us put a bounty on your head. Bobbing and weaving to evade numerous ships at FTL will make your attacks harder to pull off. Since it only takes three kilometers to shift lock. Once they do they have your speed and trajectory and can engage at 3 kilometers. I guess the real battle will be won in detail. Namely a lot of mano e mano, one vessel vs another, as most of fleet will likely scatter if you see a much larger one about to shift-lock you.

I will attemp to address some misconceptions. 1. It is not a jump drive. 2. It is a space moves past your vessel drive. 3. SVL navigation is as simple as steering your ship like a plane in space. Make no mistake. You are'nt accelerating, space is moving past your ship and you decide what direction space moves past based on your steering. Smaller mass ships are easier/quicker to steer. They can make tighter turns. Which is a relative thing, considering that base SVL speed is a lightsecond per minute. For FTL SVL, a vessel must clear a seven light second radius from the nearest planet. Then you can SVL at a lightyear per hour. Within a seven lightsecond radius of a planet you can only go a lightsecond per minute. 4. A vessel generates an invisible SVL field bubble while at SVL that is 3 kilometers wide. Any missiles or cargo dropped within it are subject to newtonian physics. But they will STAY in the bubble provided they do not drift out of or accelerate out of it. When that happens your vessel will shift lock to whatever mass it launched that cleared the 3 kilometer bubble first. 5. A vessel will literally stay at SVL forever until it either finds something to shift-lock to or the SVL generator overheats and melts it. Seven hours of SVL use is considered safe, but 8 hours is considered risking a meltdown. Leaving your vessel stranded in space unless it has a backup SVL generator. 6. A ship's SVL generator can cool down with heat sinks. Which may take hours or perhaps just 30 min if you have some expensive ones. 7. Say you SVL drove to a satellite and aquired it's orbital trajectory and speed. Next you SVL toward the moon, but detect four vessels trying to intercept you while in SVL. They turn tighter than your vessel and you know they WILL intercept you sooner or later since they are circling you from different vectors. You fire a missile that clears your SVL bubble radius and shift-locks you. What speed and orbital heading do you aquire? Well... during SVL you do not get ANY orbital trajectory. You can only TRANSLATE to what you shift-lock to. In your case it is the missile you fired from your own vessel. Thus you retain your previous orbital trajectory with the added speed of the missile thrown in. Just translocated to a totally different area in space, since you were halfway to the moon when you shift-locked to your missile. That is how you can do that. Now if you translated or shift-locked to the pirate vessels... yeah, you would match them for trajectory and speed at at a relative stop 3 kilometers away. 8. Pirates could still catch up to you but it would be hard if you keep spamming missiles to SVL away. Plus when not in SVL you're virtually standing still while SVL vessels are virtually making u-turns and loops at a lightsecond per minute.

I guess what I am saying is that shift-lock merely defaults to the closest object that weighs a kilogram or more. You really cannot choose what shift-locks you unless you launched the object yourself.

I really was just fetching. Dark energy is sonething we really do not understand well at all. I thought it sounded better than mixing antimatter with vacuum to make a vacuum jet. Since that sounds silly.

Well you understand the drive's abilities quite well. Although you may have a misconception. 3 kilometer radius is set. Does not matter what it is. If an object weighs a kilogram or more it WILL shift-lock your vessel. You CANNOT SVL until you clear the shift lock radius. Thus if a station did not want a bunch of dangeous ships creeping up on it it only has to launch a bunch of satellites a few hundred kilometers out. Spread them out so that they only a few kilometers out from each other and you have a massive shift-lock net. Space combat you have better grasp than I, as you understand just how lethal modern missiles are. I can still see combat being a massive missile swarm battle. Although getting free speed won't be as easy as you think in combat. Because: At SVL your ship will literally stay at SVL until you reach the 3 kilometer radius area of another 1 kilogram or more object. If you try dumping cargo, it will just SVL along with you. Now if you launched a missile or railgun slug, yeah, you could use that to shift-lock your vessel as soon as it hit the 3 kilometer radius. In that case, you would retain your ship's true original speed and orbital heading before you went SVL. So you may drift totally off target. Surely not at a relative stop to them this time. Yet it would be a tactic that could pay off if you hit your target. Which is a big if considering SVL capabilities. Two things seem to matter most here. Rate of fire and shift lock. With a good enough weapon loadout you could clear out the stuff shift locking you. Missiles would be a mixed favor of sorts, since they will shift-lock your enemy ship the same as it will to you. Worst case scenario? Shift-locked with a thousand missiles headed your way. But you are right. Something this huge get get away FAST from those missiles simply by launching high velocity railgun rounds and SVLing to them. Assuming the thousand enemy missiles were not already within 3 kilometers of your ship's radius. In that case you cannot even SVL. I hope your vessel would have good countermeasures. It would need them.

Kerbal really is not about stories It is about KSP. No I have not told details because I am still working them out, and I do not think it proper to do so anyway. Not here on KSP. I mean this is not a fanfic site, nor am I writing that. I have learned a few things here I did not know before though. Namely just enough to realize that rockets can be used... but need some truly awesome scifi assists to justify using them in a setting... given how limited they are in space. I guess if you want a straight answer... is that I intended to utilize multiple types of FTL and sublight propulsion. Not just one. Now it is easy to do this. But making them not too dangerous can be hard if one is not willing to be inventive and forces things and tech to be constrained to a single way. By now I have my answer.

LOL. A scientist tells you how the vacuum jet works. Yet you ask "Does it produce thrust?" "No." "What's the point of making it then?" "We had a government surplus okay? You happy now?!" "No?"

Under different circumstances they could allow it. But not when they have business to take care of.