Warp drives as STL

[MC.STEEL]

So everyone is proudly parading the warpdrive/jumphole/whatever as our source of FTL but that partypooper Einstein and the concept of casuality say that you would either be timetraveling or breaking the speed of light so yea.

But it seems that everyone seems to overlook the posibility to use this technology as an STL booster of sorts.

Like an antimatter fueled spaceship eccelarating to 5%c and then activating a Warp drive as an STL booster,reaching 30%c.When it needs to break it just turns off its booster slows back down to 5% and then uses its propelant to slow down to parking orbit.

The problem i see from the get go is it even worth powering this thing?

Edited January 31, 2014 by MC.STEEL

[Albert VDS]

The partypooper with that idea would be drag and your rocket burning up.

[MC.STEEL]

The partypooper with that idea would be drag and your rocket burning up.

Asuming they didnt forget to add a magnetic shield to help fend of those pesky space particles.

Edited January 31, 2014 by MC.STEEL

[Neil1993]

The theory behind the workings of a warp drive is that you could start with an initial low velocity (let's say 3000 m/s). You would create a warp in space which would give you an apparent velocity of FTL (or 0.3 in your case) while still having an actual velocity of 3000 m/s. You could think of the warp like a bridge and the initial velocity of 3000 m/s as the velocity necessary to cross the bridge. You would then emerge from your warp with a velocity of 3000 m/s relative to your origin. All told, you would still need to perform various burns to reach orbit, but it would probably less than trying to decelerate 0.05c.

At least, that's how I think it works

[Idobox]

The big idea of the warp drive is to allow you to appear to travel faster than light when you really don't.

The hard limit on velocity is only local, and there's nothing stopping space from moving as fast as you want. Right now, parts of the universe that are far enough are traveling away from us faster than light.

As result, it is possible to imagine a warp drive that doesn't involve time travel, by making that 10 light year distance only 200km.

And since a warp drive works by deforming space, it must be able to go FTL.

[K^2]

The theory behind the workings of a warp drive is that you could start with an initial low velocity (let's say 3000 m/s). You would create a warp in space which would give you an apparent velocity of FTL (or 0.3 in your case) while still having an actual velocity of 3000 m/s.

That's a common misconception, and I suspect I know where it comes from, but not how it actually works. Because velocity is relative, I can always find an object moving at 3,000m/s relative to you. So say you've enabled warp drive, and now travel at .3c relative to that object. How fast are you traveling relative to object with respect to which you were at rest before enabling warp drive? Well, .3c - 3000m/s almost on the dot. There is going to be a slight relativistic correction, but you are still performing an STL warp relative to that initial point, despite never moving relative to it. So you don't actually have to have an initial velocity to perform a warp.

Where this works a bit funky is with interplanetary travel. If I want to travel from Earth to Jupiter, for example, I've just left Earth's orbit, and I engage warp drives. If I did manage to warp to Jupiter, I'd find that my ship's total mechanical energy is actually negative. That can't happen. You can compensate for this with warp drive, but it gets all sorts of complicated. More realistically, I need to be on an Earth-Jupiter transfer orbit already before I engage the warp drive. Hence, the "initial velocity". But this is only relevant because we are working within Sun's gravitational field.

All of that said, I don't know if STL warp is conceptually different from FTL one. Certainly, it'd take less energy to perform, so it'd be the first thing we do. But I don't think there is anything special that happens at the speed of light for the warp bubble that would prevent you from just scaling up your STL tech until it's FTL capable. So if we figure out how to do STL warp, we will figure out how to do FTL warp as well, eventually. Whether we ever get to that former stage is a separate question entirely.