Interesting Ideas on FTL Travel

Why, where are you planning on going?

 

Anywhere but here.

 

He's been reading Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon," only he's planning to stake out Mars before Musk gets there. Then he'll establish colony ships Maiph Upper and Maiph Lower, followed by a cargo and package service...

The trick is not to be the first colonist or miner, but the guy who sells the colonists and miners the goods and services they need—but never telling them there's a barrier at the edge of the Solar system that turns humans into gods.

 

10% is 18,600 miles per second.

This is interesting -The fastest manned space ship was Apollo 10 (Thomas Stafford, Eugene Cernan and John Young), which reached 39,665 kph as it returned to Earth from the Moon in May, 1969.
The Apollo 10 reached 39,665 kph when it returned to Earth.

18,600 miles per second = 107,761.67424 kph which is nearly quadruple the velocity obtained by the Apollo 10 craft upon re-entry.

 

Einstein said that the speed of light in a Vacuum is c.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon

What is the vacuum of space?

Vacuum is space that is devoid of matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum

We know that after the Big Bang that the space of the Universe was no longer a perfect vacuum devoid of matter but a Universe filled with hot expanding gas that created pressure on the particles including light photons that slowed the Big Bang to slower than speed velocities over time.

This means that in a perfect vacuum that FTL is possible.

When designing a FTL drive the gas pressure present on the ship must be dealt with as well.

In space, the pressure is nearly zero.

http://quest.nasa.gov/space/teachers/suited/3outer.html

Although the gas pressure might be nearly zero but when a ship begins to travel closer and closer to the speed of light the ship is occupying more space and gas pressure at a faster rate of velocity so the amount of gas pressure experienced increases exponentially thus acting like a gas bubble.

So elevating the gas pressure on the ship is also important to achieve fast as light velocity.

Achieving FTL means that you have to remove all matter from around the ship in front of and behind it as well.

 

^math fail. Try 107,761,674.24

Which is roughly 2700 times the speed of Apollo 10's return.

Apollo was standing still compared to %10 the speed of light.

 

Bender: Like putting too much air in a balloon!

 

Well damn, I was thinking Dryson was onto something for a change instead of being completely utterly wrong.

THERE ARE CALCULATORS ON THE INTERNET HOW CAN YOU SCREW THAT UP

 

It's worse than that. Dryson can't even tell the difference between "nearly quadruple" and "less than 3 times".

 

Well, he doesn't believe in the use of calculators. To wit:

If he doesn't want to use Canon, maybe we can talk him into Toshiba?

 

This is the result when I converted it -

18,600 mp/s to 107761,67424 km/h

http://www.unitconversion.org/unit_converter/velocity.html

I just figured that the , meant that the result was 107,761.67434 km / h

 

^that's because for some reason you entered the comma in your original number.

Never use commas when entering numbers in calculators.

 

Einstein said that the speed of light in a Vacuum is c.

[COLOR=#dbdbdb]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon[/COLOR]

What is the vacuum of space?

Vacuum is [COLOR=#dbdbdb]space[/COLOR] that is devoid of [COLOR=#dbdbdb]matter[/COLOR].

[COLOR=#dbdbdb]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum[/COLOR]

But space is not devoid of matter or it would in fact be a vacuum.

This would mean that if massed matter which would include gas particles was at least moved out of the starship then the volume of compressed matter that is encountered as the ship travels faster and faster would be reduced.

Basically the idea revolves around how the shape of a boat allows water to be displaced that then allows a boat to move through the water at certain velocity.

A flat boat has a wider bow where the water is displaced move as the boat moves through the water but because the water is basically rolled back on itself the boat is displacing maybe 1.5 times the initial volume of water thus causing it to use more energy.

A speed boat however has a very fluid dynamic hull design that as the water is displaced the water flows out and away from the boat creating a ripple effect.

If the same process could be applied to a ship where matter with mass is streamlined to flow around the ship like a speed boat instead of being plowed through like a flat boat then a ship could travel faster through space while using less energy.

 

Drag (which is what you are trying to describe) is not the issue with trying to reach high velocities in space.

 

Actually it wouldn't make a bit of difference. Drag goes up with the square of the velocity (except in the transonic region), and the normal formula is D=1/2*Cd*rho*S*V^2, where rho is the fluid density in kg/m^3. In the case of the interstellar medium, rho is going to be about 0.001 to 0.1e-30 kg/m^3, as opposed to sea-level where it's 1.225 kg/m^3. So the drag equation has been multiplied through by something like 0.000000000000000000000000000001 (that's 30 zeros).

Since the drag also goes up with the square of the velocity, you'd need the velocity to go up by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000 (15 zeros) over our usual hypersonic velocities (of something like 1000 m/sec) to get the kinds of drag our existing hypersonic craft already encounter. That means interstellar flight wouldn't compare to hypersonic flight until you're doing something like 10 billion times the speed of light, which you can't do.

So instead of something like 6000 N/m^2 of drag, as you might have in a hypersonic vehicle, you'll have something like 0.000,000,000,000,02 N/m^2 of drag (2.0e-14). A light generates about 3.0e-9 Newtons per watt, so if you had a ship with a frontal area about the size of a modern aircraft carrier, shining a little 20mA LED from Radio Shack out the back end could fully compensate for the interstellar drag. So, streamlining could save you enough energy to drive one of the little blinky lights on the cockpit radio.

 

As I said, drag is not an issue.

 

^ Unless you have a cross-dressing starship.

 

Let me restate my idea involving water. The ship traveling close to the speed of light and faster would have a momentum value that was attributable to a particle with mass that unlike the photon without mass is not affected by the mass of particle that it encounters unless the mass particle absorbs the light photon.

The water representing the particles with mass in space is easily penetrated without any structural damage being done to the ship because as the ship enters the water its momentum is able to continue forward at a constant rate because it is not occupying more space at a faster velocity where the momentum of the mass particles that it encounters is not effecting upon the ship with momentum and mass that each particle in space has.

Now as the ship travels to the speed of light the same mass of particles that it encountered before becomes 100,000,000 times greater not only in the particle mass but the particle momentum that would in effect create a wall of particles that is attracted to the ship at faster rate because of gravity.

http://gravity.wikia.com/wiki/Gravitation

The faster an object with mass moves through space the more particles will be attracted to the object thus giving the object more mass and thereby needing more propulsive energy to continue forward where the faster the ship travels once again means that more particles will be attracted to the ship once again. Because particles with mass and gas pressure both have momentum that can be easily traveled through at lower velocities but as you travel faster and faster you occupy more of the momentum velocities of both particles with mass and gas pressure the create an opposite force on the ship that it must overcome to continue to travel faster and faster.

Gas pressure operates the same way.

In the image below are two examples both being used to represent a low concentration of gas pressure and particles with mass on the right where the ship would experience momentum mass from both gas and particles with mass at a normal amount. On the right hand side the ship is traveling at the speed light where it would occupy more space where it would occupy more gas pressure and particles with mass than on the left side.

http://science.taskermilward.org.uk/mod1/KS4Chemistry/AQA/Addn Mod 4/Addn_Mod4_img/gas pressure.jpg

Defeating the stigma revolving around light speed first involves deflecting as many particles with mass away from the ship as far out in front of the ship as possible so that the ship would have an area to freely travel through. The second process would be to deflect the particle emitting gas away from the ship as well in the same manner as deflecting the particles with mass so that the ship would have an area to freely travel through without additional gravity from the particles attracting towards the ship as well as an increase in gas pressure.

It might sound like I am going back over myself but I am just trying to explain it so you will understand what I am trying to convey.

 

We understand that what you are trying to say is wrong. Drag is not an issue. move along to your next topic.

 

Has this forum always pretty much functioned as a sounding board for one indefatigable person or others apparently limitless musings, or is this just a recent development?