Bias-Drive and Alcubierre Drive Questions

[CuttingEdge100]

I'm wondering if you used a device like the Bias Drive or the Alcubierre drive below the speed of light then cut the device... would you slow back down to the speed before you engaged it?

I know if you were using a device like the Alcubierre drive at so called "warp-speeds" (FTL) and cut the drive you would not still stay at those speeds.


CuttingEdge100

 

[Vance]

I'm wondering if you used a device like the Bias Drive or the Alcubierre drive below the speed of light then cut the device... would you slow back down to the speed before you engaged it?

I know if you were using a device like the Alcubierre drive at so called "warp-speeds" (FTL) and cut the drive you would not still stay at those speeds.

The Alcubierre drive would pretty much instantly drop you since the 'real' velocity is sublight all the time, and it's the field itself that enables the FTL. When the field is gone, you're back to space normal.

Not sure about the bias drive, I'll have to look into it.

 

[Vance]

The Bias Drive looks like a 'space normal' drive, meaning that it relies on regular velocity drives, etc.. so, yeah, it would react with normal physicals.

 

[Meredith]

I'm wondering if you used a device like the Bias Drive or the Alcubierre drive below the speed of light then cut the device... would you slow back down to the speed before you engaged it?

I know if you were using a device like the Alcubierre drive at so called "warp-speeds" (FTL) and cut the drive you would not still stay at those speeds.


CuttingEdge100

Have you been to the Orion's Arm website, if not , I would go there they have all sorts of cool stuff on this sorta thing.

http://www.orionsarm.com/

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/49350e2d34113

HEH

 

[FordSVT]

^Wow, someone else has heard of that place besides me!

I've read almost everything on that site... was on a bit of a Transhumanist kick last year.

 

[Ronald Held]

For the AWD, field off would leave you at whatever velocity the ship had.

 

[Christopher]

I'm wondering if you used a device like the Bias Drive or the Alcubierre drive below the speed of light then cut the device... would you slow back down to the speed before you engaged it?

I can't find a detailed enough discussion of a "bias drive" to know how it's supposed to work. But with an Alcubierre warp drive, the ship isn't actually moving; the bubble of spacetime it occupies is being relocated relative to the space around it. That's true either above or below lightspeed. So either way, if you stop warping spacetime, the ship resumes its prior velocity.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

I didn't know until recently the alcubierre drive involved a piece of space actually moved along like a wave...

I just thought the space in front of the ship was compressed which allowed it to cover more distance, the space behind it was stretched out which evened it out and the compression of space in the front sucked the ship forward and the stretched out section in the back pushed it.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't know until recently the alcubierre drive involved a piece of space actually moved along like a wave...

I just thought the space in front of the ship was compressed which allowed it to cover more distance, the space behind it was stretched out which evened it out and the compression of space in the front sucked the ship forward and the stretched out section in the back pushed it.

Well, that's basically what happens, except it's not the ship that gets "sucked" and "pushed" but the region of spacetime it occupies.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

I don't understand why you'd have to move the piece of space the ship occupies. I figure simply shortening the fabric of space in front of the vessel would be enough to do the job as it would cover more space in the same time.

 

[Ronald Held]

Moving the piece of space-time overcomes the limitation of matter being restricted to the local speed of light.

 

[Christopher]

I don't understand why you'd have to move the piece of space the ship occupies. I figure simply shortening the fabric of space in front of the vessel would be enough to do the job as it would cover more space in the same time.

I think if you did that, you'd just get a gravity well, possibly even a singularity, and the ship would fall into it, or get torn apart by tidal stress. Basically we're talking about gravity in front of the ship and antigravity behind it, balancing out to a flat space in the middle for the ship to ride in.

 

[Anticitizen]

I don't understand why you'd have to move the piece of space the ship occupies. I figure simply shortening the fabric of space in front of the vessel would be enough to do the job as it would cover more space in the same time.

I think if you did that, you'd just get a gravity well, possibly even a singularity, and the ship would fall into it, or get torn apart by tidal stress. Basically we're talking about gravity in front of the ship and antigravity behind it, balancing out to a flat space in the middle for the ship to ride in.

Yeah, Zephram Cochrane would've had a short trip...

I read somewhere that the current hypotheses about 'warp bubbles', etc wouldn't work because they'd require part of the drive to be located outside the bubble, and still be limited to sublight speeds.

The more I learn about the requirements of interstellar travel, the more I'm convinced that we'll never make it out there. We ugly bags of mostly water have to carry our entire environments around with us, and we have a pesky habit of turning grey and dropping dead even if we're in optimum health (becomes a problem during those interstellar long-hauls). Furthermore, in addition to having to haul around an entire biosphere, the energy/fuel requirements are, well, out of this world, even without some sort of drive that has the power to bend spacetime itself. And given the power to bend spacetime itself we could probaby just take our entire planet with us wherever we went (and keep it warm and lit, with the moon in tow).

I think it'll be our progeny that carry on Earth's legacy - AI. They won't grow old. They'll be able to adapt to any environment instead of taking theirs with them. They'll be comparatively small and efficient, requiring less energy to get them out there. And they'll probably have the patience to do it.

Maybe some day an Earth AI will run into someone else's AI...

 

[Ronald Held]

current warp drive concepts do not have any horizon problems, it is a matter of understanding how to dynamically shape the space-time in an engineering sense.