Imagine the Enterprise, over again!

[Christopher]

But Christopher, I'm not sure why you've come to the conclusion that Alcubierre's solutions imply a strictly straight-line course. I've looked at White's documents coming out of NASA's Advanced Propulsion Labs, and it looks like the field effect from the warp drive is localized. While the drive itself doesn't have any obvious means of steering, if the ship is turned using old-fashioned rockets while in flight, the drive field should adjust accordingly, and the ship will move on a new heading.

Hmm, well, I was basing my assumption on White's 2012 paper, specifically this part:

Consider the following to help illustrate the point – assume the spacecraft heads out towards Alpha Centauri and has a conventional propulsion system capable of reaching 0.1c. The spacecraft initiates a boost field with a value of 100 which acts on the initial velocity resulting in an apparent speed of 10c. The spacecraft will make it to Alpha Centauri in 0.43 years as measured by an earth observer and an observer in the flat space-time volume encapsulated by the warp bubble.

Since the warp bubble was symmetrical with no intrinsic way to steer, I just assumed it would be on a set trajectory. Has White released more recent work that covers what happens if the ship changes course?

 

[Psion]

Hmm, well, I was basing my assumption on White's 2012 paper, specifically this part:

Consider the following to help illustrate the point – assume the spacecraft heads out towards Alpha Centauri and has a conventional propulsion system capable of reaching 0.1c. The spacecraft initiates a boost field with a value of 100 which acts on the initial velocity resulting in an apparent speed of 10c. The spacecraft will make it to Alpha Centauri in 0.43 years as measured by an earth observer and an observer in the flat space-time volume encapsulated by the warp bubble.

Since the warp bubble was symmetrical with no intrinsic way to steer, I just assumed it would be on a set trajectory. Has White released more recent work that covers what happens if the ship changes course?

No. But I don't think the ship has the limitation you infer in the first place. Yes, the warp bubble is symmetrical, without a way to steer it off-axis, but there's nothing that insists that the bubble is locked into the orientation it had when it was activated. It's a localized effect. That's why I suggested rockets for a reaction control system that can steer the ship. Point the ship in a new direction, and the bubble will point that way, too.

In the process, perhaps some of those accumulating relativistic particles will be shed, too.

 

[sojourner]

White does suggest that the buildup of particles can be minimized by cycling the warp bubble on and off repeatedly while in motion.

 

[Christopher]

White does suggest that the buildup of particles can be minimized by cycling the warp bubble on and off repeatedly while in motion.

Yeah, I've had the thought that Alcubierre drives might be better suited for short hops than long trips. In a spec novel I've written, I've established that the starfaring community prefers wormholes for long-distance travel and uses warp more for local, even intrasystem travel. (As I said, it makes an excellent sublight gravity drive, without the complications that arise at effective superluminal velocities.)

 

[sojourner]

Nope, you misread the intent. He suggests cycling it rapidly while in use. Not limiting it to short trips.

Here's a presentation he gave in 2013 worth watching:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M8yht_ofHc#t=2770[/yt]

 

[Christopher]

^I didn't "misread" it, I just discussed another aspect of the idea. Cycling it on and off during long trips is, in fact, the way I have it work in my spec novel, for journeys where a wormhole route isn't available. The point is that a long trip would be made up of a series of short hops. Although I envisioned it more as taking a break every couple of light years, like rest stops on a long highway drive.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Interesting ideas, guys. I especially like the idea of having to travel in short hops, and not being able to stop on a dime, in orbit exactly where they want.

Been working on my EM Shield array...

More later. Trying to figure out a good way to connect these at the back. I might end up spreading each side out, like was suggested before.

What do ya'll think?

-Ricky

 

[gerbil]

I definitely like it as a full ring. Are you planning on filling in the gaps in the ring or leaving it largely empty? One cool thing about this would have to be ensuring that there are airlocks and safety rails that the crew could use to conduct EV repairs.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Actually, I've been thinking for the longest time that if you were to REALLY redo Trek technology, "warp drive" would not be a setting for a set speed, and "warp factor" would be equivalent to an acceleration setting.

So a ship traveling at "warp one" would be accelerating between .5 and 2Gs, depending on the density of the interstellar medium, local magnetic fields and gravity fields, etc. A ship at warp ten would be accelerating much faster, maybe 25Gs or something. Either way, it's a rate of acceleration that, being an alcubierre-style space warp, could reach substantial FTL velocities with enough run-up time. This would also somewhat remove the need for an impulse drive for sublight speeds; you'd just use the warp drive all the time for orbit changes or maneuvers and thrusters to control orientation.

An alternative to this model would be a "pulsed" warp drive in which the ship in question "fires" its warp drive for a single second, during which the ship effectively jumps into a new reference frame that is moving forward at arbitrary speed. So use of warp drive is a matter of pointing your ship in a particular direction, entering a desired speed, powering up the engines for a burst and then "engage warp!" in an instant, you're coasting at 28 times the speed of light, and you're going to stay that way until you fire your engines again to stop yourself or until you hit something, whichever comes first.

 

[Christopher]

I definitely like it as a full ring. Are you planning on filling in the gaps in the ring or leaving it largely empty? One cool thing about this would have to be ensuring that there are airlocks and safety rails that the crew could use to conduct EV repairs.

Or, better yet, give the crew something that ST has always lacked but that any spacecraft in the future would realistically be expected to have: maintenance robots. No need to risk sending people out to do EV repairs when they can just control a drone by telepresence, or just instruct an autonomous drone to do the repair itself.

 

[STRenegade]

You mean like a Exocamp:http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Exocomp

 

[sojourner]

Actually, I've been thinking for the longest time that if you were to REALLY redo Trek technology, "warp drive" would not be a setting for a set speed, and "warp factor" would be equivalent to an acceleration setting.

So a ship traveling at "warp one" would be accelerating between .5 and 2Gs, depending on the density of the interstellar medium, local magnetic fields and gravity fields, etc. A ship at warp ten would be accelerating much faster, maybe 25Gs or something. Either way, it's a rate of acceleration that, being an alcubierre-style space warp, could reach substantial FTL velocities with enough run-up time. This would also somewhat remove the need for an impulse drive for sublight speeds; you'd just use the warp drive all the time for orbit changes or maneuvers and thrusters to control orientation.

An alternative to this model would be a "pulsed" warp drive in which the ship in question "fires" its warp drive for a single second, during which the ship effectively jumps into a new reference frame that is moving forward at arbitrary speed. So use of warp drive is a matter of pointing your ship in a particular direction, entering a desired speed, powering up the engines for a burst and then "engage warp!" in an instant, you're coasting at 28 times the speed of light, and you're going to stay that way until you fire your engines again to stop yourself or until you hit something, whichever comes first.

Warp drive imparts no momentum. the minute you disengage it you return to whatever velocity vector you had previous to it's use.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Hey guys... a little more progress last night. Playing with what the main hull should look like.

This is what I'm thinking:

Too much? I want it to look like it's actually constructed out of parts, not just one smooth surface. I was looking at "The Globe" in Stockholm as an example.

Later Guys,

-Ricky

 

[darrenw]

Hey guys... a little more progress last night. Playing with what the main hull should look like.

This is what I'm thinking:

Too much? I want it to look like it's actually constructed out of parts, not just one smooth surface. I was looking at "The Globe" in Stockholm as an example.

Later Guys,

-Ricky

i think that sphere i think should have rotating centrifuges sections in their for gravity

 

[sojourner]

It already has gravity.

 

[publiusr]

I remember the game I had forgotten earlier. Someone did a starship for SPORE somehow...

Some of us in this thread have chosen to speculate based on existing theories, to work within the constraints of that framework as a creative exercise. It allows more focused speculation than just making up stuff in a vacuum, and the choice to work within a set of constraints can be more creatively challenging and rewarding. That's the spirit in which I offer my discussions of what real physics says. I'm not trying to be negative or shoot things down; I see that some of the designers here are interested in basing their models on Alcubierre warp theory and I'm providing information about what that theory says in order to help them.

That might simply be a ring shaped space station, with the habitation ring serving dual purpose as the warp ring--perhaps not occupied during transit--if field effects are bad.

When you tell folks to re-imagine the Enterprise, that can mean many different things to folks.

In some respects, The Protector from Galaxy Quest is an answer. A ship that has a very lovely sense of sweep, as does the ship from Planetary Traveller
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168124/reviews
http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/180/infinitys-child/

According to CINEFEX, some of the early Protector sketches were too Enterprise-like--but they never showed them! Augh!

The deep keel Kryptonian spacecraft from Man Of Steel also have a visually interesting look.

For more conventional tastes, there was a pamphlet in the Bandai NX-01 offering that had nice art--and I can't find that anywhere on line.

One wonders what Richard Taylor would have wanted for TMP, if he had his way. Maybe a Foss design?

 

[JES]

space is big. pull back far enough from the solar system, and its a disc. everything you'd care about is in that thin little disc.

Yes, but we're not talking about being far away from the system, we're talking about the safest way to arrive in the system given the hazard of the particles ejected forward from a ship coming out of warp. So this is a close-range sort of conversation.

and you seem to be thinking that warp travel is all straight line. you're going to need to be able to adjust course to come into a system anyway, so why not optimize your arrival trajectory?

First off, I've already explained that if we're talking about current Alcubierre-based warp theory, then it probably would be a straight-line sort of thing -- the direction in which a warp bubble propagates is the same as the direction the ship was moving when it initiated the warp bubble. In order to change course, you'd have to drop out of warp and reorient yourself.

Second, optimizing your arrival trajectory is exactly what we're talking about here. But in order to know how to optimize it, you need to know what the hazards are. The first step is defining the dangers, the second is determining how to minimize or avert them. And I have already offered at least two clear suggestions on how to do so: One, come in at a steep enough angle to the system's disk that your "particle forewash" (to coin a term) will only intersect it at a narrow point, minimizing the chances it will hit anything, and two, overshoot the system and neutralize warp pointing away from it. So I don't know what gave you the impression that I wasn't already talking about optimized trajectories.




But that's the whole point: it would be at relativistic velocity. The longer your travel, the more the energy of the particles caught in the warp builds up.

http://www.universetoday.com/93882/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside/#ixzz2FaZsXDuM


It sounds like this is the same kind of runaway feedback loop you get in wormholes if you don't have exotic matter to stabilize them -- the potential for the energy of the particles to ramp up without limit. So hell yes, we are talking about a very, very dangerous effect here.

and if you assume it *is* focused by the warp effect, its trivial to point it somewhere harmless in a volume as large as a solar system.

Not necessarily. The article continues:

So how to avoid disintegrating your port of call? It may be as simple as just aiming your vessel a bit off to the side… or, it may not. The research only focused on the planar space in front of and behind the warp bubble; deadly postwarp particle beams could end up blown in all directions!

So this may be a bigger problem than we thought....

And yes, of course you can point it somewhere harmless (maybe), but the point is that you need to know where the harmless directions are. You'd need a detailed, updated map of every inhabited object or vessel in the system you were approaching. Sure, the odds of hitting anything by accident in the vastness of space are minuscule, but the danger is so great that it would be reckless not to be aware of the risk and take every feasible step to minimize it. When you're controlling a ship with the power to annihilate an entire civilization just by slowing down, it is not okay to shrug and say "Meh, it'll work itself out."

True, being the captain of a starship means responsibility. If some extra-terrestial ship were to come out of warp and damage or annihilate life on our planet, we wouldn't want the commanding officer to just receive a slap on the wrists. We'd expect someone to pay, perhaps with his life.

That said, I'm curious if perhaps these high energy particles could be absorbed as a power/fuel source. I'd imagine enough advanced might render the danger not only mute, but maybe an advantage.

 

[Christopher]

Too much? I want it to look like it's actually constructed out of parts, not just one smooth surface. I was looking at "The Globe" in Stockholm as an example.

I can see the aesthetic value of giving the hull some texture, but we're already in the age of composite hulls made as single preformed pieces. In the future, there'd be little reason to build a ship hull out of multiple parts with lots of seams to serve as weak points. A hull would most likely be a single continuous piece with any necessary openings or depressions or extrusions molded into it.

Come to think of it, though, maybe the inner hull could be such a continuous piece, while the outer layer could be a set of ablative armor "scales" designed to be removed and replaced individually as they wore out. Although if it's armor, giving it a bunch of seams is still potentially a problem.

 

[publiusr]

I can see the aesthetic value of giving the hull some texture, but we're already in the age of composite hulls made as single preformed pieces. In the future, there'd be little reason to build a ship hull out of multiple parts with lots of seams to serve as weak points.

Dandridge Cole wanted hollowed out asteroids:
http://planetarydefense.blogspot.com/2007/11/concept-from-yesterday-colonies-from.html

Lots of thickness to the hull.

Why have the Ent--when you can have the Doomsday Machine?


Cute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRhfF9yRGQg
http://www.foundation3d.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=33286&d=1258255939
http://makezine.com/2012/02/07/upcycled-star-trek-model-ship/

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=5390470&postcount=15


http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums3d-wips/93-hybrid-enterprise-42.html

 

[T'Girl]

You mean like a Exocamp

Or more like these guys.