"IS WARP DRIVE POSSIBLE?" - A discussion

[Dryson]

Einstein said that FTL was not possible due to an infinite source of energy being needed to power the engines due to the increased amount of mass encountered the faster that a ship approaches the speed of light.

If mass is added to the ship the faster that it approaches the speed of light, would there be an increase of potential energy available that would coincide with near light speed velocities.

If mass is added to the ship as a result of faster and faster travel, there should be enough energy present to power the ship.

Think of it this way, you have a speed boat that skims along the surface of the water at very high speeds.

There is an energy potential taking place between the hull of the boat and the water itself.
If you add cargo to the speed boat in incremental amounts though, the boat loses some overall speed with each amount of weight placed into its cargo hold. The boat also uses more fuel to maintain its top speed.

The heavier the boat while maintaining its top speed will drastically increase the amount of fuel that the boat consumes.

As the boat becomes heavier, it sits lower in the water due to the increased weight. Eventually the boat will not be able to skim across the surface of the water due to the weight and will have too reduce its speed to conserve fuel.

But if the boat is able to recover an amount of energy potential that exists between the boats hull and the water based on the speed that boat is travelling at and the weight placed in the cargo, then more fuel could be generated that would allow the boat to travel at faster speeds.

Therefore a ship travelling through space could, theorectivally, generate more fuel the faster that it approached the speed of light. Fuel production that would allow the ship to maintain a much faster velocity due to the increased amount of mass placed on it due to the ship travelling faster and faster opposed to the ship travelling slower and consuming more fuel over time.

The Big Questions

In space, when an object travels faster and faster towards the speed of light, how much energy potential is created between the objects surface and the particles that it encounters in space?

What type of hull material would be the best to use to generate the greatest amount of energy potential between the hull and space time?


If space around the object can be reduced to Pre-Big Bang space-time, if only for a planck, then the object should be able to surpass light speed.

Pre-Big Bang Space Time refers to space time that existed before Suns, Planets, Black Holes and other stellar objects, where gravitational influences were a lot less noticeable but still existed.

 

[Silvercrest]

How does this mesh with the Dryson Barnacle Gibberish Theory™ from earlier in the thread?

 

[Deks]

Well, at least folks can get away from each other and start over. Having an AI raise children with no history of their past would be the ultimate in starting over.

Not if the underlying socio-economic system/environment in which those kids grow up is the same like the one their parents originally left behind (and its probably going to be VERY similar to that because most parents don't know any better from what they were taught)... this would result in existing behaviors emerging again.

No, we need a large systemic change which would move away from competition, consumerism, cost efficiency and concept of profits (or economic or social status), and focus on cooperation,sustainability, critical thinking, problem solving, arriving at decisions using methods of science (and exposure to relevant general education), technical efficiency, etc. to have an effect.

 

[Transaction Declined]

Better late (threadwise) than never: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/3240.html?id=6192

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Anything is possible until you've proven it isn't.

That's not actually the way that reality works.

No one can prove beyond all logical doubt that I won't be able to fly like Superman tomorrow, but that doesn't make it possible that I'll be able to do so, in any meaningful sense of the word possible.

Also, physical science doesn't deal in impossibility proofs anyway. Empirically exhibited counterexamples are enough to prove that a relationship between observable quantities does not hold universally, but the lack of universality of a relation does not imply that that relation does not hold in more specific circumstances, especially when admitting approximations. For example, Newtonian mechanics does not describe the orbit of Mercury, but it suffices, and historically has sufficed, to describe some phenomena sufficiently accurately for practical purposes (see, e.g., the Apollo program, for which relativistic effects were smaller than other sources of error).

On the contrary, theoretical impossibility can be established only in relation to a particular scientific theory, and such impossibility can be assumed only as long as the theory relative to which it exists enjoys evidentiary support. Implicitly, such an assumption of impossibility is tested every time an observation is made that could refute the theory that implies the impossibility.

 

[rahullak]

The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M. Krauss can give one a start.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

So should I invest in tardigrade and mushroom farming?

 

[Dryson]

What about using Ion Drive to propel a vessel to faster velocities over time and then harvesting hydrogen at those increased velocities to use as a chemical thrust?

Would the thrust created become exhaust gases at the same velocity the rocket is traveling at while using the Ion Drive?

In theory, if the Ion Drive is propelling the rocket at 15,000 kph, and retro rockets are fired to reduce the forward velocity, slightly to create resistance and the thrust from the chemical conversion of hydrogen being encountered at 14,500 kph produces more thrust than the Ion engine, the forward acceleration should increase by 2,000 to 3,000 kph.

 

[Santaman]

Hmm, now I can't remember it really well but if an ion drive's exhaust it like 30,000 Km/s then that would be top speed of the ship as well, I read something about it but that was before the internet existed so.. eh I can be wrong.

 

[StarCruiser]

I would guess that you can't travel any faster than you can throw the exhaust out of the tailpipe...

There would, obviously, be a slow loosing race with return on investment as you get closer to that max exhaust velocity as well.

 

[Santaman]

^^That was my guess as well.

I do wonder if you actually can build a ion powered ship which could reach its top speed, it has to have enough fuel of course and an energy source light and strong enough and very long lasting and on top of that engines strong enough to get the whole thing moving alhough I would first bring it up to speed with a few boosters..

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The simple rocket equation for a fuelled rocket is delta V = Ve * ln(Mf/Me) where Ve = exhaust velocity, Mf = mass of craft when fuelled, and Me = mass of craft when empty. So, theoretically, you can go faster than the exhaust velocity if you have sufficient fuel. The exhaust velocity for ion thrusters is typically 30 km/s so, for example, the Mf/Me ratio to reach 100 km/s would be exp(100/30) or 27 times more propellant mass than spacecraft mass, which is ridiculously high. Ion thrusters have very small thrust, typically less than 250 mN, so it would take many years to get up to that speed. The Dawn spacecraft took 1.7 years to increase its speed by a measly 5 km/s.

ETA: IIRC the main problem with Bussard ramjet designs is the inertial drag caused by the mass of the matter being scooped up for use as propellant. I think one estimate was a maximum velocity in interstellar space of a few percent of lightspeed.

 

[think]

You know I warp or beam out all the time. back and forth between the quantum states and also in and between realities that can and can't exist --- mostly I am not aware of all this, just like everyone else that is not aware of this happening,.. too but when I catch a glimpse of the illusions that are realish illusions within the grand illusion - I might get a chill of thoughts that realize the warping of me thru these tight little specks of thoughtless ideas that have meanings and or no meanings to anything, real - unreal or other.

but yeah warping now in a beam thru here to there.

 

[Santaman]

The Dawn spacecraft took 1.7 years to increase its speed by a measly 5 km/s.

ETA: IIRC the main problem with Bussard ramjet designs is the inertial drag caused by the mass of the matter being scooped up for use as propellant. I think one estimate was a maximum velocity in interstellar space of a few percent of lightspeed.

Wished they would at least test that ramjet idea.. at the moment it seems there are just two kinds of engines, really strong ones (which guzzle fuel at an absolute alarming rate) and engines that are really fast but they have the power of someone breathing on a sheet of paper..

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

With established technologies, Orion nuclear pulse propulsion has the best combination of specific impulse (ISP, basically thrust divided by fuel flow rate) and thrust but it means exploding hundreds of nukes, which is not a good idea anywhere near the Earth even if it were not banned by various treaties.

 

[StarCruiser]

Inertial Confinement Fusion... Has been theoretically possible since the 1970's (Project Daedalus) and can, maybe, reach around 15% c.

It's not warp drive but, you can make a run from here to Alpha Centauri in about 50ish years.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Theoretically possible but has ICF yet been demonstrated as viable for sustained energy generation on Earth never mind as a means of spacecraft propulsion? As far as I'm aware, even ignition conditions have not yet been obtained unlike with magnetic confinement. There would have to be vast improvements in implentation to make it practical for the purposes of propulsion.

 

[Oddish]

Is traveling at the speed of light possible? No. It's not. Even if it was, you'd need to accelerate and decelerate, and that would take a long time even at multiple gravities.

However, there might be a workaround somewhere, something concerning wormholes, space origami, or other theoretical parlor tricks.

 

[dupersuper]

Is traveling at the speed of light possible? No. It's not. Even if it was, you'd need to accelerate and decelerate, and that would take a long time even at multiple gravities.

However, there might be a workaround somewhere, something concerning wormholes, space origami, or other theoretical parlor tricks.

Warp could be described as space origami...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Warp could be described as space origami...

spacetime origami...

I think perhaps we need a theory of spacetime as an emergent property of something deeper in order to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics and to allow us to travel the cosmos in reasonable timespans - albeit we might still be subject to the strictures of special relativity - twin paradox included. However, we don't have direct access to that deeper realm so we are currently fumbling about in the cave even if we have slipped off some of our chains.