A Way to get to lightspeed?

[Jay-qu]

Welcome aboard hungry, our motto is "Science for everyone" age is irrelevant :)

 

Perhaps a new thread for the discussion of your ideas, but in the appropriate forum. Also we have had a few discussions of FTL already, which you may like to read.

 

J

[Pyrotex]

I can think of three (3) ways to go faster than light speed! :(

 

[1] Meson Drive or Meson Skis

Your ship (probably the size of a small asteroid) will need four Meson-Catalytic fusion reactors, positioned at the points of a tetrahedron around the ship. These almost spherical reactors use mesons with relativistically-extended half-lives to act as catalysts and trigger the fusion of deuterium to form helium, yielding lots of energy, and a lot more mesons. They also release an exotic massive particle (X-meson) that moves perpendicular to all three normal dimensions of space.

 

When activated, the flow of X-mesons pushes the ship "up" in this 4th dimension, causing the ship to "hover" about 10 nanometers "above" all three normal dimensions of space. The ship is no longer bound by the limits of the speed of light since it is NOT in ordinary space and cannot be observed from ordinary space. The position of the ship can only be inferred from the decay of the X-mesons into ordinary mesons when they enter ordinary space.

 

[2] The Quantum Gravitational Discontinuity (QGD) "Slingshot"

You will need a shell around your ship, a shell of mirror-like smoothness with imperfections no larger than the wavelength of red light. The shell must be shaped like a prolate ellipsoid. Inside the shell, at the two focal points, you must have terawatt-caliber microwave generators. When operating, the microwaves form an exotic interference pattern on the surface of the shell.

 

Dive the ship into a tight orbit around the Sun, coming well within Mercury's orbit. At the perigee, the path or vector of the ship must point to your destination star. At this instant, pulse the generators from 1% to 100% power output. The ship will disappear, having been slung over a 4th dimensional causeway by the Sun's gravitational flux-gradient density. Your ship will reappear in normal space when it enters the target star's gravitational field. Travel velocity is always a constant pi times pi to the pi power times the speed of light.

 

[3] Jovian Thor Hammer

This one is expensive. It requires building a base at the core of a Jupiter-class planet. Like, Jupiter. Because the density of the core is so stupendously high, the base is actually pushed "up" into a 4th dimension and supported there. Kinda like building a base at the tip of the Eiffel tower, only the tower is the core of Jupiter. Once the base is built, it is easy to build a series of "Hammers" which can extract stupendous amounts of momentum and energy from the moons of the Jupiter-class planet.

 

An approaching ship is detected from the core base, several mega-giga-watts of energy are drained from the orbital velocity of, say, Ganymede, and transferred to the ship. Like tossing a baseball. Aim is critical, because if the ship is not to be destroyed, it must be caught by another Jovian Thor Hammer base around another star. The ship's stupendous momentum is drained and pumped into the orbital velocity of one of the moons at the arrival base.

[Moontanman]

I can think of three (3) ways to go faster than light speed! :)

 

[1] Meson Drive or Meson Skis

[2] The Quantum Gravitational Discontinuity (QGD) "Slingshot"

 

[3] Jovian Thor Hammer

 

.

 

Wow, when can we expect to see these great drives in action? :(

[Pyrotex]

Wow, when can we expect to see these great drives in action? :naughty:

If we continue with the current NASA budget, increased at 5% per year to deal with inflation, and we work with perfect efficiency, then we can expect:

 

[2] The Quantum Gravitational Discontinuity (QGD) "Slingshot"

will be developed first, in about 2160 CE,

and will achieve commercial status by 2210 CE (200 years from now)

at which time a ticket to Alnilam-5 (in the Orion belt) will cost M$17.

However, the constant effective velocity makes trips further than this

prohibitive.

 

[1] Meson Drive or Meson Skis

will be developed later, in about 2350 CE (340 years from now) and the

prototype immediately goes commercial.

A ticket to Alnilam-5 will cost M$16,000.

 

[3] Jovian Thor Hammer

will be developed in about 2600 CE (590 years from now) initially as a military

system to ensure that the latest MRE's are available to our star troopers

anywhere in the Human Zone. Shipments that "vanish" account for 10% of all

journeys, until about the year 2860 (850 years from now) when the bugs are

finally ironed out and the technique is deemed safe for people. At that time,

a ticket to Alnilam-5 will cost M$1 * 10^18.

 

But then, that's inflation for you. :( :naughty: :) :naughty: :naughty:

[Karnuvap]

So All I've got to do is figure out a way to stay alive for the next couple of hundred years and then the universe is my oyster.

 

Not sure I can wait that long.

 

In the meantime, I wrote a story about FTL - it seems we just weren't pushing hard enough.

Glimpses of Infinity

 

Karnie

[arkain101]

ok here is my idea on light speed

 

 

 

Now,as we all know,there is no gravity in space,so there for [as far as I know] theres no pressure.So my possible way of getting to the speed of light is that maby,just maby,we could build somthing like a massive gun [or somthing like that] to shoot a ship forword! we could even get to FTL [faster than light] speeds. as for the fact of getting back,we first send robots to a promsing planet.they build another ''gun'' so any humans could fly back and forth!

 

 

what do you think??

 

I think that is a great start, your way of thinking that is.

 

But I ask you.. Would you prefer the world builds a super gun and find out it doesn't work.. or would you prefer that people study and test subjects to find out what is possible in theory first!

 

Expanding the creative mind is important, and thats why I said, I think you are on a great start.