certain ideas abour sf tech

[assasin]

1. artificial gravity: have you heard of a warp drive. the one that separates a ship and then propels that space. do you think that there would be the slightest chance of using the same warping tech to create artificial gravity.

2. hyperspace: lets ssay you rip a hole in spacetime the area on gthe otherside of the rip would be hyperspace. dol you like this idea. it coul be used for travel [from a few hours to planets in the galactic neibourhood to a few months to the oth side of the galaxy] and communication[which would be near instantanoeos anywher in a single galaxy.

3.planetry landing: i hate it when authors land juggernauts on planets. it would be a lot more viable to use some sort shuttel. the shuttle could user warp technology to move into and out of the gravity well.

4. gravity: i hate it when sf authors make all planets the gravity of earth but i also dont want a vari9ation of gravities. if i could write a reason that all gravity is the same i wont really mind. do you think warping tech could be viable. only problem is that it wouldnt be permanent and could require lots of fuel. another wa could be to somehow increase or decrease the mass of a planet. no idea of how to do that though.

[J-WO]

If you have the tech to create gravity using warp drives (And why the hell not? Who's to say?) then why not use it to make a planet's gravity stronger? Propelling a ship light years is gonna use up a comparable(ish) amount of energy, so the civilization you envision can't be short on juice. And as for energy source- well, planet's orbit Stars.

What I like about all your ideas is that they all work together. They may or may not have scientific credibility but that's not all that important. What is, is they all obey an internal logic. You've obviously picked up the warp drive idea and ran with it, explored the ramifications of a universe where it works. Its not just a way of getting your ships around; warp tech has drenched every level of whatever society your picturing, from shuttle landing all the way up to Planet maintenance. SF readers love that kind of forethought.

Keep up the good work and tell any science buffs were to go if they should grumble.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by assasin

3.planetry landing: i hate it when authors land juggernauts on planets. it would be a lot more viable to use some sort shuttel. the shuttle could user warp technology to move into and out of the gravity well.

But this wouldn't be a problem if artificial gravity could be used both ways. i.e. to create, local, increased gravity when required, but also create local, decreased gravity when required.

[Stephen Palmer]

I read somewhere that there's a major physics flaw at the end of Alastair Reynold's Absolution Gap, does anyone know about this?

[chrispenycate]

Whoops, posted in the wrong thread.

Reverb effects I'll be baaaack

[chrispenycate]

Warp drive, as I remember, works by moving space through space, rather than the matter it just happens to contain. Energy requirements are phenomenal, and, even if a source of energy were found that could deliver (presumably vacuum energy or similar) the efficiency of using it required would need a lot of nines after the ninety-nine percent, or the ship and all its contents would be reduced to elementary particles, not merely plasmolised. Not the sort of technology you want near a planet.

Hyperdrive generally transfers you into a universe (technically a continuum, as 'universe' contains all the matter and energy that is) where either physical constants (in particular the speed of light) are different – and it is extremely unlikely that any form of life could adjust to changes in these laws, so the interior of the ship would have to remain in, or be sent back to, its original continuum, with only the shell coexisting in the two, or where the age of the particular cosmos is different, so if you find one ten minutes old there is one to one correspondence between a volume that would fit inside the Earth's orbit, and the entire present day universe. A few minutes on ordinary drive and, when you transfer back, you're a thousand light years from where you started (we hope in the correct direction). Screening for radiation densities available in a cosmos so close to its origin could be an interesting problem, though.

If you really want to get properly arranged gravity with no continuous power, you could plate the pavements with neutronium (the matter making up neutron stars) for the low gravity planets, underfoot, for the heavy ones in canopies overhead. The means of manufacturing (mining?) and machining neutronium are left to the student.