Version 1.1
Compiled By: Jack a.k.a. Wildside
At: Dewi...@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca
Disclaimer: This list is for the purpose of accumulating forms of space
travel in books, games, and the media. This is not an acceptance,
nor a denial, of the idea that the forms of travel listed in this
list are possible.
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Editors Note:
I have tried to make these entries as clean as possible, but I
don't have a really good way of checking every single entry that
gets submitted. If there is an omission of a particular drive OR
if there is an error in an entry, send E-mail and I will try and
have it fixed for subsequent releases. As this list is being
compiled with the help of people on the net, you have a say in what
is put on this list by telling me what types of drives I have missed
and the source of that drive!!!
Also, when describing the books, a title is surrounded by the '_'
character (i.e. _Dragonriders of Pern_). If the drive appears in
the series, the '"' character is used. Furthermore, if the titles
of the books in the series are known, they are listed after the
series name, separated from the series with a ':'.
(i.e. "Some Series": _First Book_, _Second Book_.)
Thanks to the following people who have contributed to the list. They are
listed in alphabetical order to avoid hurt feelings.
3040...@uwovax.uwo.ca,Andrew....@prg.oxford.ac.uk,ap...@andrew.cmu.edu,
burd...@copper.ucs.indiana.edu,CAB...@vaxb.strathclyde.ac.uk,
choi...@primerd.prime.com,csh...@eeserv.ee.umanitoba.ca,
d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se,da...@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu,dzw...@rnd.gba.nyu.edu,
e...@jyu.fi,e...@cwns5.INS.CWRU.Edu,fo...@cis.ohio-state.edu,ham...@rpi.edu,
har...@cs.swarthmore.edu,henn...@plains.NoDak.edu,ho...@etl.army.mil,
h...@junior.vmars.tuwien.ac.at,ja...@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk,je...@athena.mit.edu,
jsh4...@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu,ka...@ms.uky.edu,k...@valkyrie.ecn.uoknor.edu,
komi...@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com,llethe!tvcent!and...@zoo.toronto.edu,
lta...@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU,mill...@bbn.com,
neu...@helios.physics.utoronto.ca,ph...@tekig5.pen.tek.com,pie...@apple.com,
rcb...@urc.tue.nl,S.J.L...@massey.ac.nz,s5!ma...@uunet.UU.NET,
spco...@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu,ve...@ddsw1.MCS.COM,
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Faster Than Light Drives
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Books:
Adams, Douglas. _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. The idea is that the
infinite improbability drive places you at every point in the
universe at the same time. Has really weird side effects. Uses
a cup of tea somewhere in the design process.
Adams, Douglas. _Life, The Universe, and Everything_. Almost identical except
that it uses waiters in an Italian restaurant instead of a cup of
tea.
Anderson, Poul. _The Avatar_. A system of artifacts, set up by an alien race,
establish artificial jump points in the universe.
Anthony, Piers. _Macroscope_. Uses the idea that space is actually folded.
Therefore the warp drive links two points in space that touch at the
fold and travel is seen to be instantaneous. A large gravity well
is needed for such transitions, so the ships ususally carried around
large asteroids. Also, do to the high-pressure conditions of
transport, the human tissue had to be liquefied, then vaporized before
transit, and restored after the transit had been completed.
Asimov, Isaac. "Foundation" Series. Uses same type of drive as _I, Robot_.
Asimov, Isaac. _I, Robot_. Operates by form of a controlled nuclear explosion.
The people were legally dead, while in transit, but lived through the
experience. A problem was encountered due to the Three Robotic Laws
where the interpretation of 'harm' seemed to include temporary non-
existence while 'in transit'. There was also a problem because
the drives were to complicated for humans to build, so
super brain robots did instead. Their positronic brains, of
course, froze when they discovered that the passengers would
be dead at one point (regardless of their final state!) so
a special super-brain was made that could deal with temporary
deadness. The two passengers, as i recall, had terrible
nightmares while in transit (scenes from hell, etc..) this was
the work of the super-brain, who had developed a sense of
humor in order to deal with the temporary deaths. Entering transit
from too deep within a gravity well causes really ugly side effects.
Asimov, Issac. "Robot Detective" Series. Jump drives are used, but they under
control of spacers, humans who do not live on Earth, but out in space.
The drive has the side effect of making people who use it feel sick.
Asimov, Isaac. _Nemesis_. The superluminal drive negates the effect of
inertia allowing many multiples of the speed of light. Computer
controlled and the vessel remains in real space. However, the
speed of light is treated as Ground Zero. Above the speed of light
gravity repels objects rather than attracting them.
Asimov, Isaac. _Thiotimoline To The Stars_. Uses Azimov's famous substance
thiotimoline as a drive. Uses logical inconsistancies from the
previous books (like the fact that it goes into the water before
the water hits it).
Blish, James. "Flying Cities" Series. Travel was performed using a 'spindizzy'
drive which operated on a little known law of physics. The speed
obtained is proportional to the mass (i.e. larger mass, larger speed).
Cities and planets were hooked up to this drive.
Brin, David. _Earthclan_, _Startide Rising_, _The Uplift War_. One of the
species uses a drive that suppresses reality, hence no lightspeed
barrier. Really dangerous concept though. Other species used drives
that could only be used at particular points near stars. The humans
and their uplifted children utilize a quasi-jump drive augmented with a
stasis field to slow down time for the occupants of the ship.
Chalker, Jack. "Wells of Souls" series. In this series, the universe is a
giant computer running a simulation. Therefore, if you change the
bits that represent your location, you change two. Seeing as this
can involve a hyperspace approach, it seems like Faster Than Light.
Foster, Alan Dean. "Humanx Commonwealth" Series. The 'KK Drive' uses a gravity
field which is projected in front of the ship. The ship moves, then
the field moves, etc. Takes advantage of the fact that as you
approach the speed of light, gravitational acceleration is constant.
Haldeman, Joe. _The Forever War_. A drive that used black holes was used in
this novel, but not much of the inner workings were explained.
Harrison, Harry. _Bill the Galactic Hero_. A 'Bloater Drive' is used which
acts like a rubber band. You stretch the size of the ship until it
stretches to your destination and then let go of the tension from
the starting point.
Heinlein, Robert. _Future History_. In one of the Lazarus Long stories an
inertialess drive is used to go FTL.
Heinlein, Robert A. _Number of the Beast_. Based in a 6-dimensional space,
you can instantaneously travel to where you want to go provided
you know the proper vectors. ( Ed Note. Heinlein used three time vectors
and three space vectors. )
Heinlein, Robert A. _Starman Jones_. The starship in question accelerated to
the speed of light where it jumped elsewhere. Obvious violation of
special relativity.
Heinlein, Robert A. _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_, _To Sail The Sunset_.
Drive is size of a sewing machine case and can instantaneously place
the vessel anywhere, anywhen, in any universe with a velocity up to
the speed of light. Computer controlled and uses virtually no power.
( Ed.Note Someone told me that this drive is the same as the one in
_Number of the Beast_. Any confirmations?)
Herbert, Frank. _Dune_, _Dune Messiah_. Faster than light travel was used
by a form of time travel, and therefore, the navigation required
prescience. The Navigators Guild was able to achieve this with the
mild-altering drug 'melange' that was only available on the planet
Arakis, also known as Dune. ( Ed.Note In the movie, the navigators
actually folded space to make the ship jump. )
Longyear, Barry B. _SHAWNA, Ltd._. This short story uses a device called the
SHAWNA ( Superluminal Hegelian Absolutized World Neospatial Amplifier)
which allows philosophers to sit around and to think the ship from one
place to another.
Martin, George. "WildCard" Series. Dr. Tachyon's ship, 'Baby', uses a tachyon
propulsion system where the ship and its occupants are transformed
or considered to behave like a single particle, in this case a tachyon.
A weapon is also used that follows these principles. The Takisian
names for the drive and weapon are 'ghostdrive' and 'ghostlance'. The
reason for Faster Than Light travel is the property of the emulated
particle, in this case the tachyon which can theoretically travel
faster than the speed of light.
May, Julian. "Exiles" Series. Ships pass into a place called 'the grey limbo'
in order to travel. An 'Upsilon field' is created for the ship to
enter and exit hyperspace, and if the spacial lattices of the ship
are not adjusted properly to the new surroundings after emergence, then
'the rubber band effect' sends the ship back to its original point.
The problem with this mode of transport is the pain that is caused
by the Upsilon field and usually only Metapsychics who can use a
mitigator to dull the pain can go very fast. As the pain experienced
is proportional to speed, passenger ships go nice and slow.
McCaffery, Anne. "Dragonriders of Pern" series. In this series, all of the
creatures descendant from dragons have the ability to go "between".
There is one book in which they actually travel to another planet by
this method in order to try and kill alien spores. As the dragons
go to a cold, dark void, and then out of their destination, it could
be argued that they are going through jump space at the time.
McCollum, Michael. "Antares" Series. The instantaneous transport scheme used
here is based upon the heavy gravity wells of stars. In these wells
exist folds that are half of a pair of folds. It is then possible
to travel from one fold to its partner fold. The heavier the star,
the more fold points are contained within its gravity well. The
existence of the folds themselves are actually functions of the mass of
the star and of the target star. If a star goes supernova, all fold
points leading to that star are either destroyed or severely distorted
instantaneously.
Niven, Larry. "Known Space" Series/Universe. Technology purchased from aliens
where there is a fixed of x light years / hour. This rate of transport
depends which hyperspace is entered as there are five levels ranging
from, 'I want to be there now' to 'Next month is okay too'. Weird
psychological effects on people travelling through this hyperspace,
as the hyperspace is treated as a big blind spot by the optic nerves.
While it is possible to go outside of the ship in hyperdrive, it is
quite possible that you will forget what sight is until you look back
at the ship. Therefore, while it is possible to have your eyes open
and your face towards the viewport, it is impossible to look out of the
viewport. There is also a strange disappearance that occurs if the
jump passes to close to a gravity well.
Niven, Larry and Pournelle. _The Mote In God's Eye_. Takes place in the
future of the CoDominium universe ( q.v. Pournelle, Jerry ) about
1000 years.
Niven, Larry. _One Face_. The ship travels into an 'Overspace' which has
two possible subspaces: c=0 or c=infinity. Interesting consequences
if the wrong one is entered. Apparently, this type of drive is the
ancestor of the drives used in the Known Space universe.
Niven, Larry. _One-Way Street_. In this short story, a really novel approach
is used. The crew is placed in suspended animation for a sublight
voyage to the destination, followed by a time travel backwards to the
starting date of the journey. Depending on the method used to travel
backwards, this could be considered Faster Than Light.
Pohl, Frederick. "Heechee" Series. By removing all of the mass from the ship,
the limitation about accelerating masses to luminal velocities
would disappear.
Pournelle, Jerry. "CoDominium" Series. Transportation was possible using the
drive along lines of equal nuclear-magnetic flux between stars. This
only works for certains points in space. There were a series of these
points around most stars, some within the photospheres of some of these
stars. (Ed Note: apparently one of his friends wrote a six page proof
that this wouldn't work.) Thus a ship would jump at star one and would
jump to star two. This drive is called the Alderson Drive and produces
a slight amount of discomfort after use. One theory is that the drive
send the vessel to an alternate universe where gravity wells are
inverted and thusly, the ship would slide down one gravity gradient and
glide up another gradient before instantaneously appearing in the
target solar system.
Sagan, Carl. _Contact_. The drive used in this book uses wormholes for
travel.
Scott, Melissa. _Five-Twelfths of Heaven_, _Silence in Solitude_, _The Empress
of Earth_. Alchemy is used in order to get the ship into hyperspace
where medieval symbology used in the drive can take effect.
Sheffield, Charles. _Between the Strokes of Night_. After experimenters in
sleep research discover a stable metabolic rate which is 2000 times
slower than normal for humans. Phsyicists also discover a hyperspace
called S-Space where the speed of light is 2000 times slower due to
the space itself. Therefore, people lower there metabolic rates and
go into to S-Space, travel at 0.1 times the speed of light, and get
to the next solar system in only a month instead of 100-200 years.
As well, since everything is slowed down, only supplies for a month
are necessary.
Simmons, Dan. _Hyperion_, _The Fall of Hyperion_. The 'Hawking Drive' utilizes
a quantum jump between matter transmitters which are set up by sublight
ships. Allowing for the 'time debt', it is possible to get the trans-
mitters up almost immediately. Has a strange effect where the people
on the journey feel that is has been longer than the people who sent
them actually experience. Communication is achieved by a 'fatline'.
Smith, Cordwainer. "Instrumentality of Mankind" Series: _The Colonel Came Back
From Nothing-At-All_, _The Game of Rat and Dragon_, _The Burning of
the Brain_. Uses two kinds of drives, the Space-2 and Space-3 drives.
While most of the details are left out, the Space-2 drive involves going
two dimensional. These drives are put onto 'planoforming' ships which
have defense crews which consist of teams of feline and human
'pinlighters' who ward of the energy-beast 'dragons' who live there.
After jumps using the Space-3 drive ( which was instantaneous ),
a 'Go-Captain' would consult star charts to figure out how far off
course they were. In the last story, an indication is made that a
drive could be hooked up to a mansion so that people could have a
pleasant afternoon at a cocktail party, end up at their destination
in a leisurely fashion.
Smith, E.E. "Doc". "Lensman" Series. Drive renders ship inertialess. Speeds
of greater than 100 parsecs per hour. People uncomfortable due to
total loss of inertia. Collisions with inert objects cause ship to
stop and 'tractors' pull the vessels together. Speed limit is that
of the friction of interstellar gas against the shields of the vessel
versus the thrust of the main drive ( which is reactionless ). Much
better at intergalactic space then intragalactic space due to density
changes.
Spinrad, Norman. 'Subjectivity' from _The Last Hurrah of the Gloden Horde'.
A starship crew is drugged out on Omnidrene, a new hallucinogen, and
move their ship by instantaneously concentrating together. While
technically not a drive, a drive is developed by scientists observing
what had happened.
Unknown. _Perry Rhodan_. This comic series uses a gravity well attached to
the front of the ship using a magnetic container. When going Faster
Than Light, the field is intensified until a black hole is created by
which the ship can enter hyperspace. The acceleration range is usually
between 500 and 800 km/s^2, and ship seem to fall into suns if they
are in planetary systems.
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Movies and Television:
Battlestar Galactica. The ships are able to move at superluminal velocities
by using a Maron drive. This drive creates a field around the ship
which allows for great velocities inside of the filed. A chemical
fuel, tylium, is used in order to generate the enormous power needed
to make the field work.
Dune. Unlike the book, in the movies, humans who have been genetically altered
for a higher psychic capability using the spice Melange are able to
change the physical location of an object by simply wishing it to go
somewhere else.
Explorers. In this movies, the kids dream up and create a generator that
causes an inertialess bubble to be created. The kids then build the
ship from scrap parts.
Last Starfighter. The StarDrive that is used here allows the vessel to
cover great distances in really short amounts of time. Doppler
red shift is included.
Planet of the Apes. The ship that is used in the movies seems to be capable
of faster than light travel, or sublight travel with a time warp
effect. It is used in order to get to the future planet Earth, and
the two intelligent chimpanzees use the drive to get back to the past
in order to try and stop the holocaust.
Robotech. Two types of drives are used here. The first utilizes magnetic
monopoles to push the ships at faster than light speeds. The second
is a jump drive that is called a 'SpaceFold' system. The SpaceFold
system uses a 'protoculture' reaction to fold the fabric of space
and then leaping across the resulting crease. The reaction uses spores
from the 'Flower Of Life' which are sealed in a container at a given
pressure. Cell division is arrested and the resulting heat is
transferred into electrical energy. The interesting side effect is
that machines utilizing this energy gain a semi-sentience (reflexes).
Star Trek, The Original Series. By placing a ship inside of a 'warp bubble',
that is a field where the ship can break certain laws of physics as
we know them, the ship can break the speed of light barrier. Warp
speed is Warp Factor cubed times the speed of light.
Star Trek, the Next Generation. Like the original Star Trek, but faster. Due
to technological advances, the ship can be placed in alternating warp
fields to gain a theoretical maximum of 100,000 times the speed of
light. Warp speed is figured at the Warp Factor quintupled times the
speed of light, that is to say that theoretically, Warp 10 is the
fastest speed possible.
Star Wars. (Lightspeed Drive). The ships velocity is increased where it
enters hyperspace. They are unable to jump within gravity wells.
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Games:
2300 AD. An ancestor to the drives used in Traveller and Megatraveller,
the 'stutterwarp' creates little jumps within spacetime. These jumps
are usually 100-200m quantum jumps which gives the ship the illusion
of flickering or stuttering forward. The tunneling or jumping that
is performed is repeated millions of time per second. Unfortunately,
within a gravity field greater than 1/10000th of a gee, the efficiency
of the drive drops to 0.01%. Therefore, a ship trying to jump from
Earth ( Terra ), would have to be 2.4 Astronomical Units from the Sun,
not allowing for the possibilities of planets close to the ship. This
is apparently one of the only superluminal drives based on existing
physical concept.
Battletech. Here, the Kearney-Fuchida Jump drive is used. The drive coil
rips the fabric of space open allowing the ship to travel to the
target star. Most jump points are at the zenith or nadir ( the
north and south poles of a star ) and the jump distance is limited to
approximately nine parsecs.
GURPS Space. Hyperdrives. Catapulted into a space where the speed of light
is not 3.0 x 10E5 km/sec. Space is called hyperspace. Doesn't
work in gravity wells as well as killing unprotected crew members.
GURPS Space. Jump Drives. Instantaneous transmission of the object through
great distances. Apparently can have limitations like being an
energy hog, only jumps between linked pairs of stars, and critical
failures turn your ship to antimatter.
GURPS Space. Warp Drives. By rendering the ship inertialess, the ship is able
to be propelled at speeds greater than that of light.
Renegade Legion. A tachyon drive is used where the ship is accelerated to
a speed just short of that of light, and then activating the tachyon
drive. The ship is then transferred to T-space and travels at an angle
perpendicular to the normal space. There seems to be a limit if one
month in T-space before fatal problems arise.
Spelljammer. Spelljammer Helm. Included for completeness, this drive is
magical in nature, and allows the ship in question to travel through
space. All laws suspended here.
Star Frontiers. The ship accelerates to 1/6 speed of light where an effect
that is natural in the universe causes the ship to go into a hyperspace
that lasts for a few seconds. The ship then exits at the other side
and must begin braking maneuvers.
Traveller, MegaTraveller. Jump Drives. The ship goes into another dimension
where it goes to a corresponding point that represents its position in
the normal universe. The transition is made using high energies
( achieved by fusing enormous amounts of hydrogen very fast ) and
using that energy to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe into
Jumpspace. While in Jumpspace, an internal Grid creates a containment
field that allows normal physical laws to be retained as Jumpspace
has other laws. These laws are so varied that closeness to the
protective field will result in insanity or death. Some species are
totally unable to exist, even in a protective field, with Jumpspace.
The maximum jump distance has been built into the drives and is
Jump6. Every jump takes approximately 160 hours, with the amount of
fuel used for the jump being proportional to the mass of the vessel
and the distance to be jumped. The one important concept is that a
ship should not enter Jumpspace near gravity wells. Any violation
of this usually leads to misjumps which will place the ship at a wrong
destination, damage to the ship and/or the crew, effect the time needed
for a jump, or destroy the ship totally. If a ship is not only within
a gravity well, but also very close to a gravity source, the ship will
be attracted to that source, usually emerging within 100 diameters of
the mass. Once a ship has entered jump space, the only way to abort
the jump is the destruction of the ship.
Universe. Each 'jump ship' contains a psionic navigation officer and the
jump grid which is a grid of magnetic monopoles. The navigation officer
pictures the destination and imposes this on the grid. As the grid
changes, the ship jumps. This is really bad if done in a gravity well
and the navigator stands a chance of getting psionic backlash.
Warhammer 40,000. Like other methods, this one uses a warp space. The
main difference is that the warp space used is like a fluid. Thus,
in order to go from point A to point B, you need to catch a current
and ride that current. A point of interest is that there are physical
landmarks in this version of warp space. As there are no landmarks,
psychic Navigators are used in order to locate psychic beacons that
have been set up. The problem with this is that only people from the
Navigator families that have the Navigator gene are able to do this.
In order to keep the psychic beacons activating, thousands of lives
each day must be sacrificed in order to keep them going. If this was
not complicated enough, a species called 'Warp Demons' lives in the
warp space and want to take over the normal universe.
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Gates
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Books:
Langford, David. "The Space Eater". Anomalous Physics gates. AP devices
vary fundamental constants to get their effect. Imagine E=m*c^2 as
c approaches infinity. The first AP gate was about 10 feet across; it
eventually blew up (taking half of North America) and causing ~10% of
the stars in the Galaxy to simultaneously nova. A safer version
exists, but is only 1.95 centimetres across -- they chop you into
little bits and push you through. Good book!
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Ansibles and Other Communications Devices
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Books:
Card, Orson Scott. _Ender's Game_, _Speaker For The Dead_. Used and ansible
which was able to transport communications almost instantaneously.
LeGuin, Ursula K. _The Left Hand of Darkness_, _The Dispossessed_. A faster
than light communication device called an 'ansible' was used.
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Standard Spaceflight
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Books:
Anderson, Poul. _Tau Zero_. Slower than light travel is achieved including a
time dilation factor.
Clark, Arthur C. _Imperial Earth_. Uses the 'Asymptotic Drive' which keeps
a charged quantum black hole in the drive chamber using magnetic
fields. Gas pumped into the chamber is sucked into the black hole
which in turn emits photons which excite the remaining gas. The gas
molecules fly out the drive outlet making a very efficient reaction
drive. Obsolete due to Hawking's work on black hole evaporation.
( Ed.Note I believe this depends on the size of the black hole. )
Forward, Robert. _Rocheworld_. A solar sail is used with the sun's light
being concentrated by a laser and a detachable part is used as a
brake when the destination is reached.
Heinlein, Robert A. _Time for the Stars_. Sublight travel is achieved with
time dilation being taken into effect communication is achieved by the
use of ESP.
Rackham, John. _The Proxima Project_. The ship is propelled by the
overbalancing of inertia. A massive piston moves down very slowly
and up very quickly... thousands of times per second. The result
is the ship that houses the piston begins to rise. Think of being
in a canoe. It is possible to move the canoe by leaning back very
slowly and then move forward with a big jerk. This drive, while
feasible for atmospheric travel, does not work in space due to the
fact that in order for the above to work, an appropriate frictional
surface or medium is needed. It can further be argued that most of
the generated energy in a medium would go to heating the vessel.
Sheffield, Charles. "MacAndrew" stories: _The MacAndrew Chronicles_. In
this series, a sub-light drive is used that uses quantum mechanical
vacuum energy, thus getting something from nothing. Of equal interest
is the feature used to compensate for inertia at high accelerations.
The thrusters are mounted on a huge disk of condensed matter with the
living quarters on a column behind this disk. The distance from the
living quarters to the disk is adjustable so that gravitational
attraction of the disk matches the inertial force due to acceleration.
Miscelaneous
Bussard Ramjets
Light Sails,
ORIONs,
Generation ships.
Sleeper Ships. The ship in question travels at normal velocities with all of
the people on board in suspended animation.
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Misc Facts and Trivia.
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Hyperspace. A common feature of hyperspace is that, as the mapping between
it and real space is usually quite random, a small error in hyperspace
means a big error in real space. Stories are written about ships that
got lost doing a jump.
--
Jack a.k.a. Wildside ... 2nd regeneration of a Time Lord
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"But that's not decent"
"I am a pirate, I don't do decency!" - Don Carnage
> Version 1.1
>Sheffield, Charles. _Between the Strokes of Night_. After experimenters in
> sleep research discover a stable metabolic rate which is 2000 times
> slower than normal for humans. Phsyicists also discover a hyperspace
> called S-Space where the speed of light is 2000 times slower due to
> the space itself. Therefore, people lower there metabolic rates and
> go into to S-Space, travel at 0.1 times the speed of light, and get
> to the next solar system in only a month instead of 100-200 years.
> As well, since everything is slowed down, only supplies for a month
> are necessary.
As I recall (it's been a while) S-Space (and T-Space, introduced later
in the book) is purely physiological. Because the space ship is
travelling at 0.1c and perceived time is slowed by a factor of 2000,
passengers think they're travelling at 200c. However, it's all sleight
of hand and there's no new physics involved.
It's possible for passengers & crew to move between the various spaces;
in one scene the ship's captain moves into N-Space (normal time) to effect
repairs; to the rest of the crew he's gone for 5 minutes, but he's
exhausted because to him days have passed.
The only problem is that you can't eat hot food, because it takes hours
to eat a meal. If human metabolism were really slowed to this extent,
I'd guess that this might be the least of your problems.
Steve Thomas