Burn
For anyone wondering, this is the main reason why the Empire or Rebellion would easily beat the Federation, and it's also the reason why the Necrons' original form of space travel didn't make any damn sense in the Warhammer 40k universe.
Very fast interstellar space travel is a huge boon when fighting a war.
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.
While most of the interstellar travel that we see on Star Trek is done by major governments, there are a few examples of interstellar travel being undertaken by private merchants. Even as early as Star Trek Enterprise we got to see warp 2 freighters, and traffic through the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant can consist of anything from a mere Runabout to a fleet of thousands.
Furthermore, the existence of Risa lends credence to the notion that interstellar travel is commonplace and casual. It's a vacation planet, for crying out loud!
Hide / Show Replies
It is possible that most people get rides in government or military run ships
Removed the following: "This is plausible insofar it is probable (we tentatively think maybe possibly) that Faster-Than-Light Travel would be much more complex and therefore more expensive than any sub-light drive suitable for using within a star system, and that the energy expenditure required to open a jump-point or propel a ship very quickly over interstellar distances would be vastly greater."
And this: "Many find this relatively easy to swallow when applied to some form of Portal Network, but being able to walk into a seedy bar on a Crapsack World and hire a ship to take you to a planet of Crystal Spires and Togas requires prodigious application of the MS T3k Mantra.
This can happen when writers do not think things through and treat planets like towns and interstellar voyages like intercontinental flights or, at worst, like crossing an ocean in a steamship. If the Sci Fi Writers Have Any Sense Of Scale, then the scale of civilization surpasses our one planet easily. And probably mocks the Mundane Manifesto while it's at it.
It can also be done deliberately, in the [Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness very softest SF]], where all sense of realism has long since been tossed out the window."
Physics as we know it right now doesn't allow any form of FTL travel; only the narrative convenience of the trope saves it from being You Fail Physics Forever. Therefore, it's silly to say that some forms of FTL are more "plausible" or "realistic" than others. If you're already rewriting physics to let you bypass the lightspeed barrier, you can rewrite it any way you please and make it as easy or as hard as you like. —Dausuul
Edited by Dausuul Hide / Show Replies
No. Occam's razor still applies. Usable FTL requires that known physics is incomplete, as we expect it to be, but some forms of FTL are less incompatible with known physics than others.
A FTL drive you can build out of three pieces of wood and a chicken's heart would be highly implausible, because we know how such things behave very well. A drive which requires spinning a hoop of cosmic string round the ship at near-c relative speeds is much more plausible, because we haven't done experiments with anything even close to that set up, and it operating near the frontiers of our theory anyway. A portal network is actually most plausible of all, because it is possible with known physics, and sufficiently exotic materials.
Cattle die, kinsmen die. You yourself will surely die. Only word-fame dies not, for one who well achieves it.
First off, when discussing FTL, the question is not "Can something literally have a speed greater than that of light?" The question is "are there any special cases where you do not need to consider speed of light restrictions (aka loopholes)?" Wormholes are an example of a potential loophole. Another example is the Alcubierre drive. Go to [1]
for cognizant overview of ftl theories.
There is a common confusion about how the speed of light imposes restrictions upon journeys through space. Although from the perspective of wherever you left off from (e.g. Earth) it would indeed take at least a year for your ship to travel a lightyear, from your perspective, due to the effect of time dilation, the journey could be arbitrarily fast. I've modified the intro to reflect this. Please don't alter this if you're a novice to special relativity; you may think it necessarily takes at least a year from your perspective to travel a light year, but this is a mksunderstanding and not correct.