Hyperspace

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NOMAD
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by NOMAD »

so if you can't bounce back is any reliable way, what happen if you had a Jump drive failure mid way. Say the total time for a jump is 4 secs and the time line work out like so,

0-1 sec, ship enters hyperspace, everything normal

1-2 A hint of problems then drive blue screens.

3+ secs what happens then

A) the ship simply exits hyperspace between system and has to travel vie convention drive ( on reduced power) either to back the original system or to target destination. Also, if this is what happens would the Loroi and Umiak have procedures/ crew survival method to save the crew ( IE cryo or statis systems).

B)the exits i very violent and either the ship is/dones I) break ups or II) surfer heavy damages III) atomized

C) The ship simply winks out of existence( ie is destroyed on the hyperspace drive failure) or is stuck in Hyperspace until the universe ends
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CptWinters
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by CptWinters »

I don't think there is a measurable time delay between jump and arrival.

dfacto
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by dfacto »

Yeah, you are on a simply flat trajectory between stars with an instantaneous transit time. The drive can't fail mid-jump because there is no mid-jump.

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Arioch
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

I can see that I need to rewrite the FTL section, as much of the meat of it is currently in the Q&A section at the bottom of the page.

The energy required for jump is significant (proportional to the mass of the object), and the charge must be built up over several minutes. When activated, the jump field generator creates a small rupture in spacetime and propels the ship into hyperspace. After that, the ship is ballistic in hyperspace, depending on the momentum provided by its original vector (and the +hyperspace momentum attained by being thrown into hyperspae) to carry it towards the target; there is nothing more required from the jump field generator or the ship's engines.

LegioCI
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by LegioCI »

So an object that enters hyperspace exits it with the same velocity and vector that it had as it entered.

I wonder if anyone in-universe has thought of strapping low-impulse engines on asteroids, had them gradually build up to Ludicrous Speed and then make a "suicide jump" into an enemy planet? It's an RKV that you don't know is coming until it pops out of hyperspace a couple light-seconds away from splashing your industrial planet.

If an object weren't worried about personal safety, how close to a gravity well could an object get?
"But notice how the Human thinks. 'Interesting... how can I use this as a weapon?'" - Arioch

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Siber
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Siber »

If I recall the the inside writeup correctly, the entry zones are well out in the system, in the pluto area. It seems likely that deeper entry jumps are possible, but outside of the capability of the civilizations in question to properly calculate and pull off. Right now in the war I don't think killing enemy planets is really a challenge, the bigger problem is getting to anything worth killing through the several system deep deadzone they've burnt.
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Arioch
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

The more linear (realspace) momentum you have, the deeper into the destination gravity well you can emerge. The closer you get to the target mass, the more likely you'll be pulled into it (or through/past it), so there is risk involved. A short-jump into Sol could be at around Neptune distance; a deep jump could be at around Jupiter distance. You can jump shorter or deeper, but you increase the chance of missing short or long.

Space is three-dimenional, so most jump links between stars will not be in the same plane as the planets. Therefore collision with planets is not usually a problem (or possible). A jump link that happens to be in the planetary plane will be mostly unusable due to safety factors. But it would be very hard to deliberately hit a planet with a jumping object; jump exit points are not very accurate. Also, since jumps are only between nearby stars, inhabited planets are usually out of reach; in addition to the wide depopulated zone of the no-man's-land, most major population centers are well back from the border systems.

edit: One more thing that I didn't mention: inertial dampers are a prerequisite for jump drive, to prevent the ship and crew from being torn apart during the transition through the "portal" into hyperspace.

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Razor One
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Razor One »

There are presumably also easier, more reliable ways to glass a planet than throwing giant rocks around on trajectories that have a 99.999999% chance of failure.

Judging from the graphic depicted, pretty deep in. All the way into the star itself actually. The problem becomes one of accuracy. Hitting a planet (read: small target) from light years away through another dimension for which local and interstellar interference make accurate course projection a figment of one's demented imagination is unbelievably difficult. If you had the technology to pull it off reliably in any fashion you'd likely have the technology to conquer the universe using quicker, saner and safer methods.

I can see the deep-jump method being used as part of an unmanned and automated rapid-message courier... sort of like Pony Express in Space. But without the Pony. Or the man that rides on the Pony.
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LegioCI
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by LegioCI »

Right... *crosses Hyperspace-RKV off*

Back to my demented, demented drawing board.

...I need a new hobby. :twisted:
"But notice how the Human thinks. 'Interesting... how can I use this as a weapon?'" - Arioch

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

Heh.

But notice how the Human thinks. "Interesting... how can I use this as a weapon?"

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Razor One
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Razor One »

LegioCI wrote:Right... *crosses Hyperspace-RKV off*

Back to my demented, demented drawing board.
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dfacto
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by dfacto »

I'm telling ya: warp torpedoes.

A nuke isn't going to take care of those pesky ultraheavies in one shot, so just boot them into hyperspace and make your troubles disappear.

Aygar
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Aygar »

Repost from the previous forums. Here is my best guess at specifics of how hyperspace works with pictures. As far as I know it is still constant with all information provided by Arioch.

On massive wall of text coming up.

If you map our 3+1 dimensional (3 space and 1 time dimension) universe into a 2+1 dimensional membrane in a 3+1 dimensional external space where mass deforms the membrane to create a slope in external spaces 3rd dimension. For future reference the 2 dimensional membrane will be referred to as the ground brane and the external space will be referred to as the space.

Now take a 2 dimensional cross section of the space where x-axis is passes through the target and starting stars and the space's 3rd dimension is the y axis. In the cross-section the ground brane will form a curve leading from the source gravity well to the destination gravity well.

In this figure shows the approximate space time curvature of the solar system ranging from 1 au to 30 au (Earth to Neptune orbits) and neglecting the contribution of any planets.
Image

When the ftl drive in engaged, the mass within its sphere of influence is unstuck from the ground brane (the mass is no longer constrained to remain embedded in the ground brane) and proceeds on a velocity vector that is tangent to the slope of ground brane deformation. This mass is now referred to at the transiting mass. This is shown it the following figure.
Image

While in the external space the transiting mass is affected by gravitational forces as usual (there is an acceleration vector pointing from the transiting mass's position to all other masses embedded in the ground brane). This has the effect of creating a net force pulling the transiting mass back towards the the ground brane.

To re-embed itself back into the ground brane 2 conditions must be met.
  1. First the transiting mass must be coincident with the ground brane within a tolerance.
  2. Second the slope of the transiting mass's velocity vector must be within the a certain tolerance of the slope of the ground brane's deformation.
This is illustrated in the following figure.
Image

In a the event of a velocity undershoot or a velocity overshoot you are most likely to re-embed inside of a star. The following figure shows why this is (In this graph I simplified by assuming that the star has a uniform density).
Image
As you can see the gravity gradient reverses and eventually zeros out a the center of the of the star. Given that while jumping course correction is impossible. Therefor entering a stable orbit while possible is extremely unlikely. The most likely outcome is that the transiting mass will come to rest in the center of the star. At which point both re-embedding conditions will be met and the transiting mass will re-enter normal space in the center of the star.

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osmium
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by osmium »

there would be fewer questions if the old forum threads were easily accessible.

The thing I find interesting is that Arioch has sort of just said that hyperspace has like a 1 way parallel vector field "gravity" effect. That is to say gravity is (constant?) and always points down, so that you need to attain positive hyperspace velocity, not just open a portal into hyperspace. It seems like it wouldn't be super hard to get into hyperspace, but that it's probably very hard to get back out again.

As for the hyperspace drives, I sort of envisioned them like some sort of catapult spring thing. You spend a good bit of time winding the springs (putting energy into the capacitors or whatever), and then when you hit the big red button it provides significant impulse force in the hyperspace positive direction. This would result in a relatively huge acceleration obviously requiring some sort of dampener to keep people on the ship alive.

-O

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by fredgiblet »

osmium wrote:there would be fewer questions if the old forum threads were easily accessible.
Not really, almost nobody reads past the first few posts anyway. I'd bet that if you asked the next new person who shows up if they've even read the entirety of THIS forum they'd say no, and that's not nearly as tall of an order as reading all of the previous forum.

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Karst45 »

Arioch wrote:Heh.

But notice how the Human thinks. "Interesting... how can I use this as a weapon?"
true but it inherent to the situation. We think of that because were trying to find some usefulness to the human in this story. And because the setting is in an all out war were no party seem willing to make peace. the only other option is to fight (running when you are a planet is kind of hard :) )

And since weapon wise we are of no match because of the range, we try to think of alternative to ether gain range advantage (close jump) or turn our current technology into powerful weapon.

I say we are just adapting to the situation.

It wouldn't be the first time we turn out a normal thing into a weapon because of a war. the other way around is also true. Maybe we will find a creative way to use our current weapon to let say "harvest" asteroid. After all railgun are big magnet ;)

LegioCI
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by LegioCI »

Well, to quote the good Sir Lawrence of Arabia...
Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.
Humanity's history of technological development has always either been driven by the need for better weapons or driving the need for better weapons. Hell, the greatest technological advance of the twentieth century, splitting the atom, could've been developed as a fairly clean, peaceful way to make energy. What did we do? We turned it into a bomb, and then used it as a fairly clean, safe, peaceful way to make energy. When you step back and think about it, collectively we're psychopaths.

It's actually kind of scary, but the good sort of scary, the sort of scary that you're glad you're apart of and not having to fight against.
"But notice how the Human thinks. 'Interesting... how can I use this as a weapon?'" - Arioch

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Arioch
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by Arioch »

osmium wrote: The thing I find interesting is that Arioch has sort of just said that hyperspace has like a 1 way parallel vector field "gravity" effect. That is to say gravity is (constant?) and always points down, so that you need to attain positive hyperspace velocity, not just open a portal into hyperspace.
Since all the nearby mass is in realspace, and apparently none of it (except the crazy people in their starships) in hyperspace, there is always going to be net gravitational pull in the direction of -hyperspace toward realspace. But gravity will still pull the ship in realspace directions, too. The departure and destination masses will tug at the ship in the forward and rearward directions along the linear realspace jump vector, and other nearby masses may also perturb the ship's trajectory.

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icekatze
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Re: Hyperspace

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

I suppose you could use "probe golf" to try to attack someone through FTL, if you knew they were about to jump into your system, you could launch a ton of unmanned kamikaze probes into the jump corridor. Though that would probably require a level of precision that nobody has at the moment.

Hold on a second... If someone took a star into hyperspace, it could pull objects in realspace into hyperspace with it? (theoretical energy requirements aside)

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Re: Hyperspace

Post by osmium »

Arioch wrote:Since all the nearby mass is in realspace, and apparently none of it (except the crazy people in their starships) in hyperspace, there is always going to be net gravitational pull in the direction of -hyperspace toward realspace.
So what if you're in -hyperspace does gravity pull you back to realspace in that direction too?
(this to me seems to be the more "logical" setup, but it doesn't lead to the more interesting you miss the jump and you're stuck in hyperspace effect; this (gravity pulling back to realspace) means that eventually all ships in hyperspace will eventually come back in, except in the case that they somehow pass the edge of the universe before passing be enough mass to be pulled back into realspace or somehow falling into a stable oscillating equilibrium whereby they simply increase amplitude...).

-O

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