RupertG
Posts: 80
Joined: Nov. 2005
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| Quote (Richardthughes @ May 19 2008,13:44) | Just a thought to add:
This is why cyberspace is better than real space. You make the rules. |
And that's why cyberspace is so much worse than real space for fiction - it's ridiculously easy to deus ex machina your way out of anything. Like the transporters and communicators on Star Trek, they seem real cool at first, but as a "Scotty, get my arse outta here" system they have to go wrong for dramatic purposes. A lot.
Incidentally, I dreamed up a space drive that doesn't need to throw any mass away, can work up to relativistic speeds and doesn't use any energy to translate to any velocity in free space. It only needs one tiny little bit of magic - something that can instantaneously reverse the directional vector of momentum (I tried picking apart relativistic and quantum momentum maths to see what breaks if you change the sign of v, but gave up. Quickly.).
You're allowed one piece of magic in all but the very hardest SF, after all.
Imagine you accelerate an object in any way you like to an appreciable velocity, and then let it coast for time T1. Flip its direction 180 degrees and let it travel for T2. If T1 equals T2 it's back where it started. Flip it again. Make T1 = T2 = very, very, very small, and the object appears to just sit there. Then start varying the mark-space ratio, and it moves in the direction of whatever direction has the larger T - and in the absence of external acceleration or gravity or whatever, it carries on moving at a velocity proportional to the ration of T1:T2.
This means you can 'charge' up your object in situ anywhere you've got enough energy, and then bugger off at willl, especially if you bung in energy in all three axes. You'll use up energy getting out of gravity wells, but assuming your instantaneous velocity is high enough that won't be a problem. About the only issue i can think of (excepting the bit of magic) is that if you do charge up to a healthy fraction of c, your mass and time dilation will become annoying to you and those around you, but what that means when your local frame becomes very small... wibble.
But it makes for some interesting ways to go through space, from hovering ominously above peasants through to visiting Alpha Centuri, and suggests some rather spectacular failure modes/weaponry applications. You know what happens when a flywheel seizes...
I read a _lot_ of SF when I was young; less so now so I've missed a lot. I was just wondering whether anyone else has used this device? (Was rather annoyed when I found Larry Niven had stolen my idea for radioactive money that goes critical if you get too rich, and he'd had the bad taste to do so ten years before I'd had it. As it was the only original SF idea I've ever had, I found that unforgivable.)
R
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Uncle Joe and Aunty Mabel
Fainted at the breakfast table
Children, let this be a warning
Never do it in the morning -- Ralph Vaughan Williams
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