Spacecraft approaching the speed of light or C

[DaveK]

This discussion is developing into a very interesting thing!

How's about: 1 unit of fuel to open the wormhole and then I unit per sector to maintain it?

[DaveK]

As to the reason why "normal" engines can't get us up to the speed of light, here are some prelim thoughts and calculations:

Ignoring Relativity and assuming we maintain the rapid initial acceleration (30 secs to reach 5000m/s) then to reach SoL (300 000 000m/s) would take 10 million secs = 117 days (continuous afterburner). The acceleration works out at around 170 m/s/s - so we are actually accelerating at 17G. Obviously they've sneaked intertial dampers onto out ships without telling us!!

On after burner fuel is uses at the rate of about 1 unit per second - so we would need a fuel tank about quite a bit bigger than the biggest available

If we now take relativity into account, then the situation is worse, though not until we've reached around 90% of the SoL. As speed increases so does mass. The equations describing how increasing speed affects relativistic mass are exponential. Starting with the ship's mass = 1.0, then as speed approaches the SoL, the ship's mass increases like this

Fraction of SoL ______ mass of ship

0.10 _______________ 1.05
0.50 _______________ 1.15
0.67 _______________ 1.34
0.83 _______________ 1.81
0.92 _______________ 2.5
0.98 _______________ 5.5
0.996 ______________ 12
0.999 ______________ 25
0.9999 _____________75
0.99999 ___________ 387
0.999999 __________ 574
0.9999999 ________ 1732
0.99999999 _______ 3872
0.999999999 _____ 12247
0.999999999999 _ 387298

The ship has doubled in mass by 90% SoL, increased to 25x its mass by 99.9 SoL and the numbers from there show how quickly the increase in mass increases.

Increased mass needs increased force to accelerate it (F=ma) and when the SoL is reached the mass becomes infinite - hence in normal space SoL is the speed limit.

Relativity shows that as speed increases time of the outside world slows for the pilot of the ship. This is the origin of the twins paradox (don't go there Maars or Marvin! ) So if you could get across the galaxy in a reasonable time (as opposed a third of a year) by getting close to the speed of light, for the outside (of your ship) world hundreds or thousands of years would have passed.

All of which shows why the Fulcrum Drive had to be invented (in 2178)

[Edited on 20-2-2012 by DaveK]

[Maarschalk]

Finally, the numbers do not lie...relatively speaking that is!.....:P

[Marvin]

So if you could get across the galaxy in a reasonable time (as opposed a third of a year) by getting close to the speed of light, for the outside (of your ship) world hundreds or thousands of years would have passed.

That doesn't explain how Kirk could get to the center of the galaxy in two weeks but it would've taken eighteen years for Voyager to cross the Delta.

[DaveK]

So if you could get across the galaxy in a reasonable time (as opposed a third of a year) by getting close to the speed of light, for the outside (of your ship) world hundreds or thousands of years would have passed.

That doesn't explain how Kirk could get to the center of the galaxy in two weeks but it would've taken eighteen years for Voyager to cross the Delta.

??????? Je ne comprend pas! Voyager or V'ger?

[Marvin]

Jane-somebody's ship. The one with a half-Klingon for chief engineer ... married the pilot. Took out the Queen Borg on its way back to the Alpha Quadrant.


Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek_voyager

[Edited on 2-20-2012 by Marvin]

[Maarschalk]

That was Captain Jane Way's Ship Voyager!

Also they where traveling at warp speeds when jumping and the max warp was like 9 Warp speed which is like 9 times the speed of light or faster traveling through the Space Time corridor! I think! That is why they could reach certain distances in much less time needed then just traveling at the speed of light!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive_(Star_Trek)

[Marvin]

Maars ... it was going to take Janeway over 18 years to return from the Delta Quadrant. 50,000 light years at most. It took Kirk only a couple weeks to travel 30,000 light years. Now, that's what I call relativity! P.S. It only took Kirk the same length of time (thereabouts) to reach the edge of the galaxy ... which is 20,000 light years from Sol. And, when he got there, he found a space capsule with a message from a much older ship!

-- courtesy of the Trekkie Geek Patrol

[Edited on 2-20-2012 by Marvin]

[Maarschalk]

Yeh, in the link that I posted it explains the inconsistencies and how the formula for warp drive speeds changed and was different between the series!.....

[DaveK]

That was Captain Jane Way's Ship Voyager!

Also they where traveling at warp speeds when jumping and the max warp was like 9 Warp speed which is like 9 times the speed of light or faster traveling through the Space Time corridor! I think! That is why they could reach certain distances in much less time needed then just traveling at the speed of light!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive_(Star_Trek)

Ahhhh - they had a jump drive then!

Quick bit of research: The warp factor is a cube relationship, so

warp 1 = speed of light (1x1x1)
warp 2 = 8 x SoL (2x2x2)
warp 3 = 27 x SoL (3x3x3)
warp 4 = 64 x SoL (4x4x4)
....
warp 10 was the theoretical limit = (10x10x10) = 1000 SoL

but they were travelling through a sort of hyperspace so all the mass increase / time dilation didn't happen!

However, in TNG, it changed a bit:

"According to the Star Trek episode writer's guide for The Original Series, warp factors are converted to multiples of c with the cubic function v = w3c, where w is the warp factor, v is the velocity, and c is the speed of light. Accordingly, "warp 1" is equivalent to the speed of light, "warp 2" is 8 times the speed of light, "warp 3" is 27 times the speed of light, etc.

Michael Okuda's new warp scale.

For Star Trek: The Next Generation and the subsequent series, Star Trek artist Michael Okuda devised a formula based on the original one but with important differences. For warp factors 1 through 9, v = w10 / 3c. In the half-open interval from warp 9 to warp 10, the exponent of w increases toward infinity. Thus, in the Okuda scale, warp velocities approach warp 10 asymptotically. There is no exact formula for this interval because the quoted velocities are based on a hand-drawn curve; what can be said is that at velocities greater than warp 9, the form of the warp function changes because of an increase in the exponent of the warp factor w. Due to the resultant increase in the derivative, even minor changes in the warp factor eventually correspond to a greater than exponential change in velocity. In the episode "Threshold", Tom Paris breaks the warp 10 threshold.

Exact velocities were only given in the Voyager episode "The 37's" where Tom Paris describes Voyager's velocity at warp factor 9.9 (under the new warp table formula) as being about 4 billion miles per second, which would be about 21472.775008903 times the speed of light (although Voyager cannot maintain this velocity for very long). Voyager was about 70 000 light-years away from home. Simple calculation reveals that it would take "just" about 3.259941948 years to travel such distance."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive ... velocities



[Edited on 20-2-2012 by DaveK]

[Marvin]

It's so nice to see so many Trekkies playing EM.