Bridge Commander Central
Recreational Forums => Trek Discussion => Ships & Tech Talk => Topic started by: FekLeyr Targ on August 25, 2008, 03:17:24 PM
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Hi,
I found this link today at the chris jones gaming forums.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/08/15/sciwarpdrive115.xml
What do you think?
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Not in my lifetime, if ever. That's what I think.
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This idea has existed for quite some time actually. ;)
Not sure if it was before Star Trek, but at any rate, it's not the same at all like Star Trek.
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In before Alcubierre Drive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
(Nice to hear they now say they only need a Jupiter's worth of energy though, used to be a sun, and before than suns (plural). Lets hope the miniaturization trend continues)
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it says that you need a hell of a supply of energy. if I'm not wrong, in ST, that energy... doesn't it come from the matter/antimatter reaction?
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yes, it comes, and where do they get the ressourced for this reaction?
from the bussard collectors. at least in theory.
in fact, space is way too empty to collect the masses that would be needed
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My theory is they get the matter from the human waste receptacles. (Makes sense, it's got to go somewhere)
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AFAIK, the bussards aspire matter (hydrogen?). isn't the antimatter sort of produced?
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The Matter/Antimatter reaction in Star Trek is far more powerfull than what you would get in reality. Aside from that, the bussards are only used for emergencies, for example, see Voyager. ;)
And it was the Alcubierre Drive, thanks for that Senator!
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Aside from that, the bussards are only used for emergencies, for example, see Voyager. ;)
hu?
are'nt the bussards the things that collect the stardust and so one of the most important ressources for the fusion??
and when bussards are for emergency only, why are they visible on every ship and not somewhere IN the hull and deployed when needed??
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Because for them to be any use, they need to be big. And you also don't hide the warp nacelles inside the hull either. ;) Except when it comes to the Prometheus and DeltaFlyer.
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well, mleo...
your confusing me...
I just read the article on Memory Alpha (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Bussard_collector) and cant find sth that says unneccesary
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"Collection works best in regions where particle density is high like solar systems or nebulae."
In other words: practically no-where.
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in terms of space scale, yes. the universe is practically 99% vacuum
but for what I know, having that warp drive, when you run low of supplies, it's just a matter of hours to the nearest system.
so you just collect as much as you can, and you can always come back for more
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This is the kind of thing our great-grandchildren will dream of.
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This is the kind of thing our great-grandchildren will dream of.
Actually, it (Alcubierre Drive, and the Warp drive in Star Trek for some) was the thing our parents dreamed of when they were children. ;)
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Well, we know that the Greys do it, so how difficult can it be?. :mrgreen:
(http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/3749/disclosurealienux1.jpg)
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The Ramscoops collect a load of crap, hence why the ship has to go *breaks into song* To the car-wash! Yeah- Er, I mean, ship-wash. Not only that but the magnetism of the hull blah blah, sensors, yadda yadda. But even then, the Buzzards don't indicate they collect all that much, as most of space is either nothing or useless dust particles anyway. They also have a fantastic plot-resource too. If Trek was much more realistic, they'd have a Mechwarrior style "Jump-then-you're-stuffed" situation. But eh. I like the idea of "Oh crap, I screwed up the co-ordinates, now we'll never get to Wolf-359 in time, AND I'm going to lose my job!"
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The Alcubierre drive is a long shot, but is it possible to create a matter/antimatter reactor at all? I assume that the only thing stopping your grandfather's nuclear reactor from operating the warp drive in Star Trek is the energy demand, a thirst only the warp core can quench.
Remember that in space, nothing is done because it's 'cool'. If the Federation could get away with it, all its exploration would have been done with unmanned probes, which have lower energy demands, no need for expensive artificial gravity and life support, the ability to survive speeds that would kill everybody aboard a starship, and no human losses when the probe is destroyed.
In other words, there has to be some reason why the large, expensive starship, with its fancy matter/antimatter reactor, was chosen over an unmanned probe with lithium-ion batteries.
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The Alcubierre drive is a long shot, but is it possible to create a matter/antimatter reactor at all? I assume that the only thing stopping your grandfather's nuclear reactor from operating the warp drive in Star Trek is the energy demand, a thirst only the warp core can quench.
Remember that in space, nothing is done because it's 'cool'. If the Federation could get away with it, all its exploration would have been done with unmanned probes, which have lower energy demands, no need for expensive artificial gravity and life support, the ability to survive speeds that would kill everybody aboard a starship, and no human losses when the probe is destroyed.
In other words, there has to be some reason why the large, expensive starship, with its fancy matter/antimatter reactor, was chosen over an unmanned probe with lithium-ion batteries.
According to Trek, mankind has gotten alot more obsessed with itself, also, with how large the population is in even TOS, manned spacecraft was a given, I'd say. Why do we send seven astronauts to their deaths rather than build robots to build the ISS?
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Because the robots were probably incapable of either doing the job at all, or being trusted by our space agencies to do the job.
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Machines build many things, including stuff inside the shuttle. If they trust them to build parts for shuttles, they can just as easily entrust them with construction of the ISS. Cheaper, safer, and hell, remote controlled. It worked for the Mars Rover.
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In other words, there has to be some reason why the large, expensive starship, with its fancy matter/antimatter reactor, was chosen over an unmanned probe with lithium-ion batteries.
if by the 24th century, after centuries and centuries of research, you get to handle matter/antimatter reactors, fusion reactors, graviton generators, force fields, trasporters and phasers, not completely by own discovery, but by help of outside cultures... why not use them?
the most important device we need to develop might not be a FTL drive, but a replicator.
stop hunger, raise the living quality, increase the population, and start over.....
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The Alcubierre drive is a long shot, but is it possible to create a matter/antimatter reactor at all? I assume that the only thing stopping your grandfather's nuclear reactor from operating the warp drive in Star Trek is the energy demand.
If I remmeber correctly, in our time you need more power to get a fusion becuase M and AM reject each other.so your output would be less than input.
basically the same like in "Illuminati"
those fusions are described way too powerful
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Sure it's possible to create a matter/anti-matter reactor, but it will be just a rather powerfull battery. Since we need to make antimatter in the first place, which will, if you achive 100% efficiency, yield just as much energy you put in. But that doesn't even mention storage of said Antimatter, since any matter (_any_ matter) will result in the annihilation of both the matter and the antimatter (in equal parts, meaning it will go on just as long as their is either matter or antimatter). But the storage costs energy as well.
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Is the likelihood of creating a M/AM reactor any higher than creating an Alcubierre drive in our lifetime?
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a m/am reactor is technically possible, but the problem is it wont be effective due to the above mentioned problem, more input than output.
and didnt the CERN already let react M/AM? (not sure about this point)
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I don't recall nuclear fusion being equal to a M/AM reaction, but I could be wrong. Science just isn't my strong suit - language is.
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Nuclear fusion, or fission, aren't anything like M/AM. You can have a M/AM with atoms/molecules, and with protons and negatons, and electrons and positrons. But you can't do nuclear fission or fusion with electrons. ;)
Each element has a specific "strength", it's actually a curve. This strength is actually energy holding together the atom, and is in fact responsible why some atoms have a relatively "low" half-life (half-life is the time in which it takes for half of a volume of atoms to "self destruct" on their own, uranium has a relative low half-life, of 704 million years for 235 (an "isotope" of uranium, the word describes it perfectly so I won't go into everything, otherwise I'll be repeating most of my physics and chemistry lessons :P). But iron, which has the greatest strength btw, is in 3 of 7 isotopes "stable", meaning it either has no half-life or we haven't been able to measure it yet.
Now, both fission and fusion work on the fact that different elements have different strengths. In case of fission, you break up an atom by sending some other, fast moving, particle at it, say, another piece of uranium proppeled by an explosive (basis for atleast Hiroshima type nuclear bombs). So the atom breaks up, but into what? Two smaller atoms. Now these other atoms will have different strengths. And if you add everything up, you will notice that there is a discrepancy between everything. Where did that energy go? Remember, nothing gets lost, ever, maybe it is just converted into something else. In this case, radiation, either gamma, beta or alpha, mostlikely a mixture of all 3. Gamma is pure energy (in fact a high frequency em wave/particle, an actual form of light), beta radiation are electrons and alpha radiation are helium nuclei (sp). Where am I going? The act of going from an unstable to a more stable element releases energy, since less needs to be used to keep it stable. And that energy can be converted into heat which drives a steam turbine.
Anyway, fission works the same way, except it's going the other way around, we combine atoms into bigger ones, for example, deuterium (yes, they are one and the say) into helium. And again, here, from going from a more unstable to a more stable element releases energy.
You can keep combining atoms all the way up to iron, and then it will take far more energy to combine the cores than you get out of it (in fact, you won't get energy out of it). The same with coming from uranium all the way down to iron, when you get to iron, you will need more energy to break it up than you get out of it.
Now how is this diffrent from M/AM? When Matter and Antimatter collide (just touch is enough), they annihilation eachother producing gamma radiation (any M/AM reaction does this, and maybe "rest" matter or antimatter, if the mix ratio isn't 1:1). And that gamma radiation can be used to heat up water, and the steam driving a turbine.
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I am sure I read somewhere about the theory of using antimatter in the form of antihydrogen with hydrogen, and when combined would give an extremely powerful blast of energy. A minute amount would potentially create a larger detonation if uncontrolled than a typical nuclear detonation.
By the way, don't the ships in ST have main power generators and the core is auxiliary for very power intensive operations (i.e. shields, weapons, warp drive etc.)? Also, if I remember rightly, they have to replenish the storage tanks sometimes, was it deuterium and anti-matter tanks?
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*Yawn*
Just stick a couple of long magnets on your space craft, with some wire and what not, and you're done.
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First of all, you need equal parts of antimatter and matter to get energy from it, and 99% (or something like that) of the universe is matter, not antimatter.
So you need to make it, and to do that, you need at least the same amount of energy you want to get out.
And if nothing can convince you, you need infinite energy to go faster than light, and to do that you need atleast all the matter of the universe, and then equal part of antimatter as well. In other words, you never attain that. ;)
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But can we travel at the speed of light? :arms:
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Right now? no
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well... not unless you are an atom inside the LHC :D
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well... not unless you are an atom inside the LHC :D
That still doesn't quite make it to the speed of light.
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A single proton (even lighter than an atom) doesn't make it to the speed of light in the LHC. And even that feat requires massive amounts of power. Now, scale that up, and you will need such gigantic amounts of power, that you would need to perfectly convert entire star clusters into power.
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I think warp drive is possible... however the power consumption is a lot larger than what a standard Matter/Antimatter core can provide... I believe it is something of 3 times more power to get it at the speeds where time is distorted and bent. In reality, Warp drive warps everything around an object and bends space so that a destination is closer. That way the object travelling at warp is not actually moving that fast in in it's own realm, but is in ours
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I think warp drive is possible... however the power consumption is a lot larger than what a standard Matter/Antimatter core can provide... I believe it is something of 3 times more power to get it at the speeds where time is distorted and bent. In reality, Warp drive warps everything around an object and bends space so that a destination is closer. That way the object travelling at warp is not actually moving that fast in in it's own realm, but is in ours
Hmm... infinity/3 is still infinity, and matter/anti-matter doesn't produce infinite energy. ;)
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ur right about that, but infinity/3 is not still infinity, it 1/3 infinity... unlike zero, infinity does have a value, just nobody knows what it is!
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ur right about that, but infinity/3 is not still infinity, it 1/3 infinity... unlike zero, infinity does have a value, just nobody knows what it is!
Excuse me, but, LOL.
If infinity had a value, then it wouldn't be infinity, since then infinity + 1 would be more than infinity, which isn't correct, now is it?