FTL Travel

Grist

FTL travel via star ship works but there is no known method of FTL radio, all message traffic must be sent via mail/courier ships.

Travel times are on the same lines as during the age of sail. ie it can take months to years to send a message and get a response.

Travel times are somewhat unpredictable for “reasons”. It makes it somewhat challenging to coordinate operations across systems due to communication lag and uncertain time tables.

It’s expensive and time intensive to create accurate navigational charts and therefore they are treated as state/corporate secrets.

The physics of FTL travel creates natural choke points like the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Hormuz.

Infrastructure like the Panama and Suez canals and fueling stations create other choke points. Given a little insight your can predict the likely destination of a target (Battle of the River Plate)

Pirates can chart jumps around a known choke point to provide escape routes like the islands and shallows around the Strait of Malacca where warships can’t follow; in this case it’s a lack of knowledge not a shallow draft

The frontier is along the edges of an established hyperlane route

Classic cruiser warfare is a viable tactic again

Engines

Alcubierre Drive:

  • Requires negative energy/mass; eg exotic matter

  • 1500 KG of mass equivalent energy

Critically, the study authors show the Alcubierre drive will take substantially less energy if the travelers are seated next to one another, rather than in a straight line — like a penny flying face-first, instead of a gliding frisbee.

The flatter the shape of the bubble in the direction of travel, the less energy you need, according to a breakdown of the paper shared on YouTube by Professor and Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies Sabine Hossenfelder.

There is a varient of this that doesn’t require negative energy/mass and could, in theory, have it’s energy requirements reduced to a point where the reactor design is within driving distance of what we can do today

The Krasnikov Tube:

https://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw86.html

Hyperdrive aka Quantum Tunneling:

aka a jump drive

Traveling the distances wouldn’t so much be a matter of how much time you would spend traveling but more how much energy you could apply to the drive

most models tell us that the ship could only remain in that space for only a few seconds perhaps minutes at a time

https://www.quora.com/What-are-alternatives-to-faster-than-light-space-travel

NASA/DARPA Scientists Found a Way To Create an Actual Warp Bubble (In Theory)

Fuel

The most energy dense fuel source is via matter/antimatter annihilation and we can make anti-matter on Earth (CERN) but the cost of producing measurable amounts is mind bending.

Battlestar Galactica:

Tylium is an extremely rare ore used as fuel for the Colonial Fleet once it is refined. Tylium is a metallic ore, and is very rare throughout the known universe, but essential for fueling both human and Cylon space ships, including for the purpose of FTL jumps.

In the episode “Dirty Hands”, it is shown that the raw Tylium is stored in massive silos aboard the fleet’s Refinery Ship

Star Trek:

Warp Drive “Fuel Tank”, how does it work?

It’s not about fuel usage but about what the (for Voyager irreplaceable) warp coils that generate the warp field can handle for extended periods of time. In-universe cruise speed means how fast a ship can go before damage to the drive system occurs.

As for fuel, the warp core is powered by a matter / anti-matter reaction fueled by deuterium and antideuterium, both of which are hydrogen isotopes. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, and the red bussard collectors on the warp nacelles are essentially ram scoops which collect it. So, as long as there is available from which to create the intermix, they’re sitting pretty as far as fuel goes.

The other requirement is dilithium which is used to control the matter / antimatter reaction. Except for a couple times in TOS when it actually was fuel.

I vaguely remember the TNG technical manual talking about antimatter generation on starships but it used more energy than it took and was only to be used in extreme circumstances.

You remember correctly on that part.

The Bussard collectors are an emergency system, too, according to the Technical Manual - ordinarily, deuterium is replenished by a tanker.

and if I remember right, they have a means of converting collected deuterium into anti-matter (anti-deuterium) on board, but only in limited quantities.

It converts at a 10:1 ratio, IIRC.

Star Wars:

Ships

There is a minimum size of ship that can be used for FTL travel.

There is a reasonable efficiency equivalent to the beam/length ratio surface ships are subject to and there may also be an equivalent to the bulbous bow.

Cruisers are the minimum size of warship that can conduct FTL jumps and operate independently for significant periods of time. Has the crew, food, water, fuel, navigation, medical, and ancillary capabilities required for long duration voyages. Typically travel in pairs or squadrons and have at least one supply ship in company if operating out of range of supporting bases.

Destroyers require a destroyer tender which has all of the typical support facilities plus the FTL drive to move them between systems. The destroyers mate with the tender before executing the jump, obviously a dangerous maneuver under combat conditions.

Corvettes and frigates are system defense ships (aka coastal defense) and incapable of long duration missions. Punch above their weight because of reduced fuel, crew, and stores requirements(see Italian battleships).

Merchant ships are large, at least on the scale of our current container ships, and not only carry containerized cargo they can transport smaller craft as well. You can book passage for yourself, your cargo, or your ship.

References

Videos

Will We Ever Build Warp Drives? (feat Dr. Miguel Alcubierre!)