Relativity

Like all on here I love the Honorverse, and relish reading it.
However in regard to the physics you do have to switch off your skepticism. RFC has done an amazing job of ensuring continuity and consistency, but the physics are very different to ours. The laws of thermodynamics are not anywhere like the same, as is relativity.
Imagine how boring it would be if they could only accelerate as fast and as long as we can?

Loren Pechtel wrote:Actually, I'm not sure relativity is ignored. I'm thinking it might be sidestepped, instead. Consider: We have seen a ship that can produce an acceleration far beyond what is survivable--an ordinary vessel, not a one-off. Why in the world would anyone build an engine that powerful? We think of the ship accelerating--but is it really the ship? Could it instead be the interaction of the wedge with the universe? The universe that is not moving? Now missile burns make sense. The overpowered drives exist because they're built to still produce the same acceleration even when Einstein is messing with things.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Only RFC can answer with certainty, but I think the ship is indeed accelerating. SciFi Lore says that ships that move by making space-time accelerate are also ships that, if the drive cuts out for some reason, drop back to whatever velocity they had before the drive was activated. That is, these ships' momentum and kinetic energy do not actually increase with their pseudo-velocity. In contrast, Honorverse ships do continue at their exact velocity vector when the drive cuts out, so they did acquire momentum and increased energy.

I am sorry if there are any authors that would try to use an engine that moves the rest of the universe instead of the ship. For one thing that is just a change in viewpoint rather than an actual mechanism; since the mass of the rest of universe is unbelievably huge compared to that of the ship. For another that is claiming various galaxies unbelievably distant are being moved while still maintaining the same relative position.

If I ever encountered a book claiming these things, I would get rid of it immediately and never read that author again; much as I have done in another context with Stuart Woods' Stone Barrington series.

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Actually, I'm not sure relativity is ignored. I'm thinking it might be sidestepped, instead. Consider: We have seen a ship that can produce an acceleration far beyond what is survivable--an ordinary vessel, not a one-off. Why in the world would anyone build an engine that powerful? We think of the ship accelerating--but is it really the ship? Could it instead be the interaction of the wedge with the universe? The universe that is not moving? Now missile burns make sense. The overpowered drives exist because they're built to still produce the same acceleration even when Einstein is messing with things.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Only RFC can answer with certainty, but I think the ship is indeed accelerating. SciFi Lore says that ships that move by making space-time accelerate are also ships that, if the drive cuts out for some reason, drop back to whatever velocity they had before the drive was activated. That is, these ships' momentum and kinetic energy do not actually increase with their pseudo-velocity. In contrast, Honorverse ships do continue at their exact velocity vector when the drive cuts out, so they did acquire momentum and increased energy.

I am sorry if there are any authors that would try to use an engine that moves the rest of the universe instead of the ship. For one thing that is just a change in viewpoint rather than an actual mechanism; since the mass of the rest of universe is unbelievably huge compared to that of the ship. For another that is claiming various galaxies unbelievably distant are being moved while still maintaining the same relative position.

If I ever encountered a book claiming these things, I would get rid of it immediately and never read that author again; much as I have done in another context with Stuart Woods' Stone Barrington series.

I think what Loren is proposing is similar to what happens in the Star Trek world. The nacelle's "warp" space-time, therefore has an "apparent" velocity 1000 times c.

cthia wrote:I think what Loren is proposing is similar to what happens in the Star Trek world. The nacelle's "warp" space-time, therefore has an "apparent" velocity 1000 times c.

Then I have another reason to be glad that I stopped watching after the first season of the original series.

These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

More like boldly finding exotic new women for Captain Kirk, not that there is anything wrong with that; just not sure why the Federation would fund it.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I think what Loren is proposing is similar to what happens in the Star Trek world. The nacelle's "warp" space-time, therefore has an "apparent" velocity 1000 times c.

Then I have another reason to be glad that I stopped watching after the first season of the original series.

These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

More like boldly finding exotic new women for Captain Kirk, not that there is anything wrong with that; just not sure why the Federation would fund it.

Because the mission was to seek out new life and new civilizations. New life, alien life, has alien women. The Federation wanted to put it's best foot forward without prejudice. Kirk was an equal opportunity ladies' man. The quintessential diplomat.

The original series has no equal. It truly went where no one had gone before. It tackled lots of societies' issues. Politics. Homophobia. Interracial relationships. Corrupt governments. Etc., Etc. It was a very pioneering show in many different ways.

Cancelled because it was considered too cerebral. I know that feeling.

These are the voyages of Captain James T Kirk of the starship Enterprise. His five year mission to seek out and seduce new life forms and new civilizations. To boldly cum where no man has cum before.

The series Voyager had an episode where Harry Kim contracted an alien STD. He was reprimanded for violating a star fleet regulation that requires crew to get authorization from their medical officer before initiating a romantic interlude with an alien species. I think that they called it "the Kirk rule."

How do they calculate pay?
Do they use Manticore time or proper crew time that is attempted by relativistic time dilation? I want a raise.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Only RFC can answer with certainty, but I think the ship is indeed accelerating. SciFi Lore says that ships that move by making space-time accelerate are also ships that, if the drive cuts out for some reason, drop back to whatever velocity they had before the drive was activated. That is, these ships' momentum and kinetic energy do not actually increase with their pseudo-velocity. In contrast, Honorverse ships do continue at their exact velocity vector when the drive cuts out, so they did acquire momentum and increased energy.

I am sorry if there are any authors that would try to use an engine that moves the rest of the universe instead of the ship. For one thing that is just a change in viewpoint rather than an actual mechanism; since the mass of the rest of universe is unbelievably huge compared to that of the ship. For another that is claiming various galaxies unbelievably distant are being moved while still maintaining the same relative position.

If I ever encountered a book claiming these things, I would get rid of it immediately and never read that author again; much as I have done in another context with Stuart Woods' Stone Barrington series.

That's not what I meant, though of course every time you move, the universe moved in by the same amount and opposite direction...[1]

I meant that several "drive technologies" in Sci-Fi are about space-time warp, where you don't accelerate the mass of the ship, but you make spacetime move. Starfire's drive fields are like that and were actually what I was mostly thinking of here, not Star Trek's Warp Drive, though they apply to. The fact that a Star Trek Warp Drive can go superluminal and Starfire's Drive Fields can't is a distinction without a difference.

We know spacetime can be warped, as we live inside one gravity well that is circling around another, bigger gravity well. We know spacetime can also expand faster than light, which is why the notion of "Observable Universe"[2] exists in the first place and we know there is stuff beyond it. What we don't currently know is how to make local space time do that. Alcubierre's equations require negative energy, which is also something we don't have. And besides, according to Einstein, any FTL implies time travel to the past, so we'd also need an update on Relativity.

But this wasn't about FTL, only about real-space, Reactionless Drive System (RDS).


[1][2] "Walk in circles around the room and your entire now-slice tilts crazily like a ship deck in a storm. [..] the 'present' at the edge of the Observable Universe veers back and forth by a couple of centuries every time you switch direction." - Matt O'Dowd in PBS Space Time - Do the Past and Future Exist? (last week's episode)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Actually, I'm not sure relativity is ignored. I'm thinking it might be sidestepped, instead. Consider: We have seen a ship that can produce an acceleration far beyond what is survivable--an ordinary vessel, not a one-off. Why in the world would anyone build an engine that powerful? We think of the ship accelerating--but is it really the ship? Could it instead be the interaction of the wedge with the universe? The universe that is not moving? Now missile burns make sense. The overpowered drives exist because they're built to still produce the same acceleration even when Einstein is messing with things.

Only RFC can answer with certainty, but I think the ship is indeed accelerating. SciFi Lore says that ships that move by making space-time accelerate are also ships that, if the drive cuts out for some reason, drop back to whatever velocity they had before the drive was activated. That is, these ships' momentum and kinetic energy do not actually increase with their pseudo-velocity. In contrast, Honorverse ships do continue at their exact velocity vector when the drive cuts out, so they did acquire momentum and increased energy.

No, I'm not saying the Honorverse uses a pseudo-velocity drive. Rather, I'm saying that it's drive is acting at the intersection of the wedge with normal space and thus in the reference frame of normal space rather than in the reference frame of the ship.

cthia wrote:No matter which hand you use to wave him off, at some point Newton needs to pass the baton to Einstein.* If you can find a way to legitimately sidestep that, I still won't be able to get my sister to like sci-fi. Namely because as you approach c, mass approaches infinity and the power needed to move that mass also approaches infinity.

*Star Trek claims to sidestep the limitation as well to achieve their sister-insulting thousand times c.

Star Trek has a Compendium too, sort of like HoS. Originally it had max speed capped at over 3,000 c. They sensed they needed to make more sense, so they revised it and placed a governor in the mix which limited top speed to 1000c. Sure, that makes more sense.

Know how much the author hates his Voldemort? Those facts are my sister's Voldemort, but she doesn't mind naming them.

I'm not proposing a drive that violates the infinite power at c problem. The ship's mass increases, the drive power must increase to compensate, ships are built with enough reserve drive power to do this. (Otherwise, why can a civilian ship accelerate at levels that would turn it's crew into jelly? That kind of power wouldn't be there unless it could be used somehow.) There is a limit but we never see it because the radiation shielding can't handle those velocities anyway.