Science Interstellar Travel Science Fiction

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Speaking of "science fiction", in most cases we mean by this " space science fiction." In the sense that the future seems to us almost unthinkable without space exploration.
And if with the development of our solar system, everything looks relatively simple and clear - the methods of movement differ only in the degree of authors' spat on the laws of momentum, inertia and astrodynamics, then with interstellar flights everything is much more interesting. There are various options - from classic and in no way offending physics with sending ships on ordinary jet propulsion, loaded either with frozen carcasses or populations of people for long stays on them for generations, to quite exotic ones, like using Hell as an intermediate stop.

In this article, I tried to make an overview of the ways of delivering delicate human bodies from one star system to another, which are used by the most popular NF works, plus one of my personal favorites.

Star Wars

Hyperdrive

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Star Wars was not a work that invented hyperdrive. However, they became the classic and most famous example of this technology, so common that it is, in fact, a way to get from star A to star B, implied by default.

The principle of action comes down to the fact that a spacecraft using a specific generator or engine falls into a parallel reality, which has other laws of physics and allows the ship to either move there much faster than the speed of light, or if flying a short distance to cover light years in ordinary space.

Hyperdrive and Star Wars hyperspace, however, has its own nuance. Hyperspace and ordinary space are interconnected and affect each other. Material objects cast gravitational "shadows" into hyperspace, which should be avoided. A collision with a shadow leads to disastrous results, in the case of a ship and a inhabited world - this is a rather apocalyptic event that can split the crust of the planet. For this reason, all the ZV ships are equipped with sewn security systems that automatically and forcibly take the ship into ordinary space if it is too close to the gravitational shadow. Some disable these systems in order to fly in extreme conditions, but do not live predictably for a long time.

Star Trek

Warp engine

Of all the ways of travel described in this article, Warp is perhaps the only FTL technology that currently has a real chance of being realized. Warp can safely be called the most realistic way to move above the speed of light of all known. Let it so far and remains only in the form of formulas on paper. We are talking about the engine Alcubierre .

The principle of operation follows from the way around the Special Theory of Relativity, which postulates that nothing in space can move faster than the speed of light. The “path” is that this postulate does not extend to the space itself, which can contract and stretch from various influences, for example, the gravitational field of bodies. The warp engine compresses the space in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, moving the bubble of ordinary space along with the ship forward.

In the Star Trek universe, such engines develop speeds that are quite modest by science fiction standards - the Enterprise wanderings were limited to one sector of the galaxy near the Solar System (~ 1500 light years), took years and left a bunch of white spots and unexplored areas.

Babylon 5

Jumping gates

Babylon 5 uses a network of jumping gates leading to hyperspace for communication between the stars. In principle, this is a variation of the standard idea with a hyperdrive, but there are several differences that make this option more interesting.

First, most ships are not able to enter hyperspace on their own, with the exception of the largest ones. Therefore, the jumping gate network is highly valued in the galaxy, is considered a neutral zone and direct attacks on the gate itself are considered a violation of the rules of warfare and in general an extreme manifestation of rudeness, since they are necessary for all interstellar civilizations.

Secondly, the hyperspace itself in Babylon 5 is extremely active and independent navigation in it is considered impossible. Normal signals do not reach the ships, and the constant change in gravity inside hyperspace takes the ships themselves off course. For orientation, ships use a beam of tachyons, which is passed between beacons installed near the entry and exit points of the jumping gates in hyperspace, and in case of loss of the signal of such a beam, the ship can be considered irretrievably lost.

However, apparently this situation applies only to "young" civilizations, since all higher types, like Vorlons and Shadows, use hyperspace without the need for lighthouses. In hyperspace, there is also some kind of life of its own, which, however, most often remains rather indifferent to the ships flying past.

Third, Babylon 5 is one of the very few who at all somehow affects the economic aspect of the network of interstellar paths. The passage through the jump gate is charged to the ships passing through them, as well as from the governments to which these ships belong, for the very possibility of using the gate in the territory of the charging party. Personally, I can’t recall such details in other works at all; if there is any economy, it ends with “we bought for our starship hyperdrive”.

What is interesting is that none of the existing civilizations invented the gate technology themselves, but merely found or bought from someone else that related them to the next setting in the list.

Mass Effect

Element zero

All spaceships of the Mass Effect universe somehow use Element Zero in one way or another, which generates the indicated Mass Effect, either lowering the mass of objects around it, or increasing it. Thus, it is possible to turn the Theory of Relativity and exceed the speed of light.

Ordinary travels between planets and nearby stars are made using FTL engines, which can only reduce the mass of the ship. For interstellar long-haul flights, Mass Relays are used — huge stations built around dense cores consisting of zero element. Relays are usually tied to one or more other relays and are able to create a corridor in which the mass actually disappears, almost instantly transferring the ship to thousands of light years.

For some reason, many of these relays were initially in the off state, and the galactic community initially actively investigated where such relays could lead. This eventually led to the fact that they came across the aggressive look of arachnids, who started a ruthless war with them. Subsequently, the switched off relays were banned because of fear of digging up in the chasms of the universe, which is worse. Because of this, people, having found one of these relays near Pluto, subsequently initially earned themselves a disapproving rating in the Galaxy, as they began to explore the Relay network and turn them on right and left, which resulted in a war with one of the species, turians, who tried to stop it disgrace.

Star Gates

Star Gates

In the Stargate setting, interstellar travel is somewhat atypical. In order to be on another planet, a spacecraft ... is not needed. Moving between the stars is carried out with the help of the Stargate, rings of several meters in diameter, made of exotic material, built by an ancient, extinct civilization, and the spacecraft themselves are not used as often.

When activated, the stargates create a stable one-sided wormhole between the calling ring and the called ring, allowing you to instantly move any objects that are suitable in size to crawl into the wormhole.

The one-sidedness of the gate stems from their mode of action: the matter does not survive the passage through the wormhole, therefore the sending gate engages in the analysis of objects passing through them into subatomic particles, and the receiving gate reconstructs the material back into matter.

Each Gate has its own seven-digit number, six characters define the coordinates of the receiving Gate, and the seventh character defines the transmitting Gate. The eighth character is used to communicate with Gates that are outside the normal network of action, usually in another galaxy.

In addition to the Stargate, the usual classic ships are also used, for various reasons, for example, during massive attacks, or if there are no Stargates on the target planet. In this case, the ships use a completely classical method in the form of hyperspace, only sometimes with simply indecently high efficiency (in one case, the space cruiser of civilization Asgard was able to overcome the distance between two galaxies in a few minutes ). However, despite this, transportation with the help of the Gate remains the preferred option.

Varhammer 40k

Warp

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Yes, I agree, Varkhammer 40k is not that fantastic, and definitely not scientific, but there are spacecraft there, and they use an unusual variant of FTL movements, so that it may well be included in the list.

At the beginning of the article I mentioned methods using hell as an intermediate point. Actually, this is the case in Varhammer (I could use the much more realistic Event Horizon movie instead of Warhammer, but the “flight through hell” was already firmly attached to the Warhammer, and in fact there was no actual trip to the Horizon of Events, the title ship was experimental) - as the medium for the hypertransference is the Warp, which is quite like hell. In addition to the complex "currents," resembling a turbulent river, the creatures living there are extremely hostile to the ordinary world and, with any opportunity that has tucked under the tentacle, tend to penetrate into our universe, or at least seize the mind of an unwary person. When traveling through warp, ships protect themselves and their crews with Geller's fields, which prevent the creatures inhabiting the warp, called demons and gods, from getting on board or into the brains of passengers. The warp itself can either affect the ordinary universe or be exposed to it by the universe — many of the most powerful inhabitants of another reality have arisen and draw their strength from the projection of the collective unconscious whole species inhabiting the galaxy, others derive energy from the projections of common fears - for example, disease and decomposition.

Warp is also responsible for the presence of many types of psi-abilities, which are used in particular for navigation in the warp during flights. For this purpose, Astronomikon was installed as a reference point on Earth - a lighthouse that transmits a stable and strong signal in the warp that can be seen up to 80 thousand light years from Earth. The specifics of the device is such that in order to maintain the functionality of the device, thousands of people with psi-abilities should literally earn themselves to death by feeding Astronomicon with their psi-energy.

In addition to the presence of hostile natives, the warp can generate storms, sometimes breaking through into reality. These phenomena are extremely unpredictable, not only in the time and place of formation, but also in the consequences - some ships are simply destroyed, while others may be cast into the future. One of the most powerful warp storms caused the initial collapse of the human interstellar civilization, cutting off numerous colonies from the metropolis for many centuries.

Dune

Guild of Navigators

Relationships of the Dune universe with space travel are complex. As a result of the Butlerian Jihad, all computer equipment was destroyed and banned . Therefore, flights in space have become completely dependent on the Guild of Navigators and their huge cargo ships - highliners.

For the highline, the guild navigator and the Holtzmann generator are required. The latter uses the Holtzmann effect, which “collapses” space, bringing two distant points closer to each other and allowing one to make interstellar travels. Navigators use the drug spice, produced on Dune, to expand their minds and acquire the ability to foresee the future. This allows them to safely lead the ship through the convoluted space, avoiding collisions with various space bodies.

Constant overdose with a spice at the same time exposes their bodies to strongest mutations, so ultimately the Navigator becomes unable to live somewhere other than the atom sphere, supersaturated with spice pairs, which would be lethal to any other creature. Their psychology also undergoes deformations, which in essence makes it possible to classify Navigators rather even as a separate species.

Navigators, although they seem to be an independent apolitical company, are nevertheless almost the most important part of the cosmic civilization of the Dune universe, since they alone allow interplanetary and interstellar communications to exist, without which society would fall apart into separate isolated planets. Therefore, even the Padishah-Emperor communicates with representatives of the Guild very carefully.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The engine of infinite incredibility

Mind, how to start ... "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is one of the most buggy things I've ever read. This book hits you with its eccentricity and grotesqueness right in the brain, like a golden brick wrapped in a lemon wedge - which probably explains its popularity ... The engine of infinite incredibility works by placing the spacecraft at the same time in all possible places in the universe in all possible ways, after which returns everything as it was, but in a new place ... Something like that. In any case, I don’t think that someone will be able to describe how the engine of infinite improbability works better than Douglas Adams himself.

Avatar

Cryozamorozka and engine on antimatter.

Venture Star, the interstellar ship from the film “Avatar” by James Cameron, is perhaps the most unattractive in its technical characteristics, compared to the rest of the ships from this article. It takes him several years to reach a relatively close star system, and he is gaining just 0.7 of the speed of light. But nevertheless, he does not use any fantastic assumptions, except for such anti-matter.

As a principle of movement, the ship uses a radiation derived from the annihilation of matter with antimatter (hydrogen atoms are used) radiation that forms into the plasma with the addition of a certain amount of ordinary hydrogen atoms. This forms the brightest exhaust length of more than thirty kilometers. The ship uses these engines when it departs and brakes near Pandora. Closer to Earth, the ship is decelerated or accelerated by an additional photon sail, to which a beam of high-power laser is directed from the orbit of the Earth.

People in this process almost do not participate - during all the long years of the flight, the crew consists of only four people, and all the other passengers, including the “spare” crew members, are in a frozen state of anabiotic cryo-sleep, and wake them up only on arrival at the destination . This is one of two options for real travel from one solar system to another.

What is interesting, if you believe additional materials, in the event of a system failure of anabiosis, the team is instructed to kill all passengers by euthanasia.

Knights of Sidonia

Ship of generations

Sidonia is another version of a realistic way to get to another solar system - in the form of a ship, which is a closed ecosystem that can exist independently of external supplies and for many centuries, during which it slowly crosses interstellar void. Only distant descendants of those who originally built and launched the ship get to their destination. Sidonia is built through an asteroid, which gives it both a source of fossil elements and additional protection, in addition to a thick layer of ice on the outer shell, sometimes reaching up to five hundred meters in thickness. The internal layout of the ship is “correct”, with respect to cosmic laws - the floor is in the direction of the engines, and the internal living space of Sidonia is built in the form of a large cylinder with a central pillar and various terraces on its walls, on which most of the buildings are built. Most of the time, Sidonia flies by inertia to save fuel, and here the creators mistake is closed - gravity is still present in the residential area, despite the fact that the ship is not under acceleration. Nevertheless, maneuvers for changing the trajectory are regarded as natural disasters of varying severity, since provoke a change of the gravitational vector and the destruction of part of the buildings due to overloads. In such a configuration, it would be more logical to use the version of the ship in the form of an O'Nill cylinder — a rotating cylinder simulating gravity by centrifugal force, so that its walls become floor. That's the way Rama is from the novels of Arthur Clarke, which is also a kind of ship of generations.

Emblem of the Universe

Flat Space

In a separate note, I would like to mention anime series and a series of short stories written by Hiroyuki Morioka.
This, again, is a variation on the subject of hyperspace ... But the most interesting thing is that this option provides a plausible rationale for such a stamp of cosmoopers as " flat space ".

The main difference between the Hyperspace of the Coat of Arms of the Universe is that it is two-dimensional. Ships are able to enter it exclusively through certain static entry points, called "sord". The ships move in flat space, generating a spherical field around themselves, which prevents the third dimension from collapsing. When two ships are close to each other, their bubbles merge with each other, allowing a direct attack. Matter entering the field without a generator of a protective bubble collapses into the only possible form of existence in a two-dimensional universe - a “space-time particle”. Sord located near the stars, receive a constant fraction of stellar wind, which collapses into particles inside the sord, flowing out of it in two-dimensional space in the manner of flow. These streams give the space some kind of fluid properties that flows from sord receiving matter from ordinary space to sord, located far from stars. Ships are harder to move against this “current”, but the cousin along the “current” helps to gain speed. Sord, located in the center of the Galaxy, receive even more matter from a large number of nearby stars, so navigation in the center of the Galaxy is almost impossible, because the streams there are extremely strong. Bubbles of three-dimensional space, generated by ships, have a “spin”. When the axis of their rotation is perpendicular to the Plane of a two-dimensional universe, the ship stands still, but as soon as the axis is displaced, the bubble begins to move in the direction of rotation, as if rolling along a plane. Conventional engines in flat space are suitable only for maneuvering inside a bubble.

Sord can exist in our universe in two states - open and closed (yuanon). The open state maintains a stable passage into flat space, which looks like a spherical singularity emitting photons about a thousand kilometers in diameter. , — , , . , " " , . .

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NB If I missed some well-known or interesting way to fast flight, tell me in the comments?