Space travel in sci-fi: the good, the bad and the stupid

Travelling through the big black in sci-fi is sometimes done very well.. with clever , well thought through methods and scientifically explained (at least a bit) methods… but sometimes creators and authors put zero effort in or just do something totally stupid!!


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[PaulDowling]

slipstream ( i think that's what it was called) was interesting from Andromeda as it had to be navigated by an expert

[johncampbell]

I loved Babylon 5's space travel. The hyperspace system works and all ships follow the laws of physics.

[waynehullihen]

I resisted watching Discovery until last year. I binged watched all of it. In the end I decided it is totally stupid. I’m old and began watching Star Trek TOS when it was first broadcast. I love Next Gen, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. I also loved Picard season 3 and I’m liking Strange New Worlds to some extent. Let’s get back to Gene’s original vision.

[Ka.Ha.]

Overall, the spore drive was supposed to act a bit like quantum teleportation... or at least that's the closest thing to it (I think)

[wrickcollings]

How about the "Infinite Improbability Drive" (Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy). The description in the book is much better than on-screen.

[RichtorLazlo]

The battletech franchise has a lot of similarities with the expanse, there are two space engines, sub light fusion engines that do most of the leg work in systems, ftl is hard to use in gravity wells and so the kearny-fuchida drive dose the interstellar movements, kinda like hyperspace, but not really, the dropships that do the sublight travel and planetary landings dose the flip and counter burn half way to destination.

[BubbaFranks-TheSwordDragon]

Gallifreyan technology works in the same manner that Ork technology in Warhammer 40K works. It works because a Gallifreyan says it does.

[chrisschembari]

The Discovery spore drive was dreamed up by writers who were ON shrooms!

[bartlester]

Not to mention discovery can only use the Basílio net work when a human, and a rather large tardigrade, which is a microscopic creature merged together, and only a few people could do this task it’s stupidity on top of stupidity with a giant, big mountain of stupidity in front of it

[coecludd]

Great topic - Discovery sort of did The Infinite Improbability Drive from Hitchikers (as you suggested). The idea of a "wormhole" is an interesting one where two points in space can fold and touch is a really interesting one. Obviously, it was featured on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Stargate.

[ryanconrad]

didn't one of the books explain that the Tardis isn't actually a ship. Its a pocket dimension whose 4-dimensional shadow exists as what we see (in the case of the Doctor's Tardis with its broken chameleon circuit, a Police Call Box). The door is the entrance to this extra dimensional space, and can appear wherever. The Tardis 'moving' is only a 4D projection, and damage it takes due to things like crashing are more psychosomatic, than directly indicative of damage. The references to it being a ship, is essentially dumbing down the dialogue for the benefit of the speakers and audience.

[ealan]

Sorry @SciTrek, I hate to disagree with you.

However, I recall a few mentions in cannon of needing to use impulse to decelerate in Prime Star Trek, though they were few and far between.

Gotta wrap your mind around it and it does take abit, however, I think technically and do not actually believe there is actually any velocity relative to the ship involved, or any significant velocity, when it is at warp.

Remember, inside the Warp Bubble where the ship resides, space is supposed to be at a complete standstill. It is normal space. It is the space around the warp bubble that's actually moving and the bubble is surfing on the distortion created by the push / pull effect of warping. Impulse drive is not typically engaged durring warp transit, or at least it shouldn't be I think. Though I suppose you could be at impulse within the bubble pushing it forward a bit while the warping affect is active ontop of that? Or maybe it's a combination at higher speeds? I'd have to dig back into the TNG tech manual

The point is, as space has no mass and therefore initeria, there's no significant need to decelerate it. I think it really is as simple as cutting off the warp drive and you're out of warp, in which case, the bubble ceases to exist and it would spit the ship out at it's normal space velocity on Impulse drive.

[poneill]

The jump gate travel in Babylon five was a more "believable" scenario for FTL (in that uninformed people could believe FTL was possible through such engineering infrastructure)

[Brain_Pain]

You always have to suspend reality to some degree in scifi, and not going deep into details, like Dr. Who, works because of it. We ignore that every ship has artificial gravity, aliens all speak English without accent, and time distortion never happens. I do prefer it when they at least try. I think that wormhole travel, ala SG-1, and the galaxy being populated by humanoids, making us appear similar, allows us to move ahead with the story without too much analysis.

[MartinDolan]

My favourite has to be the FTL in Battlestar Galactica...
Always heart stopping when it jumped and a bunch of missiles zoomed through the space where a ship just was.
The Galactica's jump into the atmosphere of a planet looked amazing as it stared to fall with the pull of gravity, and then when it jumped out, the gusts of wind rushing to fill the void where it was.

Only thing that still bugs me is that in the pilot mini series, the Galactica had to retract the landing bay pods before spinning up the FTL, and in the rest of the series they didn't. Obviously it was a cool plot device to build tension that one time, but then the writers realised it was also a pain in the ass and would kill a lot of tension in almost any other situation...

How did it work? Who cares, but it was mostly used well with continuity logic, looked as cool as fu¢k visually (and sounded cool too), and I liked the fact that it wasn't a speed device, just a jump device. Whatever speed you were going before you jumped, you would be doing that speed at the other end. You just moved location.

[danjager]

Good video, but I have a degree in physics, so there is a bit of a misunderstanding I would like to clear up. The warp bubble that you mention about four minutes in is not actually a way to travel faster than light. In theory, once one creates anti gravity, you can produce a zone that is separated from space. You can't move that bubble through space though. You could use this to create a wormhole though. Wormholes have their own issues with radiation, but they could work if one has anti gravity.

Now, talking the TARDIS, you have an interesting affect of physics which is the bending of space as one travels close to the speed of light. If you break time to the point that you could travel through at will then you have probably broken space to the point where you can make a ship with a larger interior than exterior. Again, you need anti gravity, but at least part of it isn't stupid. My problem is that it isn't consistent internally. They don't even try.

I'm not going to defend the spore drive. It just didn't fit with the universe, was inconsistent in its implementation, and really had no physics behind it.

[mmgf]

I agree with the Spore drive (Well Discovery as a whole) been Stupid.
Andromeda; I do like the idea of travelling through Slipstream, though the premise of reducing the vessels mass; Maybe they convert the excess mass to energy, and return it back to mass when exiting the Slippoint?

[RetroTom]

While not frequently mentioned, deceleration in Star trek is done by the Impulse engines immediately after getting out of warp, similar to Stargate ships using sublight drives to slow down or stop right out of hyperspace. The scientific value could be debated but the answer is there

[colincuthbert]

wormholes are a intresting concept

stargate uses it
babylon 5 use jump gates (wormholes)

the question being is it thorectically possible

[wendelynmusic]

I love Discovery. The story brought me great joy and touched a nerve that many of the old shows only danced around. The idea of mycelium being at the core of the universe is probably taken from the recent discovery of how trees communicate chemically through my mycelium connected to their roots. So there actually is current science that's it's extrapolated from.