Grand Unified FTL 8: Conclusion

Part of the Grand Unified FTL series.

Previously

We looked at five fictional means of faster-than-light travel: Hyperspace, Jump, Portal, Teletransport, and Warp.

More Exotic Forms of Travel

“Transwarp”

The elusive next step after Warp, “Transwarp” functions like near-instant travel between two regions of normal space. Whether Transwarp permits travel between any two regions of space or only between two connected “nodes” in a network depends on the exact method. (I.e. it’s whatever the Game Master decides it is.) It may have other limitations such as only functioning within a galaxy due to an invisible but pervasive medium through which the ship moves.¹

Like a Jump Drive, though, astrogators must plot the course to the destination carefully lest they pass through a star. Even if the ship exits normal space entirely, the “gravitational shadow” of a large star or more exotic anomaly might prematurely end the ship’s journey. Most Transwarp technology also requires a “cooldown” period like Jump Drive, whether it’s literally letting the engines cool down, waiting for warp capacitors to charge, or simply plotting the next Jump transwarp node depends on the pseudoscience required.

Transwarp ships therefore need their conventional warp drives to reach their final destination, or at least maneuever at Warp 0 once they get within a few AUs of their destination.

Time Travel

Theoretically all FTL is time travel, since it breaks the natural speed limit imposed by relativity and allows violations of normal causality. Here, though, we consider laymans’ time travel: entering a box, throwing a switch, and exiting in the past or future. Whether it’s one’s own past or future or the past of an alternate timeline is an interesting question.

“Speed” in this case makes no sense, since we’re moving through time. Nevertheless, time machines seem to impose a certain “travel time” on their passengers. This could be years per second or a constant amount for each trip, or anything in between. Generally, though, time machines move at the speed of plot.

A Grand Unified Theory?

Which leads us back to the title: can we fit all five forms of FTL travel into a single model? Maybe.

1. Hyperspace is a multidimensional, perhaps infinite dimensional space outside conventional space-time. Hyperspace travel selects a three-dimensional path through that space with a time-like fourth dimension roughly synchronized with realspace. Because it’s a path of least resistance it sometimes takes the long way around.

2. Jump drives plunge straight into hyperspace and follow a curve that allows the ship to emerge back into realspace at a distant point in time. The constant travel time as seen from realspace indicates the ship simply powers through the medium, which explains why the crew usually experiences no time at all. Misjumps are simply the ship getting knocked off its deep “curve” into some other point in realspace or an alternate space.

3. Portal travel makes use of hyperspace in an as yet unfathomable way to join two areas or volumes of space together. Travel takes no time from a subjective or objective standpoint, so it’s as if the traveler simply stepped through a door.

4. Teletransport may use other mediums, but when it uses hyperspace it resembles the other forms of travel through hyperspace, albeit as a signal rather than coherent matter.

5. Warp, according to the Martin-Pelesthon-Klapaucius Interpretation of Warp Theory, glides between realspace and hyperspace, seeming to transcend the speed of light.

   A paper by Rephaite scientist Kol-dlak Tul-pag Tezh, however, suggests that objects at Warp 1 and greater tunnel just “under” the interface between realspace and hyperspace. Since ships at those “speeds” see only the mirrored surface of their own warp bubble and sense masses only through gravitational distortions on instruments, it creates the illusion that they’re partially in realspace. When a warp bubble encounters sufficient gravitic distortions it “pops”, projecting the ship back into realspace, usually catastrophically. Voluntarily dropping the warp field has the same effect, launching the ship from hyperspace into realspace with no significant velocity or kinetic energy … just like an exit from hyperspace or a jump. From realspace, the warp bubble appears as merely a ghostly electromagnetic and gravitic distortion … just like the moment before a hyperspace or jump exit.

   Dr. Roland Martin, co-author of the MPK Interpretation, called Tezh’s paper “puerile” and “sophomoric”. Tezh responded with a criticism of no scientific value, and Martin replied by smashing a chair over Tezh’s head. After police separated the two, Klapaucius-5 admitted that both interpretations were mathematically equivalent and therefore undecidable. Olsiren Pelesthon declined to comment.

Ultimately, all five methods of travel, and all their variations and combinations, sidestep the uncomfortable reality of Einsteinian Relativity. As fictions, some sound more “sciencey” than others, but all are fictions, and the preference of one over the other should fit the larger fiction and the tastes of the writer(s).