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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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 Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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Another factor to consider with regards to relativity in the SWU is that tech may already exist to alter the flow of time, in the form of stasis fields. If a stasis field actually freezes its subject in a single moment in time, the SWU may have technology incorporated into their drive systems to counteract the effect of time dilation and compression resulting from relativity.
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vanir
Jedi
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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That would be my contention, yes.
If the hyperdrive motivator deals with cancelling negative effects of time dilation and relativistic mass/energy requirements, then "lightspeed" in SW is in fact simply marginally close to lightspeed, normal physical travel using regular everyday physics.
Magical for that, but no alternate dimensions or anything. Just really really uber fast, with no bad effects for doing so. Matches up with the astrogation gazetter nicely. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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| vanir wrote: | That would be my contention, yes.
If the hyperdrive motivator deals with cancelling negative effects of time dilation and relativistic mass/energy requirements, then "lightspeed" in SW is in fact simply marginally close to lightspeed, normal physical travel using regular everyday physics.
Magical for that, but no alternate dimensions or anything. Just really really uber fast, with no bad effects for doing so. Matches up with the astrogation gazetter nicely. |
I think Bren called it earlier. Even going marginally close to the speed of light, it would still take you months in real time just to reach the edge of a star system. For the kind of interstellar velocities needed to match what is seen in the gazetteer, superluminal travel at extreme velocities is a must. The closest I've seen to an actual quote was in Dark Force Rising, where Mara calculated the velocity of a Victory II in hyperspace at x1 to be somewhere in the range of 127 lightyears per day, or 46,736 lightyears in a standard year. At near lightspeed velocities, a ship would only be able to travel one light year per year. The diameter of our own galaxy is estimated at 100,000 lightyears, and if the SW galaxy is anything like our own, 127 lightyears per day with a x1 Hyperdrive may actually be too slow. Limiting the speed to the speed of light means that it would take 100,000 years to cross the galaxy at "lightspeed".
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
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Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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| vanir wrote: | | If I accelerate my starship to 0.9999c I travel over 233 Lightyears of physical distance as calculated from a relative velocity vector for every year of travel... |
Let's look at an example from the movies. On Tatooine, Shmi Skywalker waves goodbye to little Annie as he flies away to Corsucant with Qui-Gon Jinn. Let's say the distance is 1000 lightyears. It's probably much farther since we know Tatooine is far from the bright spot (Coruscant) of the universe, but 1000 years works. The Naboo Royal ship travels at .9999 C. racing towards Corsucant. On board the ship, about 14 years pass during the journey. Annie grows up into a man. Finallly, they arrive on Corscant. Meanwhile, back on Tatooine his mother has been dead for 900 years. That's not how travel seems to work in the movies. Either hyperspace is travel at a faster than light speed relative to a stationary observer or hyperspace is travel at sublight speed through a dimension with vastly shorter distances. |
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Fallon Kell
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Joined: 07 Mar 2011
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Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 4:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Either hyperspace is travel at a faster than light speed relative to a stationary observer or hyperspace is travel at sublight speed through a dimension with vastly shorter distances. |
And the term hyperspace seems to suggest the latter.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | Either hyperspace is travel at a faster than light speed relative to a stationary observer or hyperspace is travel at sublight speed through a dimension with vastly shorter distances. |
And the term hyperspace seems to suggest the latter. |
I concur. Lightspeed is most likely an in-universe misnomer. Sort of like Anakin calling a lightsaber a laser sword, when lasers really have very little to do with the physics of a lightsaber.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 8:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | That's not how travel seems to work in the movies. |
Exactly. The galaxy is still there when you get there. FTL travel as it appears in the movies is simply NOT possible without some sci-fi invention such as hyperspace or warp drive (as is Star Trek).
| Bren wrote: | | Either hyperspace is travel at a faster than light speed relative to a stationary observer or hyperspace is travel at sublight speed through a dimension with vastly shorter distances. |
And even with your 2nd explanation (small ball inside a bigger one), to the stationary observer it has the same effect as the first.
No matter how you wanna slice it, hyperspace travel in Star Wars is undisputedly faster-than-light with respect to the origin and destination.
And there is no noticeable time dilation regardless of how much acceleration and deceleration there is through relativistic velocities and no matter what dimension that occurs in. All planets and ships are shown to basically in the same frame of reference.
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Bren
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| Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 9:24 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | Either hyperspace is travel at a faster than light speed relative to a stationary observer or hyperspace is travel at sublight speed through a dimension with vastly shorter distances. |
And even with your 2nd explanation (small ball inside a bigger one), to the stationary observer it has the same effect as the first. |
Oddly, I don't know whether I agree with that or not.  Which is why I had said: | Bren wrote: | | I'm not certain how, in the Star Wars universe one would go about proving which theory is the correct one... |
I am not sure how a character in-Universe could tell whether hyperspace was supralight speed travel over actual distances or sublight speed travel over drastically collapsed distances. Maybe we need a Star Wars Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawkings to figure that one out.  |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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As a variation on my previous idea, do you think it would be possible for capital ships to launch their fighters while still in hyperspace, but uses tractor beams to keep them under the protection of its hyperdrive field, so that it drags them out of hyperspace along with it when it drops out?
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | As a variation on my previous idea, do you think it would be possible for capital ships to launch their fighters while still in hyperspace, but uses tractor beams to keep them under the protection of its hyperdrive field, so that it drags them out of hyperspace along with it when it drops out? |
In Star Wars we haven't seen things work that way so far. We do see it in Babylon 5 and I like how it works there. IMO Star Wars could have had most starfigters only enter or leave hyperspace along with larger vessels. With only a rare few starfightes equipped with some sort of even larger booster ring like in AotC to enable the ship to enter and leave hyperspace alone. But I think Lucas wanted ships like the Millenium Falcon to be small so they would be like a tractor trailer rig. Han Solo is more like the truck driver in Smokey and the Bandit than he is a captain of an interstellar space vessel.  And now very small insterstallar capable ships are a central fact of the SWU. I'd probably save fighters that can accompany their mother ship into hyper for some weird alien species. And in that case I'd have them work just like in B5 or if you prefer have tractor anchors. That could be fun anyway since there would always be the possiblity of having the anchor beam shut off and the smaller vessel cast adrift lost in hyperspace. - Cue eerie Sci-Fi music. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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Fair enough. I'm leaning more towards Whill's idea that a ship needs a functioning hyperdrive to keep it in hyperspace, sort of like how an airplane doesn't just drift around in the sky if the engine breaks down. My original idea was something along the lines of a hyperspace equivalent of a blimp or zeppelin that could quite literally "float" in hyperspace. I still haven't given up on it, but I'm still not quite sure how I would apply it.
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:36 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneil - you seem to want to create a lot of new tech and tactics for Star Wars. What in-universe year are you playing in? |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | crmcneil - you seem to want to create a lot of new tech and tactics for Star Wars. What in-universe year are you playing in? |
Anywhere between ESB up until around the Hand of Thrawn duology. It depends. A lot of this stuff is purely theoretical musings, and wondering if an idea like this would be possible or plausible.
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | crmcneil - you seem to want to create a lot of new tech and tactics for Star Wars. What in-universe year are you playing in? |
Anywhere between ESB up until around the Hand of Thrawn duology. It depends. A lot of this stuff is purely theoretical musings, and wondering if an idea like this would be possible or plausible. |
Thanks. It just seems if you want to strictly use canon to justify innovations then you should match the year of the innovation with the canon not pick and choose amongst the plethora of movies, animes, novels, comics, videogames, and RPGs. I find it hard to follow which innovations are supposed to be when and similarly what is going on in much of the epherma of the EU. Often I have to just ignore your EU justifications since I can't tell if that is inappropriately anachronistic e.g. Black Fleet or Vong era actions and technology justifying an innovation in that occurs during the height of the Palpatinate Empire. I realize you are not the only one to pick and choose, but you are one of the strongest proponents of strict and comprehensive canon as a justification over and above drama, in-campaign consistency, analogy to earth history, or logic. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Thanks. It just seems if you want to strictly use canon to justify innovations then you should match the year of the innovation with the canon not pick and choose amongst the plethora of movies, animes, novels, comics, videogames, and RPGs. |
My original concept for an Alliance TIE fighter was written up before AOTC and ROTS (and lost in a hard drive crash a couple years ago). The idea had been that designers and engineers had defected from Sienar Fleet Systems in a trickle, unlike the Incom defection with the X-Wing prototypes. They then used their combined knowledge (along with the plans they smuggled out) to create what I called the A-TIE at the time, basically a beefed up TIE fighter for fleet defense, like the concept fire I posted above.
And then AOTC and ROTS came out, with canon ships that very well into the rolls that my fan-made TIE fighter was being used in. I still liked the idea of a TIE designed as a fighter for the Republic, but I needed a different back story and time period, so I moved it to the post-Dark Empire era.
| Quote: | | I find it hard to follow which innovations are supposed to be when and similarly what is going on in much of the epherma of the EU. Often I have to just ignore your EU justifications since I can't tell if that is inappropriately anachronistic e.g. Black Fleet or Vong era actions and technology justifying an innovation in that occurs during the height of the Palpatinate Empire. I realize you are not the only one to pick and choose, but you are one of the strongest proponents of strict and comprehensive canon as a justification over and above drama, in-campaign consistency, analogy to earth history, or logic. |
Fair enough. I can keep it straight enough in my own head, but then I forget that people don't know what I'm thinking. Oh well...
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