Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Orlanth wrote:
Fixed jump point or gate based science fiction has its merits. As you have routes between jump points that do not deviate. This means you can have de facto terrirtorial expansion in space, and deffacto fortification in space. Wormholes beome choke points and orbiting fortress space stations guard them, either that or fleets.
You can have unstable wormholes only smaller smuggler ships can traverse to open things out, you can have newly discovered wormholes that change the map and direction of travel. You can have transport routes system to system that pirates can picket. You can have devices that close wormholes for good.
Most of all you can have a starmap that makes sense in real terms mad up of systems with linked lines between them. Its unambiguous and not scale dependent, you can avoid movement scale in sapce altigether with this system, but you can also do so with jump and hyperdrive travel.

You can add a lot of room for politics and map based strategy to your SF with this type of system. Warp or hyperdrive movement allows far more freedom but when you consider the vastness of space it means that combat is only realistic near planetary orbits.

The plot isn't directly about space combat, politics or trade anyway. It's more about "What if the wrong coordinates were entered/the FTL drive failed, causing the ship to exit the wormhole in a planet's gravity well and then crashing down with all its cargo (mainly weapons, vehicles, industrial machinery, scientific gear, some prototypes and supplies) leaving only one/some survivor/s stranded in his/their escape pod on a planet where everything is trying to kill him/them".

This is why a ship generating wormholes would be more interesting for my setting (and it somewhat seems more convenient than hyperspace/subspace/portals/warp to me).

You may ask "So why do you bother with the background?"
I like well-defined settings.

 Orlanth wrote:
Warp or hyperdrive movement allows far more freedom

Actually warp and hyperdrive mean you would never have space combat. If you can jump just outside a planet with your whole fleet from across the galaxy, you would only fight to defend a few key locations. Then, it would be with orbiting defenses.

In order to have space battles, you have to have a FTL system that allows them to occur. This is a primary problem with many sci fi settings, combat just wouldn't occur.

 LethalShade wrote:
exit the wormhole in a planet's gravity well and then crashing down with all its cargo

Hold up, are you talking about in space or actually in the planets atmosphere? If the latter, then the ship gets broken apart by gravity as it exits the wormhole, literally snapped like a twig. From 0 gravity to gravity.

Otherwise I assume you have ships that can't enter a planets atmosphere, which means they would have safeguards against such situations. This would mean someone sabotaged their safeguards to cause them to crash.

 juraigamer wrote:

 LethalShade wrote:
exit the wormhole in a planet's gravity well and then crashing down with all its cargo

Hold up, are you talking about in space or actually in the planets atmosphere? If the latter, then the ship gets broken apart by gravity as it exits the wormhole, literally snapped like a twig. From 0 gravity to gravity.

Otherwise I assume you have ships that can't enter a planets atmosphere, which means they would have safeguards against such situations. This would mean someone sabotaged their safeguards to cause them to crash.

Perhaps it's feasible to write this sort of story.... Here's an idea, it would play into other users' ideas.


I think it'd be plausible to have a ship exit a wormhole, but too close to a planet's gravity if he were to have some time lapse... As in, during "hyperspace" travel, certain systems within the ship are inoperative, and there is a lag between exiting and their being fired back up.... thus, a ship could shoot out of a hole, and its momentum carry it too far into a planet's gravity well before it's systems can catch up, thus crashing the ship.

This could also lead to plot points wherein pirates are known to "camp" on known exit points and strike ships while they are "defenseless" from exiting the wormholes.

 juraigamer wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Warp or hyperdrive movement allows far more freedom

Actually warp and hyperdrive mean you would never have space combat. If you can jump just outside a planet with your whole fleet from across the galaxy, you would only fight to defend a few key locations. Then, it would be with orbiting defenses.

In order to have space battles, you have to have a FTL system that allows them to occur. This is a primary problem with many sci fi settings, combat just wouldn't occur.

 LethalShade wrote:
exit the wormhole in a planet's gravity well and then crashing down with all its cargo

Hold up, are you talking about in space or actually in the planets atmosphere? If the latter, then the ship gets broken apart by gravity as it exits the wormhole, literally snapped like a twig. From 0 gravity to gravity.

Otherwise I assume you have ships that can't enter a planets atmosphere, which means they would have safeguards against such situations. This would mean someone sabotaged their safeguards to cause them to crash.

Not in the atmosphere.

Either a big human mistake (think Chernobyl), insurgent crew members trying to seize the ship (crashing it in the process), a software error...


Ensis Ferrae :

Wormholes aren't fixed points, ships generate their own. And well, there isn't pirates. FTL-able ships are way too rare and expensive (It was discovered less than 50 years ago).

 LethalShade wrote:

Wormholes aren't fixed points, ships generate their own. And well, there isn't pirates. FTL-able ships are way too rare and expensive (It was discovered less than 50 years ago).

As I said, other users pointed out a possibility of "gates" or other stationary things.... Regardless, you could toy around with "delays" from re-entry from a jump as one possible reason for a ship to "mistakenly" enter an atmosphere and crash.

Has anyone seen Event Horizon? Because that had a wormhole generator, look how good that turned out to be.

Maybe you could combine the ship generated wormhole with an EmDrive (emd).

The ship pokes a relatively small hole in space, and then kicks on the emd. The emd forces light to bend around the ship in all directions. This would create a bubble they could use to force the wormhole wider and use that force of the wormhole to help propel the ship through to the other end.

But, as you said, some human error causes the ship to lose the emd bubble and are forced out of the wormhole too close to a planet.

Mind you, I am playing fast and loose with science and not quite tested ideas.

 LethalShade wrote:

The plot isn't directly about space combat, politics or trade anyway. It's more about "What if the wrong coordinates were entered/the FTL drive failed, causing the ship to exit the wormhole in a planet's gravity well and then crashing down with all its cargo (mainly weapons, vehicles, industrial machinery, scientific gear, some prototypes and supplies) leaving only one/some survivor/s stranded in his/their escape pod on a planet where everything is trying to kill him/them".
.

The side effects of FTL are up to you. Wrong coordinates in a wormhole jump might mean annihilation, or it might mean the jump fails and you remain where you are. The amount of energy needs to jump is up to you, there is no fixed amount. Also there might not be any coordinates to set, just turning the FTL drive on at the right place could be enough to take you through a wormhole.

A wormhole might have a diameter which limits size of ship passing, with different consequences for a ship too large again from damage to destruction to simply not jumping. This diameter might max and wane in a cycle, so a given wormhole might only be traversible at certain times meaning that you will need a space 'tidal chart' to navigate wormholes properly.

A wormhole might be filled with gamma radiation and require a heavily shielded ship, or might not and a tethered hero in a space suit could ride a vessel unnoticed.

A wormhole might accept whole fleet, or one ship at a time. So fleets coming through wormholes might be caught and slaughtered piecemeal, or might all turn up at once and hot drop on the opponent.

Ships passing may or may not feel passage of time, and may or may not see through the exit portal and be aware of anything on the other side.

Wormholes might be traversed by accident by ships without drives, or they might requires drives to work, or drives attuned to the 'frequency' of the wormhole so that you will need a key for your FTL drive to work with a specific wormhole..

Wormholes might be easily detectable, or invisible and secret and thus classified, or both.

Wormholes might appear in low orbit, or only at the distant edges of solar systems, or at legrange points.

Wormholes might be a standard feature of all legrange points, with traversible wormholes only found at the legrange points of large gas giants to their local sun. Legrange point size might also be proportional to range, so the legrange points of a binary star system might have long range and be useful as transport hubs.

Many wormholes might deliver the traveller to coordinates within a system.

Wormholes might require a construction of a gate ring to utilise. This might be required at both interstices in which gates may only be created after the first pioneering sublight travel to the system to be connected. If so only ancient civilisations able to afford long waits might make gates. The gates will be precious and havily armoured, they may or may not be invulnerable. They may or may not be ancient and mysterious.

Wormholes might have a set destination,or might take you anywhere. hey might require attunement and construction. So a faction might take a wormhole and attune it to give it a desired direction.connecting to any unconnected wormhole at the destination coordinates. If they are legrange based you could find coordinates for other star systems by seeing their planets via conventional telescopes and working out coordinates to use. This will require advanced ranging technologies. The coordinates to attune the wormhole might need to be spot on accurate, or might connect to the nearest available wormhole to that point of spacetime. Wormholes might connect to only one, or any number of destinations.

Wormholes might be one way only, and you might need two aligned sets of wormholes in a system for a two way journey flow. This might not always be possible and wormholes might link in a circuit sometimes by which you can make a single jump from planet A to planet B, but the trip back might involve going through several planetary systems.

Traversible wormholes might exist alongside a separate method of FTL, like warp drive. Some civilisations might not have both technologies.

Wormholes are what you want them to be, there is no set physics to bade it on. Your choices will have wide ranging effects on the societies that use them.

 juraigamer wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Warp or hyperdrive movement allows far more freedom

Actually warp and hyperdrive mean you would never have space combat. If you can jump just outside a planet with your whole fleet from across the galaxy, you would only fight to defend a few key locations. Then, it would be with orbiting defenses.

Is this so? Warp and hyperdrive might be detectable from a long way away, with time to gather local assets.

Warp travel might be disengaged close to gravity wells making the closing stags of an approach much slower. This is in fact a common function of FTL in many envisionings.

You could be right and defence against hostile vessels is left to massive rings of orbital defences. Space battles might always be sieges.

Things could work exactly as you envisage, in which case concealment of assets may be key, and wars are likely either conducted by token combat or are utterly holocaustal.

Lots of options.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
There are various energy drives in early stages even today which may become powerful enough to move large ships. Many of these use little to no fuel (I saw one in the news this week which uses 100 times less fuel than a conventional rocket to do the same trip).

No. Having thrust without reaction mass violates conservation of momentum. You can do better than current chemical-fuel rockets, but your ship is still going to be a giant tank of fuel with some interesting stuff bolted on. And you're still going to be severely limited in how much mass you can afford to carry.

(Now, if you want to have "energy drives" or whatever, that's fine. But you're no longer dealing with realistic scifi.)

Armour also would depend on what exactly you are shielding against; laser weapon shielding may well be highly heat conducting wires embedded in the hull to dissipate heat and linked with radiator fins.

No. Weapon lasers are just going to vaporize whatever they hit, before it can conduct any heat away.

Particulate weapon shielding may well be laminate layers of composites which fail in a controlled way to dissipate kinetic energy (and which while heavier than no armour are still reasonably light).

I think you're underestimating the energy of any realistic kinetic weapon. And kinetic weapons are probably the least-likely threat you'll be facing since scoring a direct hit in space is so incredibly difficult. Any armor against kinetic impacts will be designed to stop random debris, not weapons.

You may even get charged fields which deflect beams and projectiles before they reach the ship.

Probably not. Energy requirements for that kind of thing are just too high.

Stealth materials, drive shields and so on will all make a ship more difficult to spot.

There is no stealth in space. You're hotter than the background of space, so you can be spotted. And if you aren't hotter than the background of space you're dead.

Active EW will make a shio harder to spot and hit.

No, it will make is considerably easier to spot and hit. Active EW means broadcasting a giant "I'M HERE" sign. You might be able to obscure your precise location from active sensors, but your enemy is going to know exactly where to point their telescope and pin you down.

Even at low level tech, one side having a perceived or real technological, positional or other advantage could still lead to war.

Sure, but then you have to ask why the other side doesn't simply surrender once the advantage is demonstrated. You need a situation where each side believes that they have the advantage, and the "no stealth in space" problem makes that pretty difficult.

 LethalShade wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
How does a corporation have a monopoly on this wormhole drive? Is it a utopian society (you mentioned lack of insurgents) and everyone is content (goverments and individuals) to have one company have the secret tech needed to travel the galaxy? The most powerful nation on the planet can't keep the president's indiscretions a secret (billy c), but one company managed to design test and manufacture ftl drives without anyone being able to compete?

Utopian society ? Hahahahaha.
No.

There is one "unified" authoritarian government for the whole Human Ecumene (Solar System + Five colonies, almost 18 billion humans), firmly interlaced with Lux Conglomerate (the corporation).
Not a particularly cruel one, but not kind either. Insurgents are into hiding.

Basically, Lux Conglomerate controls the whole production chain, from mining to manufacturing and they are the only ones to produce FTL drives (They discovered it after all), space elevators, mining probes and spaceships (but they're not the only ones to use them).

I'm less interested in the physics and more the humanitarian side of things. As i said, how exactly are they keeping exclusive control of this world-shattering technology? Why haven't other corporations stolen/copied this technology? Why is the(a?) government allowing a private corporation this much power? Who is enforcing the patents? A utopian society is the only answer i can come up with.

 Torga_DW wrote:

 LethalShade wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
How does a corporation have a monopoly on this wormhole drive? Is it a utopian society (you mentioned lack of insurgents) and everyone is content (goverments and individuals) to have one company have the secret tech needed to travel the galaxy? The most powerful nation on the planet can't keep the president's indiscretions a secret (billy c), but one company managed to design test and manufacture ftl drives without anyone being able to compete?

Utopian society ? Hahahahaha.
No.

There is one "unified" authoritarian government for the whole Human Ecumene (Solar System + Five colonies, almost 18 billion humans), firmly interlaced with Lux Conglomerate (the corporation).
Not a particularly cruel one, but not kind either. Insurgents are into hiding.

Basically, Lux Conglomerate controls the whole production chain, from mining to manufacturing and they are the only ones to produce FTL drives (They discovered it after all), space elevators, mining probes and spaceships (but they're not the only ones to use them).

I'm less interested in the physics and more the humanitarian side of things. As i said, how exactly are they keeping exclusive control of this world-shattering technology? Why haven't other corporations stolen/copied this technology? Why is the(a?) government allowing a private corporation this much power? Who is enforcing the patents? A utopian society is the only answer i can come up with.

Utopian or dystopian. Look at Alien's Weyland-Yutani. Ever heard of another company in the movies ? Nope.

They allowed their government (Earth wasn't unified yet) a cheap access to Earth orbit, created the drones and infrastructures that solved a huge ore crisis and then discovered a technology that mankind could only dream of, allowing them to spread through the galaxy (albeit at a slow pace, colonization was started some years ago). No wonder they are powerful.
This, plus they build all the government spaceships for them, and are the only ones to have mining operations on human colonies (mainly Gliese 832 c, Gliese 667 Cc and Kapteyn b).

Sure they have competition on other fields, mostly research and industry. But they are the only fish on the aerospace market, for now.

Their FTL drive would be difficult to steal. Competitors would need the actual device or the appropriate infrastructures to build it. As humanity only possesses a handful ships, and there's no backup FTL drive stored somewhere (they are built with the ship). And the government will not let that happen either. They completely rely on Lux's cargoes to provide supplies to the colonies.
Not impossible, though. Maybe some company will manage to build its own in the future.

Weyland-yutani worked by not thinking about it. They were a big corporation, to be sure, but the whole universe wasn't explored so much as to put them in their place. There may have been other corporations, it just wasn't talked about.

Meanwhile, apple can't create something as groundbreaking as the iphone without android cropping up and samsung getting sued for outright 'copying' them. Bill clinton *DID NOT* have sexual relations with that woman. This is where my question comes in, how exactly does a company create a wormhole drive and implement it without any opposition? Not saying it can't be done, but a good answer to that question goes miles towards the believability of the universe in question.

I'm not very familiar with economics and politics (Still a student), so I might need help on this one if a clever explanation is required.

But I would probably take the infrastructures they own in consideration, as they are the only private company to own shipyards.

I think its less economics and more politics/socialogy. If you can avoid talking about it then a clever explanation may not be required. But think about the 'start' of building spaceships in today's society: they have to be designed and they have to be built. This requires infrastructure, and as we stand today it can't happen without someone somewhere noticing. Such things would attract the attention of governments and rival corporations, to say nothing of the general public. Thats the million dollar question in my book, how exactly does one company go about establishing a monopoly on such a thing? Again, not saying it can't be done, but in my opinion it's a question that needs answering.

edit: and you mentioned civilian and military ships..... which military? Militaries being owned by governments, which one/s would have the technology and economic power needed to build them and why?

 Peregrine wrote:
No. Having thrust without reaction mass violates conservation of momentum. You can do better than current chemical-fuel rockets, but your ship is still going to be a giant tank of fuel with some interesting stuff bolted on. And you're still going to be severely limited in how much mass you can afford to carry.

(Now, if you want to have "energy drives" or whatever, that's fine. But you're no longer dealing with realistic scifi.)

One can utilise such things as photons or ions which can be supplied from extremely small quantities of fuel; I clarified the point in a subsequent post where I meant "none in comparison to chemical rockets".

No. Weapon lasers are just going to vaporize whatever they hit, before it can conduct any heat away.

Having worked with some pretty damn powerful lasers, I would suggest that shielding against lasers is not that difficult. Whilst vaporisation does occur, heat dissipation at impact site, material selection to attenuate energy absorption, etc are all viable methods of shielding. Whilst space based weaponised lasers would, I assume, be extremely powerful, limitations on, laser type, beam focus, power consumption, component heating, targeting, etc are all going to factor on how much energy is delivered per m^2 of hull and over what time period and how often. Shielding is a real possibility.

I think you're underestimating the energy of any realistic kinetic weapon. And kinetic weapons are probably the least-likely threat you'll be facing since scoring a direct hit in space is so incredibly difficult. Any armor against kinetic impacts will be designed to stop random debris, not weapons.

Disagree on the first point, agree on the second and third

Probably not. Energy requirements for that kind of thing are just too high.

As such things are generally working with the inverse square law, a large field would be very energy intensive. However, as their "targets" are extremely fast moving you would actually gain a larger force acting on that projectile due to the Lorentz law even with a relatively weak field.

There is no stealth in space. You're hotter than the background of space, so you can be spotted. And if you aren't hotter than the background of space you're dead.

Thermal shielding and directed radiation of heat energy. An upgraded version of the kind of technology used in current stealth aircraft. Positioning your ship in front of a heat source relative to your target and either blinding them with the other source or matching your heat signature to the other source (as you would in "open space".

No, it will make is considerably easier to spot and hit. Active EW means broadcasting a giant "I'M HERE" sign. You might be able to obscure your precise location from active sensors, but your enemy is going to know exactly where to point their telescope and pin you down.

And yet very few weapon systems will work through non- electronic visual tracking. Backwards tracking EW is entirely possible, however the use of EW drones and missiles in an active engagement considerably muddies the water (which is more the point I was making rather than a straight up "EW is stealthy").

Sure, but then you have to ask why the other side doesn't simply surrender once the advantage is demonstrated. You need a situation where each side believes that they have the advantage, and the "no stealth in space" problem makes that pretty difficult.

A sifficient advantage could lead to a swift conclusion, swift enough that messages cannot be sent, or at least travel to, other units and bases and fleets to let them know of the development.

Oh, you ought to watch Farscape, especially the movie that finally shows what can happen if one goes crazy with wormholes.
Eventually some fool will "weaponize" wormholes





Basically one wormhole drive accident, and similar disaster can happen.

 Orlanth wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Warp or hyperdrive movement allows far more freedom

Actually warp and hyperdrive mean you would never have space combat. If you can jump just outside a planet with your whole fleet from across the galaxy, you would only fight to defend a few key locations. Then, it would be with orbiting defenses.

Is this so? Warp and hyperdrive might be detectable from a long way away, with time to gather local assets.

Warp travel might be disengaged close to gravity wells making the closing stags of an approach much slower. This is in fact a common function of FTL in many envisionings.

You could be right and defence against hostile vessels is left to massive rings of orbital defences. Space battles might always be sieges.

Things could work exactly as you envisage, in which case concealment of assets may be key, and wars are likely either conducted by token combat or are utterly holocaustal.

Lots of options.

There would be no way to detect a ship travelling faster than the speed of light as the only ways to detect something in space involve interactions of light with that something.

Once its velocity drops to that below the speed of light, then yes, you could detect it, so you would have as much time as it takes the ship to slow to combat speed to mobilise defences (and you'd have to take time dilation/length contraction into account). And then that ship might just stay travelling at 0.999999c and just ram your capital city with enough kinetic energy to vaporise the whole thing and ignite the atmosphere.

If anyone is interested in reading a book which captures the problems encountered in warfare and society when relativistic speeds are possible I would recommend The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

I would go for a dark matter drive. It's not unfeasible, you just need a material capable of preventing dark matter from passing through it. Then you can put a big cone on your nose, gather up fuel as you go, and effectively never run out.

You just need a tiny secondary drive for startup and emergencies.

It's not FTL of course but it solves the fuel concern nicely.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Warp or hyperdrive movement allows far more freedom

Actually warp and hyperdrive mean you would never have space combat. If you can jump just outside a planet with your whole fleet from across the galaxy, you would only fight to defend a few key locations. Then, it would be with orbiting defenses.

Is this so? Warp and hyperdrive might be detectable from a long way away, with time to gather local assets.

Warp travel might be disengaged close to gravity wells making the closing stags of an approach much slower. This is in fact a common function of FTL in many envisionings.

You could be right and defence against hostile vessels is left to massive rings of orbital defences. Space battles might always be sieges.

Things could work exactly as you envisage, in which case concealment of assets may be key, and wars are likely either conducted by token combat or are utterly holocaustal.

Lots of options.

There would be no way to detect a ship travelling faster than the speed of light as the only ways to detect something in space involve interactions of light with that something.

Once its velocity drops to that below the speed of light, then yes, you could detect it, so you would have as much time as it takes the ship to slow to combat speed to mobilise defences (and you'd have to take time dilation/length contraction into account). And then that ship might just stay travelling at 0.999999c and just ram your capital city with enough kinetic energy to vaporise the whole thing and ignite the atmosphere.

If anyone is interested on reading a book which captures the problems encountered in warfare and society when relativistic speeds are possible I would recommend The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

As far as I am aware mass detection is FTL. Happy to be corrected on this.

 SilverMK2 wrote:


As far as I am aware mass detection is FTL. Happy to be corrected on this.

But how do you detect a mass? Short of directly observing it (very difficult in space unless it is either very close or very bright) the only way is to observe the effect of the gravitational field created by the mass on its surroundings (this is how we detect exoplanets orbiting far away star systems). This relies on direct observations of objects in the surroundings, though, and so is still limited by the speed of light.

Its possible that the prelude to the wormhole opening up is detectable. IE: for X hours before hand the location where the wormhole is opening will be sending out some gravitational waves.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

There would be no way to detect a ship travelling faster than the speed of light as the only ways to detect something in space involve interactions of light with that something.

A ship travelling at faster than light might emit a signal that travels faster than light.

You are making the one mistake you can make: Assumption.
FTL is not science, its drama, it has the effects the author desires and those effects are given a scientific sounding assumption.

Incoming ships travelling at FTL speed might be detectable, they might not. There may or may not be a form of FTL communication/radio technology to use to get help. The author of the background will have to make those decisions, and if they want thier SF to be internally consistent look at the consequences and if possible make up a science to back them up..

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Once its velocity drops to that below the speed of light, then yes, you could detect it,.....

The rest of your post is just noise.

The incoming ship can be detected. Period. All you need to do is isolate and sense the Zeta waves from its FTL drive through a Zeta wave detector array, and use a pair of quantum doppler scanners at right angles to each other to determine bearing and distance.
That is unless Zeta waves are not yet confirmed to exist, or nobody knows how to build a quantum doppler scanner yet.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:


As far as I am aware mass detection is FTL. Happy to be corrected on this.

But how do you detect a mass? Short of directly observing it (very difficult in space unless it is either very close or very bright) the only way is to observe the effect of the gravitational field created by the mass on its surroundings (this is how we detect exoplanets orbiting far away star systems). This relies on direct observations of objects in the surroundings, though, and so is still limited by the speed of light.

You can detect mass "directly", though again this is an inverse square field so your sensors would have to be extremely sensitive

If I recall correctly,its because gravity is more or less instant in its effects. Every atom in the universe has an effect on every other atom regardless of distance. Of course beyond certain distances the effect is very infantessimally small.

 Grey Templar wrote:
If I recall correctly,its because gravity is more or less instant in its effects. Every atom in the universe has an effect on every other atom regardless of distance. Of course beyond certain distances the effect is very infantessimally small.

It kind of violates laws of physics, as you could use these "instant" effects to communicate faster than light.

 LethalShade wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If I recall correctly,its because gravity is more or less instant in its effects. Every atom in the universe has an effect on every other atom regardless of distance. Of course beyond certain distances the effect is very infantessimally small.

It kind of violates laws of physics, as you could use these "instant" effects to communicate faster than light.

This. Our current measurements puts "the speed of gravity" at the speed of light, which is what General Relativity predicts.

Any FTL discussion leaves current science behind. The only question remains how much science do you discard in order to enable FTL, and whether central physical theorems need to be discarded.

It's no point arguing physics on FTL methods unless all ancilliary technological side effects are also scrutinised, such as FTL communictions, and sensors.

There is no points getting all that 'right claiming hard SF for your background then including artificial gravity through floor fields, reactionless drives, radiation shielding without significant mass penalty or numerous other things.

First question is how much lip service to physics are you going to have. If the answer is 'as much as possible' try warp drive, it has the least complications.

I'm not into very hard SF for this setting, with major deviations being FTL travel, probably artificial gravity (Could be avoided, but... Rule of Cool, and it allows horizontal spaceships), and miniaturized fusion reactors. Not much else.

FTL sensors and communications are non-existent, with unmanned probes doing the job (at a sluggish pace).

 LethalShade wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If I recall correctly,its because gravity is more or less instant in its effects. Every atom in the universe has an effect on every other atom regardless of distance. Of course beyond certain distances the effect is very infantessimally small.

It kind of violates laws of physics, as you could use these "instant" effects to communicate faster than light.

That doesn't violate the laws of physics. You could reduce the communication time to effectively zero, only if it went negative would there be problems. Communication would be more or less instant, but that doesn't really cause issues. Its not like you could send a message to your past or future self.

It can have some nasty effects when both you and the one you're communicating with move at high speeds.