[CT] A question for the sci-fi fans on the list...

[Daniel Moran]

I really don't believe FTL travel is possible -- it seems pretty clear that 
if FTL travel is possible, time travel is also possible, and, all my 
stories aside, I really don't believe time travel is possible. One of the 
reasons I so respect Greg Benford is that, staying within these limits, 
he's still managed to do amazingly great space opera. (I'm probably the 
only person on the planet who thinks "Great Sky River" is space opera. But 
fuck 'em anyway, I'll call it whatever I like.)

My spacelace tunnels are Dan Alderson's. My FTL tachyon drive is so generic 
that I don't think I can identify anyplace in particular I got it from -- 
though I think I did a nice job of laying out the "rules," even though none 
of you have ever seen them, until now:

I've never built an equation for this (mostly because my math's not good 
enough) but once a tachyon starship passes the lightspeed barrier, it has 
to burn energy to stay near the speed of light (which is now the lowest 
speed at which it can move.) It's as hard to slow to the speed of light, on 
the other side of lightspeed, as it is to accelerate to the speed of light 
on this side. If your engines fail, your ship will eventually, because of 
resistance in the tachyonic medium (think space dust if it makes you happy) 
"decelerate" to infinite speed -- meaning every particle of you is 
everywhere at once, and you cease to exist.

Also, time dilates on the other side of lightspeed just as it does on this 
side of lightspeed. The faster you go, the longer it takes _aboard the 
ship._ So if you go to Alpha Centauri in 3 years, by Earth's clocks (or 
only a little faster than lightspeed), it only takes you (I'm making this 
number up -- no eqations, as I said) 3 weeks aboard ship. If you go to 
Alpha Centauri  in 1 year, it takes you three months aboard ship. If you go 
to Alpha Centauri in 3 weeks, it takes you 3 years, shiptime. (Actually, 
looking at how I'm scaling this, it strikes me that an equation wouldn't be 
that hard to make up ... thinking out loud is useful.)

If you go to Alpha Centauri in 1 day, it takes you 30 years ... and so 
forth. (I'm definitely going to have to tweak these numbers -- Daniel 
November needs to be able to get to the Galactic Core in a ship that's less 
than a billion years old when he arrives.) But you get the idea. If you're 
taking a tachyon starship a long distance in a short time, you need stasis 
bubbles aboard ship, to prevent the crew from aging at the same pace as the 
ship itself.

:-) Interesting timing on this. 3 days ago I started writing "The Voyage of 
the Dauntless" -- about humanity's first voyage in a tachyon starship. 
During that story, the first Archangel class starship is built.....
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