I will be tabling in Minneapolis at Convergence SF/F Con this weekend! Come on by!
Weekend was filled with relaxing. Just kidding. It ended up being full of errands and cat number THREE really sick to the vet. I’ll be happy Wednesday when the Little Dee layout is to the printer and I get on a plane to Minneapolis. Finally relax. Maybe.
There was a discussion on Friday’s strip about relative time distortion issues, but, they are not actually an issue. There are no relativity effect. I should put that in the strip, but it was mentioned in the Higgs Drive description:
Further tests demonstrated that the HtNEI distorted the actual fabric of “dimension alpha” in such a way that the space in front of the HtNEI was pleated (for want of the actual mathematical term) in such a way that the clipper only interacted with a small fraction of the actual distance between origin and its terminus. FTL travel, without apparent relativity effects, was a side-effect of the function of the HtNEI.
Hmm, he wouldn’t be in debt though would he? He bet his life savings and pay for the mission so he’d have no cash but also no debt. Not a great situation to be in but better than endless debt, especially when you factor in the money earning potential of being one of the first humans to travel across the universe.
So I Forget Who did him a favor by shutting off the game instead of just being a dick.
As I said, if you’re willing to enjoy anthropomorphic critters who pass as humans and speak perfect English, why let little things like the laws of gravity, relativity, etc stand in the way of a good story.
Science fantasy (Star Wars) hath not the restrictions of science fiction (Heinlein’s Between Planets, for example). Science fantasy can make up any old bunch of gobbledygook and sell it as long as it’s entertaining, which this is.
And yes, many of us are familiar with superstring theory and the products of a theoretical warp bubble. The ship does not move in a warp bubble, space moves around the ship. The ship and contents have no inertia – and does not move itself, therefore relativity is not attached, so many multiples of the speed of light is standard (about 1800 lights in the more densely packed interstellar space within a galaxy for a very fast ship.
Edward E Smith, PhD, did all that legwork way back in the 1930s.
Can we please have something more intentionally ridiculous than the GREASED speed of light? Or the greased speed of dark? I’d like some quotable stuff to get more nerds addicted to this comic.
I admit I like the jargon, the closer to being real, the better.
We know we have a limit. They just have an artificial one. They should just make peace with it and soldier on. Easier said than done, I know.
No habitable planet in range? Or a star system with a colony?
This is nice and all…but the big knot in the string and theories is that. “the speed of light is not constant after all”. 🙂 I shall risk the wrath of the pun gods by mentioning that “it’s all relative and based on where and how you are observing”.
I doubt their sensors would work while in transit.