I’m trying to write a Star Wars story about someone who figures out a way to travel FTL between galaxies. Hyperspace doesn’t work in the Intergalactic Void, and there is a hyperspace disturbance at the edge of the galaxy blocking travel anyway. I was trying to think of an alternative method of traveling the distance. This drive I envision could ONLY be used in the intergalactic void (so it can’t replace hyperdrive). It allows travel through the void very quickly but NOT instantaneously and there is a weird quantum glitch where the inhabitants of the ship need to wait 2 hours before piercing the veil of another galaxy or weird quantum things could happen to their ship. Anyway I originally thought of a superfluid vacuum drive but I did a lot of research and it’s unlikely the universe is a superfluid. I know Star Wars science is soft as a marshmallow but I want some fake science that sounds realistic. Can anyone help me? I can’t think of anything. Wormholes already exist in Star Wars.
What about a jump drive? They do jumps but have a cooldown between every jump and have to wait where they dropped out for a while? Or perhaps a faster version of the warp drive? Interdimensional travel? Tachyon lance hitchiking? Problem is that going superluminal and trying to explain it "sciency" might not work out. It might be better to not explain how it works at all? Just my opinion though. There are a lot of alternatives, and since our science has yet to find a way to travel faster than light, you can use your fantasy in any form. Edit: Forgive my primitive technobabble on this one: A mass centered hyper velocity engine able to grab on to the super mass of a distant galaxy and fling itself towards it? The more massive the galaxy, the faster it will be to travel to it.
There is sub-space travel. It's that idea of shortening space by going 'beneath' it in a sense and getting places much faster by condensing it into a shorter distance. Still not as fast as being able to use artificial wormholes which bend space from point A and point B together making it basically instant travel. The part they don't tell you is that the gravity would be so immense that it would crush you on entry, and spit out the atomic particles on the other side if you did wormholes. The hyper drive is a mix between light speed and basically another 1/2 dimension in space, based on old SW logic. So any solid particles of dust and stuff like that, you phase right through since you are not in the same 'reality' as them, even though you can see them in real space. So, for the sake of fiction, you can honestly make up whatever kinda travel that would get your characters to their destination, and hand wave the physics so it can all work without any problems. FTL is basically using tech to do magic. Cause even using jump ports, the science says the G-forces from such a powerful and short time acceleration would liquefy the people inside.
Yes, I feel teleportation works best as it more possible and isn't limited by the speed of light. (Which, is really, really slow if one has a whole galaxy to explore.) It would take 4 years to get to the nearest start, Proxima Centari from here by light-speed. That's... a long ride.
@Maximum7 Research these... Alcubierre-White Warp Coil Gravitational Waves Introducing physical warp drives Breaking the warp barrier: Hyper-fast Solitons Solitons Warp Speed Calculator (anycalculator.com) All sorts of issues and what-ifs here. For your ship idea try this... The ship’s Warp coil would create a morphology bubble around itself within a soliton wave that’s projected forward. This wave shoots forward instantly at multiples of c, the speed of light. The bubble with no mass is carried along inside the wave. The amount of energy the ship generates would somehow tie into the distance it wanted to travel. So, after certain number of (precalculated) years past the coil stops which bursts the bubble and the soliton wave dissipates. The ship is left almost stationary outside the target galaxy. This slowdown effect is also what you were looking for in the OP. Use the Warp calculator now based on Star Trek. Click Next Generation and enter Warp Factor 1 then Calculate. Alpha Centauri from Earth 4.3 years it would take us, Andromeda 200k years you get the idea. Now work up the warp factors 2 to 10. It’s a logarithmic scale. Even at Warp 9 it would take you over 1,300 years to get to our nearest galaxy. At WF 9.99 its still nearly 100years travel time. If you could push the speed to 9.999999 then we’re down to 10years which is workable. Otherwise warp speed is simply too slow. There are loads of holes in this, but it’s an idea. But wormholes do solve your problem just how do you create the exit for one? Let me know how you get on... MartinM.
What if Hyperspace drives work, but they aren't the best/safest/fastest way to do it? What if there is something better? Technology known or Unknown? I could take this further, but I've gotten an idea for a story, so...
Transporters meet Tachyons. Transporters are real. Simple objects have been successfully converted in to energy and transported from one place to another before being reassmebled. If you can make that energy tachyon energy then you have something that is supposed to move faster than light. However, this would mean traveling only between established points, and someone would have to travel at sub light speeds to install your destinations. Of course, humans dont have to do this. It could be an automated process, and as its automated, you could launch the ship at incredible rates of exceleration. It will still be sublight but it it wouldnt take a lot of fuel to get up to its top speed and then a perpetual motion drive could take over. Once it deploys the gateway, it can teleport home as proof it is working. Travel within our solar system would be very simple as a result. Travel to the nearest stars with planets roughly like our own? Proxima B is 4 light years away, lets say it takes double that to get there. An 8 year mission is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Bernards star is 6 light years away. There are 20 planets within 20 light years of earth that astronomers think may have conditions suitable for life on them. Lets say it took 50 years to reach the furthest one and set up a gate. In just 50 years thats faster than light travel to a network of 20 planets and all the planets in our solar system. How fast are tachyons? well, they are theoretical so no one has speculated as far as i cant tell, but if they are only slightly faster than light speed, that could still be an almost 20 year journey people would have to make. Isnt sci - fi fun. You can talk out your butt all day and it still sounds cool.
Can't you just technobable some bullcrap with medochlorians? If the force permeates the universe and allows Jedi on distant worlds to feel each other instantly, it's obviously got some FTL properties. Maybe your hero finds a derelict spaceship from eons past that has a "medochlorian slide engine." It can go as fast as you want, and it sounds like a sweet dance move. Second idea more rooted in "science." What about something we'll call a "Relativity Frame Extender." Check this out: Step 1) Fly extremely close to a black hole, this puts you in a relativistic environment and from your current relative frame, the distance to the other galaxy is much much shorter. The higher the relativistic effects, the closer it gets. Step 2) Turn on the Frame Extender, which provides a sort of breaking mechanism for reference frame transitions, allowing you to keep your warped reference of the universe for a brief time, slowly losing it Step 3) Fire your engines at full speed and get as far as possible before your relativity extension wears off. Travel the now short distance to the other galaxy Step 4) When the field wears off, you are either very close to, or within the galaxy, but it's not precise enough to put you at a specific star system, so you still have the plot-necessary 2 hours of regular travel.
Brilliant - you have found the answer! Of course you can come up with any kind of nonsense explanation. SW is not exactly hard sci-fi. I think the bodies of the kids Anakin killed should fuel the Midichlorian drive. There's a limited supply of course, but there must have been enough to power a few ships.
It's easier to just use sand. It works by repulsion - Anakin's force ghost resides in this galaxy, so every ship carrying a lot of sand will be flung out of the galaxy by him.
If you are still looking for ideas, here's a range of soft and hard options: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/96389/which-sci-fi-universe-uses-the-most-forms-of-ftl-faster-than-light
A worm dot incident. Eliminate distance and time from travel. Any time you move you chase your destination, so moving to a certain known point would always be an arc - no line of sight travel. Space then is curved and twisted. Create (handwave) the mechanism that forms an instantaneous dot/window that puts you on the other side of the dot/window (without motion) and then instantly disappears. My favorite trick: "If it's probable within infinity as an instant incident, then it is controllably eventual rather than possible." Carry on
