I've been reading a lot about newtonian aurora and I think it's cool. However I'm not sure about space travel. First of all, if I understand correctly (my english is a little bit rusty) there are 3 types of space travel: some kind of "sub-light" travel, hyperspace and jump drives, right?
I've been doing some quick maths about current sub-light acceleration and it seems a little slow to me. Maybe it's just that I have got used to Stargate's space travels, I don't know (Daedalus achieves 200. 000 km/s pretty fast). Another issue I see here is that there is not a speed limit at all. I really think that there should be one, dependant on ship armor or armor type or a combination of both. Even if we take structural stability out of the equation, space debris will hit your ships harder and harder at higher speeds, plus there's the light speed limit of 300. 000km/s. Again, maybe I'm totally biased about speeds because of Stargate, and maybe 200. 000 km/s is way too high speed even at higher tech levels, I don't know. But I really think "high-end" engines should be able to achieve that for a well armored ship.
About hyperspace, there are lots of theories about it, and I don't really like the idea that your speed in hyperspace is dependant on your speed in real space, or improvements being made by switching to other dimensions. Again, maybe Stargate biased, but a single hyperspace dimension and improvements being made by more efficient hyperspace engines (from hyperdrives which let you arrive at near stars at a viable speed to high end hyperdrives that let you reach pretty distant stars and even other galaxies if someday it is implemented. . . who knows!) and those hyperdrives with a fixed speed not dependant on sublight speed.
About Jump Drives I don't have a lot of info right now. If I understand correctly it works similarly to Battlestar Galactica?
Sorry if my thoughts are offensive in any way, just sharing my thoughts with you guys
Catching a plane in two hours but I thought I had better answer this before Byron (no offence Byron
There are two types of travel for Newtonian Aurora - sub-light and faster than light (FTL). The jump drive is from standard Aurora although I think its probably been used interchangeably with FTL drive in discussions about Newtonian Aurora. In any event the FTL Drive (AKA Jump Drive) is a way to move from normal space into hyperspace and back again in order to exceed light speed.
Stargate is one of my favourite TV programs but its probably not the ideal model for realistic space travel. Space travel works on the principles of Newton's laws of motion
First law: The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.
Second law: The acceleration a of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F and inversely proportional to the mass m, i.e., F = ma.
Third law: The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear.
In very simple terms (and ignoring gravity for the moment) to move in a particular direction, you need to throw something in the opposite direction. If you have a 100 ton spaceship and throw a 1 ton object out of the window at 10 meters a second then the ship will move in the opposite direction at 0.1 meters per second. Force = Mass x Acceleration. So the force is equal to a 1 ton mass at 10 meters per second, that same force will move a 100 ton mass at 0.1 meters per seconds.
That is the basic principle behind the rocket engine, except it is the fuel that is being thrown out of the ship at very high speed. For example, if a 1000 ton rocket uses 1 ton of reaction mass per second and that mass leaves the ship at 10,000 m/s (the exhaust velocity), the force is equal to 10,000 m/s x 1 tons, so the 1000 ton rocket will be pushed forward by 10 m/s. Of course, the rocket now only has a mass of 999 tons, so the second ton of reaction mass pushes it by 10.01 m/s and it is now travelling at 20.01 m/s. This will carry on until the fuel runs out (at which point the rocket cannot slow down). The vast majority of the mass of any modern rocket is fuel - the payload is very small in comparison.
As you might guess, the exhaust velocity is very important because the faster the reaction mass leaves the rocket, the more acceleration the rocket will gain from that fuel. However, the energy required to accelerate the reaction mass has to come from somewhere too. In chemical rocket engines, the fuel itself provides the energy from its own combustion. In more exotic engines the energy may come from a nuclear reactor. In any event, achieving high exhaust velocities is the key to fuel efficiency and high speed space flight. This has a limit thought because the exhaust velocity cannot exceed the speed of light (as Yonder recently pointed out
.
Newtonian Aurora uses vastly more efficient engines than anything even dreamt of at the moment in real life. The exhaust velocities of the top end engines come very close to the speed of light.
Stargate spacecraft get around these problems by completely ignoring the laws of physics
. I did the same for standard Aurora but for Newtonian Aurora I am trying to create a more realistic feel to the game.
Steve