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speed of space travel


Emperor Harkonnen

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In dune it is described as a lot faster than in the startrek universe.

See, in Dune they fold space, and it is done so that you literally travel without moving. It is instant, and the prequels mess this up.

In star trek they actually warp space-time around the ship, and then accelerate and because of the time warping you are able to go faster than the speed of light. The warp number system is actually exponential. I do believe warp one is 1 times the speed of light, and warp two is ten times the speed of light and so on. So it does take time to get from one place to another. In the Dune universe though it is instantanious.

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I guess folding space isn't realy a speed. Considering that your here, and a second later you're there. No matter the distance. So in a way, over short distances warp engines would be faster, at larger distances folding space would be faster. Neither look very realistic to me but that doesn't matter. It's both pretty fun.

In star trek they also use jump gates, transwarp and well stuff like that. It's all theory, there's no real structure behind what they say.

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I think it is the encyclopedio which messes this up. but why can they only travel to the known universe?

Wrong.  In Dune, it says the travel is near-instant, although the loading/unloading process can take time.  They can travel anywhere, but there is no reason for armies and merchants to travel outside known space now, is there?  Even still, as soon as a heighliner arrives somewhere, that space becomes part of the "known universe" (i.e. Imperial territory)

no warp 2 is 2 times the speed of light and 3 is 3 times and so on. at warp 9 they do not travel at 100000000 times faster than light

Wrong again.  Even at 9c, travel between star systems would be incredibly slow.  I have a canon chart in my ST Encyclopaedia.  It's not a factor of ten, either; warp 9.6 (max. speed of a Galaxy-Class ship) is about 3600c.  Although these figures are different from the factors used in the original series.

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The humans in star trek can also travel in time...but they almost never do it because it might have catastrophal effects.

you are probably right vanguard, I only read that in the subtitle, when they said Warp2, it said in norwegian "2 times the speed of light"

but I am pretty sure I read somewhere that travels over longer distanses take more time than over shorter ones in dune.

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thanks vanguard, I largely forgot the details of how the warp chart worked, thanks again for the correction! :)

from what I remember in one of the books, it says that warp drive is achieved by warping time. Because time is warped, the constant is warped as well and you are able to basically cheat the constant which is the speed of light. This time warp is basically a pocket that is called DeSitter space. And it enables those to travel beyond the speed of light.

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From what I remember from ST the Warp scale is log based.

Warp 1 is speed of light and

Warp 10 is Inf speed of light.

They ended up rescaling the warp scale (in the last ST-TNG since it was getting silly going Warp 9.9999) so they rescaled warp10 to warp 15.

As to fastest travel. Foldspace easily wins, it is a bit like the jumps from "battlestar Galactica"

What I never understood was what foom of engines existed pre-foldspace? How could they move between league worlds in month's? They would have to have faster than light drives?

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But at the speed of light mass becomes infinite (and thus unotainable) so at infinite speed of light, weight would be infinity X infinity, surely?

Infinity is defined as all numbers outside your number-set that you are operating in.

This if you set is

[1 2 3 4 5]  then technically (as far as mathematicians are concerned) ...,-10,-9,-8,-7,-6,-5,-4,-3,-2,-1 0,6,7,8,9,10,... and all non integers are classes as INFINITY since they exist outside the present number-set that is being manipulated.

As to inf*inf it is equal to inf sicne as stated infinity is a terminology used to collect all numbers outside your present set.

You are right that at the speed of light your mass becomes infinitly large and time stops. However, a warp engine warps space around it thus changing the apparent value of "c".

As I stated the warp scale was setup on a log base scale, more precicely a exponetial curve. Basically it is impossible to get to warp10, you can get closer and closer to it but never to it. Since the speed of engines at teh end of ST-TNG were getting faster and faster becomin aquard going "warp 9.999999" they re-scaled it so warp 10 is equal to warp15 (but a bit more digging it is now warp100). Basically you can never get to warp 100 (which is still the same as warp10, you just have alot finer scale to control)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, if you put it in that way. There actually has been proven that the amount of elements in the set of all real numbers, is even bigger then infinity.

And I don't think Star Trek is worrying about the relativity of space-time, they just ignore it. Or things would be too weird, and they just want to tell their story (and sometimes it is a damn good story :))

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If its all "folding of space" in the Duniverse, one instant here, the next there, why do they need Navigators ? I thought Navigators guided the Highliners as they traveled through space, not "jumped".

Slightly confused now.

But I did thing they traveled faster then they show in ST.

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If its all "folding of space" in the Duniverse, one instant here, the next there, why do they need Navigators ? I thought Navigators guided the Highliners as they traveled through space, not "jumped".

Slightly confused now.

But I did thing they traveled faster then they show in ST.

Yup the engines fold space. However, there is the chance you accidently fold space and emerge at your destination in the centre of a star (very bad) 1 in 10 foldspace craft were lost before navigators were used.

Navigators are overdosed on Melange and thus have precience. It is this ability to see "stuff" they can see a safe place to bring a highliner out of foldspace

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