3DFuture's Realistic History of FTL Spaceflight (Ringship Repository)

captain_mills

Okay, so I'm obsessed with ringships... Have been for a while. I'm gonna start drafting up a whole bunch of ring-style ships and call this my Futuristic History of Spaceflight (The Ringship Repository). Whit this comes my fictional way that events occur that lead up to the development of FTL travel. It's like trek, but not trek... per se...

('1994 - Miguel Alcubierre proposes mathematical method for bending the fabric of spacetime.
('1996-2002 - NASA funds Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project.
('1998-2007 - NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts begins design experiments.
('2008 - Large Hadron Collider goes online.
('2012 - Higgs boson reportedly disovered, LHC
('2013 - Professor Harold White, NASA Johnson Space Center, theorizes ringship possible.
('2014 - Socialized health care leads to certain states overturning.
('2015 - Federal arms regulations pass, states fight arms laws and heath care in US supreme court.
('2015 - Federal education laws, legalized drugs, and other laws fought in judicial system. Courts tied up, cannot hear civil rights cases, states pass laws overturning fedeal laws.
('2016 - LHC confirms higgs boson.
('2016 - Oil boycotts mideast cause gas prices to skyrocket. US tax on oil shipped in. US enters
second great depression.
('2017 - Federal institutions lay off millions to compensate. Unemployment hits 37% nationwide.
('2017 - Montana State University Professor develops plans for working ringship prototype.
('2017 - Independent company (Virgin Galactic?) buys ringship design.
('2018 - Ringship experiment launches, successful test probe travels to neptune in 4 hrs 37 minutes. 87% light speed.
('2019 - several states declare bankruptcy due to welfare, socialized health care, gas prices, etc. Other states not cede, but declare independence from fed laws.
('2021 - Other nations collapse due to growing global economic crisis. EMP detonated over Israel, riots break out all over mid east and Europe. WWIII rumors.
('2022 - Updated ringships tested from China, US, and Russia. US prototype travels to pluto in 3 hrs 21 mins. Calculations show ftl possible, 1.6c attained.
('2023 - US government declares martial law. States barricade borders, cease interstate commerce.
('2024 - First manned flight aboard ringship. US, Russian, & Chinese astronauts make first manned voyage to outer sol system at 2x light speed.
('2026 - first colonization attempts to Mars, Moon, and Europa.
('2028 - UN allows governments rights to mine asteroids. Starts UNSA (United Nations Space Agency). Oversees Terran Protection and Safety Comission (TPSC) to guard against NEOs.
('2029 - Primitive life forms discovered in Europa sub-glacial oceans.
('2031 - UNSA oks trip to Alpha Centauri system, with first 5c ship, crew of 15.
('2031 - UN develops credit system, replaces national currencies to counter global economic crisis.
('2034 - Ringship technology adapted to personal vehicles by Chrystler Corp and Nissan International simultaneously. Oil industries work for other applications, plastics & farming.
('2035 - World hunger almost abolished. Unemployment down to 4.3% worldwide.
('2036 - UN changes TPSC to "Starfleet", opens 3 academies worldwide. Open enrollment for Sol1 Defense Force. Independent companies offer supplies to lunar, martian, europan, and titan colonies.

The images below show my concept of a working ringship design. A fusion core powers both the ion drive and the magnetic coils. Water and compressed atmosphere allow the astronauts on the 2024 flight to live in case of accident and the need to jettison the pod and living space... One of the images show an interior view of working space and such. Not all details are included yet... Updates to come!

As usual, comments, suggestions, and criticisms are welcomed.

Starship1405

Great ideas, and the ship looks promising! I have enjoyed creating "future histories" too.

sojourner

I like it better without the skin.

colbmista

i agree lose the skin keep it exposed

Knight26

Interesting design, but how does the development of FTL spacecraft lead to total world economic turnaround in less than ten years time when the whole world was on the brink of collapse before?

New Homelands

Knight26 wrote: »

Interesting design, but how does the development of FTL spacecraft lead to total world economic turnaround in less than ten years time when the whole world was on the brink of collapse before?

My thought as well, it seems to achieve that there would have to be a widespread ideological shift, while I'm not saying it couldn't happen, I've never known one to happen so fast historically. Still intriguing ideas and good work on the ship, though I too like it more without the skin.

bosun

I'd like to see it with sections of skin and sections exposed.

spacefighter

future histories are great but i think some of the events there are many decades if not centuries before they should be. i mean 87% light sped in the year 2018, i doubt that the entire worlds energy consumption for a year could accelerate any large mass to that speed. some of the events in your history seem plausible and link together well but the timescale seems a little short.

ship design is nice and i like the ring feature, is it for some type of ftl drive? i would like more explanation of what the parts are supposed to do. as a final point have you considered artificial gravity, it would be beneficial for the long term voyages. use a spin section maybe?

sojourner

How does ringship technology (an FTL drive) get adapted to personal vehicles? Assuming you mean automobiles considering the companies listed.

Sanderlee

spacefighter wrote: »

future histories are great but i think some of the events there are many decades if not centuries before they should be. i mean 87% light sped in the year 2018, i doubt that the entire worlds energy consumption for a year could accelerate any large mass to that speed.

If I recall correctly, the Alcubierre drive is theoretically elegant with respect to moving masses at great speed. It's problem is that to generate the standing bubble of space-time requires negative mass or a particle with less than zero rest energy. If we can figure out that, the only trouble with acceleration and maintained velocities will be the durability of the ship.

Schimpfy

spacefighter wrote: »

future histories are great but i think some of the events there are many decades if not centuries before they should be. i mean 87% light sped in the year 2018, i doubt that the entire worlds energy consumption for a year could accelerate any large mass to that speed. some of the events in your history seem plausible and link together well but the timescale seems a little short.

Methinks you need to read up on general Trek "history". In universe the history skews from what we know around the mid 1960s and lead to great strides in technological development during the latter half of the 20th century. Enter the Eugenics Wars and so on. The world of Trek hasn't been parallel with our world for quite a while. If it had then we'd have Lunar and Martian colonies by now.

Knight26

You are not getting the point that the ring ship uses an Alcubierre drive, basically a warp drive based upon a ring shaped design, not a nacelle design.

Beyond that, the Alcubierre drive relies on the existence and dsicovering of exotic matter, so you need to have that in the timeline. Also my issue with the financial implications is that something needs to be discovered in order to force the economic turnaround. What is discovered? Let's face it even yout 5c ships will take a year to get to Alpha Centauri.

Rekkert

I'm liking it, but I agree with spacefighter, some advances happened too fast. While I would like it to be that way so that I could travel to other planets in my lifetime, it's definitively less probable to happen.

publiusr

Now I seem to remember someone did a chart shoing a Traveller ringship.

Now I think a real ringship needs the hub to be a fat donut if I understand correctly, and the hub doesn't need to stick out much ahead or behind the ring to work--so the Traveller version might be even more accurate than Jeffries ringship--but I do seem to remember some craft that have an artificial gravity well generator or something in their nose--so maybe a combination of the two can work--thus your design.

cavebear

publiusr wrote: »

Now I seem to remember someone did a chart shoing a Traveller ringship.

Now I think a real ringship needs the hub to be a fat donut if I understand correctly, and the hub doesn't need to stick out much ahead or behind the ring to work--so the Traveller version might be even more accurate than Jeffries ringship--but I do seem to remember some craft that have an artificial gravity well generator or something in their nose--so maybe a combination of the two can work--thus your design.

Are you refering to this ship here?

captain_mills

lol...

Well, I haven't had a chance to do any real updates to the 3D modeling as (I know it sounds weird) Star Trek Online and woodturning have gotten in the way. However, I've appreciated the comments and such. I'm actually pleasantly surprised at the number of people who have chimed in on this. My disappointment, at the same time, is how many comments there are on the ships themselves are far outnumbered by the comments on the timeline I posted with them...

In my view, we spend a lot of time "conquering" the solar system before venturing out of it too much. The addition of an "approved trip to Alpha Centauri" would be a major undertaking, but there's nowhere in the current timeline that states exactly when it would leave. My head tells me we would first use this kind of drive to support the expansion to other colonies to counteract overpopulation, overmining, etc. Hence the drive would initially be used commercially and scientifically for discoveries and colonization in our own solar system for many years before these were used for much outside the Oort cloud. The single trip outside, to Alpha Centauri, would be at that point tantamount to us going to the moon in 1969...

As for the skin, it is certainly more interesting without it, but I may use the idea of a hybrid version. Some things would need to be "skinned" for structural support...

My main motivation for the shortened timeline is twofold. 1) I was greedy and wanted it to happen in my lifetime. 2) Advances in technology are happening at an ever increasing (exponential) rate.

spacefighter wrote:

future histories are great but i think some of the events there are many decades if not centuries before they should be. i mean 87% light sped in the year 2018, i doubt that the entire worlds energy consumption for a year could accelerate any large mass to that speed. some of the events in your history seem plausible and link together well but the timescale seems a little short.

Ship design is nice and i like the ring feature, is it for some type of ftl drive? i would like more explanation of what the parts are supposed to do.

IMNSHO, this is exactly why we don't accomplish certain things. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we need to get over some things (like our egos and our selfish desires for entitlement, as a society) and great strides may happen. As for the question "is it an FTL drive?" Umm, yes... And the purpose of the parts is in my head as part of the WIP part of the thread. I will eventually get to that once I have each ship finished.

sojurner wrote:

How does ringship technology (an FTL drive) get adapted to personal vehicles? Assuming you mean automobiles considering the companies listed.

In my head the drive does not necessarily mean jumping to FTL travel, but simply the bending of space-time and allowing for FTL travel. Therefore, a vehicle (yes, you have my assumption correct based on the companies) could use a simplified version of the ring design to apply to certain craft that would be able to "defy gravity" so to speak, crating a levitating people-mover that is not as expensive as an aircraft, but would naturally be a bit more than a suburban. Think of a ringed vehicle that would have the word "greyhound" on the side, lol...

Juvat wrote:

Methinks you need to read up on general Trek "history".

I actually have read up on it. My original post said it's like Trek but not Trek. I don't want this to be Star Trek. This is my own universe where we basically achieve the same things, but based in our current universe, not the one that includes your said divergence in the 1960s...

Knight26 wrote:

Beyond that, the Alcubierre drive relies on the existence and discovering of exotic matter, so you need to have that in the timeline. Also my issue with the financial implications is that something needs to be discovered in order to force the economic turnaround. What is discovered? Let's face it even yout 5c ships will take a year to get to Alpha Centauri.

I will admit my theoretical timeline is in need of some deeper thinking. Lets consider it a WIP just like the 3D modeling is... I do have some of the requisite information in there, however. It was intended that the invention of the ringship drive was what pulled the world out of its economic havoc. The discovery and confirmation of the Higgs boson needs to be expounded on, of course, but this is the lead-in to the exotic matter. The Higgs is theoretically what gives matter its mass. Once the Higgs is identified, then non-mass matter would then eventually follow.

Thanks for all the comments and such though. They've helped me to think some things through and to aide in my final version of things... Remember, this is future fiction, not like I've received some seer-stone that tells me exactly how things are going to be. I've also dedicated myself to working on my PhD in physics, so I've done my homework as well ... But, this is only fiction... not some scientific fact... (which is what I always found more interesting about Trek over Wars, as it was always more-so loosely based in some scientific possibility and probablility).

Schimpfy

captain_mills wrote: »

I actually have read up on it. My original post said it's like Trek but not Trek. I don't want this to be Star Trek. This is my own universe where we basically achieve the same things, but based in our current universe, not the one that includes your said divergence in the 1960s...

Oh, I wasn't trying to tell you to read up on Trek history...that comment was purely for spacefighter.

Your timeline, while a WIP, is off to a good start.

psCargile

Another interesting fact about the Alcubierre warp bubble is that particles and photons impacting the bubble will become trapped on the edge, and when the ship decelerates out of warp, this energy is released and will destroy the planet you are approaching.

Warp Drive May Come With A Killer Downside

The Alcubierre Warp Drive: On the Matter of Matter which concludes:

These results suggest that any ship using an Alcu-
bierre warp drive carrying people would need shielding
to protect them from potential dangerously blueshifted
particles during the journey, and any people at the des-
tination would be gamma ray and high energy particle
blasted into oblivion due to the extreme blueshifts for
[forward] region particles. While in one way journeys parti-
cles travelling towards the origin are potentially danger-
ously blueshifted, their supposed distance from the origin
would render them too sparse to be of major concern by
the time they reached the origin.

captain_mills

Fact? None of it's fact... No theory is fact. The best idea that fits the evidence is not a fact...

psCargile

Mathematical fact is fact enough.

sojourner

Besides, just don't aim exactly at the planet when using the drive.

Zeropoint

Theory is great, and mathematical prediction is wonderful--the beauty of science is that it lets us make useful predictions.

However, you don't know until you have experimental confirmation.

Jenny

sojourner wrote: »

Besides, just don't aim exactly at the planet when using the drive.

I read some pulp series recently where the ships came out of Alcubierre drive in the Oort cloud to dump the accumulated particles of interstellar travel, then moved on in with a smaller lethal load.

davidnevue

captain_mills wrote: »

Fact? None of it's fact... No theory is fact. The best idea that fits the evidence is not a fact...

Something tells me you're mixing up the standard and scientific definitions of the word "theory" and also mixing up the standard and scientific definition of "fact". hehe

Starship

Well, leaving the question about the drive for the experts to answer in the future, I have to say the ship is looking good Mills.
Pardon, but I also have to ask you about news for the Cardiff.