You don't need FTL to get to Earth…..
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LittleMissDysthymia — 11 years ago(July 26, 2014 11:57 PM)
If they're
that
different then we're getting into Lovecraft territory. If the Great Old Ones ever decide to visit Earth we're pretty much boned. It'd make for an awesome movie though.
That or the aliens could be space wizards with ships that run on magic.
Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and severe hemorrhaging. -
LittleMissDysthymia — 11 years ago(July 27, 2014 05:58 PM)
I brought Lovecraft into it because "things beyond human understanding" is his wheelhouse. Any technology so strange that it's beyond human understanding would have to be made by beings beyond our understanding. Any beings of this type would be eldrich to humans by their very otherness. It would be a fun movie to watch because such beings would also be beyond our human understanding of "good" and "evil" and would appear chaotic.
And we would appear the same way to them.
I mostly meant the "magic" reference to be something Harry Potter-ish (can you imagine if they used magic to explore space, how incredible their 'ships' would be?), but I suppose even the wizards in Harry Potter are 'using an innate physical ability to manipulate reality on a quantum level' or whatever.
Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and severe hemorrhaging. -
dngn_rdr — 11 years ago(January 03, 2015 08:35 AM)
They wouldn't need a huge amount of fuel for just traveling in space, just powering the life support - everything else can power down. You would only need large amounts of fuel of some sort for take off, landing, and some for changing course. With almost no atmosphere in space objects maintain their speed without the need to maintain powered flight. That's why shuttles going to the moon have huge booster engines to escape the atmosphere that drop away and very little for the space travel portion.
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dngn_rdr — 11 years ago(January 08, 2015 07:23 PM)
Not necessarily, but minor course adjustments wouldn't require a lot of fuel and if most/all of the crew are in hibernation then you would plot your course before going to sleep and then yes would just keep going in a straight line.
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randyw01 — 11 years ago(March 23, 2015 12:43 AM)
This whole problem kind of assumes nothing bad will happen between launch and arriving at your target planet. You might run into something in space, like rocks or what not, and then you'd need that self repairing ship as someone mentioned. Or worse, maybe you cross paths with some other armed race of spacefarers.
Guess what! I've got a fever, and the only prescription is MORE COWBELL!
-Bruce Dickinson- -
camerica1978 — 9 years ago(September 01, 2016 12:53 AM)
A matter-antimatter reactor would be far more efficient than a nuclear one, so they wouldn't need vast stores of fuel. Also, what if they could somehow harvest dark energy? Isn't it everywhere, even in deep space? Or they could maybe find some way to generate energy from dark matter, as long as they're travelling within the galactic plane.