In a series of articles I will be commenting on Bill’s game/entertainment concept which I will refer to as “The New World.” This was the name that the Americas were referred to in the centuries after its discovery. Europe was referred to as “The Old World.”
In this space saga, it makes sense to refer to Earth as The Old World, and the Space Colonies as The New World. The vast space (and time) separating the two worlds I will refer to as “The Atlantic Void” or simply “The Atlantic.”
I think that re-telling of the American revolution, set in the future is an excellent concept and I will try to add to it by giving my inputs, both on story (I am a professional writer) and on the science (I am also a physicist).
Space Travel
In this first post, I will address space travel. There exists a technology that allows this story to mimic the constraints that the original settlers faced when crossing the Atlantic ocean. It took roughly one month at sea, it was extremely expensive, and there was also risk involved. All of these features can and should be mirrored in this story universe.
The key to achieving this, in my opinion, is the Alcubierre Warp Drive. It’s a real thing proposed in 1994 by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre. It works by creating a field with a combination of positive and negative curvature of spacetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
In addition to essentially being an anti-gravity device (and in fact creating a repulsing form of gravity), it can be used to achieve faster than light travel, by contracting space in front of the spacecraft and expanding it behind. Thus, this is really a Star Trek-like warp drive, only the real deal.
Is this possible? No-one knows, but it is consistent with the general theory of relativity. Thus, it is good enough to pass for science in a sci-fi story, and all the terminology used can be made consistent with modern physics. The only open question is whether it is really possible to create a negative curvature.
One thing is fairly certain, however, IF an Alcubierre Drive is possible it is going to be extremely energy demanding, and the more curvature (i.e. more warp), the more energy is needed.
In practice, this places a severe restriction on this technology. Albubierre space ships will be as expensive as the equivalent Atlantic ships of the 17th century. They will be quite slow, meaning that crossing the Atlantic Void, may take at least a month.
Furthermore, since the unwarped volume that is transported with the warp drive is very limited, in addition to being super-expensive, there are also severe restrictions on how much can be transported through the drive. Bringing things from the Old World to the New World is going to be very expensive and has to be spread out across a long time because not much cargo fits in each trip.
The Alcubierre drive may come in several versions. One is very slow, maybe allowing only twice the speed of light. The advantage is that they require less warping of space and therefore less energy, and therefore a greater volume can be transported. If the New World is 10 lightyears away, such a slow cargo spaceship would take 5 years and is only practical for trade and transportation that is not time critical.
The second version could be enough for a tiny space module, but can travel at 20 times the speed of light, allowing you to cross the Atlantic Void in only 6 months.
Finally, artistic freedom allows us to create something I call Alcubierre Solitons. These are little warp packets that travel like a wave through space. They can only carry extremely small objects, or just light. This, however, allows for faster-than-light communication. There are severe limitations on this form of communication, too, however, because it is both energy demanding as well as highly directional. The wave also dissipates as it travels so the range is limited and there may be a degradation of the signal.
Ok, that’s it for now. Some stuff to think about. The way I am working on this is to make a near-reenactment of the real American Revolution. The names may be different (although there is no reason not to make use of some famous names) and the plot lines and actual events can be quite different, but the theme and various key conflicts can be the same.
2 replies on “The New World: Space Travel”
Looking forward to the rest of the articles. You might need to make the Old World and New World plural, as both would likely be multiplanet societies (even if just Earth, Mars, Venus Atmosphere, and Ganymede)
No need to have solitons for FTL communications if you want an analog to the 1700s. There was no radio then, people just carried messages as cargo.
Thanks for your input. I like your idea of making it plural to make it more distinct. This will be the basis of my next article. Location and type. The Old/New Worlds it is.
As to information, it is not true that it was traveling as slow in the past as cargo and people. For one, pigeons have been used for thousands of years, and were only recently retired in European military units. In the Middle East, for instance, pigeons were used to send messages from Baghdad to Memphis in Egypt in antiquity. The trip that would take weeks on camel back took only days with a pigeon. They were also used in America.