Fastest sci-fi engine

[Doglord]

What do you think is faster: star wars hyperdrive (like millenium falcon), Stargate hyperdrive (like on the daedalus or oddesey) or star trek warp 9?

[Logic]

Well, considering Star Wars Vessels Travel accross their entire galaxy over the coarse of a few days, and Star Trek's Warp 9 is about 1500 times the speed of light, Warp Drive has no place being in this contest.
But, Stargate's Hyperdrive wins all. In a few weeks they can travel to other galaxies entirely.

[The Evil Thing]

Agreed, it takes two weeks to get from the Milky Way to Pegasus in a BC-304 but over a century to cross the Milky Way at Warp 9. The Star Wars hyperdrive is probably somewhere in between but no solid units to compare with are given (that I am aware of).

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Well, considering how they invented a warp drive that went so fast that the pilot was in every place in the universe simultaneously... I'd actually go for warp.

So why mention only warp 9? Thats not even the fastest conventional engines could go. They went like 9.6 in the very first Next Generation episode.

[waspsmakejam]

The fastest ever has to be the Infinite Improbability Drive (SS Heart of Gold, Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy). Except when it isn't. Obviously.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

The fastest ever has to be the Infinite Improbability Drive (SS Heart of Gold, Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy). Except when it isn't. Obviously.
Yeah, we'd probably have to go with the most reliably fastest drive ;)

[The Evil Thing]

Well, considering how they invented a warp drive that went so fast that the pilot was in every place in the universe simultaneously... I'd actually go for warp.

So why mention only warp 9? Thats not even the fastest conventional engines could go. They went like 9.6 in the very first Next Generation episode.
If the pilot is in every single place in the universe simultaneously then how come it would have taken Voyager 78 years to return home at maximum warp (warp 9.9)?

[The Vorpal Tribble]

If the pilot is in every single place in the universe simultaneously then how come it would have taken Voyager 78 years to return home at maximum warp (warp 9.9)?
Because one of the (really dumb) side affects to going infinite velocity is that your personal evolution goes into hyperdrive as well and the entire crew would have become giant salamanders (that'll sound pretty strange to folks that haven't seen the episode).

You just have to excuse Star Trek's stupidity every now and again. If they really wanted to get home quick without the side affects they would have gone warp 9.999999 etc etc until they reached sufficient velocity to get home in a few seconds. There is no reason they HAD to go infinite.

Then again, since they have energy/matter converters (replicators/holidecks/transporters) they could grab a few boulders every now and again, convert it to energy, and never have to worry about any kind of energy problems ever again.

Again, as much as I love the series, Star Trek science is DUMB.

[TheThan]

The silly thing about most sci-fi technology is the writers seem to forget that there is no friction in space therefor there is nothing to slow a ship down. So if a ship fires its engines up to a constant speed, then it will never stop accelerating. Meaning that any ship has the potential for (nearly) limitless speed.

Now since ships in star trek are self-supporting and never need replenishment (fuel, food, replacement parts, etc) they technically can go faster than the other ones. Ships in the StarWars and Stargate universes have limits on how far they can travel without refueling.

But since that’s not the case, I’d throw my lot in with Starwars for the fastest ships, for as J. Michael Straczynski (creator of the fabulous Babylon 5 series) once said, “they travel at the speed of plot”. Meaning if they need to get to a certain place at a certain time, they can.

[Beleriphon]

Now since ships in star trek are self-supporting and never need replenishment (fuel, food, replacement parts, etc) they technically can go faster than the other ones. Ships in the StarWars and Stargate universes have limits on how far they can travel without refueling.


Not entirely true. A Federation ship does require energy to support all of its systems. The warp core is extremely efficient, but you still need unprocessed matter for the replicators. All they do is convert a base substance into something else.

As for Star Wars, I believe as per Mara Jade's comment in Heir to the Empire, that an ISD does around 1500 LY/hr. So it could cross the Milky Way in a little less than 100 hours, or four days. Not bad for something with a crew of 30000.

[Reiku]

The silly thing about most sci-fi technology is the writers seem to forget that there is no friction in space therefor there is nothing to slow a ship down. So if a ship fires its engines up to a constant speed, then it will never stop accelerating. Meaning that any ship has the potential for (nearly) limitless speed...


The irony is, warp drive doesn't work by acceleration. As I understand it, it bends (warps) the fabric of space towards the center of the ship's mass, effectively bringing the area in front of the ship and the area behind it closer together, shortening the actual distance needed to travel from point A to point B. Basically a "light" version of the "folded space" concept, allowing you to cover a mile's distance for every foot you travel.

If you think about it, warp drive doesn't actually move the ship at all--it just lets you cover more ground with the same amount of inertia--so it would still be the impulse engines providing all the thrust.

No wonder they're so slow. :smallamused:


Also, two things you might want to remember before bashing sci fi writers:

Even if limitless accelleration is possible, that doesn't mean it's practical or even survivable.

The ship's mass increases as it speeds up, so you'd become a black hole before you even reached the speed of light.

It's a moot point anyway, because the ship will likely become too massive for the engines to move long before it's swartzchild radius shrinks down to the size of the craft and collapses it into a black hole.

Sci Fi authors come up with these convoluted warp drive/hyperspace/wormhole drive systems for just those reasons...

...although some of them may just be putting warp drives on their ships because it sounds cool, without actually understanding the physics that make it nessecary.

Back on topic, the fastest sci fi ship has got to be the evacuation ships from the end of Speaker for the Dead. Although it's debateable as to whether you could really call them ships, since they weren't self propelled--just yoinked from one point in space into hyperspace and then back into a new location instantly by a sentient computer program.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

Here that? That's the sound of catgirls dying... To risk killing a few myself, it should be pointed out that all three engines operate by "warping" reality around the ship - either allowing the vessel to operate according to the rules of a different "dimension" (subspace in Star Trek), or tunneling through another reality (hyperspace in Star Wars) or folding space in some manner. Therefore, the normal rules of constant acceleration (and relativity) don't necessarily have to apply. It should also be noted that space only approximates a vacuum, and that approximation is strained at sufficiently high speeds - the closer one is to c, the less it's like flying through an empty space and the more it's like flying through a howling sandstorm. Vessels traveling at high percentages of c would likely require some form of shielding from the interstellar debris/dust, such as an ablative ice sheath.

Anyways, based on what I know of the canonical, in-setting functionality of each of the above drives, I have to go with the Stargate hyperdrive. As stated above, the drive is fast enough to get from the Milky Way to the Pegasus galaxy (likely the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular), nearly 3 million lightyears, in a span of a few weeks. Intergalactic travel is posed as an extreme undertaking in the Star Wars universe, and just getting from one side of the Milky Way to the other is very problematic in Star Trek.

[Reiku]

You're kidding right?

That's the cannonical explanation for Star Trek's warp drive?

All the in-show evidence I ever saw seemed to indicate that warp drive was a distance-reducing effect. I know they send their communication signals via sub-space (another word for hyperspace) but I don't recall ever hearing that they actually travel through it--barring malfunction, anomaly, or act-of-Q, of course.

As for the catgirl thing--it's a hoax. Science Fiction (the good kind anyway) is always based on real physics, it's dragging equations into Science-Fantasy that kills catgirls.

For the record, the concepts of Warp Drive and Hyperspace Drive are both based on real-world physics:

Warp Drive warps space, shortening the distance between two points, while Hyperdrive sends the ship into hyperspace (the theorized "space" existing between universes) and then back into regular space, either allowing instantaneous or greatly shortened travel time, depending on the method. In fact, both concepts origionated in theoretical physics discussions, science fiction just popularized them.

Of course, Some author's use the terms without knowing what they mean, and considering the level of technobable in star trek and the blissfull ignorance of physics in star wars, it's entirely possible that both shows are guilty of that.

[The Evil Thing]

Star Wars is technically science fantasy. Lucas wrote the "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" with the express purpose of dissociating the SW-verse from our galaxy and hence, our physics. How else could lasers blow up entire planets (heck, hand blasters send people flying backwards - not even bullets do that), space fighters fly around space like terrestrial aircraft and people push solid objects around with the power of thought. Science was not meant to be applied to Star Wars.

[Jack Squat]

Ludicrous speed pwns all :biggrin:

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Ludicrous speed pwns all :biggrin:

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/the-treasure-shoppee/Harvest-plaid.gif
AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh....

[Saithis Bladewing]

"All hands, prepare for LUDICROUS SPEED!"

"Fasten all safety belts!"

*A minute of preparation later.*

LUDICROUS SPEED, GO!

"Whoa!

...

They've gone to Plaid!"

[Neo]

Yeah, as on topic the fastest would be the Stargate Hyperdrive, specifically the Asgard one. Which can do the trip between galaxies in a few days rather than weeks.

As for fastest would be something like the folding space system in Dune, or other form of near instantaneous travel.

As a sidenote, Space Quest went a step further than Ludicrous Speed with Heinous Speed:smallbiggrin:

[Roland St. Jude]

Of course, there's the Holtzman Drive used on Guild Heighliners. They're extremely "fast". :smallwink:

[Flak_Razorwill]

Stargate. I mean, you get from Galaxy to galaxy in a day or two. (i.e. several million LY/hour!) I'm surprised they were able to back-engineer a trans-FTL battlecruiser within several years of the original Stargate Abydos mission.

Warp was DESIGNED slow, to keep the Milky Way a big, wonderous place, and to add drama. The term "Trek" imples a quest, or voyage of discovery. The galaxy is like the world circa 1400. You CAN get from A to B in a ship, it just would take months or years, and there'd be a lot of crazy stuff in the way.

Hyperdrive was designed to keep the galaxy approximately the size of Earth around WW2. Imagine Coruscant as London or New York, and Tatooine as somewhere in the Australian desert. It'd take a day or two to cross the distance. (On the same train of thought, the Death Star was an invincible magic machine, with a weakness that only a Skywalker could destroy. This leads me to deem Star Wars as a kind of fantasy/Sci-Fi.)

EDIT: As an aside, the whole spiel with Warp 10 never "happened" according to the writers. They wrote off that bit to lazy writing and a lack of coffee. (i.e. "sorry, it looked better on paper!")

Warp works on...*consults TNG manual*...continuum distortion propulsion.

"The key to the creation of subsequent non-Newtonian methods, i.e., propulsion not dependent upon exhausting reaction products, lay in the concept of nesting many layers of warp field energy, each layer exerting a controlled amount of force against its next-outermost neighbor. The cumulative effect of the force applied drives the vehicle forward and is known as asymmetrical peristaltic field manipulation (APFM). Warp field coils in the engine nacelles are energized in sequential order, fore to aft. The firing frequency determines the number of field layers, a greater number of layers per unit time being required at higher warp factors. Each new field layer expands outward from the nacelles, experiences a rapid force coupling and decoupling at variable distances from the nacelles, simultaneously transferring energy and separating from the previous layer at velocities between 0.5c and 0.9c. This is well within the bounds of traditional physics, effectively circumventing the limits of General, Special, and Transformational Relativity. During force coupling the radiated energy makes the necessary transition into subspace, applying an apparent mass reduction effect to the spacecraft. This facilitates the slippage of the spacecraft through the sequencing layers of warp field energy".

According to Wookieepedia, hyperdrive works like this:

"After receiving commands from a ship's pilot via paralight system (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Paralight_system), the process of a hyperspace jump began with the collection of gamma radiation by the field guide. A motivator would build up and modify the energy in a fusion generator through several kilometers of looped superconducting wire. To enter hyperspace, the hyperdrive's horizontal boosters would provide energy to the ionization chamber to begin ignition that would release the radiation, causing ripples in the time-space matrix and allowing the ship to propel off the ripples into hyperspace. Inertial dampers (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Inertial_damper) were used to protect the ship, crew, and cargo from being crushed by the tremendous acceleration of the jump. Once in hyperspace, null quantum field generator helped stabilize the vessel and keep it from prematurely emerging from the alternate dimension. Shields (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shields) also protected the ship from fatal collisions with interstellar gas and dark matter particles. To prevent the relativistic passing of time while in hyperspace, starships used stasis fields attuned to hyperdrive levels to keep organic onboard crews or cargos "in time" with the standard galactic dimension.
Upon exiting hyperspace an unknown technology was used to decelerate the starship. Both entrances into and exits from hyperspace created wake rotation and Cronau radiation (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cronau_radiation) that produced a detectable signature often used to reconnoiter fleet movements or by planetary customs authorities. Other technologies, such as the 4-axial stabilizer and hyperdrive regulator (http://starwars.wikia.com/index.php?title=Hyperdrive_regulator&action=edit) kept the ship from being ripped apart by the physics of hyperspace travel. To prevent overheating, some hyperdrives made use of overheat fail safes, like a hyperspace shunt or transpacitor, or alluvial dampers (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alluvial_damper) to regulate the flow of ion particles used to provide superluminal thrust."

Essentially, technobabble. Like any other good sci-fi franchise.

I like Galactica because they try NOT to tell you how anything works.

...And the big G seems to have no issue using FTL near a planetary body, unlike the above...

Now that I think about it...Galactica just might have all of the above beat. It seems they can fling themselves across light-years instantly. Not in seconds: instantly. The only thing limiting their range is a lack of reliable jump info beyond a certain distance, and fuel.

[Jarl]

The hyperspace mechanism in Homeworld is instant, but it only works over "short" distances. It took, what, 30 jumps... to travel a third of the galaxy. Still faster than the Warp Drive.

-(Extenuating circumstances, yes)

[Jibar]

I can understand that we're all geeks here. Some of us are nerds. We all like this kinda thing.
I am however having arguments with my brain that somebody could actally ask this question.




Infinite Improbability Drive anyway...

[The Evil Thing]

IIP Drive was such a cheat. Would make an awesome lifeboat though, just switch it on and scoop people up. Just be sure not to hit any sperm wales or petunias.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

There are several "instantaneous drives" out there, from BattleTech's Kearny-Fuchida drive to Dune's Holtzman drive to BattleStar Galactica's FTL drive. While this category is the fastest in that they take the vessel across a distance in literally no time at all, most have a limited range (the Kearny-Fuchida drive can go 30ly per jump) and require refueling or recharging afterwards, which means that over a large distance they may be functionally slower than a hyperspace or warp type drive. Not to mention most require normal-space travel at either end of the jump.

An interesting variation is the stardrive from the Star*Drive setting (for Alternity). It's a sort of jump drive, but every trip, no matter the distance, takes ~5 days (IIRC). The actual maximum distance traveled depends on the power of the particular drive, but the time never varies.


You're kidding right?

That's the cannonical explanation for Star Trek's warp drive?

All the in-show evidence I ever saw seemed to indicate that warp drive was a distance-reducing effect. I know they send their communication signals via sub-space (another word for hyperspace) but I don't recall ever hearing that they actually travel through it--barring malfunction, anomaly, or act-of-Q, of course.
It's a rough, quick explanation. Flak's is more detailed, but the non-technobabble version is more like this:

Subspace is a form of reality (a dimension, so to speak, like hyperspace in other settings), that exists in layers "below" normal space-time. A warp engine warps space-time and extends its field into subspace. The ship itself does not enter subspace - it is enclosed in a bubble of normal space-time within the warp field. The ship basically rides a wave of warped space-time from place to place, sort of like a hydrofoil.

Transwarp is more of a "distance reducing" or space-folding concept, in that it actually seems to create wormhole like tunnels through subspace from place to place.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Faster than those three is the TARDIS's drive - arrive anywhere in the multiverse before you set out. :biggrin:

[Jibar]

Oh-ho-kay then.

So, Altair wins.

[Nentuaby]

This is a silly discussion, there are many FTL drives that are instantaneous. One that hasn't been mentioned here is the Singularity from Anne McAffrey's assorted works. It travels instantaneously over any distance; its limitation is that there are only scattered points to enter it, due to the spatial topography of the universe.

[Flak_Razorwill]

Faster than those three is the TARDIS's drive - arrive anywhere in the multiverse before you set out. :biggrin:


Ooh! Only if the Time Lords were around to deal with the interdimensional rifts.

So it's just the normal universe. The dimensional thing is a fluke, now.

But then you've got alternate futures, what have you. Eh.

EDIT: Oh, eff this. I'll go with Q and his magical fingersnaps.

[WampaX]

Curious . . . how does the Quantum Slipstream Drive fit into all of this?

The ST:Voyager version has about 20K Lyr in minutes

[Flak_Razorwill]

Curious . . . how does the Quantum Slipstream Drive fit into all of this?

The ST:Voyager version has about 20K Lyr in minutes

From what I can remember, it works like a normal warp drive, except that instead of bending spacetime in a normal oblong bubble around the ship, it projects the field several lightyears ahead into the flight path, somehow allowing the field to work at gargantuan efficiencies. However, maintaining the field and navigating it successfully take a lot of energy and tech that Voyager didn't exactly have due to plot.

Here we go:

http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Quantum_slipstream_drive

The Delta Flyer somehow sucked at calculating the whole thing ahead, and the special-make plasma coils only seem to last about 10 minutes before shorting. Unless you've got the fake Dauntless, however. That thing could go about 20k LY in about a month. While still not as fast as an ISD, it's still better than anything the Fed has.

[Varen_Tai]

Gimme a tesseract any day...

[Mewtroid]

Stargate wins. They've crossed the galaxy in a day with even the standard non-intergalactic drive, crossed BETWEEN galaxies in... I think that one time with the Human-form Replicators and the time dilation thingy Thor took them to another galaxy in a day, maybe less. With the ZPM powering the Daedalus's hyperdrive they made the trip in like 3 days, under ordinary circumstances a couple of weeks.

Of course, this is ignoring the WOMG-fast Traveller-powered warp drive from that one episode of TNG and the Warp 10 drive from that one Voyager. The Traveller got them to another galaxy in under a minute, and Warp 10 is everywhere at once. Infinite Probability and Bistromathics don't count, and I don't know about Star Wars drives but those seem to move at the speed of plot. Any other drive systems worth mentioning?

[Flak_Razorwill]

Well, someone DID mention the TARDIS.

[The Vanishing Hitchhiker]

Well, someone DID mention the TARDIS.

Yes indeed. Really now people, the TARDIS always wins (well, those in better repair - and with less eccentric owners - than the Doctor's ol' Type 40). And who wants to go mucking about in alternate realities, anyway...though apparently, according to some comments from the ninth Doctor, mucking about in alternate realities was a lot easier when the Time Lords still had shop set up. (The Daleks blew them up? Just admit it man. We all know you did it.)

And yeah, if they have to be reliable, then I guess the Infinite Improbability Drive is out. Though perhaps, via the interconnectedness of all things, you may not end up where you were going, but rather where you needed to be. Ooh. *makes wiggly, mystical motions with her fingers*

[Nerd-o-rama]

Well, Stargate does win. Their hyperdrive goes fastest (even the cheap Earth knockoff version), plus their eponymous device can move smaller objects theoretically anywhere in any of several galaxies instantaneously...though it does take a hell of a lot of energy to go extragalactic, and you run into targeting issues since there's only so many points in space you can designate with six or seven of thirty-nine symbols.

But yeah, their hyperdrive is the fastest as well.

[The Vanishing Hitchhiker]

Okay folks. The way a TARDIS works is - first of all, the inside exists in a different dimension than the outside, and the outside is adjustable (though smaller than the inside, for convienence), so you could cram a pod of whales or something inside one for transport... anyway, say you're in the city Nsoel on the planet Xychekaar in the galaxy Andromeda in December in the year 284593. After you've gotten your pod of whales all settled in and comfy, you press some buttons, tell the console you want to go to Austin, Texas, on the planet Earth in the Milky Way galaxy on Valentine's Day in 1872, or whatever. The TARDIS will then make a dramatic noise as it dematerializes from whereever you were, and another dramatic noise as it rematerializes whereever you were going. Travel time through the time vortex can be nigh instantaneous, or as long as it takes for the characters inside the TARDIS to hold a conversation (speed of plot, normally no longer than a few minutes).
There are limitations, of course, mostly in relation to time rather than space. You can't, for example, go, "Oh, well, he's dead, we screwed that up, let's go back and save him!" You've already gone and joined the timeline, no "do-overs".
And of course, it's gotten more difficult to go and hop about alternate universes since all the Time Lords have gone kaput, but that's not so much about speed as it is about dimensional travel (can't exactly take highway 281 to Universe 846.3B5).
Basically how it works is, you disappear from where you were, take a quick shortcut through the time vortex, and then *poof*, reappear where (and when) you're going. All in the blink of an eye, or perhaps in the time it takes to brew a cup of tea. Whichever works best for you at the time.

Between galaxies in three days? Ha. Try minutes.

On the other hand, does the TARDIS disqualify itself on the grounds that its use of travel kind of negates the concept of "speed"? Hmm...
Anticipated response: "Yes, so long as the sci-fi engine of my choice wins."

[Beleriphon]

Of course, there's the Holtzman Drive used on Guild Heighliners. They're extremely "fast". :smallwink:

Aren't they something akin to dropping the ship into another dimension and then having pop out some place else a short while later?

For fastest drive I think the BSG FTL drive wins. While it take some time to spin the thing up it looks to teleport a massive vessel hundreds, if not thousands of light years, in the blink of an eye.

[Logic]

Aren't they something akin to dropping the ship into another dimension and then having pop out some place else a short while later?

For fastest drive I think the BSG FTL drive wins. While it take some time to spin the thing up it looks to teleport a massive vessel hundreds, if not thousands of light years, in the blink of an eye.
If that is the case, then why did the rescue team of raptors have to make some 40 jumps to get back to Caprica? Including all spin up time, I am relatively sure (without knowing any kind of distance at all) that many of these other ships could reach the destination before the FTL equipped BSG ships could. Why else would they have had a "Red Line"?
Though they never say exaxtly what the "Red Line" is, it is implied to be both enemy territoy as well as uncharted space. If they could just go there and back so fast, they would have done a bit more exploring.

[Sereno]

If that is the case, then why did the rescue team of raptors have to make some 40 jumps to get back to Caprica?

IIRC, the BSG FTL drives have a limited range in light years, but the actual transport seems near-instantaneous. The raptors are the only "small" craft the Colonies have that can FTL.

The Cylons, however, can FTL much farther. Even in the episode where they went back to Caprica in the Raptors, it took the Cylon computer from Starbuck's captured raider and "Sharon" to get the computations right....

[Rawhide]

What about Andromeda (http://www.andromedatv.com/)'s slipstream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_%28science_fiction%29#Andromeda)?

[Gorbash Kazdar]

On the other hand, does the TARDIS disqualify itself on the grounds that its use of travel kind of negates the concept of "speed"? Hmm...
Anticipated response: "Yes, so long as the sci-fi engine of my choice wins."
I think time travel is generally out for the reason you stated, though in theory we could measure subjective time of the travellers...

Unless we specify a certain distance to traverse, I think the jump/instantaneous drives need to be tossed out as well. Most jump drives technically have infinite speed, since no time passes when they travel. However, since most such drives have a recharge and/or warmup time, and many require normal space travel at either end (either to and from a "node" of some sort or up and down the gravity well), we can calculate an average speed based on distance traveled from origin to destination divided by the time taken. Of course, this "speed" will vary greatly depending on the distance and how the drive works. A Kearny-Fuchida ship from BattleTech would be much faster over 30 ly than it would over 120 ly.

Anyways, for the drives in the poll, some max speeds as multiples of c, based on some supposedly canonical information.

[hr]
Stargate hyperspace drive:
The Daedalus class vessels, using their standard hyperspace drive, travel from the Milky Way to the Pegasus galaxy in approximately two weeks, or 14 days. 336 hours (or ~.04 years) is likely an acceptable travel time estimate. It is stated in the show that the Pegasus galaxy is about "3 million" light years away. There are two real Pegasus galaxies - the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular and the Pegasus Dwarf Spheroidal. The former is 2.5 ± .3 mly away, and the latter some 2.7 ± .1 mly away. Given that the character stating 3 mly tends to be rather exact, I'd lean more towards the higher distance - 2.8 mly.

So, the vessel is traveling between 2.2 and 2.8 mly in .04 years. For the former, that's a very impressive 73,000,000c, and 57,357,142.86c for the latter.

Star Trek warp drive:
Using the Okuda scale, Warp 9 is 1,516.4c. Since the Okuda warp scale is an asymptope, decimal increases past Warp 9 represents a significant increase in speed. The Enterprise-D's maximum speed was Warp 9.6, or 1,909c. The highest speed I am aware of normally reachable by a Federation starship, using standard warp engines, is Warp 9.975, by the Intrepid class vessel. That would be 6,000c.

Star Wars hyperdrive:
Speeds for Star Wars are much sketchier than the others. The closest thing I know of is the "12 parsecs" quoted for the Millenium Falcon on a Kessel run, which is a measure of distance rather than time or speed. Getting a travel time and a distance at the same time in Star Wars is really, really rare. In any case, rather than bang my head on the wall, I'll refer to someone else's work (http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWhyperspeed.html) and go with 16,600c for the "fastest hunk of junk" in that setting.

[hr]
Clearly, the Stargate drive is much, much faster than the other two (if I've done my calculations correctly).

[The Prince of Cats]

Bah... The Voidhawks from Night's Dawn were fastest. They travel instantaneously, the pilot has a psychic link with his ship (so no delay while issuing a command) and they can jump 22 light years with each 'swallow' through a custom-made wormhole.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Oh-ho-kay then.

So, Altair wins.

:biggrin:
I'm going to put that in my sig...

Although I know that the TARDIS wasn't in the OP's list. I guessed wrong at first cause I didn't know anything about the Stargate drive.

[Poison_Fish]

I knew the Star Drive would be mentioned somewhere in this thread!

To clarify, the potential distance it went was anywhere from 5 to 50 light years per jump, and that distance was determined by the amount of energy you dumped into the system compared to the relative mass of your ship. The journey would always be 121 hours in a different dimension. It would then take about half a day to reset itself for another jump.

Certainly not the fastest way to travel, but then, the stardrive Universe liked to keep the edge of the Milky Way away from the verge by at least a month, and by edge I do mean edge.

Anyway, I've been out of Sci-Fi, particularly Trek and Stargate, for some time now. But to bring up a new contender, wormhole travel from Farscape. If you could ever get it down, you could go anywhere. You'd just better not kill yourself or accidentally fly into the flight path of a brother of an insane military commander along the way.

[Flak_Razorwill]

If that is the case, then why did the rescue team of raptors have to make some 40 jumps to get back to Caprica? Including all spin up time, I am relatively sure (without knowing any kind of distance at all) that many of these other ships could reach the destination before the FTL equipped BSG ships could. Why else would they have had a "Red Line"?
Though they never say exaxtly what the "Red Line" is, it is implied to be both enemy territoy as well as uncharted space. If they could just go there and back so fast, they would have done a bit more exploring.

The "red line" is the maximum safe distance one can jump because of navigational issues. All ships need up-to-date star charts and sensor data before a jump, and after a certain distance, the exact coordinates of what'll be around you will get sketchy. This is assuming in BSG, you always know where you're jumping, it's just that due to stellar drift, you have no idea whatsoever if what you're getting at has gone away, or if a planet will show up just where you're trying to get to.

The cylon computer they used on the raptors was a super-efficient sensor/microprocessor package, allowing the normally "short" jumps of a raptor to go much further. However, due to some colonial design limits, they needed 10 jumps to make it to Caprica.

Otherwise, Cylon drives are more advanced in both sensors AND power. It's been said that ships could get from the cylon homeworld to the colonies single jump. I once saw a map...

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Image:Locations_in_BSG_galaxy.jpg

I guessed that if cylons are way the hell off near the end of the galactic plane, that's about 1000 LY in one jump. Now, I'm assuming that you'd need scouts to get it right, so you don't actually hyperspace halfway into a planet.

There's another pro with BSG FTL: you can jump into an atmosphere, near planets, etc. Remember "Falling with style?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9_KGK_sb0&mode=related&search=

Some limits on other FTLs

-Star Wars: It seems that once in hyperspace, you really can't change course...you can only stop. All jumps need to be plotted ahead of time. An astromech droid can carry a bunch in its memory, so that's why they're so popular for smaller craft. I'm assuming the ship needs to turn and twist around various celestial bodies and such, so at those speeds, I'd rather trust this to a pretimed computer program than a person. I'm assuming the info about stellar drift is constantly updated in a holonet database.

Established routes are great. But exploring hyperspace routes is a risky venture. You're basically mapping space in a way that takes FOREVER to get through in sublight, making it a slow, painful process. If you take an unknown route to see where it goes...well...bye. If it turns out that you made it to a planet of pure ice-cold eternal superbeer, then jackpot!

(I think because of this, Mike Wong's (SD.net...I like his work, just not him. I read his stuff and feel that the guy has a lot of anger) plan to pwn the Fed would be a quagmire. I know warp is slow, but it took 20,000 years to map out routes to a mere fraction of the SW galaxy. If the Empire made a beeline at Earth from some wormhole 2000 LY away, they'd either ram into about 100 stars along the way or spend months crawling around, trying to find a safe route. (Assuming they don't steal star charts.)

Also, gravity. Hyperdrives can't work near grav wells. If they get too close, they're pulled out. If they actually HIT a substantial object, then they're annihilated, with an equivalent damage done to the target. I remember in the Episode III visual schematic book that a Republic Star Battlecruiser accidentally hit a planet when damaged. I think the planet's core was blown apart, and a large part of the surface was liquified.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Quaestor

Now that I think about it...why not just ram small ships into an enemy planet from hyperspace? If a battlecruiser can do that much to a planet, who needs a Death Star? Just get a bunch of cheapo Correllian Corvettes, and bingo! A million tons of steel traveling at 1000C...the energy's there...just do it!

Trek: While slow, it's the most flexible. You can warp around, stop, go in an instant with no preparation, Turn, stop, do a barrel roll, etc. You can even work near a gravity well. It's just that while in warp, the energy field around the ship is HUGE. I remember (I don't think this is really canon) that a civilization just about to get warp drive saw a huge object 1/5 the size of their planet coming right at them. They were panicing, until they saw it as getting smaller. It turned out to be an Excelsior-class ship decelerating from warp. Though it's not established as dangerous, I wouldn't want to be too close to a ship at warp.

Stargate: I have no idea how this hyperdrive works. The only limit seems to be navigation. I mean, millions of LY in weeks? Wow. The gates really don't count, as they're more like teleporters than true "travel" ships.

Hmm. So far, those Andromeda FTLs seem to have the edge. Another galaxy in a few days, wasn't that the thing? And all you needed to navigate was simple sentient thought among the tunnels.

[Idless]

Everytime you guys write something like: the FTL drive that ...

I can't help read it as a For The Loose

*snicker*

...sorry guys... I will bugger out of your thread now :smalleek:

...Idless

[Flak_Razorwill]

Everytime you guys write something like: the FTL drive that ...

I can't help read it as a For The Loose

*snicker*

...sorry guys... I will bugger out of your thread now :smalleek:

...Idless


For The Loose? What's loose? Like loose as in "the bolt worked itself loose" or loose like "whore loose."

I ran some work on what would happen if a million tons of steel did hit a planet at 1000c. I used some online conversion sites for the dirty work, here. 1000c is about 299,792,458,000 m/s. If we're talking metric, then we have 1,000,000,000 kgs. That comes out at about 4.493775893684089e+31 joules, or 10,740,382,155,076,694 megatons. I have no idea how much power that is. I'm not good with numbers. I forget what "e" in exponential terms does, but 10^32 joules is number I see as a minimum for the Death Star's firepower for fragging an Earth-sized planet. I'm getting 23,900,573,613,766,730 megatons, which simple math aside, sounds like just over double the previous number.

While a correllian corvette would be a bit too small, you could grab 2 bigger ships like those old Black Fleet Dreadnaughts, set them on autopilot and send that sumbitch into a planet for Death Star firepower. In conclusion, just crash ships at hyperspace speeds into things you don't like.Hey, Empire! I got an idea that could have saved you some money!

[Beleriphon]

For The Loose? What's loose? Like loose as in "the bolt worked itself loose" or loose like "whore loose."


No he means For the Lose. Its a typo.

[Tharj TreeSmiter]

Not sure that the stargate transportation method really compares to the star wars/ Star trek methods. The former is a gateway (wormhole) whereas the others are interstellar spaceship propulsion.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

Not sure that the stargate transportation method really compares to the star wars/ Star trek methods. The former is a gateway (wormhole) whereas the others are interstellar spaceship propulsion.
In the Stargate television series (SG-1 and Atlantis), there are starships equipped with a type of hyperspace drive in addition to the eponymous gates.

[Penguinizer]

What about the ship in the movie "Event Horizon"

It blinks itself through another dimension. (what it is is a plot spoiler)

[Gorbash Kazdar]

What about the ship in the movie "Event Horizon"

It blinks itself through another dimension. (what it is is a plot spoiler)
Nah, they explain that just about immediately in the film. In any case, I'd categorize the Event Horizon's drive as a form of "instantaneous drive," as, in theory, it shouldn't really take any time at all for the ship to make its wormhole and move through to its destination. As I stated above, determining a "speed" for such a drive isn't very simple.

[Penguinizer]

Good point, never bothered to watch the movie :P

Saw the thing from the commercial.

[LordOfNarf]

Aren't they something akin to dropping the ship into another dimension and then having pop out some place else a short while later?

The Dune space folders fold space arond them, until they reach their destination, it's near instant travel, no alterante dimensions invoved. The only drawback is they you have to be precognicient to use it, and the Guild isn't cheap. Teh technology is never explained fully (brian Herbert's books did NOT happen) so there is still some argument to how exactly they fold space.

[Beleriphon]

The Dune space folders fold space arond them, until they reach their destination, it's near instant travel, no alterante dimensions invoved. The only drawback is they you have to be precognicient to use it, and the Guild isn't cheap. Teh technology is never explained fully (brian Herbert's books did NOT happen) so there is still some argument to how exactly they fold space.


I remember that now. Good old guild pilots, what with their tanks, and the spice induced precongintive dream states.

[Begle1]

The infinite improbability drive gets faster if you develop anything faster.

However, I do believe that there was an even faster drive based upon the math used by restaurant waiters. And since restaurant math is entirly devoid of the concept of numerical order, the IID won't get a chance to realize that there's something faster. Restaurant math doesn't understand "fast" and "faster", so in the real world, it is probably faster. Probably, not improbably. If it was improbably faster, the IID would win by definition.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20061118.gif

(Will that hyperlink work? http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=646#comic )

Of course, in the real world I think the fastest thing we've ever launched was an ion engine thing, right? Haven't we launched one of those yet? Or have we only launched big honkin' rockets?

[MReav]

Actually, I remember an episode of Voyager (the 37's specifically) where they stated Voyager's top speed was around 4 billion miles a second (~21000c). However, longterm maintainable warp (warp 6) was only about 1500c.

All that being said, of these choices, Stargate is the answer, what with their intergalactic travel in days.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Of the ones listed, I would have to say Stargate. Of all possible ones, I would have to say my own personal one in my sci-fi stories- the Quantum Tunneling drive. In my stories, the universe is like a ball on which we live on the outside, and the inside of the ball is treated as a forbidden energy state. By using a specially generated pulse, all the atoms in you ship can be "coaxed" into quantum tunneling through the inside of the "ball", all in the same direction- that of the pulse. Of course, you have to calculate the curvature of the universe relative to you and where you want to go, and charge the capacitors, which both take time, and after you jump, because there is always an infinitesimally small inaccuracy in the calculations, you have to use sublight after you jump to arrive at where you wanna go (the error may be infinitesimally small, but when you add in the "distance" through the center of the "ball" and treat the error in the pulse like you are moving a third degree lever that small angle relative to where it is now, the error can be bloody massive. Sometimes a second jump is used instead of sublight). Of course, you have still traveled halfway across the universe in an instant, but still.

[Grey Knight]

(B***n Herbert's books did NOT happen)

I think that name should be added to the profanity filter.

Prince of Cats: Are you sure the various *foo*hawks travelled instantaneously? I haven't read that in ages, but I thought they just took a shortcut down a wormhole.

Also, I agree with Gorbash about the catgirl massacre going on here. :smallwink:

[The Prince of Cats]

Well, he is intentionally vague on a great many points, but the tricks some people pull with a swallow (like the Udat) require the kind of timing that should be almost impossible withough an almost instantaneous jump. Also, they can follow a ship making ZTT jumps and they are meant to be almost instantaneous.