Kismeteer
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Posted - 2006.07.08 13:47:00 -
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Just a couple points guys. I'd suggest you check out Special Relativity on wikipedia for a techie explination, and maybe this presentation for a nontechnical explination. (It's a video and easy to understand, if a bit long.)
1. You can't pass the speed of light in a vacumn, as of now. It's the universal speed limit, as we know it now, and while there are theoretical ways to warp space in such a way to make it seem like you can break it, it currently cannot be broke. In fact, it can't even ever be reached either.
2. As you get closer to the speed of light, your mass goes up, along with making it appear you are squishing down. If you are pushing along a 1km object at 1N/sec, eventually it will become a 2km object, which will only accelerate half as much compared to before. Eventually, you require infinite force to accelerate past the speed of light. Oh also, time slows down as you go faster and faster, though it is relative to things around you.
3. Max speed and max acceleration are two different things. That's the only time burn rate comes into play. Also remember that speeds are relative. If you are going 50km/sec, and are burning fuel, the fuel is also going 50km/sec with you. So, when you burn it, and it burns at 3km/sec, it ends up going 47km/sec, even though it is going 3km/sec away from you.
4. You can also accelerate ions (such as stripped hydrogen atoms) away from you using magnetic/electric fields, giving you a push forward no matter how fast you're going. If you're getting close to the speed of light, that push will get smaller and smaller relative to your mass. Using this, you get the most out of your fuel, because while individual atoms cannot push you very fast, the fact that you can accelerate them to near light speeds gives you a great push. (opposite reaction, after all)
5. The speed of light in a vacumn is the constant, not the speed of light in a medium.
6. One last thing to mess with your head. A watch on a planet runs slower than a watch in orbit. The deeper the gravity well, the slower the watch runs relative to the watch free of the gravity. As a watch falls into a black hole, it seems to run slower and slower and slower until it just appears to freeze, and then disappears because at that point light can no longer escape.
Warping might be more equivilent to an artifically created wormhole. Wormholes are theorized, and entirely possible, but you need an 'exotic matter' to keep them open. They would also most likely be instant as well, and not in the 3-6 AU/sec range. hehe
BTW, if you want a good example of the scale we're talking about in eve, the earth is 1 AU (Astronomical unit) from the sun. Mars is 1.5 AU, Jupiter is around 5, and pluto is around 40 AU. The nearest solarsystem is 4 light years away, or around 250,000 AU. (WOW is that a deeeeeep safe spot.) So, you have the warp gates that could be acting as true wormholes between two distant points (and using localized machinery, as theorized by some) while locally in system people use "warp bubbles", using some other mechanism. 1 AU/sec is around 500 times light speed, btw. Just some figures to think about next time you say 'I'm almost there!' when you're traveling into battle at 3 AU/sec from 5 AU away. heh
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