Every Type of FTL in Science Fiction

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Spacedock delves into Science Fiction's many flavors of Faster than Light travel.
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[@Spacedock]

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[@inquisitorr2606]

Warhammer 40k, WE GO TROUGH HELL BOYS

[@erroneousbosch]

Your omission of The Warp and the Astronomikan is displeasing to the Imperium of Man. Inquisitors will be along shortly.

[@shawnbeckmann1847]

What about Ludacris speed you did not mention that??

[@strike6899]

There is macross and gundam 00. Both have ftl in them. Gundam stargazer has a sail type one but yeah. Macross changing dimensions and gundam 00 uses quantum teleportation

[@robinvanrossum4522]

where would star wars hyperdrive fit in?

[@enoughothis]

Warhammer 40k warp drives actually punch a hole through to an alternate parallel dimension that could be called hell by the unimaginative. The denizens of this nightmare plane are kept at bay by an ancient barely understood device called a Gellar field generator that projects a small bubble of reality to both shield and cloak the ship, which is navigated by a three-eyed mutant who sees his way by using lighthouse on Earth powered by dying souls.

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

Ah 40k - you just have to love how wilfully, deliriously bonkers it is.

[@agentoranj5858]

And the best part? It totally violates causality and people can drop out of the warp at any time or place and have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on.

[@enoughothis]

@@agentoranj5858, totally true. An Ork WAAAGH! was stopped before it began when the Warboss met a previous version of himself, due to a warp accident dropping them into the past, and killed himself so that he could have two copies of his favorite gun.

[@ExternalDialogue]

@@agentoranj5858 40k actually directly addresses the causality thing. Spoilers for Plauge Song ahead. In one of the Hammer and Bolter episodes we see a warband of death guard who assault a space station that houses an astropathic choir used for FTL communications. And we see them able to blow straight past the imperial fleet with ease as the imperial battleships disintigrate into rust and mold as they approach the station. They board and make their way to the astropaths, using them to send a message back in time to the ships guarding the station containing warp borne diseases of nurgle, destroying the ships.

[@exudeku]

So basically Minecraft Nether travel

[@xeromynd6557]

"But most importantly, it spins" - now there's a man who knows his history, bravo

[@Del_S]

"Spinning is so much cooler than not spinning", as a great man once said.

[@justicegutierrez6847]

"It has to spin! It's round!"

[@John.S92]

The only additional to this is "there's pretty spinning lights" (Like the non-spinning version used in SG Atlantis)

[@ddegn]

Remember when an alien built a small Star Gate in Samantha Carter's basement? I'm pretty sure it didn't spin. When the small Star Gate was used, where did the object appear in the receiving gate? Did it show up in the middle of the gate? Did it show up at on edge of the gate? Or did the object just get bigger so it filled the same proportion of the receiving gate as the sending gate? I minored in physics but I must have slept through the class when this information was covered.

[@russellharrell2747]

@@ddegn imagine if you pass through a smallish stargate but exit out a larger one and everything is enlarged by the ratio of the diameters. Or shrunk during the return trip.

[@AsbestosMuffins]

the infinite improbability drive is always my favorite, it doesn't go faster than light, it just makes it so that infinitesimally small chance to instantly jump to another point in the universe is improbably probable

[@CovenantD]

All while turning its passengers into sofas.

[@reliantncc1864]

@@CovenantD Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it! (from the original)

[@jimskywaker4345]

so it messes with quantum tunneling?

[@brettbridger362]

Well said. Marvin couldn't have put it better

[@CovenantD]

@@reliantncc1864 - I just watched the movie again. I love how the ship usually became a flower before reverting it's ship form. I mean, what are the odds of it being a flower everytime?

[@Sausagesaucey]

I'd love to see a part 2 discussing not missed FTL types- you covered the basics pretty well I think- but rather the narrative implications of the various types of FTL and how a setting can be built around them. Might be instructive for sci-fi writers, and entertaining for fans of the genre.

[@theangryMD]

this

[@evanallen172]

A similar comment suggested they try and get Overly Sarcastic Productions, another channel that talks a lot about tropes and how they work.

[@UGNAvalon]

This can even return to the methods of ftl brought up in this very video: -BSG’s jump drive allows for ships to travel to any determined coordinates (thus allowing the fleet to travel together), but without pre-charted maps, there runs the risk of getting lost with a single bad jump (hence the fleet continually traveling “randomly” in search of a new home). -Star Wars hyperdrives are advanced & fairly commonplace, allowing the galaxy to feel very small in terms of distance. -Differing technology levels can allow for multiple factions to use the “same” ftl methods in different ways. -Halo’s slipspace drive is used by forerunners & humans & covenant, but the technological disparity allows for covenant ships to “outrun” human ships. -Similarly, Stargate’s hyperdrive allows for months-long interstellar travel (goauld & early Tauri ships), days-long intergalactic travel (Asgard), months-long intergalactic travel with a zpm (Atlantis), and even near-instantaneous travel across galactic (& even universal) distances by modifying stargates (midway station, 8th & 9th chevrons, continuum, etc).

[@UGNAvalon]

“Fixed point” hyperlanes allow for choke holds & strategic blockade points, allowing for a relatively small force to deny access to a wide area of space: this can be seen in mass relays, Star Wars hyperlanes, and EVE star gates.

[@EmpPeng2k7]

@@evanallen172 that would be a cool team up

[@DragonxFlutter]

Honestly surprised that there was no mention of the Star Wars Hyperdrive. It’s a perfect example of a combined “one direction” and “total navigation” FTL method.

[@janmelantu7490]

Interdictors are such an interesting wrench in FTL mechanics I’m also surprised they weren’t mentioned

[@mandalorian_guy]

Especially with Gravity Well generators that can distort travel by tripping the safety mechanism on drives acting as a speed bump of sorts.

[@joshuarichardson6529]

He did mention hyperdrive, though he used Babylon 5 as his example, instead of Star Wars.

[@osalrfz]

Andromeda's Slip Stream Drive also wasn't mentioned at all... The "Stear a cart on multiple rails trough a deadly rollercoaster-like tunnel"-drive

[@Taladar2003]

I am surprised gravity well influences in general were not mentioned. Plenty of FTL methods have some sort of rule to avoid use near a gravity well.

[@ShasLaMontyr]

I am amazed that you didn't mention "the Warp" in the hyperspace bits, like Hyperspace travel where "Hell" is the other-space. Event Horizon I guess does sort of count.

[@roberine7241]

let me guess you were thinking of warhammer 40k

[@ShasLaMontyr]

@@roberine7241 I was, I didn't even realise I'd forgotten to mention that I meant 40k's Warp.

[@zeux5583]

id say that its a kind of hyperspace drive. you enter another dimension obeying different laws of physics, use those laws to go where you want, then exit again. wether or not you meet scary space monsters on the way isnt really important.

[@seancarroll9849]

Event Horizon is just the prequel to Warhammer, prove me wrong.

[@darkleome5409]

@@seancarroll9849 unofficially, it might as well be. But modern times (and history in general) in Wh40k universe were very different from our own reality, which isn't the case in EH, so I'm not sure

[@nickpalmer3065]

The ships in Robotech can execute a spacefold maneuver, that functions as a teleport. The first we see this is the SDF-1 performs a spacefold that takes a huge chunk of the city it was near out in space.

[@gojidoh]

Folding isn't so much teleporting as it is creating a large field around the ship, and then everything in that field travels through space via a spacial fold. It more like star trek warping than teleporting

[@cmdraftbrn]

this is why you dont perform a fold maneuver inside a gravity well.

[@twitchyartemis]

It's based on super dimesion fortress macross, and in that super dimension pretty much just means sub space or hyperspace. In later macross series they call there variation of hyper space fold space, and they have to deal with a number of Navigational hazards, though the amount of time you spend in it compared to real space is still off.

[@adamofblastworks1517]

@@cmdraftbrn not so much about being in a gravity well, but not being near the ground, or other objects. Unless the gravity well caused the field to extend farther than it was supposed to.

[@GaldirEonai]

@@cmdraftbrn Well, they did get an almost-intact city out of it, just when they needed one...:P

[@STNuevo]

Bistromathics is the most powerful computational force known to parascience. A major step up from the Infinite Improbability Drive, Bistromathics is a way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement through space, so it was realised that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.

[@SymbioteMullet]

And it does not involve dangerous improbability factors or all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.

[@incredimazing]

"She's built like a Steakhouse, but she handles like a Bistro." - Captain Zapp Brannigan.

[@pseudotasuki]

I was just reminded of the Somebody Else's Problem field earlier today, after noticing how easy it is to ignore a mess you didn't make.

[@daveevanbeatty9095]

Be really fun if Spacedock did a crossover trope talk with Overly Sarcastic Productions about scifi drives as a narrative device.

[@emeraldvalkyrja225]

Oh yeah, I can see that collaboration working quite well! Spaceships in generel could be considered a trope as well, with thinking ships, old rust-buckets, shiny new warships, etc. being variations on that, all with their different sub-tropes, typical story elements and narratives.

[@daveevanbeatty9095]

@@emeraldvalkyrja225 indeed. Ships in general can be really important. They seem to have several functions in my mind. Their speed sets both the world's size and the stories pace. It can be it's own setting for the plot. And it can function almost as a character as well as boosting and emphasizing the owner's characterization.

[@evanallen172]

The comment got my attention, but the replies got my interest. We GOTTA make this happen!!!

[@montithered4741]

Fantastic idea! Spacedock can talk about the how drives work while OSP can talk about the why drives are used and how they affect story.

[@jakeaurod]

Great Idea! Blue can talk about coming and Red can talk about going.

[@philcolbert9645]

I seem to remember Larry Niven writing a drive in which the ship (and contents) contacted our universe only at discrete points along the trajectory, like a stone skipping across a pond. Contact occurred thousands of times per second, so it seemed continuous to the passengers. During each brief contact, the ship's motion remained well below the speed of light. But the contact points themselves were spaced so far apart that light could not keep up. A curious side effect: two ships in battle could not hit each other unless they had the same skip frequency and phase.

[@ProfessorJayTee]

IF that was Larry Niven, I've never read it. And I think I have read every novel and story... Happen to know the title?

[@philcolbert9645]

Sorry,@@ProfessorJayTee, I could well be mistaken. It's been at least 30 years since I had the book in hand. Here's what I recall of the circumstances in the story. The protagonist, effectively a young spy, was traveling alone to his next clue, via a small interstellar craft that used such a drive. Someone with similar interests caught up with the craft, in their own ship. To affect each other, they had to synchronize drives: match both the frequency and the phase, otherwise they would just pass through each other. No lasting harm was done, and the two parted company. I did try to search Atomic Rocket for more details on this drive, but it has been reorganized since my last visit, and the quotes I had hoped to find were not there.

[@carlborg8023]

@@philcolbert9645 This sounds very distantly familiar to me, Like an echo of a forgotten dream...

[@lexcrowne4546]

This actually sounds like something from Fred Saberhagan's Berserker, as I remember something about the C+ cannon's rounds being able to bypass Berserker Shields by not being the same phase, but 'existing' enough to rip through the ship itself, appearing inside the other ship and causing an annihilation reaction, similar to, but even more potent than mater-antimatter, as two bunches of matter tried to exist in the same time/place and the universe said NO. It's been a while for me too though. so it might also just be something from one of Nivin's numerous other works outside of the Man - kizin wars or Known Space

[@deusexaethera]

Regarding the Q from Star Trek: They are essentially Boltzmann Brains, hyperintelligent bits of the universe that randomly occurred during the Big Bang. That's why, as JdL's Q character once said, "The Q have _always_ existed."

[@JerichoDeath]

The Q also said that they didn't used to be as they are now. Q said that they used to be universe explorers, just like the Federation.

[@theloweffortchannel7211]

@@JerichoDeath Seems like they messed with time travel and put themselves into a constructed CTC

[@mytimetravellingdog]

if you exist across multidimensional space time when you come into being on that plane of existence you could, arguably, have always existed because time is no longer a thing and they now exist outside it/at all points of time.

[@thegreatcroc9136]

The Q could possibly also be a type xkardeshev scale civilization/being

[@UltraHelios]

"But most importantly, the gate spins". Teal'c voice: "Indeed".

[@sorak185]

I'm the general, and I want it to spin!

[@alandell88]

Isaac Asimov's hyperdrive concept was pretty trippy in the I, Robot story "Escape!" in which Powell and Donovan get zipped across the universe as part of the robot's practical joke. Except, the hyperspace part involves erasing the ship from existence, effectively killing the characters, having them travel through hell, then come back to life on the other side. And that was in 1945!

[@DaraGaming42]

i wonder was this inspiration for Warhammer 40k Warp

[@Valandar2]

@@DaraGaming42 If so, then only a tiny part. 40k came out long after the first couple Fantasy games, and the forces of Chaos were already well established there, including the detonated Warp Gate at the poles. The Warp has more in common with both Dune Navigators and the Chaos Gods from the Eternal Champions series.

[@DrakeAurum]

One highly unusual one from Harry Harrison's novel series Bill The Galactic Hero is the Bloat Drive. This causes your ship to expand to galaxy-spanning size, and then contract back down around a different point within its volume, which then becomes its destination as it reconstitutes to normal size. I don't think that fits any of the established categories.

[@caliph20]

Sounds like the improbability drive, being everywhere all at the same time.

[@DrakeAurum]

@@caliph20 Which is also how Voyager's experimental transwarp drive works, only the improbability drive somehow has more manageable side effects.

[@SteveSmith-wk9dx]

I was looking to see if anyone else had suggested this one. Essentially it's a parody* of 'space warping' drives, as instead of of shrinking space between you and the destination, you increase your own size. *Just about everything in Bil(l) the Galactic Hero is a parody of something, apart from the things HH thought up first.

[@simonpeteradkins]

Related, perhaps, is Rudy Rucker's take on string theory. By unraveling the strings that make up fundamental particles, the very atoms of a person bloat in size until they encompass the destination. Then you rebind the strings in such a way that you end up at your goal

[@PressA2Die]

Like when you zoom out and in using google maps but somehow are not looking at the same place anymore.

[@xwingx1gt]

Elite Dangerous' Frame Shift Drive is my favorite type of FTL travel because it gives you near-instantaneous travel from one star system to another, while also providing a supercruise that allows you to travel to where you want as if you're still controlling your ship in real space. The restrictions are that your minimum speed is 30 KM/S, maximum speed is 2001 times the speed of light, and that your drive is affected by the mass of the celestial bodies in the system. With all of that being said, it's actually the game that prevents you from travelling from one system to another in supercruise, just like how ships in Star Trek would travel. Each star system in the game is its own instance, or sandbox, forcing you to use Hyperspace to travel between systems, no matter how close they can be to each other.

[@Dushess]

That is true, and have a logic. The supercruise is low energy space distortion, seems right here in our energy level. That's why we can interact with objects and signals. But hyperjump seems to be a different layer of reality. Also grants much larger compression with comparable energy usage. Don't ask how it's really works with such tiny energy consumption, Targoids don't gonna answer, by 2 big reasons.

[@PatrickKennanator]

I was heavy into Elite Dangerous a couple years ago. I was performing long-haul cargo in the Type-9 to a remote outpost several thousand light seconds away from it's home star. After I finished a haul, I found there was a star that was technically closer than the outpost I had undocked from, so I lined up on it and push the throttles forward and flew toward the star in super cruise. Technically speaking, I passed it, but the game got super confused.

[@Dushess]

@@PatrickKennanator that's just brabenism as is

[@DreamskyDance]

I havent seen it anywhere in lore of Elite, but i like to think that supercruise does not work in interstellar space that is outside of a gravity well. Jump has always be towards some sort of high mass object with gravity well, a star, which is very cool in a sense that you cant just hyperspace jump willy-nilly but the endpoint has to be anchored to something. So it would be kinda logical to conclude that Elite's warp drive ( well... supercruise but it is basically warp drive ) can bend space-time only there where space-time is already bent to some extent, by a star in a star system. I always imagine the classical depiction of bending space-time and gravity with cloth and star in the middle that makes a large dip and planets circle around each with its own smaller dips in that "fabric", we all saw that depiction somewhere. Maybe the "fabric" of space-time can only be manipulated for warp to work where it is not too taut and unbending and stars gravity weakens it a bit for warp to work.

[@torg2126]

@@DreamskyDance Suppercruse works best away from gravity wells, to the point where the most efficient travel path is a parabola, as you avoid the areas of highly stressed spacetime created by a star, and arrive at your destination faster than if you straghtlined it. Secondly, the modern FSD is a relatively new invention, one that changed the way space stations are set up, as earlier on, everyone used warp drives for interstellar travel, meaning that it was most efficient to set up stations at the edge of star systems, as is seen with all the long settled systems. On newly colonized systems, the stations are clustered nearby the star, making it more efficient to suppercruse in from your arrival point.

[@FRODOGOOFBALL]

I thought these were also rather creative: - Futurama also has a universe modification drive that moves the entire universe while the ship stays where it is, because the universe isn't limited to lightspeed like non-FTL ships. Essentially it's a very localized universe modification system in reverse. - Eve Online has at least 4 types: regular FTL, artificial jumpgates (usually better for most ships when available), wormholes, and Titans, huge, regular-FTL-capable ships that can (among other things) act as mobile start-point jumpgates, and the ships using them do not need a second jumpgate to leave FTL. - The Orion's Arm setting has mass-produced artificial wormholes whose ends can be moved and change size, but only at sublight speeds. Normally, the wormhole ends are collapsed down to microscopic size before shipment to a destination.

[@denret]

Ships using Titans dont need a second jumpgate or titan as en exitpoint. BUT They still need a Cynosural Beacon as a Endpoint for the Jumpbridge (orin case of Capital Ship jumps even normal Jumps). But EVE's Capital Jump Drives (and in addition because the yessentially use the same mechanic Titan Bridges) are a really weird mix of concepts. Because they are free moving start and endpoints essentially. As long as the Cyno is not at a POS (if they still exist.. :D).

[@BogeyTheBear]

The universe mod drive from Futurama reminds me of the spindrive from MicroProse's _Lightspeed_ strategy game. Your ship encloses itself in a small pocket universe. Within this universe all physical laws still apply, but the entire pocket universe itself can be moved around at FTL speeds.

[@Arlae_Nova]

I would like to add Dune's Holtzman drives which folded space to the distance modification category. It's one of the more interesting FTL drives in my opinion, because it shapes a lot of the story and politics of the whole galaxy around it.

[@paulsaunders5555]

Seconded. But it's maybe a bit complicated as navigate get confused with the teck. Ooo and what about flight of the navigated too.

[@geoffwalker9210]

Also "space folding" is kind of misnomer because the Holtzmann effect is teleporting the ship from one location to another, with the Navigator making sure they aren't going to end up in a star or something.

[@davidbentley1012]

I didn't see your comment before I made mine. I agree it's something that should have been in Spacedock's list.

[@Tamalain]

Discontinuos, most definately.

[@ThePiiX]

Travelling without moving

[@stevenscott2136]

Scalzi's "Old Man's War" has the skip drive, which jumps to an identical parallel universe. The explanation for the change in location is "Moving an entire ship into another universe is the incredibly unlikely part. From the universe's point of view, where in that new universe it appears is really very trivial." 😆

[@modisp]

Damn you beat me to it. Yeah I also thought about this. One of more unique travel types. But I though it is more about forcing quantum possibility. Basically they "find" parallel universe where their ship just happened to randomly appear in desired place due to quantum randomness. While the chance of it is infinitely low parallel universes are even more infinite. nd in result there are infinite universes identical to theirs but where their ship traveled to desired location.

[@TheMyrmo]

I first came across that idea in "Starslip Crisis", which I believe predates "Old Man's War".

[@kirk7528]

That is very interesting. Is there a in-universe explanation for why this is seen as productive by whatever governing authority/organization that oversees these vessels? I ask because for the vessel transiting it may seem like efficient travel to another part of the galaxy, but for the rest of the original timeline every ship equipped with such a device simply blips out of existence never to be seen again negating to whole point of. creating such a vessel in the first place

[@0reo2]

@@kirk7528 unfortunately not. The "science" part in that book is very limited and since the main character doesn't really care, they're not explained apart from mentioning it. This leaves all the consequences of the technologies up to the readers imagination

[@rakaydosdraj8405]

@@kirk7528 Because the target timeline (on OMW) is identical to your own, it also includes your ship jumping to an identical timeline, and in theory the two timelines swap ships. in practive, while "not appearing" and "appearing with double the mass and promptly exploding" have been recorded, the odds are statistically insignificant, even for mas interstellar travel.

[@TonksMoriarty]

Farscape's starburst is fixed point to point, but the exit point is always along a random vector in space. As it's a survival mechanism rather than a travel mechanism this makes some sense, although it is unknown if its natural or artificial in nature. Farscape also flat out states that with its universe that things like relativity are just flat out wrong as the Hetch drive, the more conventional continuous realspace ftl in the universe, proves. The gap in knowledge prevents humans reverse engineering the tech in season 4.

[@tschorsch]

At the end of season 4, pilot was able to use a special starburst technique to travel to a specific location, so it wasn't entirely random. I didn't really see anywhere in farscape that says that the hetch drive violates relativity, they just ignored explaining how it worked.

[@smokenova]

@@tschorsch Pilot has a bit of control over Starburst, which i assume comes as part of his and Moya using it frequently and thus refining it. Early on, Starburst is kind of a cone, with travel distance not always exact. The episode where Crichton is left behind due to emergency starburst and it takes Moya some time to locate the original jump point.

[@reliantncc1864]

It is known that starburst is artificial, as the Leviathans themselves are created by the Builders.

[@davehood2667]

@@tschorsch "Newton, Einstein, Hawking, we prove 'em wrong every time we go out for groceries" - John Crichton explaining FTL to his IASA buddies.

[@DanLynch2814]

@László Novák Yep. There was an episode where Moya got stuck half in and half out of Starburst.

[@n.a.4292]

You could check out a game called "Sword of the Stars" (the first one): every race has their unique space travelling method, like the Zuul who rip apart space to create unstable hyperspace lanes between star systems.

[@DeanHarper]

Hive for life

[@earnestbrown6524]

That was a fun 1st game. The 2nd had some problems when it came out and I couldn't get it to run so never played. Also Hivers will reap what you have sown on the Earth.

[@adamofblastworks1517]

I still need to play that.

[@MazaAzi]

also basic space travel. I love the fact that the liir just teleport all over the place for every kind of space travel

[@IIIJG52]

@@DeanHarper We will darken the Skies, Like a Murder of Crows !

[@MagicScientist]

The 'Dev console' method mentioned at 10:00 is what is used in the Magic 2.0 series, where the premise is that the characters have literally found the computer file representing reality, and can modify it to teleport themselves or others, time travel, conjure objects or adjust the physical properties of existing objects. Though they never use it to leave Earth, there's no reason why they couldn't have theoretically done so.

[@Hyperious_in_the_air]

too bad that series has basically fallen flat on its face with the most recent books

[@indeepjable]

did they delete it to see what happens

[@MagicScientist]

@@indeepjable Everybody liked existing too much to try that, though one of the characters later on figures out a way to make his own file, which makes an alternate reality of sorts.

[@compmanio36]

Babylon 5's hyperspace is navigable any direction and exitable at any time, but only with a working jump drive or jumpgate. Otherwise, you're stuck. So I guess it's mixed, depending on the capabilities of your craft?

[@rondevrind7655]

I thought you only needed a jumpdrive or jumpgate to enter or leave hyperspace. You didn't need such a drive to navigate once inside.

[@hoojiwana]

Yeah that's why it's mentioned ahead of the other types of hyperspace, mainly because of jump gates. So it goes under multiple categories! - hoojiwana from Spacedock

[@nightrunnerxm393]

@@rondevrind7655 You don't...but B5's hyperspace isn't really "navigable" in that sense. It's "traversable." But just because you can move around in there doesn't mean you can "navigate" it. It's a place of constantly shifting space/time that doesn't really bear that much relation to anything located in realspace, especially where distances of light-years are concerned. You could literally make the jump into hyperspace and then have to turn your ship completely around in order to get to your destination instead of simply setting your entry vector toward the destination in realspace. It's _extremely_ easy to get lost in there as a result. ...It also means transit times are somewhat variable. And just to make things even harder, all that distortion in hyperspace makes long-range communication nearly impossible, seriously degrades sensor range and resolution, _and_ creates currents that can push you further into it's depths. Seriously, getting lost in there is _bad news._ But again, being able to travel in it doesn't mean you know where you're going. To mitigate these problems some, there's a network of tachyon beacons (usually associated with the various jumpgates and/or inhabited systems) to guide ships from point to point in hyperspace. So while you don't need a jumpdrive on your ship to _traverse_ hyperspace, you _do_ need a functional tachyon sensor.

[@compmanio36]

@@rondevrind7655 Correct, which is why ships without jump drives like Starfuries can still use hyperspace, but only with the help of gates, or a bigger ship like an Omega or Nova class to open a jump point for them.

[@MoOrion]

@@nightrunnerxm393 Was going to post something similar but this pretty much covers it. The B5 system is my favorite FTL system.

[@3xfaster]

BattleTech’s “Jump Drives” aka KF-Drives (Kearny Fushida). Essentially a teleporter jump drive that navigates strictly between stars (to enable capacitor bank recharging via solar sails, average 2 weeks time between use or can perform hot jumps with lithium batteries) so as to have stable gravity points at the north and south of a star. Also, the ships that are super luminal are dedicated Jump Ships, while any interplanetary travel is carried out by Drop Ships. The hyperspace cores from Homeworld, and also Balcora gate!

[@LupusGr3y]

BattleTech's jump drives are not teleports. It's reducing mass to increase light speed, so very much like Mass Effect's drives. It just looks like teleports because they go so incredibly fast for a very short time. But I like that they take into account that reducing mass is super dangerous while under the effect of gravity.

[@agentoranj5858]

Worth clarifying that there's nothing special about solar power, it's just free, and with a JumpShip you can go anywhere. The limitation on KF drives is how quickly you can charge them without causing damage, the source of the power can be anything including the ship's reactor (it doesn't blow the lights after all). And pardon me if this doesn't adequately explain it, but a Lithium-Fusion battery is an extension of the drive that increases its charge capacity for much less cost than building a bigger drive around a bigger core; It doesn't rapidly recharge the drive, it is a component of the drive. Hot jumping is just charging the drive at a rate known to be dangerous in order to save time. I would link Sarna's page on JumpShips directly, but KZbin tends to silently delete my comments when I add links.

[@3xfaster]

@@agentoranj5858 your addendum is entirely appropriate! I notice now I cut out certain key points just make a quick add in. I know the Zenith and Nadir points are emphasized too, on top of the “pirate points”. And while no one really wants to acknowledge it, the jump drives can malfunction to a “0000” mis jump (far country)

[@agentoranj5858]

@@3xfaster We don't talk about far country. Anyway I appreciate the approval. I've seen simple overviews of KF drives causing confusion in other threads so I thought I'd try pre-empting the FAQs this time.

[@hoojiwana]

I wonder if Halos Shaw-Fujika drives took the naming scheme from BattleTech. - hoojiwana from Spacedock

[@valen123456]

I really like the Hyperspace seen in David Webers Honorverse. As he is partly a navy historian it has a significant overlap with the ocean and water movements but applied to space. As I understand it the Honorverse hyperspace is full of gravity flows (similar to how an ocean is full of currents) because the hyperspace dimension is distorted compared to normal space, so all gravity or mass distortions in real space get applified massively (bcause in hyperspace, space is literally a different size). Stars, galaxies and anything that has gravitation effects creates a current in hyper, and by using shaped gravity sails (the Warsawski sail) they ride the currents from place to place. Going deeper into hyper amplifies the effects so the deeper into hyper you go the faster you move relitive to normal space but the more dangerous and difficult it is to achieve. You cannot enter hyper if you are too close to a planet because of its gravity distortion. Wormholes here are points in space where the distortion is so great that when connected to the flow it more or less instantly drags you from one point to another. This creates all the trade paths, choke points and navigation issues, similar to big ships on the ocean. And even allows for FTL communication and detection similar to passive sonar by using ripples produced along the join between hyper and normal space.

[@81Alfetta]

"Too high. We bounced off the iota wall about a day out of Yeltsin..." Honestly, Honorverse was one of my favourite executions of a hyperspace mechanic, both in how it functioned and how it was used.

[@peterk7428]

And they also have naturally occurring wormholes as well.

[@plucas1]

The Stutterwarp Drive from the TTRPG 2300AD is an interesting concept and I guess would be a hybrid between continuous and discontinuous drives. The drive can only teleport a ship a few hundred meters per jump, but is capable fo cycling through many thousands or even millions of such jumps per second, allowing the ship to travel from one point to another faster than light

[@aepceo1]

Yep. Very similar to Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star (book) wormhole drive. It's pulsed like that.

[@jarredeagley1748]

Always thought something like this would be cool in a setting, I'll have to check out that ip!

[@varenshan7731]

What is it exactly ?

[@JustAnotheNeoSilver]

It's a hybrid between the two kinds, with the oft-added range restriction found in a number of sci fi ttrpgs.

[@DanielDracohun]

@@JustAnotheNeoSilver It would be boring if the ships cannot be intercepted before reaching their destination... No space piracy, etc.

[@Jaaxfo]

There's the Homeworld Hyperspace drives, which I feel straddle the line between a few categories, as it's somewhere between a door teleporter, and non-real space semi-navigable (as you must set co-ordinates before you depart, but the travel path can be interrupted, forcing an early exit)

[@thomassmith6232]

I believe that Edward "Doc" Smith theorized a drive which could nullify inertia. allowing ships to get around relativity. In one version of the Traveller RPG ships use what is called a 'stutterwarp' drive which is a series of micro warp jumps to go faster than light.

[@ThubanDraconis]

The Bergenholm inertialess drive from the Lensmen series. That series was the grandfather (or at least one of the grandfathers) of most science fiction today but it seems largely forgotten.

[@lloydevans2900]

The only application of that in Sci-Fi I have ever seen is with the Gua'uld "Death Gliders" in the Stargate series. They are only short range fighter craft with no FTL capability of any kind, just an extremely fast sub-light drive which makes an indescribably strange noise and appears to be reactionless or engineless as far as we can see. There was one episode of the show where a capture glider was taken to full power and managed to get from Earth out to Jupiter in less than a day's time, which is pretty quick as sub-light drives go. Anyway, even though the operation of the drive was never fully explained, the little they did say about it on screen was that it took inertia out of the equation.

[@ZlothZloth]

One of the Swords of the Stars races uses a stutter warp. The mini-jumps can get bigger when further away from stars, too, which makes it a little more interesting than the constant-speed FTL drive.

[@Kyza2006]

You need to nullify inertia to use FTL in any meaningful way unless you’re happy with a slow acceleration up to c. I mean we all saw what happens when you get sudden unshielded deceleration to a certain Belter in The Expanse when his little ship hits the Abaddon Gate goo too fast. Same thin* would happen with the acceleration you see in almost every FTL sequence along the lines of ST/SW

[@reclusiarchgrimaldus1269]

Have you heard of the Salvatore Pais navy patents?

[@jetflaque8187]

Also. I would be curious to see under what catagory you'd place the Holzman Drive in combination with Navigator Precience in the Dune universe

[@ezraclark7904]

Isn't it a space folding noncontinuous travel method?

[@valen123456]

@@ezraclark7904 Actually wiether it is continuous or not depends on the version you are looking at. The original book and 1981 movie imply it to be single discontinous event (full on space magic scene in the film) with all ships and cargo loaded onto a Highliner, then the ship folds space and appears somewhere else and they all disembark. However the most recent 2021 film implies it is a sort of semi-continous event with ships looking to travel elsewhere flying up too and through the highliner while it folds space to become a sort of wormhole funnel carrying both the smaller ships and itself all at once. I dont think Villeneuve and developers have specified exactly how its done in their version quite yet.

[@awshepherd]

The dune space folding drive uses teleportation with fixed point to point. I thought of where that comes into it. The navigators "prescience" is because while the exit point is "fixed" environmental effects adjust it, such that gravity pulls it around from point to point, but when engaged its instantaneous. Dune legends had computers controlling "with limited" safety jumps.

[@themetalstickman]

I'd put space-folding under Universe Modification

[@seaniam81]

I've always thought of the holzman drive as a universe modification. Like the fold a piece of paper and stick a pencil through.

[@GaldirEonai]

There's a very fun variant in the excellent sci-fi comedy webcomic "Freefall" (I'd link it but apparently links gets comments instantly deleted here), nicknamed the DAVE drive (Dangerous And Very Expensive) by its creator. It works by somehow reversing the effect of relativistic time dilation...while from the point of view of the starship, years or decades pass as it makes its way between stars, to an outside observer it arrives in a matter of days or months. This is turned into a viable form of travel by cryogenic suspension, AI-controlled ships and _lots_ of redundancy. Ships still require extensive overhauls between trips since of course after their first round trip to another world and back they might be a century or more old...

[@stevenscott2136]

I've been following Freefall since 2006 -- I second that recommendation!

[@Bird_Dog00]

Wasn't Florance meant to help develop a new type of FTL drive before she was shanghaied by Sam? I think she explained the theoretical idea to Winston. Something about "immagine a box with walls that have neither mass nor energy. then remove all mass and energy from inside and there's no longer anything to define space-time inside the box, so the walls touch on the inside even though it looks normal from the outside. Any particle entering the box on one side immediately exits it on the oposite side." Sounds like an Einstein-Rosen bridge to me...

[@Sorain1]

@@Bird_Dog00 So basically a 'space deletion drive' where you remove the space in front of you from existence and as a result are closer to your destination... Nobody put that on a missile please.

[@ThatSpecificIndividual]

One of the most unique FTL methods I've seen was from a book series known as the Starships Mage. FTL is literally magic and space travel relies on specially trained magic users called Jump mages. Space travel is slow however as each jump is one light year and a jump mage needs 8 hours of rest to jump again. The series somewhat actually follows the laws of physics when magic isn't involved.

[@sen2583]

But it is jump from point to point type. But idea of the "core" is nice

[@molybdaen11]

This would mean that you need a very large crew to get around. And this mages are probably hard to train and expensive.

[@ThatSpecificIndividual]

@@molybdaen11 Kinda for both, more jump mages means a faster ship, military and courier vessel have several mages for faster travel while freighters only have 2 or even one mage on duty. Training takes a year or two if I recall correctly, there are many people who can do magic but a minority have the knowledge to do space travel and fufill other purposes where magic can be used.

[@mozzy207]

Great video, but surprised the Warp from 40k didn't get a mention!

[@Oculas2003]

Or the Webway come to that.

[@hoojiwana]

Does it not come under hyperspace? - hoojiwana from Spacedock

[@weldonwin]

The Warp and Webway, both count as a form of Hyperspace, being alternate dimensions where FTL travel is possible

[@JustAnotheNeoSilver]

@@Oculas2003 @James Moston Continuous "Other Space" with free navigation (and hazards) for the Warp, discontinuous "teleport other" with fixed entry/exit for the Webway.

[@ShadowFox178]

More surprised they didn't mention the Tyranids mode of transport through gravitational manipulation through a special organism.

[@positively-]

Kinda wish you would have covered slipstream from Andromeda. I always thought it was a cool form of ftl, but I'm super grateful that Stargate got some love. It's my favorite Sci-fi, but always seems to get overlooked

[@milamberarial]

The TV series Andromeda had one that I would like to see categorized. They manipulated gravity to open a hole into the quantum realm and then rode naturally existing corridors created by the quantum connections between stars. Whenever a path branched, each was exactly equally viable for getting to your destination. A path only became the "correct" path when the pilot chose one to go down. AIs couldn't pilot ships in this space because when an AI was presented with a choice with absolutely nothing to use to decide which was correct (because AI in that universe cannot have intuition or hunches or gut feelings) so an AI hitting a fork would just be stuck there until they smashed into one of the "walls" which being made of energy in a quantum state would destroy the ship.

[@argonwheatbelly637]

Schrödinger navigation of the slipstream. Yep. Made for fun episodes.

[@chrisbingley]

The slipstream drive was some sort of weird mix wormhole drive and hyperspace drive, that kept breaking down. To the point where it was a running joke amongst the crew.

[@buttercup9709]

The honorverse does a kind of entering hyperspace, with different layers of hyperspace that allow faster travel due to the effective distance being shortened but require much stronger drives to get there safely. There's also wormholes as well, with manticore being incredibly wealthy despite its relative size because its got 6 wormholes at the edges of the system that massively shorten journey times to most places in the galaxy, so it can get away with applying trade tarriffs

[@shawnbeckmann1847]

Agreed Isaac honor verse is a fantastic read

[@robertdrexel2043]

I do believe Weber, author of the Honorverse, also uses a similar system for his and Steven Whites Starfire series. Though if I remember right these Wormholes are the only way to travel in FTL for the Starfire series.

[@Karolinavsverige]

And the fact that the ftl engine is called Warsawski Sails is definite bonus.

[@DavidGreen_au]

I liked the FTL systems in the Honorverse. Especially the concept of there being more than one type. • The Wormhole Junctions for instantaneous transit from 1 known point to another. • And the hyperspace levels (α to θ+) starting at the edges of gravitational influences. … and also that gravity could be "seen" faster than light.

[@shawnbeckmann1847]

@@Karolinavsverige I have an aunt named Warsawski... Her first name is Adrianne..

[@gordondavis6168]

The Uplift War series by David Brin has various species using different FTL drives. The Comminwealth series by Alan Dean Foster has the ship project an intense gravity source in front of the ship, making the ship constantly going faster.

[@limerence8365]

There's a book by Diana Wynne Jones (same author who wrote Howl's Moving Castle) called the Merlin Conspiracy. In it the main girl does something similar to shortening space time by performing a spell that physically shortens the road to their destination. Just something I read as a child and I've always remembered it.

[@atillafiliz6591]

The jump method in BSG is almost identical to Asimov's Foundation books. The jumps are instant teleportation, but it requires heavy calculations and has error margins, so they have to do multiple jumps to reach their destination, correcting errors and recalculating at every jump.

[@joshuarichardson6529]

They were weirdly energy efficient for FTL too. At one point they were running off Diesel engines. Most other FTL requires nuclear reactor scale energy requirements, if not anti-matter annihilations.

[@delfimmarques5014]

In the old "Sword of the Stars" pc game every race has its own FTL system and most are on the video but the Morrigi and the Zuul does seem to have something not mentioned here.

[@alexslgato1735]

If I remember correctly, there was one drive in Futurama which instead of making the ship move, made the entire universe move around it while the ship itself was still.

[@Joao-ur7ey]

I think my favorite is the one from Elite Dangerous. Both the FTL cruise travel and the jump between systems are awesome. The thought of you having your personal warp drive inside your personal small ship while being able to do interestelar travel regularly in day to day life is simply cool.

[@brokenursa9986]

I have a sci-fi world I’ve been building that uses three different methods of FTL, depending on the tech level of the species/government in question. Lower-tech FTL-capable species use an Alcubierre warp drive, similar to Star Trek, which is referred to as a “Compression Drive” in universe. The most common FTL system is a tachyon-based system called an “Inversion Drive,” that projects a dual-layer “tachyon field” around a ship, the outer layer enabling FTL, and the inner layer preserving normal space and time for the ship and its occupants. The most advanced known species in this universe uses a wormhole projector called a “Puncture Drive”. The hierarchy is based on the amount of energy needed relative to the speed/distance traveled. The Inversion Drive is unique in that it increases in efficiency with velocity, so ships traveling short distances will often find it more efficient to massively overshoot their destination, then turn around and actually go to the destination. For example, if you wanted to make an inversion jump from Earth to Saturn, you would jump to Alpha Centauri first before turning around and coming back to Saturn.

[@stamfordly6463]

The Spacing Guild in Dune uses a space-folding mechanic.

[@mistercmartin]

Thank you! I came looking for this or to make the comment if it was missing.

[@chkmcgee]

Being a scifi buff having watched shows from the 60s forward you covered most of the drives except the following. Star Wars, The Orville, and Star Blazers. The one that stands out is Star Blazers where they used a tachyon drive. You set a high bar.

[@brianrogers7360]

The Star Gates in Buck Rogers would be good for one of these categories. Or, the Wave Motion Engine in Space Battleship Yamato

[@draochvar9646]

The Wave Motion Engine is kind of a weird one. It uses it's ability to create infinite energy to accelerate the ship past lightspeed. But in the process of doing so the ship punches straight through the space-time boundary into a separate dimension.

[@W00dstockSJ]

Some travel that you didn't mention that may deserve their own classification: a) Dune's Holtzman Effect folding of space time. b) TNG's Soliton wave (even though it was not viable) c) Contact's gimbaled ring's machine which seems to transfer consciousness but not matter.

[@javierandre-orlich430]

In Contact matter was definitely transferred. Remember the 8 hours of static recorded by the suit.

[@ArchOfWinter]

There's an interesting FTL system from an old anime, Lost Universe. Ships has to open up a 'gate' on an individual bases to go into FTL, but ships in FTL can still be attacked from both FTL and non-FTL hostile. There's also a weapon the hero ship, the Swordbreaker, has that can rip parts of hostile ship into FTL, flinging it to random location. This weapon can also be used in an emergency when the hero ship's FTL is offline by detonating a high yield ordinance at point blank range so the entire ship get's encompassed by the blast radius to fling it to safety at a random vector in FTL speed. One interesting side note is that depending on the manufacturer, the animation of entering and exiting FTL is unique to each ship type.

[@icyknightmare4592]

Now I can't get Infinity out of my head. :)

[@stunimbus1543]

Great to see a moment from Event Horizon - although their FTL had certain issues.

Eh, it's just a bumpy ride, nothing major. Keep your seat belt fastened, and your body parts inside the vehicle at all times. Except your eyes, you won't need them where you're going.

[@willfieldsend]

You got my like at “most importantly the gate spins”. Brilliant.

[@ThiagoMacieira]

One very unique type that comes to mind is Andromeda's quantum slipstream drive. It's a discontinuous drive that is not instantaneous, as you leave normal space, but it's not your regular hyperspace because the navigator must make decisions to arrive at the destination. And since it's quantum, the navigator's act of making choices leads to arriving at the correct destination.

[@TigerofRobare]

Andromeda just had a slipstream drive; the quantum slipstream drive was from a few episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, especially "Timeless".

[@onyhow]

Eh, so it's basically a specialized subcategory of hyperspace drive.

[@Black-Knyght]

There's also the "Folding Space" used by Guild Navigators in the Dune series

[@FormulaXFD]

And here, I thought I was going to trap the claim of "Every type of FTL" with the Ahb's 2D-compression slip-space, but no, this was a pretty good capture of all types.

[@JustAnotheNeoSilver]

Yeah, the "hyperspace is 2d" bit in that series is just wild.

[@sen2583]

the interesting part of it is that 2d and 3d space are not equally connected (which is not in other FTL fictions). so 2 stars that are near each other in 3d could be even unreachable through 2d or be very very distant from each other

[@johnpietrzak4129]

Yeah, Plane Space is my all-time favorite version of hyperspace. It provides a conveniently complex mechanism to connect stars to one another; it is utterly frightening (lose your 3D space bubble, immediately get crushed to an infinitely flat pancake); and it makes fleet movements easy to display on a TV show. :)

[@sen2583]

@@johnpietrzak4129 yes yes and yes :) Also there are alot of nice things. Interceptors, ship sizes, reactive mass, vertical start, dumb "elf" :) and breeding concept. Very nice story, but very very short (i`c read all books)

[@TheMajorActual]

The Jumpdrive mentioned for _Wing Commander_ has a predecessor, the _Alderson Drive,_ from Niven and Pournelle's classic _The Mote In God's Eye:_ FTL travel from Jump point to Jump point is more or less instantaneous, but you have to slog along under normal-space drives in order to cross the destination solar system to get to the next Jump point. The effect was to create an "Age of Sail" atmosphere, because unless there was a functioning "Pony Express" network to beam communications to waiting ships in a system, you were very much on your own. Many worlds were at least a year's travel away from Earth, some much more. Military officers and governors had to make their own decisions without orders from Earth, which could get...problematic, in the extreme.

[@trinalgalaxy5943]

Im surprised we didnt get mentions of Dune, 40k, Homeworld, Andromeda (not the mass effect one).

[@Takaya_NL]

Yeah, what about the Holtzman engine and folding space?

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

@@Takaya_NL Dune is a big one to leave out.

[@DaFinkingOrk]

​@@Takaya_NL Dune imo doesn't fit well with the categories he gave, so it would have been great to include it as an 'other' type. "Travels without moving" is how Dune describes it. I kinda pictured the Heighliner aligning it's current and destination locations over each other, so it is very very briefly in both places at once, and there is absolutely no movement - it's just here and then it's there. My theory is the extreme delicateness of doing that is why there's a high chance of disaster without a navigator or massive supercomputer - it would have to be overlayed exactly right before 'switching' to the destination - rather than about avoiding hitting things (since it isn't moving). Only my opinion and thoughts though.

[@detectivesquirrel2621]

My own in my scifi novella Thoughtless. The Thought Drive, powerful telekinetic race who can hold a ship and its crew in their mind and project the ship to another world. These telekinetics visit many worlds to create an almost virtual star map in their minds and so can "pilot" a ship to any world they have visited. The ships basically travel at the Speed of Thought.

[@ZlothZloth]

The speed of thought isn't very fast! Thoughts don't need to travel very far, after all.

[@detectivesquirrel2621]

@@ZlothZloth Yes but this is a system of travel called Thought Drive, where a powerful Telekinetic holds a ship and it's crew in their mind and in an instance can transport the ship and crew from the orbit of one planet to another.

[@theloweffortchannel7211]

@@detectivesquirrel2621 So the pancake bears from 40k

[@doihavetobeg]

So, it basically works like the movie Jumper with Hayden Christensen except he teleports himself instead of others. These telekinetic aliens have been to many places and can transport ships by imagining them in the locations they have visited. Sounds interesting. Can they transport themselves? If they need others to transport them, there's probably a first. That first must have traveled a lot. How long do they live? Even if they don't need others, they'd have had to travel to different locations the slow, old fashioned way. Are they controlled/monitored in any way? Having individuals this powerful roaming around kinda seems catastrophic should one flip out or if someone uses them in nefarious ways.

[@xymaryai8283]

i really really like the idea of Q just opening a dev console to do everything

[@joshuarichardson6529]

You missed Skylark of Space. "Well, I guess that Einstein guy was wrong." Thus light-speed is no longer a limiting factor on acceleration.

[@nddragoon]

I find the FTL system in the TTRPG Stars Without Number really cool. It only works between stars because the drive needs a large enough gravitational gradient, and the need for specific paths through metadimensional space means both that routes that havent been recently mapped are dangerous to attempt and that distances through it can be almost unrelated to distances through real space, leading to sectors (groups of systems close together in metadimensional space) being all over the place Oh, and there used to be jump gates built between systems that were operated through basically magic

[@jacara1981]

Star Treks Slipstream is kinda like a mix of Wormhole, Warp, and Subspace drive. Theres also Folding drives like in the Dune universe.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

When you say slipstream, I think Andromeda.

[@jacara1981]

@@MonkeyJedi99 yeah the movie Supernova also has something similar

[@wingmaster1015]

I love the space engineers soundtrack in the background

[@Crimson-kt7fd]

The FTL in 40k requires tearing a hole into super hell and hoping the space wizard can get you to the other side.

[@varenshan7731]

Thats a weakness the Tyranids took advantage of , knocking out means of escaping.

[@Amexel]

Saw some ships from Legend of the Galactic Heroes at 1:17. As far as I am aware, the ships of LOGH simply use their engines to go faster than light, though the show doesn't talk much about FTL so I'm not sure whether they bend space-time or simply decide that the velocity barrier of light is cringe and decide to go past it.

[@Josua070]

Supposedly, they call it "Warp", with some calling it "Pulse Warp" instead of "normal Warp". Dunno about the difference, but it can apparently cross 24k ly in a day or so, maybe even less. I should also mention they've mastered gravity manipulation enough to be able to use Neutrons as projectiles for their weapons.

[@shadekerensky3691]

In LOGH, they use a type of warp drive. They mention it here and there in the original series, such as when they attached warp engines to Geiersburg Fortress to use it as a weapon against Iserlohn Fortress.

[@Keemperor40K]

From what i've been able to gather, it is a linear hyperspace, with a limited distance capability. It can be affected by some type of nebula and other gravimetric distortions and is the reason why the Iselorn and Fizzan corridors are so essential. It is possible to outright circumvent this area of space that makes direct FTL travel possible, but with the limitations currently on their warp drive in terms of distance, it makes more sense to fight for the corridors, than to try to circumvent them.

[@Amexel]

@@shadekerensky3691 just remembered that they used warp drives as I was watching the new DNT episode, they're at that point with Geiesburg now.

[@Amexel]

@@Keemperor40K interesting, I could never quite understand why exactly space wasn't navigationable outside certain areas but that makes sense.

[@Hexterguard99]

In Frank Herbert’s Dune, the Spacing Guild and it’s navigators (spice melange mutants) use what they call the Holtzman effect via the use of Holtzman engine to fold space allowing a vessel to seamlessly shift from distant one location to another.

[@saturnv2419]

The foundation jump drive, it basically create a black hole that distort spacetime, allowing the ship to just gently "fall over" to the destination.

[@SymbioteMullet]

Spelljamming from the Dungeons and Dragons Spelljammer setting is a bit of a weird one, since it is both a continuous drive (normal spelljamming speed) and an external dimension (traveling through a crystal sphere gate into the flow of the Phlogiston), and teleportation via normal d&d cosmological rules (a quick bounce into the astral plane and then back out) is possible too, potentially on a ship-scale as well. At least, within the Spheres that is. And there's portals. And that's only in 2nd edition D&D, I'm really hopeful that 5th edition Spelljammer has far broader horizons than that. Spacedock episode on Spelljamming Helms when the book comes out?

[@kossttamojaan]

Phlogiston. haven't heard this term in a long time

[@SymbioteMullet]

@@kossttamojaan Not since the late 1600s, aye.

[@kossttamojaan]

@@SymbioteMullet 🤣 Did I age myself that badly??? 😂

[@SymbioteMullet]

@@kossttamojaan Look up phlogiston theory, science is a weird place!

[@LordPecka]

Awesome variant on regional speed of light modification drive is in the Remembrance of Earth's Past series (Three Body Problem) by Liu Cixin. The drive changes the speed of light for the ship in the opposite value then for the area it passes - hence the ship can go FTL through a given area only once, and than no more ship can ever go through that space fast, because the speed of light has been permanently lowered. Really depressing, really novel (as far as I know), really interesting.

[@TheLastStarfighter77]

FTL is a fascinating concept, the first time I had ever seen this was in Star Wars and then of course many later concept's throughout the Sci Fi world, an interesting one though was in Cowboy Bebop where they used a number of rings to travel beyond Light speed. Great video guys! Thanks 👍

[@stile8686]

Great summary. Tons of comments for you to get through. There is an interesting 3 player board game called Web and Starship where one race only understands a hyperdrive/warp based FTL and the other only understand artificial wormholes. The two empires are in a centuries long stalemate as the FTL species can go anywhere fast but with only what they can carry while the wormhole species has to send a sublight probe to a new system and evade the FTL species but once established can flood the system with its troops. The third player is Earth caught between the two but able to learn both techs and gradually reach the empire levels and pass them - if the empires allow. It made for an interesting and unusual 3 sided game.

[@Dathansmith91]

You forgot Slipstream. I remember Gene Roddenberrys Andromeda used it.

[@TheJaniebear]

I was going to mention that too. I think it falls under the Navigable Hyperspace category though.

[@jasonspeeds1]

@@TheJaniebear I'd say it's only partially navigable. It relies upon some fixed points and navigation isn't always straightforward.

[@orcaman1353]

Video idea: air patroller from paw patrol breakdown

[@jeffl.9633]

_Star Trek_ retconned the the show's FTL early on. It was originally the "Time Warp Drive", which is succinctly described in A. Bertram Chandler's _Rim Worlds_ novels as "Going forward in space whist going astern in time". In Chandler's books this is the "Mannschenn Drive". This form of travel can be comfortable or cumbersome, depending on the ship's acceleration and temporal precession rate. Acceleration uses sublight drives while temporal precession uses the Mannschenn drive. The time twisting Mannschenn drive can be dangerous. Problems with it can destroy a ship, toss it into another universe, or throw it into a different point along the timeline (past or future). Changes to a ship's mass counts as a problem. Even something like firing a laser cannon can be enough to alter the drive's precession field. Getting too close to an unshielded Mannschenn drive while it is running is also quite dangerous, as it has a nasty habit of turning people inside out without killing them.

[@wraithflaire1639]

David Drake's RCN universe has my favorite variation of hyperspace that I feel is worthy of its own mention , travel from star to star by means of the “Matrix” - a method of transiting from one “bubble universe” to another, where physical constants are different than in our own. Through the use of sails of light, electrically-charged fabric on 90-foot masts the ship can be maneuvered from bubble to bubble using the residual velocity it had when it left normal space and the pressure of Casimir radiation on the sails.There is no FTL radio, and messages must be carried by ship, sometimes taking days or weeks to travel from star to star through the Matrix. While in the Matrix, no electronic devices can be used on the hull because it can disturb the delicate charges on the sails, which would cause the ship to move in unpredictable ways - and this could maroon the ship in a bubble universe from which it could not escape, or in a part of the universe from which it could not return. There are no suit radios, and there are no electric winches. Sails and masts are moved hydraulically and sometimes freeze or become damaged in battle. One of the most dangerous jobs on a ship is that of rigger, a crewman outside on the hull while the ship is in the Matrix. Should repairs be needed they are accomplished by the riggers using brute force. Communication with the riggers is by a mechanical semaphore system mounted in two sets, forward and aft on the ship’s hull.

[@euchiron]

Krasnikov tubes remind me of the foldspace travel from Antares Dawn (Michael McCollum). And the hopscotch/leapfrog method sounds like the hyperspace travel of the Foundation ships from Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth that can skip across the galaxy in multiple hops

[@onyhow]

Another interesting one for Krasnikov-like system is Sword of the Stars' Loa, where they construct series of gates from one destination to another that acts as a FTL railroad. They designed this system so that no one else can use it, since only their cubes (their spacecrafts are actually cubes that they can form into whatever kinds of ships they want, if there are enough cubes to do so) can travel through it safely.

[@AnthemAnimation]

I always saw the infinite improbability drive as being sort of a placebo. It’s creation and way it functions is described as being an accident that nobody understands how it works. It’s literally just a brick of gold, (hence the name of the ship) The drive doesn’t bring the ship to another location through making an improbable thing probable, rather we just start following an alternate reality where the characters got to their destination (still improbably, but with no help from the drive), but notably something funny also happens. If it truly worked by making the ship appear at another location, if it could actually choose an improbable thing to happen, it would only be the transition of the spaceship and nothing else. This theory fits the books themes about the absurdity of the universe and how even if we think we control things, we actually are at the whim of nature

[@raverdeath100]

the Bloat Drive from Harry Harrison's "Bill the Galactic Hero". the drive loosens the bonds between the particles that make up matter and the ship expands towards the destination - when reached the drive strengthens the bonds and the ship rubber bands to it.

[@divideby000]

Well done. That's the one I saw that they missed. Plus it's the only one that's deliberately stupid.

[@billvolk4236]

Mass Effect's method was always weird to me. You could only use it to go faster than light if you reduced your ship's mass to zero, and would your thrusters even work under such conditions? Having negative mass would work the same as having positive mass since your propellant also has negative mass, but if you ever collided into something with positive mass, that would get real messy, as it would never bounce off your hull; no matter how small it was it would just push even harder against you, and you against it, until one punched right through the other.

[@shadowsayan3454]

8:50 Space Battleship Yamato has an intresting take on the whole shrinking space to create Wormholes. If you warp at an unstable point in Space or fuck Up the Calculations/Warp you can land in an Inter Dimensional Space where certain Physics Law are reversed and the normal engine the Wavemotion engine is actually beeing drained of energy instead of Generating it. But not only that it is possible to Create an Interdimensional Submarine which can Attack from that Inbetween Dimension with out getting touched by Conventional Weapons.

[@G-Forces]

I love the interdimensional submarines in that show.

[@shadowsayan3454]

@@G-Forces Yeah there amazing they also have the benfit of having Flaaken as a Total Badass of a Captain

[@GaldirEonai]

The best part of that was them adopting the Yamato mutineer in the end :D.

[@Monody512]

Wasn't that just in the reimagining, 2199? The original didn't have the submarine, and the drive worked quite a bit differently.

[@robertdrexel2043]

Also didn't the various races have their own version of Warp. For example, the Gamilas use what is called an Geshtam engine while Earth uses backengineer Iscandaran Wave Motion-Type Warp Drive which freezes a ship in time which is why everytime an Earth ship jump it exits the warp encased in Ice which soon breaks off. The Galtantis uses a different type of warp that is similar to that of the Gamilas Geshtam Warp Drives. Then we have whatever is being used by this new race in the 2205 series which just shifts ships between two different places.

[@maxmogavero952]

Next please do a list of things that spin

[@hoojiwana]

Do I have to list each planet in sci-fi individually? - hoojiwana from Spacedock

[@EchoNovemberDelter]

I smell the Space Engineers menu music you cant hide it from me

[@therealEmpyre]

In the classic Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith, there is a device that creates a field inside which inertia is neutralized. Without inertia, the only limit to your speed is "air resistance" from the interstellar medium. This allowed speeds fast enough to make flying across the galaxy take about the same time as driving across the continental US, just a few days. I think this falls into one of the last few categories in this video.

[@jonathangibson9098]

How about the Bloater Drive from Bill the Galactic Hero? Essentially the ship expands foward until the bow reaches the destination. Then the stern contracts behind it.

[@StrewthStoatPirate]

I was going to mention the Bloater Drive. Thanks for getting here first! :)

[@jonathangibson9098]

@@StrewthStoatPirate think im gonna have to fish some of those books out now 🤣 I'm trying to remember what the FTL method was in the stainless steel rat...

[@StrewthStoatPirate]

@@jonathangibson9098 I don't remember how FTL worked in those books either.

[@cyborghobo9717]

I've started coming to idea that Slower than light travel can become the new rule of cool in science fiction. If you think it adds more drama by exaggerating the scale of the events in story .

[@ShadowFox178]

I believe there is an anime like that.

[@cyborghobo9717]

@@ShadowFox178 more recent example I've been watching was the Passengers. If only not this horrible rapey storyline.

[@stevenscott2136]

FTL is about getting to where the story will happen, but STL is about the journey BEING the story (2001 Space Odyssey being the most famous example). It's perfect if you want to emphasize the "man against nature" element of space travel. If Jack London had written space stories, he'd have stuck to STL.

[@generalcodsworth4417]

Like in the Expanse? For most of it, without the ring gate thing, all travel is limited to traditional Newtonian physics: blast fuel exhaust one way to make yourself go the other. They also don't have any kind of inertial dampeners or artificial gravity, so the passengers feel every G of acceleration when you try to do a quick maneuver. They go impossibly fast by today's standards, but it still takes several days or weeks to get anywhere in the solar system, which gives it a pretty nice sense of scale. One thing I really like about it is that you can't have people just pop up without warning, you'd most likely detect people heading your way the moment they start their long journey, and sending help or reinforcements takes a lot of time too, requiring significant estimates of the future to send resources before they're needed. The solar system feels much smaller than it does now, but it feels so much bigger than Star Wars' entire galaxy

[@cyborghobo9717]

@@generalcodsworth4417 more like the Revelation space book series where all starships traveled at relativistic speeds . It only made plotlines more interesting.

[@jaquigreenlees]

Spongespace from David Drake's RCN Universe. After extending the masts and raising sails the ship is forced out of reality and into another where time/distance are a ratios better for travel in our universe. This is hard to navigate and has severe negative effects on the peope on board the ships until they are back in our reality. He uses similar drives in several of his novels. The first of the RCN novels: With the Lightnings is a 1998 science fiction novel by David Drake. It is the first part of the military space opera RCN Series.

[@akirakoto_channel]

Seeing the LoGH's ship in the opening make me happy

[@rishoh]

I wonder where the Slipstream drive from Andromeda would fall in this list?

[@Nostripe361]

I love it when a series has multiple types of FTL. I actually had a world building game I did where I had multiple types of FTL that were all based on the same principle of subspace and its relation to real space.

[@adamofblastworks1517]

What kind of FTL do you want? Yes, but some of them are named slightly off or completely wrong.

[@Nostripe361]

@@adamofblastworks1517 I had four main ones. First was using SciFi particle physics to use gravity or other particles to create a wave of space-time that an item can ride on. This would be created from a so type of gravity canon or relay. Sort of think of like a cheap version of a mass relay from Mass Effect. Problem is you can't control this as your ship is just surfing the wave so a ship can only go in the straight direction of the wave and must move through a relatively empty area of space as you will smash into anything large like planet. Second was a form of warp similar to Star Trek. A ship can bend space around them by messing with subspace; perhaps by dipping a engine system into subspace or creating a small portal to mess with. This would give you more freedom of movement than the first one but has a couple of major disadvantages. It requires more raw energy to do than the first one as you have to keep messing with subspace as long as you want it active, its comparatively slower than the the other ftl systems, and the power requirements and efficiency of said system become worse as the vessel increases in size. Third was the main way most ships in this world travel if they can; hyperspace. Open a portal and create a bubble of real space in subspace that allows you travel in realm with different distances and physical laws. you can pretty much go anywhere but Subspace has its own dangers. It has a form of "weather" that can damage ships or destroy them that is more dangerous for weaker or smaller vessels. Since you have to rip a hole in spacetime, the raw energy needed for this is extremely high. Since the concepts of "space" "distance" and even "time" don't truly exist in subspace, travel can get weird as your relation to things in real space while you are in subspace will only be in a general area with some form of Shadow of the object in subspace (so you could have to travel past Jupiter to reach Mars from Earth); better engines, advanced computer guidance, and the affect of a human observation can control this weirdness. Final is the Gateways. Stargate like portals that ships can travel through for instantanious travel between places. These are the fastest and easiest to use but require a lot of infrastructure to make and keep up open so they are rare and only in major ports of governments that can afford their production and maintenance and also are fine with the risk of enemies using said portals. Though these do mean that a government with them can restrict standard FTL engines on ships in their territory as people can main use these for the majority of their travel. Still not sure if I want them to have to stay permanently on once activated though. I also had it where people theorized on the use of tachyons but it is not believed to be possible to use yet with only conspiracy theorist talking about using them to travel instantly around the known universe.

[@adamofblastworks1517]

@@Nostripe361 wait, #3. Hyperspace, but you rip a hole into subspace and travel through that? Is that hyperspace then? Haha. Oh wait... I guess hyperspace doesn't have to mean a dimension specifically "higher" than ours. That would be superspace I guess.

[@DoubleTrouble-li5wi]

I have always loved the Honorverse FTL system, creating massive sails using gravity to catch gravitic waves. Just incredibly cool.

[@JusticeGamingChannel]

You forgot Slipstream as seen in Andromeda, they have a slipstream kind of highway system through galaxies and betwee galaxies that when ridden a lot are easy to navigate, but if not used a lot become real rough and have navigational hazards, but these "lanes" always remain in the same place, you kind of hop onto the lanes and ride the lanes of slipstream.

[@inventor121]

New idea for FTL travel: you can only slowboat it between the stars but you have reverse time travel so you can just jump backward n time once you get to your destination. Due to the observer effect if you observe the future of your destination the universal wavefunction collapses such that all events converge to form the reality you have witnessed.

[@brandonmadigan7523]

I do believe thats how "The Cage" Time Warp Factor drive from Star Trek was supposed to work.

[@stile8686]

I can't remember who the author was or the title but that was how it worked in that novel where a billionaire entrepreneur working to exploit the asteroids discovered a new lifeform that appeared to be part multidimensional. When fed the lifeform could expand and split and it was possible to move something in to one of the split forms and it would instantly appear out of the other. The character built single man sub-light spaceships which he flew to other stars (taking years) with one of a pair of the lifeforms and then after arriving left the ship there and stepped back through to the one remaining behind, thus creating instantaneous gateways between the stars. Because of relativity effects, they were also a method of time travel with different time having passed for the lifeform that travelled and the one remaining behind. By taking one on a round trip it formed a pair of gates where by stepping through one you moved forward or back several years and then could repeat it indefinitely.

[@sircaramelofcanadia4743]

What FTL method is displayed at 6:53? I recognise it but can't place it.

[@hoojiwana]

Its from Love, Death & Robots season 1, Beyond the Aquila Rift. - hoojiwana from Spacedock

[@sircaramelofcanadia4743]

@@hoojiwana thank you! I knew it was somewhere in my mind.

[@dartagnanx1]

I’ve been a subscriber for years. Your mastery of craft continues to impress.

[@S0MEYAH00]

Well, there's the Slipstream drive from Andromeda, it's kind of navigable "hyperspace", but with a kind of tree structure where a pilot can choose paths in the stream (or through bad piloting, fall out of it altogether).

[@Jawmax]

What about the Planet Express ship's engines moving the universe while the ship stays in place?

[@dionemoolman]

That’s more a type of propulsion than a type of FTL. And I guess it’s pretty similar to the concept of Alcubierre drives.

[@dionemoolman]

That’s more a type of propulsion than a type of FTL. And I guess it’s pretty similar to the concept of Alcubierre drives.

[@The_Sci-Fi_Slut]

Yesssss LETS GOOOOOO!(at FTL speeds)

[@lonestarwolfentertainment7184]

Ludicrous Speed! GO!!!!

[@IncoherentOrange]

I would love to see videos about the "wrinkles" in FTL methods. The difficulty of replacing BattleTech's JumpShips (just a video on the concept of losing technology base over a setting's timescale could be neat), the whole transit-through-hell thing of 40k, the Slowness in A Fire Upon the Deep, stuff like that. Some of these have some really interesting details and add a lot to their settings.

[@carlgoff1]

The Q Continuum having access to the Universe's Dev Console is a fantastic theory!

[@chrisdutoit4526]

I wonder what's the most realistic FTL drive in scifi?

[@SmoochyRoo]

An alcubierre drive basically, it's the closest thing to a realistic one since the scientist it's name after made mathematical calculations as a speculative solution to Einstein's field equations for general relativity. There's math to back it up basically.

[@compmanio36]

Alcubierre's theory is essentially warp drive, so I'd have to go with that one. It's not been proven yet, but mathematically, there's no reason we shouldn't one day be able to achieve it. It's a matter of power generation more than anything else.

[@agmuntianu]

probably warp drive (Alcubierre drive ), the "only" problem being the causality disconnection from normal space-time . and if access to negative mass/energy ever becomes a reality, the enlargment of primordial subatomic wormholes could also work.

[@DaraGaming42]

Warp Drive (Star Trek) or Wormholes like (Star wars, Stargate, Babylon 5) , anything outside of that is pure fantasy

[@onyhow]

Alcubierre drive and transversible wormholes.

[@stainlesssteelfox1]

The Bloater Drive from Harry Harrison's 'Bill the Galactic Hero'. The spaceship stays in the same place but expand itself outward, becoming intangible as it expands to interstellar scales. When the ship encompases both the start and end point of it's journey, it just shrinks back down centred around the new end point.

[@MightyBOBcnc]

I kinda love how the discovery of instant-travel warp points (natural wormholes) in the Starfire setting (see the games and the David Weber & Steve White novels) naturally led to a setting where nobody bothered to research other methods of interstellar travel because they would all be too slow even though the setting has reactionless drives that can approach an appreciable fraction of light speed. Consequently the entire galactic political structure is organized around these warp points, and warp point assaults and defense are the major defining feature of interstellar wars.

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

The Spice must flow, Spacedock. Without it, navigating Holtzman drive folded space travel is unacceptably dangerous...