How Does FTL Space Travel Work in The Middle Heavens Region (Alien) - Alien Universe Explained

[@EdwardiusMcAndriez]

I like the Alien franchise for it's realistic feeling style. When I was a kid, I always hoped science would yield some kind of way to travel faster than light. In reality, the video games, and robots have come a lot further along than I expected to see.

[@alejandromolina5645]

Never had any of this explained in the movies. I like how original it is and there isn't any "warping" or "jumping".

[@bradysmith4405]

Even though as far as we know warping is the only mathematically feasible way we’ll ever be able to travel from place to place effectively faster than light. Even though the displacement drives sound kinda like Alcubierre drives since they are displacing the space in front of the ship

[@simkoning4648]

What he describes in the video is basically a warp drive, an Alcubierre drive to be specific, though the velocity vs time aspect is just special relativity, and warp drives are based on principles from general relativity.

[@HellsRaven4444]

So that's where the energy shield in Alien Dark Descent came from. I was wondering why the heck did human ships suddenly have shields all of a sudden in that game. Also I'm pretty sure another comment would have mentioned this already but just in case. I'm surprised you didn't mention the inverse-time dialtion effect that the Tachyon Shunt Hyperdrive has as mentioned in the Marine Technical Manual. The faster the ship flies in FTL, the faster time flows inside the ship as well, meaning that while a year may have passed for the rest of the universe, 10 years could have passed inside the ship instead. Hence why they need the Hypersleep chambers to prevent the rapid aging and why Synthetics and AI computers autopilot the ship pretty much 90% of the time.

[@TheElMuffin]

Same, I was waiting for him to mention that. That's the only source I remember that attempted to explain FTL and justify hypersleep.

[@SnowFoxDiver]

@@TheElMuffin The RPG also explained it, though the reason for hypersleep given was that being awake while FTL is a recipe for going insane

[@randomusernameCallin]

In the rage war novel the human learn how to enter FtL without needing to sleep. They also made wormholes that are even faster but you need to be in cryo to use.

[@ProjectACHERON]

It would be a good spruce to use but rage war is canon to the AVP Timeline, I only cover information from the Alien timeline on this channel

[@skepticalmagos_101]

Been waiting For this.... Whoohoo!

[@wadedungan3172]

I prefer to watch your videos about these sorts of topics way more than looking it up, the immersive music, and awesome format you use really makes everything that much more interesting!

[@ProjectACHERON]

Awesome that really makes my day to hear as that really my true goal, thank you!

[@martinstallard2742]

The mention of the gravity drive reminds me of the film Event Horizon

[@DDRHeretiC]

I am still pretty sure the younger guy that sticks his finger in the contained black hole had mild autism. Adios skipper!

[@ProjectACHERON]

Yeah it reminded me of that too!!

[@antcow1239]

Well im sure it can only end well for all parties involved

[@spaceflight1019]

An interesting backstory would be about the many disasters that it took to breach the light barrier, much as the breaking of the sound barrier cost many lives.

[@thehelldoicallthis9241]

The Event Horizon - Warhammer 40K connection theory is well known but Event Horizon - Alien sounds very much possible to me. Their settings seem so simular and the drive being highly classified would make sense considering WY would likely not want the public to find out they go trough some hellish dimension during jumps or what happened to the original ship that used it. Using hypersleep to prevent the space madness fits well in the theory too. Edit: hell lets make Event Horizon - Alien - 40K the new theory. Alien might as well be very early Age Of Technology with the gravity drives being first large scale use of warp drives. The shields they generate remind me of gellar fields and void shielding too.

[@dannywhite9975]

Alien Universe is so mysterious. Good channels like this help fans 2 discover something new every upload we see. Thanq

[@ProjectACHERON]

That really brightend my day. That exactly what I aim to do and for me to have achieved that through you guys is amazing. Thank you.

[@dannywhite9975]

@@ProjectACHERON keep up d gr8 work ☆☆☆

[@JeffMcDuffie72MeridianGate]

15 times the speed of light? That's slightly faster then warp 1 in star trek. 700 times the speed of light is about warp 5.2.

[@alexiendeluxe]

We love science stuff over here and learning about Middle Heaven’s history! Your channel is awesome!

[@breembo]

Ever thought of doing a video on the politics of crew pay in the original Alien. Always seemed interesting to figure out if these trips were making them alot like a futuristic sailing ship might crossing the atlantic. Or the oddities of them not getting paid if they dont respond to the signal. Or the engineers faking work to get a bigger share. Or how long ripley was really going to be gone on this mission (we talking missing years of her daughters life for a big payday or weeks at most for average haul?)

[@ProjectACHERON]

Yeah i might do a video on the day to day life of a space trucker! good idea my friend.

[@spaceflight1019]

In the original movie, Ripley estimated that it would take about 10 months to reach Earth. As far as compensation, crew members probably sign a standard contract that specifies terms and conditions. Pretty standard stuff. Buried in every contract is a clause which states that any transmission appearing to have an intelligent origin must be investigated upon total loss of pay. Those conditions are determined by the ship's computer and employees are not part of the decision making process.

[@thatrandomguy0133]

Could you do one video about the artificial gravity that the ships have and How they work

[@ProjectACHERON]

Okay ill get right on it!!

[@khartog01]

I've argued with so many people about ftl in aliens. So many people don't think they have any.

[@USSTOLEDOSSN769]

100 times the speed of light! Imagine being able to travel 245 trillion miles (394 trillion kilometers) in 5 months. But the problem of interstellar communications still remains.

[@ProjectACHERON]

That’s why they set up the network. I might have to do a video on that

[@peterkrochmalni673]

“Some honch in a cushy office on Earth says go look at a grid reference. We look. They don't say why, and I don't ask. I don't ask because it takes two weeks to get an answer out here, and the answer is always ‘Don't ask.’”

[@chris1013151]

@@USSTOLEDOSSN769 I imagine quantum entanglement communication technology similar to the 3 body problem sophons can get around toss

[@lachlanthomaslangmead1651]

God imagine being the first human guinea pig to test a tachyon shunt drive.

[@randycheow4268]

It seems like FTL travel in the alien universe is slower than Halo and Star Wars, imagine being the only available ship sent to reinforce a planet during a war or being sent to tescue colonists like the ones in LV-426. Everyone’s probably be dead or the battle would have ended the moment the ship reaches it destination

[@control4050]

No shit, humanity is barely a type 1 civilization in the Alien Universe able to harness all of the energy present on earth. Humanity in Halo or star wars could be called a type 2 or in star wars its definitely a type 3 civilization. A type 2 can harness all the energy present n its parent star while a type 3 can harness the energy from basically all the stars present in the galaxy. there'e even type 4 and type 3. check kardeshev scale.

[@thehelldoicallthis9241]

Takes a good year or so to get from one end of Middle Heavens to the other

[@nicholaswalsh4462]

That's kinda the point. This is still early days of human extra solar colonization.

[@Oneaphelion]

Difference between Dune and Alien: how long it takes to get anywhere

[@marystone860]

I thought of that too!

[@tyronedavis3534]

Wh40k: are we even going to be alive when we get there.

[@Morgomir09]

Interesting but effective gravitic drive, weakening space time in front of the vessel and strengthening it behind the vessel causes the difference in densities to propel the vessel

[@Dushess]

Just an Alcubierre drive

[@PickleRick65]

Nice Work.👍👌💪💪

[@ProjectACHERON]

Thanks ✌

[@phatty6782]

6:51 Dear Lord, they've created wedges!

[@james8449100]

I thought hypersleep was used because the company is too cheap to spring for food air and water for a 4 month trip

[@ProjectACHERON]

well that do, but my corporate overlords dont want me to say to much about that side of things....

[@james8449100]

@@ProjectACHERON annoying that it's reffenced in the novel of alien but makes the fact that if in aliens there sent one more person whos job was to say in orbet

[@spaceflight1019]

Unlike Star Trek, real space travel is extremely boring. Not much to see and do, so sleeping through it isn't a bad idea.

[@thehelldoicallthis9241]

@@spaceflight1019 its pretty boring and takes a long while in Star Trek too exept when the Federation decides to name a ship Enterprise again in which case it seem to run into weird new space phenomena on a monthly basis

[@sunixjester]

@@thehelldoicallthis9241i wonder how the other ships of the Federation feel? Enterprise gets all the fun and they don’t.

[@davyheijlands1956]

The Engineer race is an awesome edition to the Alien universe. I know the community is still a bit split about the way the Engineer lore has expanded, but it's good to see that a small decade later the rest of the mediums are including it. The Alien RPG book and especially the Alien Fireteam game has two chapters dedicated to the Engineer race and the black goo. I would love to get a proper movie with a few of them in there. Let them interact with humans a bit so we can expand on their ideas and stuff. I think it was a shame the Shaw and David plot was abandoned. A big mistake from Fox if you ask me. How cool would it have been if Ridley could have made his original Prometheus trilogy and if Neil would have had one or two alien movies between those. Each movie building on the other and in the end connecting it back to the first Alien movie. We would have had the best of both worlds. Firstly everyone would accept the Engineer angle more because they didn't feel robed of an "Alien movie" and it would have allowed Ridley to flesh out the Engineer society and goals more (I.e earlier drafts of the script had some really well thought out reasons why Engineers needed to seed planets) and secondly it would would use both directors to work towards each other on an overarching ark. Maybe even finding a good reason why WY wanted to get their hand on as much Engineer tech as possible. We could have gotten a final movie using the cast of both movies to wrap it up.

[@sonofeyeabovealleffoff5462]

There are two races, a slave race and the precursors/space Jockey race is who is the master. That ship on LV-426 is NOT an engineer ship. It can't be ignored and retconned.

[@ronjon7942]

Groovy. In six years, we’ll be really cookin’!

[@TheOnlyOneStanding8079]

Good explanation

[@ProjectACHERON]

Thanks

[@TheElMuffin]

Sounds like a lot of conjecture to be honest. I don't remember the source, maybe Alien Colonial Marines technical manual, but I remember reading something about how a ship is shunted into a tachyon bubble inside which one time moves much faster, which is why hypersleep is necessary and why androids are used to maintain the ship, E.g. it takes a ship weeks to get to a destination, but inside the bubble and on the ship years pass instead of weeks.

[@curiousgeorge5992]

Leading to the very high probability of a displacement.Drive failing under certain circumstances would mean absolute obliteration of the vehicle involved😮😢

[@juleswild9498]

I wished we had such tech.

[@ProjectACHERON]

same here!!

[@francescocavicchi5763]

So do i

[@sonofeyeabovealleffoff5462]

If you believe in Area 51 and Roswell, we may but we just don't understand the crashed craft's method of Propulsion. this is again if Roswell actually happened.

[@sonofeyeabovealleffoff5462]

The spacecraft in Aliens: Apocalypse; (publication Date 1999)the Destroying Angels were able to instantly bend space and time around their drive.

[@ProjectACHERON]

It’s now a non canon source and not something humanity would have access to anyway I would guess

[@sonofeyeabovealleffoff5462]

@@ProjectACHERON It was a much better plot than Prometheus. I keep looking forward to the day you cover it. It's got good plot points that you can use for your alien awakening which I'm such a huge fan of. In fact your space jockey story is my head canon now.

[@davidolsen9425]

Is Einsteinian space another term for hyperspace?

[@ProjectACHERON]

I’m not sure they are exactly the same thing but for the sake of familiarity then yes. I would think it’s more akin to a warp drive or speed where you are wrapping or folding space as opposed to entering a different dimensional plane

[@davidolsen9425]

@@ProjectACHERON ok thanks. The novelisations of the first two movies by Alan Dean Foster mention hyperspace. Curiously any notion of ftl is ignored in the book of Alien 3 (also by ADF).

[@deathstrike]

I think the real leap (no pun intended) that the invention of the gravity drive enjoyed was not born of human knowledge. In fact, I believe that the reason the gravity drive is so highly classified is not due to the technology itself, but it's origins. IMHO the technology for such a drive could have possibly been recovered from the "David" series of Android. He did eventually learn to pilot an Engineer starship and we know they had that level of ability as their ships were massive. Part of learning to control their ship also included the basic design principals of an Engineer ship. If his body was found and recovered and any other Engineer ship it tech was found, it would explain how Weyland Yutani could have reverse engineered it and created the Gravity Drive. It's sickening in a way, we found an alien technology not by the joy of discovering and learning of the Engineer civilization. We learned from its barbaric destruction at the hands of an Android with a God complex.

[@ProjectACHERON]

that very very possible and while we can verify anything at this stage i think you are definitely onto something there!

[@malamuteaerospace6333]

2096 Rolls Royce invents Spencer Type Artificial Gravity for a LEO missle platform for the UK Space Atomic Command Forces to keep nuclear weapon missile officers more comfort and better health.

[@spaceflight1019]

Prometheus was capable of a fuzz over Warp 2, taking a little more than 2 years to travel the 39.17 ly to Zeta Reticuli. With the Engineers' being an extremely old species the tech in a Juggernaut would certainly be worth reverse-engineering. Quantum slipstream drive? Transwarp drive? Remember "Distant Origin" in Voyager? They had roughly 65 million years of experience and it's estimated that they could have brought Voyager home from the far side of the galaxy in a week or so. Space is staggeringly vast, and we see most of it as it was millions and billions of years ago.

[@benjaminconnor6640]

Sounds like Three Different types of FTL developed by Three different people or corperations in competition with each other. Then Bought up by WeyYu later on, or contracted for Production.

[@antcow1239]

So, they go warp 700 then? Thats my cross over mind working the numbers anyway

[@ProjectACHERON]

haha

[@creepycraiyons3519]

Finally.

[@Fury9er]

The Marines Technical manual talked about an inverse-relativistic effect with the tachyon shunt drive. The ships top speed, parsecs per sidereal day was dictated by its mass and drive class. That book states that the faster your real-space speed, the more time would pass inside the ship. So when Ripley talks about it taking 10 months to make the trip, that would be 10 months of time as experienced by her daughter. Inside the ship a lot more time would pass, and the faster you want to go the more pronounced that effect would be. In the Nostromo's case the mass of the refinery would also make a significant impact on its top speed. Regarding the NDDs, i like to think the crew of Prometheus were suffering from a severe drop in IQ to account for the strange choices they made 🤣

[@ProjectACHERON]

Hahha let’s call it that 😂

[@mstcrow5429]

Vroom vroom vroom.

[@romanlutseiko7633]

First ftl drive 2030🤣🤣🤣 that was really optimistic, that's how we are overestimating our intelligence and capabilities!!!

[@Bassjunkie_1]

2030? wow they defo didn't have Christianity in that universe then

[@ProjectACHERON]

?