Musing Out Loud: FTL Travel and Space Combat

[ladyabaxa]

So, here's a tactical question that's been bugging me for several days now. Say you have access to FTL travel - which is essentially teleportation in space. Let's also say that you can create the effect without necessarily using a ship. That is to say, the engine driving this mode of travel doesn't require being in a spaceship in order to function. If that's the case then what's to stop an attacker from just attaching an FTL engine to a large comet or what have you, punching in some coordinates, then sending the rock/iceball to appear oh, right in the middle of a space station?

BOOM!

There could be some interesting hypothetical effects from doing that. If the FTL-moving object is large enough it's gravity alone would wreak havoc. It get's even more interesting if you have to convert the FTL-moving object into dark energy/matter or anti-matter in order to achieve the effect. What if the FTL method is actually distorting space itself? Can two objects collide or merge together while space is warped?

That, in and of itself, is an intriguing idea for a sci-fi story.

In my concept of slipspace there is a gravity distortion generated upon entering or leaving slipspace. The wave is proportional to the mass of the object entering/exiting. For this reason if there are multiple objects the largest has to be the last to enter and the first to leave or the distortion it generates could destroy the smaller objects. Imagine the utter havoc endured to learn that fact. ^.^

Comments

[omnimirror.livejournal.com]

I would have to assume that someone would have to manually activate the FTL mode itself. I suppose that can stop someone from throwing around FTL comets whenever they wanted.

Plus, even if you could automate it, attaching such an engine to a meteor or a comet would leave it without sufficient interior protection. I would think the engine would seize up before it was able to hit a sufficient speed to activate FTL mode. I'm sure you COULD do it without a spaceship, but there would have to be sufficient cooling mechanisms in order to do it, and I just don't see that happening on a blazing hot comet.

Short answer: My brain hurts.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

Interesting answer. My thoughts were if the object were removed from "normal" space as a means of getting around the energy problem inherent with approaching the speed of light then acceleration could be much less or even none at all. It really depends on the hypothetical method of FTL travel.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

Actually, thinking further on this I'm wondering where the heat is coming from. Perhaps I simply don't understand the physics involved. Can you elaborate?

[omnimirror.livejournal.com]

I can only elaborate slightly, as I'm certainly not a physics expert. :)

I figure that the amount of stress an engine would have to put on itself in order to achieve such crazy speeds would be great. This, coupled with the object itself, as comets and meteors and other such things will likely be very hot, would require a very elaborate cooling system.

But your idea to bypass that with an alternate space is pretty sound. I guess we'll never really know.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

Hmm, my understand of space is that if an object does not internally generate heat and isn't absorbing energy from an external source it is actually rather cold. Celestial bodies tend to lose heat slowly (as they are restricted to radiation) but have had huge amounts of time to reach thermal equilibrium with the surrounding vacumm. The lack of air in a vacumm rules out friction as a source of warming. However, your suggestion is sound if the engine itself generates too much heat without having sufficient radiators.