Tachyonic Transporter

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is a particular kind of stargate, it is shaped like a ring, a ship accelerates to 0.001 of the speed of light or 300 kilometers per second, a feat which will take 8.333 hours when accelerating at 1-g. When the ship reaches the proper distance, the ring emits a pulse, a ripple in the fabric of space-time which engulfs the ship, the ship then emerges from the stargate traveling 1000 times the speed of light. At this rate of travel the starship takes 1.1899 days to travel 1 parsec. the ship approaches another stargate and passes through it, at which point the stargate emits a space-time pulse which drops the starship to sublight speeds traveling at 300 kilometers per second, the ship then takes 8.333 hours to slow down to a more normal speed.

Is this a good idea or a bad idea? It is based on the idea that there is a symmetry above the speed of light to match that below the speed of light. There are baryons and tachyons, baryons always travel slower than the speed of light, tachyons always travel faster than the speed of light, the stargate converts objects made of baryonic matter into starships made of tachyonic matter, and does the reverse at the destination. This is straight FTL.

 

[Subzero001]

Sounds something like Babylon 5 FTL gates. There is a first edition of Babylon 5 traveller that you might be able to pull interesting tidbits.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The gamma factor for time dilation is close to -1, so if it takes 1.1899 days to cross a parsec from the crew's perspective, it takes -1.1899 days for the ship to travel that distance from the point of view of everyone else. The ship will arrive 1.1899 days before it left. The FTL ships interact with light and gravity while traveling faster than the speed of light, but with nothing else, they can travel right through a planet without slowing down, they could pass through a star, and they would be inside the star for so brief a time they would hardly be affected by the radiation at its core. The Sun is 1,400,000 km in diameter, it would take 4.667 seconds for light to pass through the Sun if it could, so it would take 4.667 milliseconds for a ship traveling at 1000 times the speed of light to pass through, it might not be a good idea to do that, that might be enough to destroy the ship, so if your traveling at 1000 times the speed of light, avoid passing through stars!