A Short Sort-of Explanation of the Mechanics of Hyperspace-capable Craft in the "Culture" Fictional Universe
In the Culture novels all the advanced civilisations mentioned utilise faster-than-light technology for interstellar travel. It can also be assumed from the descriptions of the different types of ships that they are all based on the same principles. These are, as yet, undescribed, but the maximum hyperspace speeds attained by such vessels seems to be dependent on the proportion of the total volume of each vessel consumed by the hyperspace engines,which, for a General Systems Vehicle at least, mostly consist of hyperdense material.
Put bluntly, small ships with space devoted to crew/passengers tend to be fairly slow, taking days or weeks to arrive at a destinaton (or centuries to traverse the galaxy), while much larger vessels, like some warships, can afford to devote more space to engine capacity and are much faster. A GSV with a third of its actual volume being engines can achieve a velocity of around 240 thousand times light speed.
A reason for this may involve a multiverse explanation for gravity (being that gravity is so weak and has no corresponding counter-gravity (or anti-gravity) that it must 'leak' in from a higher dimension or the 'real' multiverse) corresponding with a possible consequence of super-luminal travel:negative mass. It may be therefore possible to artificially cause more gravity to leak in or to create anti-gravity for levitation relative to a large mass (like the anti-gravity harnesses used by the crew of the Clear Air Turbulence in Consider Phlebas), so a ship containing a dense mass can have artificial gravity by basically creating a field around said mass that increases the gravitational constant.
Assume that a body, such as a starship, suddenly appears to the outside universe to have negative mass then it will also travel faster than the speed of light apparent to the outside universe then this could be achieved by leaking anti-gravity in the volume occupied by the engines at such a rate that they appear to have negative mass relative to the outside universe. This way, it would require less energy for a large ship to enter and increase speed in hyperspace than a smaller vessel.
The hyperdense material described likely consists of a mix of stable high atomic-number elements in the form of a stable degenerate matter similar to that of a White Dwarf star. It is not unreasonable to assume that the engines of a GSV would actually be dense enough to provide a very reasonable amount of surface gravity (if we think of a GSV as being about the size of Wales, the habitable areas being twenty miles high and the engines basically being the continental crust) without the need for rotating sections. The hyperdense material would also provide another purpose: facilitating deuterium fusion. Besides solar, this would be an abundant source of energy for the artificial worldlets called "Orbitals" as the base material for their constructon is also descrbed as being "hyperdense" (this would also provide protection, lacking by an Orbital's thin atmosphere, from Cosmic Radiation).
In the Culture novels all the advanced civilisations mentioned utilise faster-than-light technology for interstellar travel. It can also be assumed from the descriptions of the different types of ships that they are all based on the same principles. These are, as yet, undescribed, but the maximum hyperspace speeds attained by such vessels seems to be dependent on the proportion of the total volume of each vessel consumed by the hyperspace engines,which, for a General Systems Vehicle at least, mostly consist of hyperdense material.
Put bluntly, small ships with space devoted to crew/passengers tend to be fairly slow, taking days or weeks to arrive at a destinaton (or centuries to traverse the galaxy), while much larger vessels, like some warships, can afford to devote more space to engine capacity and are much faster. A GSV with a third of its actual volume being engines can achieve a velocity of around 240 thousand times light speed.
A reason for this may involve a multiverse explanation for gravity (being that gravity is so weak and has no corresponding counter-gravity (or anti-gravity) that it must 'leak' in from a higher dimension or the 'real' multiverse) corresponding with a possible consequence of super-luminal travel:negative mass. It may be therefore possible to artificially cause more gravity to leak in or to create anti-gravity for levitation relative to a large mass (like the anti-gravity harnesses used by the crew of the Clear Air Turbulence in Consider Phlebas), so a ship containing a dense mass can have artificial gravity by basically creating a field around said mass that increases the gravitational constant.
Assume that a body, such as a starship, suddenly appears to the outside universe to have negative mass then it will also travel faster than the speed of light apparent to the outside universe then this could be achieved by leaking anti-gravity in the volume occupied by the engines at such a rate that they appear to have negative mass relative to the outside universe. This way, it would require less energy for a large ship to enter and increase speed in hyperspace than a smaller vessel.
The hyperdense material described likely consists of a mix of stable high atomic-number elements in the form of a stable degenerate matter similar to that of a White Dwarf star. It is not unreasonable to assume that the engines of a GSV would actually be dense enough to provide a very reasonable amount of surface gravity (if we think of a GSV as being about the size of Wales, the habitable areas being twenty miles high and the engines basically being the continental crust) without the need for rotating sections. The hyperdense material would also provide another purpose: facilitating deuterium fusion. Besides solar, this would be an abundant source of energy for the artificial worldlets called "Orbitals" as the base material for their constructon is also descrbed as being "hyperdense" (this would also provide protection, lacking by an Orbital's thin atmosphere, from Cosmic Radiation).
posted by Legal Smeagol at 12:32 PM
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