Friday, March 2, 2012

FTL Vs Warp

Battlestars, basestars and almost all the ships from Star Trek have some sort of drive that propels them at speeds faster than the speed of light, but which is better: wrp or FTL? I suppose while being pursued, FTL is better, since its impossible to track a vehicle with FTL jump capabilities, but its possible to follow a ship using warp, as long as (to put it mathematically) the power of your warp drive  >  the power of theirs. But before jumping, you have to carefully plot the destination coordinates, or else a blind jump could put you somewhere you really don't want to be, like inside a planet's atmosphere or right next to a sun. But if you're ever lost somewhere in space and have jump drive, just remember: 1123 6536 5321. Those are the jump coordinates for earth. As I was saying though, the advantage of warp in this case is that you can just point yourself in the right direction and go until you arrive at your destination. And in terms of preparation, they both have ups and downs. FTL has to take time to prepare, but once that's done and you hit the button, the jump is instantaneous. Warp doesn't really need that preparation period, but it takes a little bit to get going once you engage. And also, I think if you're going a distance that can be traversed in one jump, I feel like that would be a better method of transportation than warp drive. Well, I'm not sure I can say which is better, but I brought up all the factors I can think of, so I guess I'll just say they're both awesome and leave it at that.

 

Edit: In response to the comment wondering about our current location, that's a smart question and I actually didn't think of that, so I don't know out current coordinates. If we find out how to convert FTL coordinates to modern notation, it could be calculated, but until then, we'll just have to wait. Sorry.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

1123 6536 5321 were the coordinates of Earth 150,000 years ago. The entire solar system has moved since then since it orbits the center of the Milky Way.

So using those FTL coordinates today would be put you well over 127 light years or 747,067,680,000,000 miles from where Earth was when Galactica found it. Where are we now?