McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

I broke physics and now it's being obnoxious.

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Aminar:
The portals are related to my FTL methods(but ships don't have FTL drives.)  It's all done via use of a very big, very beyond understanding, entity that exists in multiple spaces at once(specifically around black holes it eats, but that's beside the point.

I'm just ignoring the science behind how the ships reach .9C and leaving it at They Can.  I am however counting relatavistic time dilation in as a part of the story(that the faster you get to the speed of light the less time you experience in relation to slower people.  I'm running the math for it, the characters sya they are running the math but don't mention the equations, they just give the conversion.  (IE at .9C 12 Light days of travel feels like 5 something, almost 6 days, but 13 some days have gone by for everyone else.)

(Also, the gates/Portals can only be made on a physical, mostly flat substance.

Now, as to my question, I'm massively confused about his now.  My brother mentioned Pulley's too, but I can't manage a portal pulley given the rules I've designed, so I'm switching what I did seeing I had the bulkhead strength wrong to begin with.  I just need to place the pulling point against the wall the engines push on to rely on their strength to keep the wall from ripping out.

R4ph:
Actually, by my understanding (and I have a Physics degree, so either I'm right, or about to embarrass the crap out of myself), small ship towing big ship shouldn't be a problem at all.

1) Engine size and structural integrity limits the force you can apply, not the acceleration you can reach.

2) In atmo, that means an RC car can't pull a space shuttle, because the RC can't provide enough force to overcome friction/air resistance.

3) In space, there's no friction or air resistance. So an RC can pull a space shuttle... Really slowly.

4) What this essentially means is that if your F is constant, and your mass goes up, your acceleration just goes down. So it is easily possible to tow a huge ship to .9C, it just takes 6 times longer to get up to speed.

Alternatively, if you wanted to use the slope idea (which is super clever), you could use statites as the solid surface upon which to place the gates, that way they'd stay in place around a sun.

Aminar:
Wait...  So the structural integrity thing doesn't apply?  Stupid Space not working how I want it to for momentary dramatic tension.  :l 
Oh well, I'll add in a line about wanting to build up speed faster to avoid pursuit, seeing they think they are being pursued.

R4ph:
There's always running the engine beyond it's capacity (Ah can give ya warp 7 for 38 seconds, cap'n, and nae more!). Leaves the option for something to be burned out/exploded afterwards/during.

Structural integrity is unlikely to play a large factor though, unless the "tow bar" isn't able to withstand Force equivalent to the engine as maximum thrust. But that would seem unlikely, in a vessel designed to withstand the kind of G forces involved in FTL travel. Especially as magnetic grapples are involved, those seem like they'd pop off before the ship damaged.

Maybe you could have multiple grapple lines due to the largeness, to spread the load, and have some of them disconnect during acceleration? Then there's the tension (hehe) of hoping the remaining line(s) hold, with the consequence of losing their ship if the last one disconnects and the ship they're in zooms off.

Aminar:
No FTL, but quite rapid acceleration to an enforced .9C cap.(enforced by long standing tradition and the dangers of blaa blaa blaa I said so.(I'm sure there are plenty of justifiable reasons made by the ship designers who happen to be much smarter than most of the human race put together.)
I'm honestly not looking to have things explode.  Part of the flavor I'm going for is just how careful people have to be while travelling in space.  I have other causes of tension.  As is, I'm just sticking the grapple to the wall the engine is braced against, so that the ship can accelerate fast enough for her emission trails to disintegrate before the Ships tracing a bounty beacon she set off can catch up.  Because Space Travel is frankly boring, but I, like an idiot, planned on having the whole first book be aboard ship.  Grrrr.

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