Woah.

[Captain Robert April]

^ It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a Sperm Whale had been called into existence, several miles above the surface of an alien planet, and since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity. This is what it thought as it fell:

The Whale thought:

Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by "who am I?"

Okay, okay, calm down, calm down, get a grip now.

Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? It's a sort of tingling in my... well I suppose I better start finding names for things. Lets call it a... tail! Yeah! Tail!

And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do.

Yeah, this is really exciting. I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now isn't it? And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'!

That's it! Ground!

Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello Ground! *SHPLORT!!*

Curiously, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell, was, 'Oh no, not again.'

Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that, we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

 

[Cmdr Sho]

the bowl of petunias in past lives was a fly dent killed at a cricket game, the rabbit on prehistoric earth that dent ate and made into a bag, and the creature in the cave.... but does any of this hgttg have to do with the topic????

 

[AoC Berto]

All this tech talk doesn't get to the root of the problem, which is: Can engineers ever build a ship capable of exceeding ludicrous speed?

 

[Cmdr Sho]

but we have never gone that that fast... idk if the ship can take it.....

it might be possible that at one point in the future that might happen....

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

What are you, Cmdr Sho... chicken?

 

[BolianAuthor]

I would say as fast you want to traverse it -- since we have no basis or idea just how many bazillion times the speed of light the speed implied by 'Warp 1,000,000' is... *shrug*.

Cheers,
-CM-

Do we have any idea how fast the Enterprise-D was going, when the Traveler threw it into the Triangulum Galaxy?

 

[Captain Robert April]

I'd say they went straight to plaid.

 

[Cmdr Sho]

prepare ship.....prepare ship for ludicrous speed... fassen all seatbelts.... close all doors... cancel the 3 ring circus... secure all animals in the zoo....

idk how fast they were going..... perhaps faster then transwarp...

 

[NCC-1701-A]

Ah! You're all Spaceballs fans, too! But, they didn't even have a Warp Drive system... They were using common Newtonian propulsion (rocket engines)... How did Spaceball-1 survive over Transwarp velocities?! How did they get to that velocity, anyways?!?!

 

[Vance]

Simple: Liquid Down-Side Scwartz.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Ah! You're all Spaceballs fans, too! But, they didn't even have a Warp Drive system... They were using common Newtonian propulsion (rocket engines)... How did Spaceball-1 survive over Transwarp velocities?! How did they get to that velocity, anyways?!?!

Steroids?

 

[FredH]

...But it does make complete sense, in a Newtonian universe. If you moved infinitely fast, you would indeed by definition be everywhere at once.

Would you not therefore crash into everything at once--and destroy or seriously damage everything in the universe thereby?

 

[Cmdr Sho]

That is a good question!!! I would say that the computer would make sure that they didn't... You could apply that question to warp drive as well... How did they not hit things in warp like planets and stuff or go through star systems??

The answer would apply to your question too

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That is a good question!!! I would say that the computer would make sure that they didn't...

First of all, I would love to see a computer fast enough and powerful enough to avoid a collision with an infinite number of objects on an infinite number of trajectories at an infinite closing speed. Because, actually, that could computer would be called "God."

Although this is irrelevant anyway, since if your drive system causes you to occupy every point in the universe simultaneously--or even every point in a straight line--then there is no mechanism under the computer's control that would cause you to NOT occupy a particular point that is also occupied by that giant iceberg you just rammed at Ludicrous Speed.

You could apply that question to warp drive as well... How did they not hit things in warp like planets and stuff or go through star systems??

Deflectors, mate.

The answer would apply to your question too

Nope. Deflectors require a finite amount of time to move things out of the way, as does a computer need a finite amount of time to detect an obstacle, calculate an evasive course, and then use the engines to impliment that course.

This is only possible at "infinite velocity" if by "infinite" you simply mean "really really really fast." Otherwise your only recourse is to plug the ship into an infinite improbability drive so that all you really have to do is calculate the probability that your ship will reach its destination without colliding with anything.

 

[Tigger]

This is only possible at "infinite velocity" if by "infinite" you simply mean "really really really fast." Otherwise your only recourse is to plug the ship into an infinite improbability drive so that all you really have to do is calculate the probability that your ship will reach its destination without colliding with anything.

Maybe it's like Dune where you "travel without moving". Since I never read the books, I do not know how the Guild Navigators did it, but you could perhaps collapse the universe into a quantum point and "attach" yourself to your position when you expand it again.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Collapsing the entire universe into a "quantum point" would pretty much destroy it outright. One hell of a nice weapon, but not such a good engine design.

The Guild navigators did it by sheer brute force mathematics, and this was necessary only because of the complications of "folding space." The actual propulsion method was more akin to the creation and crossing of an artificial wormhole between two points in space.

 

[Cmdr Sho]

but then how would a ship not hit a planet or go into a star system then? i think that was the original question...

 

[Vance]

Because it would be infinitesimally dense, and not have the mass (effectively zero) to impact anything.

 

[Praetor]

...But it does make complete sense, in a Newtonian universe. If you moved infinitely fast, you would indeed by definition be everywhere at once.

Would you not therefore crash into everything at once--and destroy or seriously damage everything in the universe thereby?

I have always thought the idea was that you were everywhere and nowhere. Basically that you are moving so fast that you are everywhere, but in no one particular place for more than the tiniest speck of time, so it's almost like you're in another dimension. It's not like you're pinballing all over the place, you're just potentially everywhere, and when you disengage, you disengage yourself to wherever your mind guides you.

That's my theory, anyway.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Again, this is the problem when you take a Douglas Adams joke seriously.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy says:

The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.

It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion by the Galactic Government's research team on Damogran.

This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood - and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this - partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.

Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralyzing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:

"If," he thought to himself, "such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one, is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea ... and turn it on!"

He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air.

It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smart ass.