Post #1004886

2026-04-08 08:08 UTC

#PennedPossibilities 979 Tell us about something that disgusts your SC. This does eventually get around to being an answer, I promise... In Moral Void, there are two sci-fi ways for a spaceship to conveniently go really fast. The first is hyperspace. Jumping into hyperspace allows you to travel at close to the speed of light for a few hours (on the outside - it feels like seconds for you, due to time dilation) Great for getting around a solar system, but it won&#39;t get you to another star. 1/3

Replies (2)

@pentup@mastodon.art 2026-04-08 08:13

#PennedPossibilities 979 cont. The other is warping - a warp gate folds space to connect two points and you pass through it to go from one to the other without passing through any of the space (or hyperspace) in between. This is how people move between star systems (once a ship has previously travelled there via more conventional means to set up the gate at the other end). I wanted to disambiguate the two by making them feel very different. I haven't got to those parts of the story yet, but 2/3

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@mindpersephone@spookygirl.boo 2026-04-08 08:27

@pentup@mastodon.art ooh multiple FTL methods are fun for scifi stories. I once had a universe where there are two, a kind of hyper space bubble ftl and a wormhole ftl. But they are kind of incompatible. Wormholes take a fuck ton of power but let you jump short distances functionally instantly. Hyper space bubbles need a lot less power and let you travel extremely long distances. However the way you target the ends of a wormhole is similar enough to how a hyper space bubble works that a passing hyper space bubble can rip the end of the worm hole off and attach it to its self. But in doing so its like the bubble gets hit by a pool cue, and is fired off in a random direction. Wormholes are generally considered the poorer technology because of the stupid power requirements to go anywhere outside your own system. Humans invent wormholes first and then cause "diplomatic incidents" by catapulting random aliens across the galaxy without realising why their wormhole machine sometimes goes wrong.

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