"Contact" -A space race between species (RP forum game)

Woohoo, thanks for the answers!

We're lucky enough to have (as my rough estimate) at least 50 years before any species in this game will be trying to go FTL -- in the best of circumstances, where all available resources on a planet are concentrated on the task of improving space technology (meaning we'd probably dislike how hard of a wanking they're getting). So, we'll probably have a few pages of updates (upwards of 5, 10 maybe) before people are moving FTL, traveling across interstellar space, and we need to

My posts here have certainly been on the heavy side, so I'm putting together an abridged timeline of what the East Pacific Tree Octopus has done so far. Before that, though, I wanted to pull out a few ideas I've seen for potential FTL:

- The Alcubierre Drive: allows FTL travel without a pre-constructed structure, mostly without limits, apart from the need to avoid obstacles I believe (massive shear forces at the leading and trailing edges of the bubble iirc). Requires some exotic forms of matter.
- Heim Theory (this name might be wrong): an attempt at creating a grand unified model of physics, one strange feature of the model is that it's possible to use some funky tech to create a spacetime-warping bubble (or is it a temporary tube? I am not totally sure) that can take you between two points of sufficient spacetime flatness. I like it a lot, because the math provides enough justification for some interesting story implications: You can launch from either far away from your star, or from certain Lagrange points, and can return to normal space at locations far enough from strong gravitational wells, but it is very very very hard (mathematically almost impossible) to land at lagrange points, meaning there's a certain asymmetry which favors the defenders of solar systems over an attacking force. Can be created without needing any exotic form of matter.
- Wormholes: Two spheres in faraway parts of space, entering the surface of one causes you to effectively exit the surface of the other, as they are connected just as much as adjacent parts of regular space are. Difficult to create and maintain, very effective, but keeping them from breaching causality can be a doozy. Require some exotic forms of matter to stabilize.
- Krasnikov Tube: A specific type of wormhole, in the form of tube between two points in space -- fly from one end, along it to the exit, at near light-speed, and you will reach the end faster than you would expect. Effectively a spacetime megastructure constructed by warping the wake of a superluminal object -- so the ends are displaced in both space and time (by a classical definition of time -- given that general relativity means there is no universal reference time, saying 'a wormhole is displaced in time' is effectively meaningless). To my limited reading they seem to have even more causality problems than other types of wormhole, but there are some theoretical mechanisms proposed which would prevent breaking causality. Shouldn't require any exotic form of matter, just some crazy antics with gravity and high-energy particles, and a superluminal object whose wake can be turned into a tube.

There's probably more stuff, but I don't have the time right now to look more stuff up. I like the synergy between Heim-theoretical drives and the Krasnikov tube -- no exotic matter necessary, just some superconducting coils and a bunch of other crazy tech, and you can send off ships that can be easily resupplied. We'd have to decide what limits we want to put on these technologies, if we want to even the field between competing FTL methods, for example, Alcubierre drives might be able to go faster than Heim drives, etc.

As the sun rises on the first day of the 6th year after the 3rd unification war, the first tangible progress of the Imperial Space Program is seen, as the Kingdom of Lavi launches the first satellite to make a round trip around the planet. While the Kingdom celebrates, their rivals begin to try picking up speed on their programs, with the people of the United Districts begin theorizing about the use of the Nuclear Rockets used to end the 3rd unification war and possibly use of nuclear energy in space, while the Peoples State begin more ambitious plans. The Imperial Palace publicly congratulates the Kingdom, but orders a release of known theories from all nations, and orders registration to the Imperial Space Agency to prevent another surprise launch. This order is contested in the Senate but is not blocked, as the weaker nations take advantige of this law to give them an easier time getting on track.

Aww man. I think what we need to do is agree to fast-forward enough that we can all collaborate and interact with each other instead of upteching alone while sending a few messages back and forth.

Unless we can come up with a good way to do that, though, then yeah this is probably dead. Pity, too.