The only realistic part of the this is the energy level needed, and nothing short of Anti Matter engines can supply the power to travel faster than light...warp drive.

I think that was proved problematic a few years ago, antimatter wouldnt supply enough power to push a ship as fast as the Enterprise is supposed to go with just the impulse engines going.

Science Fiction, get it?! Its a FICTION

The real surprise though is that a lot of science FICTION as you put it has become science REALITY and some more is science POSSIBILITY depending on how much money we are willing to expend getting there.

They use antimatter all the time, a PET scan is exposing your body to positrons, the antimatter form of electrons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron

Other antimatter particles have been created at many of the atom smashers around the globe, the problem is the amount of power it takes to create the stuff along with the issues of storing it safely. Very little antimatter exists at any particular moment in time.

The LHC is for testing several high energy physics predictions including attempting to detect the Higgs boson, the only particle predicted by the standard model that hasnt been observed yet. It might not actually exist but its intended to give other particles mass.

Then again the Tachyon hasnt been isolated either, a hypothetical creation that never goes at less than the speed of light. These arent forbidden by physics at present but havent been detected either. To have a chance of stopping one, if they exist, you would need at least 3.500 light years of lead...

we need to worry more about eradicating religion than anything else - thats the cause of ALL our problems.

Can you imagine what would happen if we ever met another civilisation? The god botherers would try and convert them, and start conflict.

Easy tiger. Youve just demonstrated why Ive always said the anti-religion brigade can be just as fanatical as some of the more evangelical loons that grace the various religions of the world. The blinding hypocrisy of doing exactly what some of them are guilty of is absolutely hilarious.

Whilst I have no love for the unholy Abrahamic trinity that have caused a lot of problems in the past (and are continuing to do so to some extent) I think a live and let live policy is the best thing to work towards.

Incidentally you should pick up pretty much any history book and thumb through it when you have the time. Youll find an example somewhere of someone who tried to suppress or eradicate one or more religions and pushed them underground forcing the religion to push back harder and causing even more conflict.

"Spirituality" of some form is and always will be part of the human condition.

Quote from: Mark

we need to worry more about eradicating religion than anything else - thats the cause of ALL our problems.

Can you imagine what would happen if we ever met another civilisation? The god botherers would try and convert them, and start conflict.

Easy tiger. Youve just demonstrated why Ive always said the anti-religion brigade can be just as fanatical as some of the more evangelical loons that grace the various religions of the world. The blinding hypocrisy of doing exactly what some of them are guilty of is absolutely hilarious.

Im always amazed at the speed atheists adopt and use religious stances. Burn the heretics, burn the heretics! is swiftly translated to burn the believers, burn the believers! I dont want to be converted to atheism, thanks, I certainly dont try and convert you lot, thats your choice. Conflict between religious groups that make claims that they need to eradicate something need to damn well sit down and think the whole area again. Atheists and scientists are included.

Im also sure that any alien will undoubtedly have their own ideas on theology and religion too, they might come here with the idea of converting us. So what do we do then with the death rays pointing down? Obviously Mark would want to fry for his belief in there being no god.

Or they may just need to build another intergalactic highway.

Well, the original question wasnt accusing the sci-fi as being full of flaws.

It was what mechanisms, if any, were used to explain it. And Dogbert has finally answered it!
 

Simple answer would have been none of them use the same mechanism for FTL that the Forever War does so none of them need to address the problem.

I use the exact opposite, to an outside observer my ships instantaneously pass through the wormhole, but the crew spend time inside as if they were crawling across at light speed. That means they have to spend a long time in suspended animation during transit.

I assume its this one?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Peace-War-Omnibus-Forever-Gollancz/dp/0575079193/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231085994&sr=8-3

The idea is quite simple, you can cross all that space at light speed, or, you can go through a short cut in space that you make yourself, this requires the borrowing of a huge amount of energy to create a quantum effect and repaying the loan as close to instantly as possible in order to make it work. Not repaying it has fatal consequences as the interest rate is rather steep. (No I didnt work every little fact out, I had to use might be possible, or at least not disproveable yet.)

Once you are inside the wormhole your ship still needs to cover the same distance, and at the same maximum speed of light. The difference being that you are now isolated from the time in the rest of the universe. Effectively while the ship is travelling no time passes outside of its bubble.

Then there is the problem of the mathematics needed, you need special people who can just guess at the right option and be right. Computers can do these calculations but they would take an incredible amount of time and by the time you got an answer the chances are the parameters would have changed. So the number of pilots available, as with the Dune universe, is severely limited. They dont use spice or any similar chemical substance though, its a genetically modified gene combination that was created for another reason but is fortuitously just what they need for doing this.

Because of the way the physics works there is no way to stop a ship in transit, either for those outside or inside. There is also the fact that Gravity increases the amount of complexity, so you have to move your ship well away from a gravity well, such as a sun or planet. That means there is no warping in close to a target, bombarding  it and then warping out again, fighting is, for all practical purposes, limited to sub light.

You might think that this would give no advantage, except it does. In war being able to transport troops and information practically instantly can mean that you outnumber the enemy locally and take on a fraction of their force with a much greater percentage of yours. The limits of pilot numbers means you can only move so many of your ships if you put a pilot in each one. That means most up to date warships are docked with carriers for long range transport, so a single pilot can shift a hundred cruisers. It makes them similar in function to the present fleet carriers and aircraft.

Maximum acceleration is also limited, there are gravity engines, which provide a maximum of about 20G and microwave ones that can add about another nine to that, this means that the people are almost guaranteed to know you are coming. There is also a zero percent energy harvesting option, so you can keep your ship powered up, but in order to use it there is a minimum speed you have to achieve before it becomes viable. Ive taken the probably reasonable decision that gravity hills and wells cancel each other out over longer distances, so the ship will not suck people off a planet or cause tidal waves if far enough away.

Weapons are basic high energy beam weapons  for guns and nuclear missiles. At the present point in the history of the books energy weapons can destroy a missile attack from a similar number of enemy ships but if you get close enough they have to choose to target incoming missiles or enemy ships. There are no shields or such, there is a basic magnetic field generator and thats it, any nukes that explodes close enough and your crew die due to the radiation.

There are robots but their use is limited and they are effectively lobotomised, just in case they try and take over the world. Troops wear powered armour exoskeletons with plasma based rifles. Firing a plasma rifle of this kind without the powered armour can easily break your arm or shoulder.

Ive ordered a copy of the omnibus along with one of Old Twentieth. So hopefully Im in for some interesting reading*
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*if not Ill bribe the dolphins a load of fish to find you next time you go diving and they will sort you out...

I did think of that one, the ship effectively creates its own mini universe until it rejoins normal space, so they would just go past each other, for each the other ship effectively does not exist.

At the moment one of the characters is in a Shrodingers cat situation. On board an alien space station hes faced with four enemy cyborgs who are termed Mechs. They are probably going to kill him anyway and he doesnt have a gun anyway. What he does have is an EMP bomb, which might be more fatal to him as the cyborgs.

The issue is he either lets them kill him or he takes his chances and sets off the bomb, he has a complex electronic computer system inside the back of his skull and this isnt exactly EMP proof, so there is the probability of him frying his own brain - permanently. At that point he would also break any contact with his own people outside the station. The question is did he survive? He doesnt know cause hes at best comatose. Those outside are in a similar predicament.

And what about the Mechs, are they still active?

Needless to say the crew of the ship he arrived on are taking bets on his survival chances...   You dont really need enemies with colleagues like these.

Oh, I dont know either as this wasnt supposed to happen.