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submitted 2 months ago by trslim@pawb.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

This can be anything from Hyperspace in Star Wars, Warp Drive in Star Trek, travel through the Warp in Warhammer 40k or anything else.

I've always liked "slow" FTL travel, where going a few light-years still takes a few days or so. I also really like travel through an alternate dimension like in 40k, Event Horizon, Witchspace in Elite Dangerous.

I wanna know your favorite versions, or do you prefer stories that obey the laws of known physics, like the Expanse or Rimworld?

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[-] palordrolap@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago

For practicality: Whatever it is that The Nox do in the Stargate TV show. It's not well explained because, well, no other race is advanced enough to understand it. Something about briefly causing two distant points in space to touch. Instantaneous travel to anywhere.

For impracticality: #1 The ring network in one of Stephen Baxter's novels. Kind of like the eponymous rings in the better known Stargate franchise, but the ring source and destination are fixed and transport time between rings is light speed, so you arrive years after you enter. And IIRC, you come out as an approximation of what you were when you went in. A very good approximation, but still an approximation. The advantage is that the journey seems instantaneous to the traveller.

#2 Whichever story has it that travel in hyperspace / subspace turns out to be slower than travel in real space. This may have been a throwaway Internet joke, but it still amuses me.

#3 Stephen King's Jaunt.

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

So in the first Tolan episode, they contact the Nox so they can help the Tolan refugees. The Tolan mention their ftl, and Daniel says he thinks it's like the folding space theory.

Basically like folding a sheet of paper, so the two ends meet, and shooting right through, so when it unfolds, you're instantly on the other side, and the Tolan smiles and says "...No."

I don't recall the Nox ever mentioning FTL, just their invisibility, and they can also form wormholes without dialing.

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[-] Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Slipspace from Halo.

You can weaponize that shit in a pinch if you wish. It seems to be the appropriate FTL method for humanity to use.

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[-] Siethron@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

In the Bobibverse (book series) they used SUDAR for FTL. SUDAR was a gravity based communication. I believe this started coming out before the gravity wave discovery and we confirmed(/it became common knowledge) that gravity travels at the speed of light. It was a cool idea though.

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

In the Battletech universe, the Kearny-Fuschida drive jumps a ship instantly up to 30 light years, but then the jumpship needs to deploy a huge solar sail and wait two weeks to charge the capacitors. They also can't jump (safely) except to the low-gravity Lagrange points, and then dropships need to detach and make their way to the planet or whatever.

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[-] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago

There's a theory about Even Horizon that it was basically the Warp from Warhammer 40k.

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[-] user1234@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 months ago
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[-] isgleas@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Ender's sagas adresses not only near light speed travel, but also the relativity on communications between the traveling veasels and "stationary" posts via the ansible

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[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago

I like gate type things and prefer them in space like babylon 5 and buck rogers.

[-] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I like the version from BSG.

Andromeda was weird. Able to travel from galaxy to galaxy otherwise they travel at sub-light.

[-] FishFace@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Visually it's gotta be Leviathans' Starburst from Farscape.

That sequence never got old when I was a kid even though they reused it

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[-] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I like the Stargate-lite system in the game Terminus (2000). Unlike Stargate, each gate connects 1 to 1 with another, so there’s no “dialling up” a new destination. In fact, these gates don’t go anywhere unexplored. They only go where we’ve already been (around the solar system).

See, in Terminus the space ships can only fly at realistic speeds (similar to real life rockets) and maneuvering is difficult (with pretty decent Newtonian physics). If you want to travel to other places in the solar system it takes an extremely long time, so the gates make it actually feasible to get around.

This all had the effect of making space feel like the age of railroading. You can get around but you’re limited to where the rails can take you. I don’t know why, but there’s something so romantic about that.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

in mass effect, the core can manipulate the mass of a surrounding ship, making lightspeed travel possible.

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this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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