starship-design: Raise the limit?

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Steve VanDevender writes:
 > kyle writes:
 >  > I was wondering about FTL travel, and ask myself "why do we really need
 >  > it?" To get somewhere fast. Why not abandon FTL until physics gets that
 >  > far and simply travel without traversing the space between two points?
 >  > You could theoretically travel from any point to any point without
 >  > having to exceed the speed of light, AND taking a very short travel time
 >  > in earth's reference point. 
 > 
 > The problem with this is that so far the only known way to curve space
 > is to concentrate mass.  Furthermore, curving space doesn't easily allow
 > for the sort of curvature

Bleah.  I meant to finish that paragraph, really :-)

Furthermore, curving space doesn't easily allow for travel that looks
subluminal in one direction but superluminal in others.  Speculative
"space warps" like Tipler's infinite rotating cylinder or Kerr-Newman
black holes aren't easy to construct -- the Tipler cylinder would
collapse axially, and you can't spin a black hole up to the point of
being able to access the singularity without being trapped in the black
hole.  And either method, again, uses tremendous amounts of energy that
could be used to fuel many relativistic starships.