starship-design: FTL Navigation

["Ron Hubbard" <hubbard_ron@hotmail.com>]

I grew up reading E.E. 'Doc" Smith's Lensman novels and have always been 
fascinated by the concept of the inertialess space drive. I think that with 
the various new theories of inertia, such a space drive might be technically 
feasible within a couple of decades.

If by some miracle of "voodoo technology" such a drive becomes a reality, 
would faster-than-light navigation be a problem?

>From the little I care to understand about special relativity, as an object 
accelerates time slows down, mass increases (thus requiring more and more 
energy to push it), and the universe appears to shrink down ahead of it-- 
but since Einstein had decided nothing can travel faster than the speed of 
light, there doesn't seem to be any speculation on what the view would be if 
all of the relativistic hindrances Einstein foresaw were removed. If a 
hypothetical inertialess spaceship was traveling at ten times the speed of 
light, would it see the universe rushing towards it or nothing at all? Or 
would FTL navigation be an immensely complicated proposition?

Ron Hubbard


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