Lets rank some speeds

Baal · Post by **Baal** » 2007-10-20 09:44pm

Ok, here goes. I want to rank the speeds of various SC-Fi shows. The speed is only valid if it is from a live action television show or live action movie.

As a start here are a few

1. Stargate SG-1 (Specifically the Asgard)
2. StarWars
3. SpaceBalls (Druidia space car cruised along at an easy 1400 lightweeks per minute) When you consider secret hyperspeed or Ludicrous speed then might move to #1.
4. Star Trek
5. Babylon 5 (this one might be above Star Trek, assuming the rim is really the rim then drips to the edge of the galactic disk are done rather easily)

What else can we add in there?

Lord of the Abyss · Post by **Lord of the Abyss** » 2007-10-20 09:49pm

The Mannschenn Drive from the old Rim Worlds/Commodore Grimes books used time travel to travel backwards in time as it moved forward in space. If things went wrong you could arrive before you left; hard to get faster than that.

Darth Ruinus · Post by **Darth Ruinus** » 2007-10-20 11:18pm

Lord of the Abyss wrote:The Mannschenn Drive from the old Rim Worlds/Commodore Grimes books used time travel to travel backwards in time as it moved forward in space. If things went wrong you could arrive before you left; hard to get faster than that.

Doesnt that one require you to get there first at normal speeds? That hardly seems like fast FTL.

Ryan Thunder · Post by **Ryan Thunder** » 2007-10-20 11:20pm

Darth Ruinus wrote:
Lord of the Abyss wrote:The Mannschenn Drive from the old Rim Worlds/Commodore Grimes books used time travel to travel backwards in time as it moved forward in space. If things went wrong you could arrive before you left; hard to get faster than that.
Doesnt that one require you to get there first at normal speeds? That hardly seems like fast FTL.

It's all relative. You might be old and decrepit by the time you get there, but to your enemies, you just executed the ultimate pre-emptive strike.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2007-10-20 11:56pm

Ryan Thunder wrote:
Darth Ruinus wrote:
Lord of the Abyss wrote:The Mannschenn Drive from the old Rim Worlds/Commodore Grimes books used time travel to travel backwards in time as it moved forward in space. If things went wrong you could arrive before you left; hard to get faster than that.
Doesnt that one require you to get there first at normal speeds? That hardly seems like fast FTL.
It's all relative. You might be old and decrepit by the time you get there, but to your enemies, you just executed the ultimate pre-emptive strike.

And then there are TARDIS's which don't even have the aging issue.

Teleros · Post by **Teleros** » 2007-10-21 12:58am

The official speed for Lensman ships is 60-90 parsecs per hour, although those figures are pretty dodgy given some of the other stuff in the books.
In the Skylark series the fastest we definitely see the ships going at is accelerating at something like 127c (in realspace... don't ask

), and that's minus a rotation into hyperspace that catapulted the Skylark Two a few millions (if not billions!) of lightyears in a couple of milliseconds (although they ended up lost as a result

).

Lord of the Abyss · Post by **Lord of the Abyss** » 2007-10-21 01:59am

Darth Ruinus wrote:
Lord of the Abyss wrote:The Mannschenn Drive from the old Rim Worlds/Commodore Grimes books used time travel to travel backwards in time as it moved forward in space. If things went wrong you could arrive before you left; hard to get faster than that.
Doesnt that one require you to get there first at normal speeds? That hardly seems like fast FTL.

As I recall it altered time inside the ship so that didn't happen. Unless it broke, and your engineers aged to dust in a few seconds, say. Oh, and it was purely mechanical as well; a very weird drive. Weird, violated various physical laws, and about as reliable as a Star Trek transporter.

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2007-10-21 02:28am

If we're talking FTL speeds, the Necrons of Warhammer 40,000 can cross the Milky Way in a fraction of a second.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2007-10-21 03:08am

How does one add in groups that use networks of wormholes/special intersystem corridors? Wing Commander would seem to travel at least several ly/s when they move from one system to another, but to get from system A to system E they have to travel at sublight through systems B, C, and D. Freespace ships move similarly, except they can travel at or a little above c within the system, and intersystem speed is closer to 1 ly/min.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2007-10-21 05:38am

That's hilarious!
OP: "I want to know about live action shows."
First reply: "Well there's this book..."

The only thing mentioned so far that qualifies per the OPs requirements is the TARDIS. Incidentally, it's probably also the fastest thing you'll get.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2007-10-21 05:44am

Alan Bolte wrote:How does one add in groups that use networks of wormholes/special intersystem corridors? Wing Commander would seem to travel at least several ly/s when they move from one system to another, but to get from system A to system E they have to travel at sublight through systems B, C, and D.

Are the speeds inside the corridors constant or not ?

If they are I'd probably make a mention of both the corridor speeds and the speeds and distances between them in-system.

Though I know that for Andromeda their FTL system definitely didn't have a constant speed at FTL. Depending on your pilot, identical ships could take different lengths of time with the same entry/exit points.

kinnison · Post by **kinnison** » 2007-10-21 08:57am

How about Dune? Travel an arbitrary distance instantaneously, or at most in a fraction of a second. Without having to be at some particular place to do it.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2007-10-21 09:11am

Hah, I suspect most of us made the same mistake I did, and just skimmed the OP. Of course, speeds do vary quite a bit not only depending on route in most universes, but between different factions in a few. It might be best to specify max sustainable warp for a fast UFP ship circa the Dominion War, and then indicate Borg transwarp speeds. The other major Trek factions are less important to note because they are all similar to the UFP.

Hmm, we can still keep Wing Commander because they had a movie which, though different from the games on a few points used the same FTL system. I'd put them behind B5, though I suspect they're on par with B5's gate-using traffic. IIRC, there were at least a few instances where ships had to leave hyperspace at one gate and re-enter at another because there was no good path between the gates through hyperspace. Now that I look back though, that doesn't make a lot of sense, as the gate entrances should be so close together in hyperspace as to be nearly indistinguishable, or so far apart in realspace that travel would take months at least. Perhaps I'm just remembering wrong.

Now, BSG is another one with faction-specific speeds. Travel from point-to-point would seem to be nearly instantaneous, but there's a distance limit per jump and a cooldown time between jumps, though the latter appears to be a matter of minutes. Colonial FTL is sharply limited by poor nav computers, but there's no indication of how far the Galactica can jump at one time. We know even less about the limits on Cylon FTL, though if their distance per jump is limited by computing power it's at least an order of magnitude greater than the Colonials'. The impression I get is that the Galactica is limited to less than 10 ly per jump before they risk going off course.

Steel · Post by **Steel** » 2007-10-21 12:52pm

kinnison wrote:How about Dune? Travel an arbitrary distance instantaneously, or at most in a fraction of a second. Without having to be at some particular place to do it.

2 small points,

1 Thats a book read the OP

2 There is never a timescale mentioned in the original dune as far as i recall, but in the prequels there is a definite non zero time for a journey. On the order of 4 hours in foldspace for leto going between caladan and IX or something...

Post by **NecronLord** » 2007-10-21 01:57pm

Steel wrote:1 Thats a book read the OP

That's odd, because I've seen it on television.

There have been several adaptations of Dune made as movies and miniseries.

2 There is never a timescale mentioned in the original dune as far as i recall, but in the prequels there is a definite non zero time for a journey. On the order of 4 hours in foldspace for leto going between caladan and IX or something...

The books (or at least the encyclopedia) give limits. The David Lynch film (the only one I'm familiar with) just implies it's limitless.

Lost Soal · Post by **Lost Soal** » 2007-10-21 02:37pm

Lexxverse appears to have a realspace FTL drive where the light speed barrier and relativity is negated. This drive sees them travelling across the entire universe in a short timescale.
While time isn't actually mentioned if we assume season 2 covered a time period of 1 year (the common convention), then for the mantrid drones travelled across and converted the entire universe inside of 1 year.
I think you'll agree that is obscenely fast.

Chevron_Seven · Post by **Chevron_Seven** » 2007-10-29 04:05pm

Baal wrote:Ok, here goes. I want to rank the speeds of various SC-Fi shows. The speed is only valid if it is from a live action television show or live action movie.

As long as you have good slipstream routes that are well traveled or a skilled pilot a slipstream equipped ship in Andromeda can jump between galaxies or across them in seconds to minutes. That's far faster than the Asgard the only issue is consistency is your pilot sucks or you are blazing new routes.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Lets rank some speeds

Lets rank some speeds

Re: Lets rank some speeds