Links:
Babylon 5
Back to the technology
Back to step-through
|
THE AUTHOR ON STEP-THROUGH
I am indebted to my friends David Angier and Tim Bellerby for the step-through process. They know more physics and maths and other clever stuff than I do, so I explained my dilemma:
- I wanted a faster-than-light process for the novel.
- It had to be convincing and plausible-sounding, based on our present scientific knowledge and extrapolating suitably (no magic "he pressed the hyperdrive button and the ship shot away ...").
- It had to have limitations.
Let me explain that last point. A ship that can just turn on the warp drive (Star Trek) or leap into hyperspace (Star Wars) has it too easy, and whenever dramatic tension is required, the warp drive or the jump generator fails with monotonous regularity. Far more fun from the writer's point of view is to have the technology invariably work under the right circumstances, but to make those circumstances hard to attain. For instance, in Babylon 5, the ability to get into hyperspace is never in doubt for anyone for can reach a jumpgate, and never once in the five-year run of the series did a jumpgate malfunction. But, if you are in a small craft like a Starfury, you still have to get there, and anything can happen on the way. Larger ships, which can open their own jump points, have it easier but still are constrained: doing it too near a planet is problematic, and the jump generators always need to recharge (at a consistent rate) before they can be used again.
And my friends came up with step-through.
The basics really are based on what we know of quantum theory and wormholes: but as it stood to reason that the inventors of the process, not being human, wouldn't have called them wormholes, nor do my characters. More contentious, but dramatically interesting, is the contrivance that step-through only works between points of the same gravitational potential, and are easily detectable if you have the right equipment. Again, this introduces limitations that the characters might have to get around in a hurry.
Well, you wouldn't want it too easy, would you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
