I have seen numerous programs on light speed travel or even faster spaceships by Dr. Michio Kaku, Dr. Stephan Hawking and others. They make great and very fascinating theories on such travel, but the problem I have and I don't know if somebodys addressed this yet is, how do you avoid things going at such insane speeds.

Space is full of all kinds of things we know about and don't know about, meteorites, asteriods, comets ETC ETC.

How do you avoid these types of things going so fast? Some of these objects I've mentioned could be huge or the size of a pea, given what we know with the space station and shuttle, a piece of debris the size of a grain of sand is enough to destroy either object given their speed.

thats why its not going to be a walk in the park.

was thinking about the same problem too.

[edit on 6-10-2009 by platipus]

also, how do you avoid becoming a puddle in the back of the spaceship, when you get there?

[edit on 6-10-2009 by MR BOB]

It's going to be easier to create a vessel than can bend space, and warp to certain locations, then to travel at the speed of light.

plasma force field like in the movies that vaporizes everything in your way even STARS STARS JUST HEAL QUICKLY

Originally posted by MR BOB
also, how do you avoid becoming a puddle in the back of the spaceship, when you get there?

[edit on 6-10-2009 by MR BOB]

As long as you accelerate gently enough, then decelerate gently enough, your body will survive. It's not the speed that creates forces on our bodies, it's acceleration/deceleration.

I suppose that the spaceship would need to begin slowing down long before it reaches its destination, so as not to decelerate to quickly.

Perhaps if we ever develop extremely fast methods of space transportation, we may also need to develop anti-gravity/anti-inertia (like the inertial dampeners on Star Trek)

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13
plasma force field like in the movies that vaporizes everything in your way even STARS STARS JUST HEAL QUICKLY

No: Bussard Ramjet to scoop up all the muck and use it as propellant.

One must take into account the physical changes that occur in an object and its structure at that speed.

If the ship is able to create it's own gravitational field then the occupants would not feel the effects of inertia due to their speed. For instance, we earth is traveling at a tremendous speed in orbit of the sun, however we do not feel the effects of the speed due to the earths gravitational field.

I think that if you were traveling at the speed of light with a generated gravitational field the small objects would be pushed aside, ant the large objects be viewable.

-E-

I read a something a while back that there was a theory that once you reach .57 of the speed of light with some sort of gravity manipulation that small objects would actually repel from you. So if anti-gravity was used it would eliminate G-forces and also repel smaller objects, big objects such as planets would have more gravity than the anti-gravity that is produced and would still need to be avoided. So if you knew there were no large object between point A and point B you may not have to worry about smaller rocks etc.

Edit to say the last post says the same thing but the member beat me to the punch

[edit on 6-10-2009 by Mars007]

IMO I dont think this is feasible. The thing I think we would need is something more like a slip-space area, kind of like Star Wars' hyperdrive. Otherwise, we would need some sort of guidance system to track all objects between the start point and the end point.