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FREAK'N SPACE TRAVEL!!!


Tien

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Honestly? how have we not seen this before!? a full feruchemest and mistborn (hemalurgy or natural) could totally travel through space.

Back story: I was sitting in my AP Psychology class and we were talking about memory. I started to daydream about being a feruchemest who could simply store memories. this led to me fantasizing about real world applications for feruchemests and mistborn. then i mentally played out a story in which i, a full mistborn/ feruchemest, travels the world being epic, then traveling to other worlds and.... then my mind exploded and i was forced to wait a nearly unendurable 8 1/2 minuets till the next bell rang so i could share my insights with Finallity.

so here it is: why cant we survive in space? there is no air and it is freezing (or roasting). however, if we didn't need to breathe and we could magically maintain body heat... however, through the power of compounding Feruchemical powers, we could totes travel through space!

wa-bwam!

so basically after launching ourselves out of the atmosphere, by pushing on the metals in the earth, one could fly through the cosmos traveling to other worlds at ridiculous speeds while staying warm and not needing to breathe. EDIT: also one could use the Feruchemical power of storing nutrition to stay... nutrient-full...uh... not hungry.

this also caused me to wonder if marsh has already traveled to other worlds...

Edited by Tien
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Guest Galavantes

Honestly? how have we not seen this before!? a full feruchemest and mistborn (hemalurgy or natural) could totally travel through space.

Back story: I was sitting in my AP Psychology class and we were talking about memory. I started to daydream about being a feruchemest who could simply store memories. this led to me fantasizing about real world applications for feruchemests and mistborn. then i mentally played out a story in which i, a full mistborn/ feruchemest, travels the world being epic, then traveling to other worlds and.... then my mind exploded and i was forced to wait a nearly unendurable 8 1/2 minuets till the next bell rang so i could share my insights with Finallity.

so here it is: why cant survive in space? there is no air and it is freezing (or roasting). however, if we didn't need to breathe and we could magically maintain body head...

wa-bwam.

so basically after launching ourselves out of the atmosphere, by pushing on the metals in the earth, one could fly through the cosmos traveling to other worlds at ridiculous speeds while staying warm and not needing to breathe.

this also caused me to wonder if marsh has already traveled to other worlds...

Very cool thought, also likely very true. I would hesitate to claim that Marsh could travel to other planets, as I have a really hard time imagining steelpushing allowing you to get anywhere near relatavistic speeds. And even then it would take far longer than the intervening 300 years for him to reach another planet and return.

Still, the concept seems sound. So long as we agree that compounding gold could keep your body from bursting apart in the vacuum.

I would love to know if any of the metallic arts allow enough manipulation of Shadesmar to allow "planet hopping" tho. We've already discussed how versatile that magic system is, and I'd really llike for it to be possible.

-Edit- When I say other planets I'm picturing inhabited ones, which if the Cosmere is anything like our own Universe should be extremely far away from each other. A trip to a planet approx as far away as Mars is likely feasible, again assuming steelpushing can obtain decent speeds

Edited by Galavantes
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If the traveller had fine enough control over Iron Feruchemy, it would be possible to travel by manipulating momentum as shown in the Effects of Iron Feruchemy thread (more detailed breakdown two posts down from there, and yes, it would work in a vacuum). This could (eventually) get to relativistic speeds, as there would be no air resistance or other forms of drag. If the numbers I made up for calculating the example are correct, the traveller could accelerate at a rate almost 0.75% of light speed per day (0.735%, actually), and (ignoring relativity), reach light speed in 4.5 months.

Edited by ulyssessword
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I had an idea that you could use Feruchemy to manipulate your mass until certain planets had different gravitational pulls on you. this could be a possible way for a traveler to 'steer' through space even though it would be slightly in accurate. kind of like how Lurchers control their 'flight'.

also, assuming investiture means other magical powers, you could compound steel to get enough power until just pushing on the earth would be enough to launch yourself out of the atmosphere. the speed should be enough to get into space then that speed should be maintained due to zero gravity. It might not take 300 years to travel to another planet, assuming the Allomancer could gain enough speed by pushing off of planets. they would be super old by the time they arrived...

but compounding age...

does anyone have any thought on using cadmium or bendalloy in space? i haven't thought this through entirely yet.

Edited by Tien
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does anyone have any thought on using cadmium or bendalloy in space? i haven't thought this through entirely yet.

Well the thing about those two temporal metals is that they have fixed locations, but we don't know what that reference point affixes to. If you could affix the 'bubble' to yourself then compounding bendalloy would allow you to move through space in decent time, or alternatively, maintain your age as you pass through time...the tricky bit being that you have to get the 'bubble' to move with you through space, which as far as we know so far is not possible.

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The only problem I see with this idea is the vacuum of space - your body would explode from the sudden lack of pressure on it.

It's a basic physics concept that air, just like everything else, has weight. Oversimplification here, but because of that weight it exerts pressure all over our planet at roughly 760 Tor (14.7 psi) and part of our biology is the ability to deal with that constant pressure. Take us into space and all that pressure is gone, our bodies are now pushing on something that's no longer there, and we're just bloody larger-than-human smears drifting across the cosmere.

Though I wonder if Compounding gold would prevent that, so it's still plausible.

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One difficulty of simply jumping into space is that there's no air. Sure, Feruchemy has a solution for that, but that doesn't help your body exploding from the lack of pressure, which it will before you freeze to death (I'm fairly sure).

EDIT: Looks like Cuaiir ninja'd a reply about pressure before me :)

Plus, space is ~2.7 degrees Kelvin. Room temperature, 296 K. Do you really think you can survive a temperature difference that high across a very long trip in space, even with Compounding? The sheer amount of warmth you'd need to store signals to me that the weight of the metal would get prohibitive.

You'd need a spaceship at the very least. Brandon did say that FTL travel has something to do with time bubbles, so I'm pretty sure that would be a propulsion thing.

I would love to know if any of the metallic arts allow enough manipulation of Shadesmar to allow "planet hopping" tho. We've already discussed how versatile that magic system is, and I'd really llike for it to be possible.

Brandon isn't saying how it would work, but I do believe that he implied it was possible, through some unknown means [citation needed]. I'm trying to find the quote which gave me that impression, but it wasn't where I thought it was.

Edited by Chaos
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The only problem I see with this idea is the vacuum of space - your body would explode from the sudden lack of pressure on it.

It's a basic physics concept that air, just like everything else, has weight. Oversimplification here, but because of that weight it exerts pressure all over our planet at roughly 760 Tor (14.7 psi) and part of our biology is the ability to deal with that constant pressure. Take us into space and all that pressure is gone, our bodies are now pushing on something that's no longer there, and we're just bloody larger-than-human smears drifting across the cosmere.

Though I wonder if Compounding gold would prevent that, so it's still plausible.

Actually, exploding isn't a danger here. Vacuum kills you in many different ways, but turning you into jam isn't one of them.

Link

Edited by Kurkistan
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You're not going to freeze, as long as you bring along enough Feruchemically charged brass (which stores warmth).

This thread has made me realize exactly how awesomely powerful a full Mistborn Feruchemist actually is. Given enough metal, a MF would be practically indestructible.

Edited by Sir Read-a-Lot
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Actually, exploding isn't a danger here. Vacuum kills you in many different ways, but turning you into jam isn't one of them.

Link

I stand corrected. I was basing my statements on what happens to deep-sea creatures when they're brought up to sea level for study, and over dramatizing to prove a point. Vacuum exposure would still mess you up, though.

Also of note in Kurkistan's link is that vacuum is actually an excellent insulator, which does take care of the warmth issue. Copied for ease of reading:

But in a practical sense, space doesn't really have a temperature-- you can't measure a temperature on a vacuum, something that isn't there. The residual molecules that do exist aren't enough to have much of any effect. Space isn't "cold," it isn't "hot", it really isn't anything.

What space is, though, is a very good insulator. (In fact, vacuum is the secret behind thermos bottles.) Astronauts tend to have more problem with overheating than keeping warm.

If you were exposed to space without a spacesuit, your skin would most feel slightly cool, due to water evaporating off you skin, leading to a small amount of evaporative cooling. But you wouldn't freeze solid!

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You're not going to freeze, as long as you bring along enough Feruchemically charged brass (which stores warmth).

Right, but I'm saying, when the amount of brass you need to survive the trip exceeds your entire weight, this may not be the most efficient means of space travel.

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Right, but I'm saying, when the amount of brass you need to survive the trip exceeds your entire weight, this may not be the most efficient means of space travel.

But why would you need that much brass - vacuum is a good insulator - you wouldn't lose much heat. (See the posts by Kurkistan and Cuaiir.) That said put the person in an insulated capsule and then send them - problem solved for sure. Then all you would need is steel and breath and nutrition.

Also a full blown space ship will mass more and be way more inefficient then the brass needed

Edit: Even better put the person in a brass\steel capsule with a supply of bendalloy and have them use that as their vehicle.

Edited by discipleofhoid
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But why would you need that much brass - vacuum is a good insulator - you wouldn't lose much heat. (See the posts by Kurkistan and Cuaiir.) That said put the person in an insulated capsule and then send them - problem solved for sure. Then all you would need is steel and breath and nutrition.

Okay, point. I always forget that vacuum's a good insulator.

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Of course there are other problems - assuming distances between star systems are similar to our galaxy's you are talking at minimum a 20-30 year trip -probably longer. Compounding nutrition and breath would work to keep you alive but most people would have serious mental issues after 20 years of isolation. This is why some method of FTL is usually considered necessarily for anything other than colony ships.

Edit: The method would work for intra-system exploration though.

Edited by discipleofhoid
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Of course there are other problems - assuming distances between star systems are similar to our galaxy's you are talking at minimum a 20-30 year trip -probably longer. Compounding nutrition and breath would work to keep you alive but most people would have serious mental issues after 20 years of isolation. This is why some method of FTL is usually considered necessarily for anything other than colony ships.

Edit: The method would work for intra-system exploration though.

yeah you would most likely go crazy from being isolated for that long...

... unless you knew exactly who you were...

... storing identity?

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Right, but I'm saying, when the amount of brass you need to survive the trip exceeds your entire weight, this may not be the most efficient means of space travel.

.. but still, freak'n space travel. :D)

Speaking of space if you greatly increased your mass, you would suddenly have a gravitational pull, right?

so if - hypothetically- some crazy situation requires an allomancer feruchemest to release extraordinary abounts of compounded mass, would the whole universe, or at least a few planets, be wrenched off of theier orbital patterns and begin orbiting around the allomancer? or would the universe simply explode?

so many questions, not enough mistborn books...

this is where i get all of my information about gravity: :ph34r:

Edited by Tien
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I think you might also be underestimating the mathematics involved in actually launching yourself from one planet and hitting another. As Adams puts it, "space is big".

In order for us to actually send something off to Mars, for instance, we've got to launch during just the right windows of opportunity and follow a mass of complex calculations involving our orbit, our velocity, the orbit and velocity of the target planet, and the effect all of that has on the trajectory of the launched object.

I don't buy steering through mass effects. You'd need to adjust your mass HUGELY to be affected over interplanetary distances (much less interstellar), and even my grade-school physics remembers that you're equally going to affect anything that affects you. Increase your mass sufficiently to be pulled into planetary orbit, and you're pulling on the planet with your own mass.

Plus... that's a lot of mass. Where is it coming from? How long does it take a human storing all their mass to equal enough mass when tapped to affect gravity over a bajillion miles of space?

Re: Gold and it's ability to keep you from dying; just because you survive the damage through gold feruchemy doesn't mean that it isn't incredibly painful. In fact, Wayne illustrates that it very much is. Imagine experiencing the effects of deadly temperatures and pressures over and over again, constantly, for however long it takes to get there. And it would take a LONG time to get ANYWHERE.

I'm quite sure that there is a way to work out interstellar travel using the combined powers of Scadrial, but I don't think it's as easy as flinging yourself into space.

Edited by Inkthinker
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Time is not an issue, if bendalloy bubbles compound like I thought they did. A small space ship, and 30 or 40 mistings, and you would not even need to bother with not traveling at relativistic speeds. Or you could always just augment their power with Hemalurgy to save space. The only real trick is getting the bubble to move with you. Or a couple of compounders, but those seem much more rare. I dont feel like calculating it, but say you have enough mistings to slow down time to 1 second of your time for a week of real time, that massively increases your speed relative to everything else.

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I don't buy steering through mass effects. You'd need to adjust your mass HUGELY to be affected over interplanetary distances (much less interstellar), and even my grade-school physics remembers that you're equally going to affect anything that affects you. Increase your mass sufficiently to be pulled into planetary orbit, and you're pulling on the planet with your own mass.

Plus... that's a lot of mass. Where is it coming from? How long does it take a human storing all their mass to equal enough mass when tapped to affect gravity over a bajillion miles of space?

I was thinking steering would be accomplished by steel pushes. Even then you are right about the math being complicated but the scenario given was a full Mistborn/Feruchemist. That means compounded mental speed as well as any other feruchemical ability including mass. So if you wanted to do gravitational steering I don't see why you couldn't. You would just use a lot of iron compounding your mass.

Note: There are much better means of doing this available to a full mistborn/feruchemist. I see why Brandon isn't allowing for that option. Talk about DM's nightmare.

Edited by discipleofhoid
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You would also throw multiple planets and possibly stars out of their stable orbits, possibly killing life on said planets and accelerating the decay of the universe - just like Ruin wanted when he helped make Feruchemy.

:rolleyes:

(Edit: just in case it wasn't clear, I'm once again being over dramatic to prove a point.)

Edited by Cuaiir
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I think you might also be underestimating the mathematics involved in actually launching yourself from one planet and hitting another. As Adams puts it, "space is big".

In order for us to actually send something off to Mars, for instance, we've got to launch during just the right windows of opportunity and follow a mass of complex calculations involving our orbit, our velocity, the orbit and velocity of the target planet, and the effect all of that has on the trajectory of the launched object.

I don't buy steering through mass effects. You'd need to adjust your mass HUGELY to be affected over interplanetary distances (much less interstellar), and even my grade-school physics remembers that you're equally going to affect anything that affects you. Increase your mass sufficiently to be pulled into planetary orbit, and you're pulling on the planet with your own mass.

Plus... that's a lot of mass. Where is it coming from? How long does it take a human storing all their mass to equal enough mass when tapped to affect gravity over a bajillion miles of space?

Re: Gold and it's ability to keep you from dying; just because you survive the damage through gold feruchemy doesn't mean that it isn't incredibly painful. In fact, Wayne illustrates that it very much is. Imagine experiencing the effects of deadly temperatures and pressures over and over again, constantly, for however long it takes to get there. And it would take a LONG time to get ANYWHERE.

I'm quite sure that there is a way to work out interstellar travel using the combined powers of Scadrial, but I don't think it's as easy as flinging yourself into space.

Pfff... kill joy, you do realize that we are talking about a fictional universe and magical powers that are at the mercy of Brandon's imagination, right?

screw physics and reality, we have magic!

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