Very true, what is this doing in Paranoia? And the problem with a warp drive and creating a bend that you travel along is that to do this you'd have to use gravity, and gravity waves extend out from a source at the speed of light. You're gravity bubble can't extend outwards from itself faster than the space outside would permit. So the real issue here is that you'd have to wait the time it would take light to reach that destination before you could actually make it there.
This doesn't go to show that it can't be done, just that it would be not economic to have giant gravity benders that are constantly stretching space-time like rubber bands. Also, to converge these beams of gravity you'd need large, highly dense rings of sorts spaced evenly from one point to another (so you don't suddenly collapse the universe around you). I kind of like that idea better than warp drive simply because it is plausible and would make some kick-ass hard-scifi stories.
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Originally Posted by Radio Monk33
I am curious as to how you get these giant crafts to resist the impacts of various space debris, particularly the solar sail one..
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Well... you'd need large magnetic deflectors and electric inductors. That is why I like the ramjet, even though it is the quasimodo of space travel, because in order to prevent instellar oopsies you'd already need something to move the stuff in your way outta your way.
Q: Why not fuse a ramjet and a photon sail into one? They both need large arrays to work, so just have some sails strapped to the back side of the ramjet collector. It might even give some class to it.
Also I have seen a different style of light craft, where the large sail was parabolic and not panelled. To accelerate it there would be a large array of lenses in Earth orbit to focus sun light to propel it. ObieX, have you seen this one?