Enigma's Dark Matter Hyperspace Engines

[Enigma]

Dark Matter (DM) is a hyper-dimensional substance that protrudes into Normal Space, in much the same way one sees an ice berg - most of it is still within hyperspace, so all we can perceive is the "tip" on the surface of Normal Space.

A Type 1 Hyperspace engine works by balancing a fragment of dark matter of equal or slightly more than the ship's mass in a resonance chamber. The resonance chamber causes the dark matter to move deeper into hyperspace, dragging the ship with it into the interspace, the 'event horizon' at the edge of normal space and hyperspace. Oscillations in the resonance chamber essentially pulls the ship through interspace at speeds beyond what is capable in normal space - essentially faster than light with only minimal effects of inertia, but without losing the normal space reference.

An additional benefit is the gravity produced by a hyperspace engine allows designers to position living and working decks to allow crew to experience planet-normal gravity.

However, the balance of the dark matter can be upset by coming too close to a sizable mass in normal space, such as a small moon or planet, which then forces the ship back into normal space. This effect is referred to as "Gravity Shallows". These shallows become more pronounced the deeper you go into a gravity well.

Those systems who engage actively in interstellar trade will place a transfer station on the edge of their system's gravity shallows, allowing cargo ships to transfer their cargo for transshipping by an inner system shuttle and still have sufficient clearance within the system gravity well to return to hyperspace.

Dampener fields prevent the dark matter fragment from slipping deeper into normal space, but the fragment could experience "swelling" as its volume doubles or even triples before stabilizing. A sudden shift could damage the resonance chamber, even if the damper fields hold.

A catastrophic failure of the dampener fields would result in a dark matter intrusion, where it momentarily shifts deeper into normal space, allowing the actual volume of the dark matter to fill the volume occupied by the ship. As two masses cannot occupy the same point at the same time, the ship tears itself apart from the inside.

This shift is only temporary. The original fragment oscillates back into hyperspace, creating a temporary rift that pulls the surrounding matter through the interspace event horizon into hyperspace. Surrounding dark matter moves in to close the rift, causing a gravitational shift that intensifies the pull momentarily. This creates a rippling effect to the rift that fades in intensity as the dark matter settles back into balance, sealing the rift.

Type 1a Hyperspace engines are smaller engines that are balanced to work in the "gravity shallows" of hyperspace in and around a system gravity well, preferred for use for high-speed couriers and shuttles. A catastrophic failure of a type 1a drive is not as pronounced as for a type 1.

Type 1b Hyperspace engines are smaller still, designed to maintain a small stabilized interface to allow sensor probes and antennas access to interspace as for use as navigational buoys and early detection systems. Due to the minute size of the dark matter used in these kinds of installations, a catastrophic failure of these engines would result in interior damage to the buoy, minimal effect otherwise.

A Type 2 Hyperspace engine allows the ship to shift further into hyperspace, leaving normal space behind and thus, greater speeds. However, without normal space reference, ships have no idea of how far they have traveled or even where they are going. They are more prone to the effects of gravity shallows.

[Enigma]

More to come on hyperspace gates, beacons and bombs.
____________________________________________

Hyperspace gates are a specialized Type 2 hyperdrive that opens doorways to and from hyperspace. A beacon stationed inside hyperspace acts as both a navigation aid and gate opener. This allows space ships that do not have their own hyperdrive to traverse hyperspace.

However, without their own type 2 hyperdrive, they have no way of returning to normal space except through another hyperspace gate. Without dark matter to balance the mass of the craft, the space ship is shunted around the gravity shallows like a leaf caught in a current.

Hyperspace Beacon - this is a specialized form of the Hyperspace Buoy, anchored in hyperspace with a type 1b engine that gives it internal access to normal space. This allows craft to signal the hyperspace gates from within hyperspace as well as communication with the transfer station.

Hyperspace Bomb - Essentially a giant generator tied to a type 1 hyperspace resonance chamber, needed to offset the greater difference in mass between the bomb and dark matter. When activated, the bomb shifts into interspace, on the border between Normal Space and Hyperspace. It then shuts down, forcing an amplified dark matter insertion into normal space with disastrous results.

However, because of the greater mass of dark matter used, it too cannot be too deep into a gravity well. The gravity shallows prevents the greater mass from shifting sufficiently into hyperspace.

[K]

A cluster of hyperspace bombs could also remove sufficient mass from the star to trigger a collapse; however, the explosion would produce a flood of radiation traveling outwards at the speed of light as well as dangerous levels of interstellar dust that could accelerate the collapse of neighboring stars.

Given the amount of gravitational force exerted by even red dwarf stars, and the system that's been described above, I have my doubts regarding to whether or not one could initiate a supernova using hyperspace bombs. It'd probably be easier to cause a minor destabilization within the core, which would cause the star to implode inwards, then "shed" its outer layer of plasma in a massive coronal ejection event. Then again, the gravity exerted near the core of a star is incredibly high, making this a nearly impossible use of the technology.

Even if you could get a star to explode, it wouldn't be able to trigger the collapse of stars in other systems. Since we're talking about an omnidirectional expansion of overheated plasma, the strength it generates will cubically decrease over the distance it crosses, and is simultaneously slowed down by powerful magnetic fields as it nears other stars. At best, you'd probably just get a highly lethal dosage of radiation within nearby star systems.

On another note, you could use this technology to render terrestrial planets/moons highly inhospitable, by removing a chunk of their core. The rest of the mass would fall inwards, imploding on itself and causing the surface to collapse, letting magma rush above the surface and make it all molten. Doing this is as feasible at the inner-outer core boundary of an Earth-like world's center, as it would be at the surface of the Sun-like star, since both regions give off a near-equal amount of gravitational force.

Other than these opinions, I think everything else is just fantastic.

[Enigma]

Thanks! This is just me working this out based on our conversations last night and the one I had with Antlers a while back. And I was never wild about turning a sun nova.

You could go with basic kinetics - fit a large asteroid 3 to 5 miles across with thrusters and a type 2 engine, then shoot it towards a planet. It goes hyper, falls out at the shallows but it's too late to stop it. The impact causes tsunamis or a massive impact crater that throws tons of dust into the air, creating a nuclear winter.

Come back in a few years and you've got a planet ready for resettlement.

Did a little editing to remove the bottom half of the Hyperspace bombs.

[Xanthuss]

I still think these hyper-space bombs are just to powerful, but I can't find any problems to pick with your thoeries Enigma, so it looks good :)

[Enigma]

I don't like the bombs, they were someone else's idea, going on about what I said about dark matter intrusions.

But they're expensive and can't get too close to a gravity well.

I'm still running numbers to figure out where each type of drive would run into the gravity shallows. Dark matter displacement is hard.

[Enigma]

I'm copying this to my Dracos Rift group for safe-keeping.

One limitation I'm considering is the engines may require a lot of power for the intial start - a capacitor bank that gets charged by the ship's generators creates the initial 'spark' with dark matter to open interspace.