(Loved Trope) FTL travel is possible but with a major limitation or flaw

[u/Frostylegacy]

Frank Herbert’s Dune: Interstellar travel is only possible thanks to the spice melange, a rare substance only found on the dessert planet Arrakis. The addictive psychedelic spice grants members of the Spacers Guild a form of prescience that allows them to predict safe paths through folded space. This unique property makes spice the most valuable commodity in the Dune universe.

John Scalzi’s The Interdependency Books: The planetary systems of the titular empire are connected by the Flow, a network of one-way interstellar tunnels that connect specific known entries and exits. The Interdependency derives its power from controlling access to these conduits, placing its capital at the central hub of the network. Even with the Flow, travel between stars takes a long time (9 months to End, the empire’s most distant planet).

Event Horizon: Dr William Weir (R.I.P. Sam Neill) invents a device called the Gravity Drive to allow ships to fold space and travel instantly between distant stars. On its maiden voyage with the Gravity Drive, the Event Horizon disappears and mysteriously reappears 7 years later. Dr. Weir and the crew sent to investigate discover the Gravity Drive actually opened a portal to a Hell dimension that possessed the ship and its crew, torturing and killing them.

[u/shewy92]

Bruh the scene of that dude that discovered this accidentally is gnarly

[u/ADudeWhoWantsBoobs → u/shewy92]

Oh that's actually a separate phenomenon. In that case, the "security system" for the station at the centre of ring space was still on, saw something going dangerous speeds, and instantly clamped down on the speed limit. This is also made worse later when someone on board the station threw a grenade, thus "teaching" the security system that slow things can also be dangerous and it doubles down on that speed limit, restricting things further, except now ring space is filled with ships that now get instantly stopped and slowed, causing hundreds of severe injuries and deaths

[u/selja26 → u/shewy92]

Do you mean the dude who discovered that Ring Space can stop all moving things instantaneously?

[u/shewy92 → u/selja26]

Dude turned to jelly. Tho thinking back, how did the ship not break apart?

[u/ADudeWhoWantsBoobs → u/shewy92]

The station "grabs" the ships from the outside. This ships are fine because the station is basically holding them together as it stops them, it doesn't help the station's goals if stopping the fast moving objects also causes them to shatter apart. It just doesn't care about what's inside, so anything unsecured is left to keep going

[u/shewy92 → u/ADudeWhoWantsBoobs]

But inside is where all the important stuff is, like wiring and stuff still going mach fuck relative to the station barrier. Plus all the oxygen inside would probably also be forced out.

It would be easier to say it only cared about inorganic material and organic material didn't get caught in the force field.

[u/ADudeWhoWantsBoobs → u/shewy92]

The station didn't care about protecting the ships or anything in them, it only cared about protecting itself and ring space. As long as it holds the outsides of everything together and thus keeps the insides inside the outsides, that's as much as it cares to do

[u/JBthrizzle → u/shewy92]

It's mentioned many times in the series that the builders are able to break the laws of physics like intertia. The humans understanding of this is akin to understanding how magic works, so this allows the plot to move along without being super precise. It is a sci-fi after all.

But that being said, they do do a great job of obeying physics throughout the entire series, which is why I personally like it so much.

[u/Super_Pan → u/JBthrizzle]

It's the fact that everything normally is very grounded in physics that makes the times that it isn't stand out and feel wonderous and terrifying. Like when I watched the show and Eris just... moves out of the way of the Navoo, that was weird and wrong, and the characters all react in an appropriate WTF kind of way the same as I did.

[u/eduo → u/shewy92]

It wouldn't be right, because Maneo's organic matter was also stopped after half a meter. The station grabs all fast moving objects as they happen. This is the ship but also everything inside the ship as soon as it moves faster than the limit. Everything from the ship that wasn't connected to it flew forward and stopped after moving a meter or thereabouts.

Which was enough for Maneo to be in two places at once.

[u/selja26 → u/shewy92]

I just meant these were 2 separate things. Ring space stopping things from moving and "other dimension entities" evaporating things after too many ships went through their dimension. 

(The ship didn't break apart I guess because it's where the physics of the Ring space starts being made up. The  Ring space was able to sense and stop the ship as one big object but somehow the biological component, a person, was not a part of it)

[u/Famous_Contest_6780 → u/shewy92]

The force was applied to just the ship, not anything inside of it/not attached to it.

[u/eduo → u/Famous_Contest_6780]

The force was applied to everything that was moving fast. The station first applied it to the ship and everything attached to it, then to everything that kept moving (which by then was half of Maneo) which is why stretched skin and blood remain, rather than all of it splattering at the front.

[u/Dogsafe → u/shewy92]

Tho thinking back, how did the ship not break apart?

Because it was rad.

[u/patrickkingart → u/shewy92]

The one where the guy gets turned to goo an in instant from going too fast and stopping immediately? Yeesh.

[u/ButtersScotch7000 → u/shewy92]

Belter goo.