If you are moving in a ship at FTL, could a pilot react at FTL?

[Maximum7]

Faster than light travel is most likely impossible (at least in this dimension) BUT hypothetically I was thinking back to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At the near-end of the movie, Han Solo, Rey, Chewbacca, Finn and BB-8 get through Starkiller Base's shield by exploiting a loophole. The shield doesn't let anything moving slower than light to get through but doesn't work for something moving at FTL. Han went FTL all the way without stopping in orbit like ships do but turned off the hyperdrive when already well past the atmosphere and about to crash into the snowy ground below.

Obviously, this is fiction but it's for my own piece of mind. Han is traveling FTL in a ship. Could he be able to reflexively turn off the drive fast enough before impacting with the ground and possibly destroying the entire planet. Human reflexes cannot move FTL, but since he is already moving FTL inside a vehicle, could it be possible from his state of motion?

 

[pinball1970]

Faster than light travel is most likely impossible (at least in this dimension) BUT hypothetically I was thinking back to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At the near-end of the movie, Han Solo, Rey, Chewbacca, Finn and BB-8 get through Starkiller Base's shield by exploiting a loophole. The shield doesn't let anything moving slower than light to get through but doesn't work for something moving at FTL. Han went FTL all the way without stopping in orbit like ships do but turned off the hyperdrive when already well past the atmosphere and about to crash into the snowy ground below.

Obviously, this is fiction but it's for my own piece of mind. Han is traveling FTL in a ship. Could he be able to reflexively turn off the drive fast enough before impacting with the ground and possibly destroying the entire planet. Human reflexes cannot move FTL, but since he is already moving FTL inside a vehicle, could it be possible from his state of motion?

I would not touch this question with barge pole if it was in the relativity forum but seeing as this is the Sci Fi…
Putting causality to one side for the moment, how could light signals from the outside reach the sensors in the ship if you are traveling FTL?

In terms of the ships position and what it may crash into?
I am thinking head on light only?
If you are traveling at or near light speed or something way ahead would be on you pretty quick.
So an object 186,000 miles in front of you is on top of you one second later.
Nerve impulses travel about 200-300 miles an hour so even if the ship had some way of getting data of the surrounding to you, your reactions would be painfully slow.
Also, stopping. Stopping dead at 20 miles an hour (say hitting another car) can give you whiplash. 40 miles an hour? Expect a visit to the hospital.

100miles an hour will put you in the morgue.

What would the stopping distance be at light speed to land on an object? Or enter an atmosphere? To make sure your vessel does not disintegrate?
say its unobtainium like, how would body cope with the g’s?
A lot of stuff in there!

 

[Algr]

Once you invent a method of FTL, it is all hand waving beyond that.

 

[jbriggs444]

Possibly this is the old quandary. "Can humans survive moving at 60 miles per hour"?

Yes. The fact that this is faster than the blood flows in one's veins and arteries so that one's blood is always moving forward down the track does not stop the blood from circulating perfectly well in the relevant body-relative frame.

"Can human pilot a supersonic craft"?

Yes. The fact that this is faster than the speed of sound and, perhaps, faster than the speed of nerve impulses so that your nerve signals are always moving forward relative to the passing air does not stop you from thinking perfectly well in the relevant body-relative frame. You can even talk to the co-pilot since you are both in a cockpit filled with co-moving air.

"Can one survive passage through the event horizon of a black hole"?

Yes. The fact that not even light can get from your feet to your head before your head also crosses the horizon does not prevent your blood from circulating and your nerve impulses from working perfectly well in the relevant body-relative frame. (If light can't come to your head, your head can nonetheless come to the light after having crossed the horizon).

In your hypothetical FTL situation, one hopes that you have a local frame of reference that still let's you function normally, even if it is manufactured from pure hand-wavium.

 

[Melbourne Guy]

Han went FTL all the way without stopping in orbit like ships do but turned off the hyperdrive

Can we assume that Han timed the manoeuvre so he was not reacting faster than light, but merely ready to react at exactly the correct time to avoid pancaking into the terrain?

 

[DaveE]

Once you've stipulated FTL travel, which isn't consistent with any theories or observations in modern physics, you are free to stipulate anything that will make a good story (or a bad one, I guess). Asking for a rational discussion of the implications of something that doesn't fit theory is pointless. Whatever reasoning you use to justify FTL travel can be used in a similar vein to justify anything else you want your story to include.

 

[jbriggs444]

If you handwave away the [serious/insurmountable] problems with FTL frames of reference, causality and blueshifts so extreme that photon energy becomes imaginary, there is nothing problematic about looking out the front of the craft and seeing the landscape of the planet that one is approaching.

The only difficulty is trying to look behind the ship. But even that is no particular problem. After all, one is catching up to light emitted by the planet from which one has recently departed. One can see that planet by looking forward. And, with a sufficiently good telescope, see history unfolding in reverse order.

You have a whopping big "blind spot" where nothing is imaged. The entire field of view is compressed into a forward-facing cone.

 

[pinball1970]

If you handwave away the [serious/insurmountable] problems with FTL frames of reference, causality and blueshifts so extreme that photon energy becomes imaginary, there is nothing problematic about looking out the front of the craft and seeing the landscape of the planet that one is approaching.

The only difficulty is trying to look behind the ship. But even that is no particular problem. After all, one is catching up to light emitted by the planet from which one has recently departed. One can see that planet by looking forward. And, with a sufficiently good telescope, see history unfolding in reverse order.

You have a whopping big "blind spot" where nothing is imaged. The entire field of view is compressed into a forward-facing cone.

Probably one of the most confusing replies I have ever read on pf.
That is up against some pretty stiff opposition.

 

[Office_Shredder]

It actually made sense to me!

 

[Rive]

At the near-end of the movie, Han Solo, Rey, Chewbacca, Finn and BB-8 get through Starkiller Base's shield by exploiting a loophole. The shield doesn't let anything moving slower than light to get through but doesn't work for something moving at FTL. Han went FTL all the way without stopping in orbit like ships do but turned off the hyperdrive when already well past the atmosphere and about to crash into the snowy ground below.

In the universe of Star Wars the estimated speed of Millenium Falcon varies from 1.5X speed of light to 1k light years per hour
Actually, both gives very small (unrealistic) window of opportunity to drop out of FTL in time.
Maybe the former could work a computer. For a person to do it - quite a gamble.

To make things worse, according to canon in that universe FTL requires an acceleration/deceleration phase up to relativistic speed. The required distance for that alone is enough to cross the atmosphere - several times.

So - the amount of handwavium needed to fuel that even is quite high

 

[pinball1970]

It actually made sense to me!

It will do to you look at your trophies!

I tried again and kind of got that the ship catching up with earlier and earlier photons?
The History in reverse?
The cone blind spot though?? Is that where photons are heading towards the ship at C but can't reach it?
Is that at the back window?

Cone because?

 

[jbriggs444]

Cone because?

Radial symmetry.

Abberation means that the perceived angle of arriving light is all shifted forward. In two dimensions, the permissible arrival angles would be in a sector of forward-looking arc. The filled in area of an angle.

In three dimensions, it will be a forward-looking cone instead.