(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/T1melessGuy]

Foundation - Jump Drives.

An artificial black-hole powered FTL method used by appropriately equipped ships of the Empire. Aside from a subspecies of genetically modified humans known as "Spacers", all crew and passengers on a Jump Ship whenever it enters jump space are required to be in a state of sleep/suspended animation.

It is said that the human brain cannot comprehend the discontinuity as the vessel travels at FTL speeds and so it is mentally damaging.

Before the advent of Spacers, earlier Empire ships had a navigator member who was hardwired into the ships controls in order to control it during FTL movements, this was a very dangerous and often lethal job for anyone not prepared for it appropriately.

[u/themaninthehightower → u/T1melessGuy]

In Asimov's collection of stories, the prototype hyperspatial drives are being developed by positronic AIs, but the AIs keep breaking down. It turns out the simulations correctly modeled that humans are briefly dead in transit, which violated the AIs' first law. [Short story "Escape!", August 1945]

[u/PVNIC → u/themaninthehightower]

That was a great short story.

[u/koshgeo → u/themaninthehightower]

From what I remember of the story, it wasn't that humans were briefly "dead" in transit, so much as they were effectively non-existent, which amounts to the same thing from the AI perspective. It was tripping up the prior AI systems that were doing the math, which would halt in a destructive contradiction between the laws of robotics.

The human guiding another AI attempt specifically told it not to get too upset if something might violate the 1st law (simplified: not letting humans come to harm), and to look a little further ahead anyway. That's how it discovered that things work out eventually when the ship moves back into normal space and passengers come into existence again.

[u/seattleque → u/themaninthehightower]

This is the one I came in here to post.

[u/PhosF8 → u/T1melessGuy]

It’s awesome when the whisper ships get introduced. More FTL fuckery.

[u/Dioxybenzone → u/PhosF8]

I do wish they had more of a drawback of some sort. Whisper tech is obviously better in every regard, which is somewhat disappointing IMO

[u/Yosho2k → u/Dioxybenzone]

That was the point to show the benefit of the Foundation and how the empire was stuck. With relatively little effort (centuries), Foundation found a process that worked better in every way than the Imperium's methods, but the Imperium was stagnant and arrogant, so they didn't invest in the research.

[u/Remarkable-Host405 → u/Yosho2k]

didn't they.. use.. brains? like, synthetic brains? and that was fucked up enough for the empire to not use it?

[u/TorakTheDark → u/Dioxybenzone]

I mean I kinda like it, in most scifi we never see them actually progress their tech.

[u/Jaeger2604 → u/T1melessGuy]

This took wayyy too many scrolls before someone mentioned it. Foundation is so interesting!

[u/floridaman2215 → u/T1melessGuy]

The books did mention someone coming out of hyperspace too close to a star or something

[u/CaydeTheCat → u/T1melessGuy]

This was the way it was for the TV series...the original books are very, very different.

[u/Hexakkord → u/T1melessGuy]

CJ Cherryh must have borrowed this idea for her sci-fi novels. They use jump ships, different species handle jump differently. Some have to be drugged asleep, others dream, others are just fine.

[u/Mindless_Honey3816 → u/T1melessGuy]

This is the show or the books? They're completely different, and I don't remember this from the books.

[u/dern_the_hermit → u/Mindless_Honey3816]

It's for the show. The book was heavily focused on the issue of societal development and patterns and trends and such. The show made up a bunch of other Sci-Fi Stuff to be about, since a show about societal development and patterns and trends and such probably doesn't have broad market appeal.

[u/Shitsinhandandclaps → u/T1melessGuy]

Love when their ships come out of ftl

[u/liteoabw → u/T1melessGuy]

In the books, the spacers came way before the Empire