Jonathan_S wrote:Now I'm wondering if a wave that's 40 LM wide in the Delta bands would automatically be ~60 LM wide if you followed it down into the Gamma bands? (e.g. is the n-space "footprint" constant across the hyper bands; meaning the wave width would vary)
Not necessarily. We know that some waves exist in some bands and not in others, therefore it stands to reason this one could have a different configuration different bands too. It seems very likely it exists in all of them, though it's also possible it exists only in the Alpha band. The ship needs to transition through Alpha to get from Delta (or higher) to n-space anyway, so it would need to raise sails to go through that.
tlb wrote:Theemile is saying that a light-month (or whatever) is just a convenient shorthand for the equivalent number of kilometers (or miles) in normal space. I believe that the various bands are point to point equivalent, so umpteen million kilometers refers to the same distance wherever you are. The only difference between bands is the increasing value of light speed as you go higher, so a light-month becomes easier and easier to travel across as you go higher.
I don't think so because the acceleration rates would change. If the speed of light is 62x higher than what it was, it would allow us to accelerate for longer to reach speeds that would otherwise be superluminal and thus violate Relativity, but it wouldn't change the amount of energy required apply that delta-v.
Even a missile couldn't accelerate fast enough to go from Manticore to Grayson in a week. Let's take the easy case of 129231 gravities = 1 light-year / day²: it would take you 2 * √20 = 4 * √5 ≅ 9 days to make this trip, at a constant acceleration and turn-over in the middle, reaching 4.5 light-year/day = 4.5 * 365.25c ≅ 1643c at the midpoint. We've never heard of accelerations this high, for this length of time.
It could be that wedges and compensators work differently in hyperspace, exactly compensating the speed of light change (or near so it doesn't matter). We haven't heard how exactly reaction rockets operate in hyperspace - we know they had been used prior to the invention of the impeller - but I'd venture that hyperspace would be a useless discovery unless Newton's Laws also got a bump exactly matching the change in speed of light.
At which point it's a distinction without a difference: it would mean applying a 1W of power to accelerate an object 1kg in mass for 1s (giving it a kinetic energy of 1 J) will result in a Δv = ½ * 62 m/s and a ΔS = ¼ * 62 m. So you end up exactly 62x from where you were from.
However, this would neatly explain how ships flying in formation don't overlap with each other when transitioning up, or light-hours apart when transitioning down.