Mr. Oragahn wrote:That's a touchy subject.
What we've seen thus far are the following phenomenoms:
1. Ships suddenly accelerating when a less than a second away from going into hypersace. Reverse applies as well when they exit hyperspace.
2. Shipe are not immediately "sucked" inside a window when it's open. An example being the wraith ships which escape in Allies, it takes them more than a second to be sucked in.
Most of these examples of sublight engine glowing may be an important part in hyperspace transition/travel. I'll talk more about it in the Prometheus example.
3. A ship can graze against an unstable window, almost looking as it goes through, be succintly accelerated over a short distance, be doused in some kind of energy aura for a very short period, but remain in normal space afterwards (Redemption).
The hyperspace field may not have reached the 'transition level' intensity required to make a full arrival into hyperspace. The field might have remained active, allowing some of the hyperspace radiation to still be visible, while the ship was in normal space.
4. You can make the window much more stable if you plot a much closer target (Redemption, Fallen). It was said that the shorter the trip, the less energy is needed, and thus you reduce the chances of making a window unstable. The instability of the Naquadriah increases exponentially as you attempt to extract more energy out of it.
The X-302 couldn't get a lock on its destination once the window was open so it auto-aborted.
The fact the X-302 veer off-course is due to a safety measure, since we learn that the ship could have actually jumped into hyperspace, but would have ended at an unknown location.
So the power surges of the naqahdria generator made the hyperspace window unstable and "uncoordinated".
Since it seems you are out of phase with normal space-time, the only hinderence you'd come across outside of hyperspace radiation is the lost of the field and your shields. Because more stable windows can be created with lesser energy because of shorter distances, travel through hyperspace could use a projection of the field a certain distance ahead of the traveling vessel. With the same amount of energy, a shorter distance/shorter extension of the field can be made more secure because you are not spreading out your energy expenditure over a larger area.
The closing of a window itself could also be an indication of some part of the hyperspace field having left that particular area of space-time, as well as marking the full transition point, as could the opening of one at the end of a trip.
5. You can even make the hyperspace trip very slow; in Fallen, Jack uses the naqahdria based hyperdrive onboard the F-302 to bypass Anubis' ship's shields. The trip lasts a couple of seconds, despite the ship only being a couple of kilometers away.
6. All ships keep their sublight engines on when in hyperspace.
However, in Prometheus, the Prometheus had its sublight engines offline by the moment it opened an hyperspace window. It's actually that which saved the ship, was her orbit was decaying.
Here's where I'm elaborating from above. In most of the instances, sublight engines remain active during travel through hyperspace. Earth created ships don't have their sublight ones on at full burn. They are shown to be much weaker, so this says to me that newtonian engines of some kind are a standard for hyperspace travel. However...since we have seen the Prometheus not use sublights when entering, the hyperspace field itself might supply some movement, but it'd be normal procedure for sublights to be on, given the other examples...probably because the speed and the resultant distance traveled given by the hyperspace field alone is much smaller.
7. Inerta matters in hyperspace, apparently. In Fail Safe and Prometheus, it seems that an object's initial velocity will be of matter while in hyperspace. Otherwise, Carter could have opened a window in any other direction rather than Earth. But she couldn't. The asteroid was moving towards Earth, and apparently, this forbid Carter from veering the asteroid off into another direction, by jumping in hyperspace.
It doesn't prove that a ship can turn in hyperspace, but it strongly suggsests that a ship has to point in the right direction before making the jump.
Weren't they low on power or something? That might have contributed to that situation. Also, was the asteroid attached to the cargo ship or was it just close by? It's been a while since I saw it. If it wasn't attached, then, if they tried to turn, it could have come out of hyperspace on its own and crashed into earth or appeared somewhere inside the earth with its initial velocity and probably would have done some damage. Hell, weren't they inside a 'cave' on that thing and were able to see earth at one point of the asteroid's rotation or were they near the surface?
8. McKay and Zelenka were arguing about the idea that if a piece or a ship with no hyperdrive, would be severed from a ship flying in hyperspace, Bad Things would happen (No Man's Land).
We saw that as Sheppard, stuck on the hull of a hiveship flying along another one, in the same hyperspace corridor, hesitated disengaging his F-302.
Globally, it would seem that if you're inside a ship's hyperspace field, you may leave it en route only if you have a hyperdrive on your own. The results are unknwown, but they sounded worrying. That could be from being dropped to nowhere, to be destroyed or worse, due to funky physics.
Part of the hyperdrive field must act as a buffer to the energies of hyperspace. Since visible light reflects off ships in hyperspace, some of the radiation must be getting through the field, as well as any shields that are up.
But, this brings up another point. Hive ships must stop periodically because they are organic and can't handle hyperspace radiation, like inorganic ships can, like Lantian city ships and warships and Tauri warships. But, even if Sheppard's 302 was inorganic, would it have lasted longer in hyperspace than a hive ship solely because it is inorganic, regardless of the size difference?
9. Several ships present in the same hyperspace corridor (ha'taks, wraith hiveships). Either the hyperspace fields seem to fuse together, or both ship can extend their conundrum, or use the same one if they're sufficiently close to each other.
My initial guess would be that they combined their hyperspace fields to take the strain off their engines to conserve power, if they are close enough.
10. A ship tugging another ship in hyperspace will be slowed down (Unnatural Selection). Thor was tugging the Prometheus around, abck and forth, first from an unknown location back to Earth in the blink of an eye, but would still take "many hours" to reach the Ida galaxy, and Halla, the world where the Replicators were trapped.
Tugging something would probably require expanding the size of the hyperspace field to encompass both things, as well as possibly go back to the normal procedural use of sublight engines during hyperspace trips.
11. The size of the hyperspace window is relative to the size of the ensemble that's about to go in. In Fail Safe, Carter proposes to expand the tel'tak's hyperspace field to encompass the 137 km long asteroid.
Expanding the field requires lots of energy, and as a consequence, reduces the time a ship can stay in hyperspace.
That makes sense, if hyperdrives are designed for levels of strain required for the ship it's being used in. Pushing the limits won't burn out the hyperdrive, but it will make it sooner before it needs rest/repair.
12. Slightly unrelated, but still important regarding energy consumption, Prometheus' hyperdrive generator would produce enormous amounts of energy to open an hyperspace window.
It was said that if that energy was not channeled towards an hyperspace window (logically, a buffer is charged up), this would generate an explosion with enough force to turn the entire state of Nevada into a smoking crater.
Off the top of my head, I don't know what that figure would be, but it'd be huge. But, it would be a start for determining energy consumption of varying sizes of ships. The central body of the Daedalus class and its kin is a little longer than the Prometheus. The height of the tower wouldn't fully cover the width of both 'wings' of a Daedalus. At most, it'd be a little over one. So, we can assume that windows, as well as the fields, for Daedalus classes are gonna be a little more than 303s. I don't remember if it was a 303 or a Daedalus that was show on screen in the size comparisson chart when they were trying to come up with a gas form of the retrovirus to turn wraith into humans, but whichever one they used, it was dwarfed by the hive ship. Their energy consumption per window is through the roof and they have to make more windows with all their pit stops. An Alkesh or even a cargo ship's energy usage would be nothing in comparisson.
13. In Tangent, Jacob returned to hyperspace after doing hasty reparations, without opening a window. The ship blurred away.
It's been a while since I saw it, but could the vanishing have been from activating the cloak before going to hyperspace?
14. Talking about blurring away, this happens everytime a ship goes in or comes out of an hyperspace window.
If its a phase transition, that could happen.
15. We should leave windows and conundrums colours and shapes aside.
Absolutely. There isn't enough info in the canon to talk of that. With Trek, the light around the ship is indicative of just how fast the drive could travel because that particular light wave is being brought along when they first cross c, all visible light, including just white, for the slowest of warp drives. But, we need more info, even indirect stuff, to work on that.
16. In Lost City, hok'jack managed to boost up the hyperdrive of a teltak wile in hyperspace, which enabled the group to return to Earth ahead of schedule.
How did he boost it? Just more power or an alteration of the normal operations of the hyperdrive itself? I know he brought a bunch of stuff with him.
17. Hyperspace emits radiations which can damage, directly or indirectly, wraith hyperdrives. My opinion is that hyperspace itself is a formidable source of energy, but if it is tapped, it damages hyperdrives.
Probably. Both the Asgard and the Ancients didn't use hyperspace radiation to fuel
anything. If it was usable, they probably would have. The closest we have are the subspace fields within ZPMs, but they aren't hyperspace.
18. Only massive blackholes can force a ship out of hyperspace, as they increase the power requirements. That said, a ship can finely jump into hyperspace inside the atmosphere of a planet, but the stronger gravity field will tax the engines more.
Three ships have, thus far, opened a window inside the breathable atmosphere of a planet. Jack's X-302, Fifth's Spider class replicator ship, and the Orion, a lantian damaged warship.
Only an Asgard ship has shown the ability to enter hyperspace while close to a black hole.
In Prometheus, an hyperspace window was opened from earth's low-orbit.
Yeah, you can't say the Asgard know what's what with the time-dilation tech in their power cores (First Strike) because Thor was surprised the human form replicators were getting away from the event horizon. He thought they had the time-dilation device, but didn't have any idea how they got it to work, so they could get away from the black hole.
19. In Exodus, the energy emission of a supernova boosted the hyperspace trip of Jacob's band, and dropped them far far away from the edge of the Milky Way, in another mass of stars.
It seems that a window will absorb energy, and this flux does "push" ships.
Let's notice that Jacob's ha'tak was certainly not caught within the supernova, and the energy surge hit them several seconds after departure. However, once they were hit, they immediately dropped out of hyperspace, in an uncharter part of the universe.
Apophis' ship, on the other end, was logically going to be hit more directly by the supernova's radiations and blast, as several of his ships were already exploding.
Yet, mysteriously, both ships ended in the exact same zone.
Hyperdrives were burnt I think.
This is something I've been thinking about. It is odd. As for arriving and getting hit, his ship was bigger than the other one, so maybe it took longer for the hyperspace field to dissipate. Okay, maybe, but the same spot? Maybe his long range sensors detected where the other ship came out of hyperspace and before Apophis' hyperspace field dissipated fully on its own because of getting hit by the shockwave, he had it deliberately disengage, so they got to the same spot?
Why it sped them up...I'm gonna need more time. At the moment, what I'm thinking is that the hyperspace field can be boosted just because more energy is dumped into it and the already existing field somehow is able to use it to boost the distance traveled. Odd, but it's the only thing I can come up with right now without knowing more of its operation.