In the technical manual the hyperdrive is refered to a tachyon shunt, where
time rate in the vehicle increases the faster you travel beyond light speed
which I believe is the theoritical behaviour of tachyons - I don't think
anyone has demonstrated their existence as yet. If this is the case
practical hyper velocities must be balanced by limits in human physiology in
which suspended animation may try to improve or nullify.
Now how canon is this, I don't know, since none of the movies, particularly
with the directors cuts, are not consistent in many areas.
Also we have very little idea as to the distances travelled or speeds.
As other people have pointed out
DALLAS: "Gimme the short version. How far to earth?"
LAMBERT: "Ten Months"
and that there only halfway there......
(Alien)
The question is, are they talking real time or subjective as they are not
the same thing. In relation to the tachyon shunt, the actual travel time
might only be days or weeks but the subjective travel time for the crew be
months and years, a figure the crew might use instead in casual everyday
conversation, surely growing older faster than friends and family would be a
concern for any human being in that situation and the practise in refering
the distances travelled by subjective time might be more meaningfull.
Regards
"Algomeysa2" <Algomeysa2NOSPAM RemoveThis @mindspring.comNOPESPAM> wrote in message
news:D99ad.14518$Vm1.9536@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Space travel time and hypersleep
>
> Something I was wondering about recently was how long these interstellar
> voyages last in ALIEN.
>
> There's enough circumstancial evidence to suggest they don't last years,
> so
> it seems they take weeks or months, and they must be travelling faster
> than
> light.
>
> If it's just weeks, putting the crew into hypersleep doesn't really seem
> necessary.
>
> In ALIENS, I think it was said (and I'm sure someone can quote me the
> exact
> line), that when the ship didn't report back in 10 days they'd send out a
> rescue mission, but that would take an additional 3 weeks....or
> thereabouts.... so that it was effectively 4 weeks before they could
> expect
> rescue.
>
> It's just something that doesn't quite mesh. For ships this large,
> which
> apparently manage to have a heated atmosphere fairly soon after waking the
> crew up, the savings in food, etc. doesn't really seem to make sense for
> voyages that are just a few weeks long. If they were months or years
> long,
> it might make more sense.
>
> But voyages can't take years, because Ripley wasn't expecting to never see
> her daughter again, and she's surprised that the new massive space station
> has been built; people who went on voyages that lasted years would be
> expecting bigger changes.
>
> My best guess is, in ALIEN it was intended that voyages take months, but
> by
> the time of ALIENS that had become somewhat fuzzy and Cameron didn't
> really
> think that aspect through. Of course, the other possibility is that the
> Marine garrison was relatively close by in interstellar terms, so in their
> case the journey was just a few weeks (though again, that begs the
> question
> why hypersleep was necessary).
>
>
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