One way to resolve this is to have some kind of multiverse theory where you don't travel back in time to your universe, but to a narrow slection of parallel universes that are also shifted slightly so that it spits you out in an analogous location to your initial departure.
I was surprised when I read the OG time machine story by Jules Verne and this was a main plot point, and only later stories hand-waived it. You'd think it was something from later analysis of the idea. Almost like that Verne dude was clever.
Clark Ashton Smith wrote a similar short story where the inventor failed to take it into account. Upon realizing his mistake he decided to just wait for another planet to reach him, turning his time machine into a spaceship.
That's actually a fascinating idea. All interstellar travel is based on the movements of the planets through space time. I bet it alternates between being technically faster and slower than FTL travel since you may have to wait for a time when your destination to pass into the planets past location.
Wow that's a fun thought hole. Constraint certainly breeds creativity!
Classic sci-fi slaps hard
that's why you build it like a spaceship 🤷 ez
I hear police boxes and phones booths are popular as well.
You've got to entangle the same machine first over a massive macro quantum space-time superposition.
See, you get it.