Warp Drive Space Craft

littlemac1980

http://www.thejournal.ie/nasa-warp-drive-spacecraft-1511894-Jun2014/#respond

This Article links to an interesting lecture (1 hour) regarding some hypothetical interstellar space craft.

I haven't looked at it all yet - but it seems pretty in-depth and very interesting.

I was a little disturbed at the very beginning where both the lady introducing the speaker and the speaker himself - a "Rocket Scientist" - fail to understand and appreciate the basic principles of audio feedback.

Though in her case it is obviously an accidental occurrence, but his act of grabbing what he believed to be the offending microphone is inexcusable. Thankfully the Sound Engineer was alive to the danger and obviously "muted" the appropriate channel immediately. Phew!

Akrasia

Dr White is the advanced propulsion lead at NASA and has successfully proven that faster than light travel might just be possible.

I wish him the very best of luck buiding his donut shaped warp bubble. I hope he is successful. It would be freaking awesome.

ps200306

Dr White is the advanced propulsion lead at NASA and has successfully proven that faster than light travel might just be possible.

How do you prove something might just be possible? :rolleyes:

The Hill Billy

I watched the video yesterday. The idea is that it is not faster than light travel, but the contraction & expansion (warping) of space that allows distances to be covered very quickly.
He makes this clear when he explains that the rates of time for those travelling in the spacecraft will be exactly the same as the rate of time back in mission control.

Calibos

The Hill Billy wrote: »

I watched the video yesterday. The idea is that it is not faster than light travel, but the contraction & expansion (warping) of space that allows distances to be covered very quickly.
He makes this clear when he explains that the rates of time for those travelling in the spacecraft will be exactly the same as the rate of time back in mission control.

While the amount and type of energy required to power an Alcubierre Warp Drive is still exotic (ie not proven to exist yet) and still a massive amount of energy, taking relativity out of the equation makes it much more likely to actually happen if it turns out to be at least technically possible.

It would also take massive amounts of energy to accelerate a spacecraft to relativistic speeds 'conventionally' but the difference is best served by an example. Imagine it takes the entire energy output of a planet for one year to power the ship. Imagine Alexander the Great had conquered the entire earth and had the tech for such a mission and could decree that the entire earths energy output for a year would be dedicated to the mission. The mission to the 1200 Light Year distant Orion Nebula (which is in our galactic back yard) would only be arriving back to earth about now after a round trip of 2400 years. At relativistic speeds the mission from the astronauts on the spacecrafts perspective only took a few months but from the stationary observers perspective here on earth the mission takes the quoted Light Years distance worth of time. No empire or government on earth would ever allocate so much resources to a project with no hope of results or payback within their own lifetime never mind their civilisations lifetime. Ie any possible payback will come nearly 2 and a half millennia after they are dead.

The warp drive gets around that. From the crews perspective, the mission might take longer. Maybe at maximum warp it takes the ship 2.5 years to reach the Orion Nebula instead of a few weeks or months. Round Trip is a 5 year mission for them. With Warp it's also a 5 year mission from our perspective on earth.