NASA reveals warp drive ship designs

[Reach]

Originally Posted by shadow 1800

@ reincarnate: They actually solved the energy problem and it was in one of the source links, but you are right. All this is is a 100,000x more efficient plan than the previous essentially.

http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-star...rek-warp-drive

"There was only one problem with all this: where does the energy come from? While we knew that warp drives were theoretically possible, physicists have always argued that they would require a ball of exotic matter the size of Jupiter to power it. Clearly, that was not practical. But thankfully, Dr. White has found a solution that changes the game completely.

The Eagleworks team has discovered that the energy requirements are much lower than previously thought. If they optimize the warp bubble thickness and "oscillate its intensity to reduce the stiffness of space time," they would be able to reduce the amount of fuel to manageable amount: instead of a Jupiter-sized ball of exotic matter, you will only need 500 kilograms to "send a 10-meter bubble (32.8 feet) at an effective velocity of 10c."

All this means is that they proved it is possible in theory on paper and the requirements are way less energy intensive than previously thought. edit: and going from the mass of jupiter to 1600 pounds is quite a feat, even if it just is math on paper.

Yeah, as Reincarnate said, this is pretty much just an alcubierre rehash.

I highly doubt this would ever work even if we had the energy to do it.

And even if it did work, 10x c is not fast enough to do anything useful. It would basically allow us to travel to nearby stars. Anything beyond that would take more than a human lifetime to reach. Our entire civilization could not even exist by the time one of these ships breached the outer galaxy, so there goes the idea of cryogenic sleep etc to allow for flights longer than a human lifespan.

Not to mention how you could continue to supply the craft with energy etc.


It ...depresses me deeply inside to know that star trek esque shit will never happen but alas that's probably reality.

[gold stinger]

Originally Posted by Xayphon

...Star Ocean 3 is the first thing that came into my mind

didn't even click the link yet and I'm already getting subliminal images on what it looks like lol.

Originally Posted by Reach

And even if it did work, 10x c is not fast enough to do anything useful. It would basically allow us to travel to nearby stars. Anything beyond that would take more than a human lifetime to reach. Our entire civilization could not even exist by the time one of these ships breached the outer galaxy, so there goes the idea of cryogenic sleep etc to allow for flights longer than a human lifespan.

I would be happy if even just this was a possibility within a reasonable timeframe.

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Reach

And even if it did work, 10x c is not fast enough to do anything useful. It would basically allow us to travel to nearby stars. Anything beyond that would take more than a human lifetime to reach. Our entire civilization could not even exist by the time one of these ships breached the outer galaxy, so there goes the idea of cryogenic sleep etc to allow for flights longer than a human lifespan.

Once we could start harvesting resources from nearby asteroids etc, it becomes more within the realm of reason to think we might get a space elevator working comparatively soon. Once that's done, you build this crap right in orbit so size only becomes a matter of the resources rather than the resources AND the need to push it all out of a gravity well.

Then you clearly just go Colony Ship and not care how long it takes to get somewhere :P

[Reach]

That's probably the best shot we have if we plan to sustain ourselves as a species.

My guess would be that we would still have to make stops on various planets to replenish resources though. I have a feeling these stops won't be nearly as interesting as their star trek counterparts XD