I remember reading that at one time the experts said we couldn't break the sound barrier. So I know warp drive will come.
Sorry Dr Einstein, but you will be wrong.
Steady as she goes, Mr Sulu.

They should have asked Michio Kaku - His book "Hyperspace" has projected Warp Drive as NOT in the far future... but the energy requirements are not here yet. Dr. Kaku is much more optimistic than Dr. Obousy seems to be.

Omen... I'm sorry to point this out but your understanding of how Einstein's theories and concept of warp drive relate is clearly flawed. Einstein said that objects could not accelerate to the speed of a light. Objects may travel at the speed of light, they just simple can not accelerate to that speed the way that a plane accelerates past the speed at which sound travels in our atmosphere. The warp ship design described above makes no claims to either accelerate to or travel at the speed of light. Really from the ships point of view it isn't even accelerating at all, it is in fact stationary. Instead it is the space around it that is changing.. which results in the net movement of the ship from one location to another. The rate of which may be faster than the physical speed of light.. but the ship itself does not actually travel at the speed of light. So no, Einstein was not wrong.. I mean seriously, who are you to claim Einstein was wrong, it is just kind of laughable.

I should mention I am not a physicist, I do not understand the concepts mentioned above in great detail, so please forgive any details that I missed. But the big picture here is that Einstein was not wrong, at least he hasn't been proven it yet. Not by you, not by other physicists and not by the above design concept warp ship.

@Chris

So, I wonder if, as you point out, the ship is never really moving at light speed, not even close to it, I wonder what this would mean with respect to time-dilation problems.

@eidylon

There aren't any.

lyou guys take this serious huh? lololololol

The interesting part about warp drive that most people either ignore or misunderstand is that the ship itself isn't moving very fast at all. It's the warp bubble around the ship which is moving through subspace. This concept seems to get lost in the new Star Trek movie (I still love it). There was also a reason why 1. Warp was not safe close to bodies of large mass 2. The ship had to reach at least .5C (half impulse). Not to mention the problem with combat at Warp.

That bubble is what kept the ship from tearing apart. The space inside the bubble didn't move, just the bubble itself. That was the original concept. Maybe people should read Roddenberry's info before guessing.

This is also why Warp travel and Hyperspace travel are completely different. In Hyperspace, the ship is actually moving that fast directly through "space".

I don't buy any time dilation theories... time is a constant... there won't be a problem...

@anachronite:
Time Dilation is not a theory, they have proven it. Satellites move at a high enough speed that they can measure the effect of time slowing down.

Granted, at the speeds satellites move at the dilation was on the order of micro or even nano seconds (not sure there), but it was measurable.

@stromm sarnac:
Hyperspace is another dimension where either a) the speed of light is different (higher) or b) where the distances are shorter, or c) both.

Time Dilation is not a problem if you and everyone you know Live forever. No matter how long it take to arrive back and how short it was for you eternial live make the distance between the to a non factor in the long run.

if only there were more articles on this site that are like this one

This has always gotten me to wonder how one theory could be shorted by other theories. Such in that fact of this time dilation. When a ship enters warp or hyperspace, they step outside regular space time. For them it is sped up dtastically. So what would take a ship traveling at warp an hour to travel is what.... a month for those in normal space time? That don't sound right.

What Einstein actually said was that as an object accelerates to relativistic speeds, its mass increases. An object accelerating to the speed of light would have infinite mass, therefore it would take infinite energy to accelerate to c.

It is also important to note that all physics break down at the quantum level. Subatomic particles appear to obey their own laws, which are yet to be fully understood. Because of this, many theoretical physicists believe that the key to light speed travel may lie in Quantum Mechanics, where Einstein's Special Relativity may or may not apply.

interesting how its sorta "saucer" shaped.

See... this guy is really using his brain ^

Compressed space. That is how the TARDIS is bigger inside. Noticed in Voyage of the Damned, when the spaceship Titanic crashed into the side of the TARDIS, the compression was only half way. The Ship in size made the Doctor look like a monster. But, when the life saver came hurling towards him, it adjusted to the proper size. Question. Why didn't the crew (or the passengers) of the Titanic ever acknowledge the crash? The Doctor manipulated and reversed time surrounding the Titanic, thus avoiding the crash. What did the crash look like from the outside of the TARDIS? It looked similar to what the Star Trek's Enterprise looked when jumping into warp (TNG) - best way to describe with such little space.

Then, of course, we need to discover the forgotten planet of Arrakis, mine some spice, avoid the worms, hire some freak-show navigators, fold some space and VOILA! We have warp speed!!!

Jokes aside, thanks for the great article.

as a star trek personality always says"there are always possibilities"

this ship looks like the Wheel within a Wheel described in the Bible of the thing that retrieved Ezekiel. Maybe it really was a ship that he was retrieved in.

The idea that the ship does not more but the bubbble does remind me of the fly flying in a car going 70 MPH drown the road yet the fly can not be said to be flying 70 mph but just flying in place. just a thought?

Ask the Aliens at Area 51 they Warp travel all the time....

Why would you use so much energy to create a bubble? If you can manipulate space time simply fold it and just push the ship from one side of the fold to the other. Probably simpler in the long run.

Did nobody notice that Professor Farsworth has already solved this problem? That's how he gets the Planet Express ship to move through space. It's not that the ship moves, it's that the space around it moves. Plus, it's powered by a "dark matter reactor." Granted, dark matter is Nibbler poo, but it still works...

They don't even know how to actually achieve warp. How could they think up what a warp should look like. I say, stop playing with your art rendering programs and get back to work.

save Sci Fi Eyes The Object In Ezekiel Had Eyes arond each circle. And it could move in such a way that it wouldn't need warp Drive.
"What does God Need With a Starship? JamesT.Kirk (The Real One)

But I'm not real. I'm a work of fiction, brought forth from a former L.A. beat cop's fertile imaginiation.

Therefore, your quote has no basis except as one from fiction.

James T. Kirk.

The attribution was in error but a real person, David Loughery, was nonetheless responsible for the quote:

"What does God Need With a Starship?" - David Loughery, screenwriter, STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER