Replies

Very important point. Deflector shields and all that. Such details are exceptionally important.

Deflector shields are not necessary because the spaceship itself is not moving and there for the prospect of the ship striking another object is nill.

The warp drive moves space around the spaceship while the ship remains stationary.

I am assuming you were serious.

Certainly I'm serious, but relativistic or superluminal flight cannot disregard basic physics. Your description describes space folding more than warp flight, IMO. In the case of warp drive, the ship does move, but space-time around it is “warped” in the sense that space-time is contracted in “front” of the vessel from how I understand the principle. That does not remove basic relativistic principles from the issue.

I admit I could be mistaken, but from what I've gathered from the principles, it's not a simple endeavor.

Your "explanation" is magical thinking and it is incorrect. There is a frame of reference in which the remote destination "arrives" at the ship. And there is also a frame of reference in which the ship arrives at the remote destination. In one of those reference frames, you are flying into whatever is in the space in front of you. In the other frame, it is flying into you.

In either of those frames, it is a problem.

But you have a MUCH, MUCH, bigger problem than the hypothetical space debris. The problem is that in every frame of reference, you will have moved to your remote location (or it will have moved to you, I won't quibble) faster than light could have done so. This means that your journey will be outside of the light cone. [see, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone]

When you return to earth, you will discover that you have travelled backward in time.

We know that the Alcubierre Drive is, in fact, a time machine, because it is not possible to travel through space without also travelling through time. And it is not possible to travel faster than light without travelling backwards in time, because all observers regardless of their (uniform) velocities see light travelling at the same speed.

The objection you will raise that you have not travelled faster than light inside your little warp bubble is immaterial. To all outside observers, including yourself once you step out of the warp, you will have travelled faster than light from one end point to another (that's the whole point of the exercise, after all) and therefore backwards in time as well.

So ... we know that the Alcubierre Drive does not exist, for the simple reason that no astronaut has ever visited us from the future.

Your space debris problem is now happily solved, because the ship exists only in your imagination.

Excellent. Space-displacement is really the only thing that makes sense to me. It addresses several problems.

1) G-force.

2) Striking objects during transit.

Although I don’t understand the mechanics the theory implies the craft simply displace -x distance in front of it and +x distance in back of it. Doing so hundreds or even thousands of times a second makes for some good travel time. A 187-mile displacement done 1000 times a second would get them FTL.