This is the amazing design for NASA’s Star Trek-style space ship, the IXS Enterprise

Washington Post ^ | Washington Post

[Dallas59]

NASA engineer and physicist Harold White announced a few years ago that he was working on a potentially groundbreaking idea that could allow space travel faster than the speed of light. Yes, like in “Star Trek.”

And now, to boldly go where no designer has gone before, Mark Rademaker — who is collaborating with White — has created a CGI design concept for the “warp ship.” They’re calling it the IXS Enterprise.

“We wanted to have a decent image of a theory conforming Warp ship to motivate young people to pursue a STEM career,” Rademaker said in an e-mail interview. “It does have some Sci-Fi features that might never transfer to a possible final design, unless we really want to.”

[henkster]

In 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, technology was pretty much where it had been for centuries. The concepts of powered flight, internal combustion engines, steel ships, organ transplants, electric power, and literally thousands of everyday things we now take for granted were not even percieved. Could a contemporary genius like Newton or Michaelangelo even have comprehended a hydrogen bomb?

Maybe warp drive is 500 years off. How can we know the state of technology then?

[Dallas59]

The ship doesn't move in a warp bubble. Space time is contracted in front of the ship, and space time is expanded in the back.


The metric derived by Alcubierre was mathematically motivated by cosmological inflation. The original "warp-drive" spacetime metric can be written in (t,x,y,z) coordinates as:

ds^2 = -c dt^2 + [dx-v_s(t)f(r_s)dt]^2 +dy^2 +dz^2

It uses the curve (world line) x=x_s(t),y=0,z=0 where x_s expresses the x-coordinate position of the moving spaceship frame.

The radius r_s=[(x-x_s(t))^2+y^2+z^2] is the euclidean distance from the curve. Furthermore, c is the speed of light and v_s(t) is equivalent to dx_s/dt, the velocity associated with the curve.

The shaping function f(r_s) is any smooth function that satisfies f(0)=1 and decreases from the origin, vanishing at r_s>R for some point R.

The driving phenomenon behind the apparently arbitrary velocity (including v_s>c) could be (and was) postulated to be the York extrinsic time, \Theta, defined as:

\Theta=\frac{v_s}{c}\frac{x_s}{r_s}\frac{df}{dr_s}

It provides for the contraction of space in front and expansion in the back of the warp bubble. The idea can be seen in some way as an applied extension of the hypothesis that the early universe also saw a rapid inflationary expansion that possibly exceeded the speed of light for some time. However, according to research, it appears that the York time behaviour is merely a side effect of another underlying mechanism. The problem that led to the assumption that York time is only one part in the larger picture is the unusual symmetry in the required energy density. Using the Einstein field equations, the stress energy tensor T^{\mu\nu} can be derived from the Alcubierre metric, resulting in the necessary energy density:

The energy-density distribution around the x-axis derived from the EFE

T^{00}=-\left(\frac{c^4}{8\pi G}\right)\left[\frac{v_s^2(t)\rho^2}{4r_s^2c^2}\right]\left(\frac{df}{dr_s}\right)^2

where G is the gravitational constant and \rho=\sqrt{y^2+z^2}.

[Pox]

I personally think that light speed will never ever be even closely approached.


I concur. However, I still hold out hope that our knowledge will advance and discover an elegant and simple method to surpass said "limit".

It may never happen, and still may never even be possible, but to give up research and hope to succeed in an endeavor to surpass our current knowledge of the limits we believe exist in this Universe is a path to our stagnation and eventual demise.

Someday the proof may be submitted that will stop any pointless research into FTL travel, but that may also lead us to focus our efforts into developing travel that is optimal and efficient according to our knowledge, and even perhaps improve upon that knowledge and we can take advantage of that knowledge to colonize what we can with the technology we possess.

[mcshot]

But we got Muslims involved now.

[MHGinTN]

IF you are a true realist, do a little research inot the work of Bernard Haisch. There is a really informative paper by Haisch, Rudea, and Puthoff which opens the door to astonishing concepts, like getting space craft fuel from the zero point field, isolating a craft from the zero point field, and faster than ‘C’ travel, all because the zero point field is what causes inertia and gravity. Don’t waste time scoffing when you can increase your knowledge and perhaps help ‘bring things into existence’ which scoffers assure us cannot and will not ever be done. ... Remember, we did break the sound ‘barrier’, and Jesus stepped from our where/when into a different where/when no further away from you now than the length of a man’s arm.

[BuffaloJack]

beam me up

[dr_lew]

Could a contemporary genius like Newton or Michaelangelo even have comprehended a hydrogen bomb?

Of Newton, I have no doubt. How's your calculus? Newton invented it.

[skinkinthegrass]

psst! we need to access "those flying saucers" hidden @ Area 51. */joke*
Until our Science of Cosmology figures out the actual relationship (and
manipulation of same) between gravity and time, we shall not break the
speed of light..and then you deal of the power source available and the politics.

[Fledermaus]

This is old news actually. Gene Rodenberry and the writers seeked out and used NASA ideas even back then. The concept of a warp drive (the ship itself can’t travel at that speed so it’s surrouned by a warp bubble that can. Relativiely the ship is basically on impulse speed for propulsion) is one idea.

But the transporter is old sci-fi (The Fly, original) and budget friendly.

[Doomonyou]

she’s gonna blow captain!

[Dead Corpse]

We’ve got the theory. Everything else should just be engineering...

Let’s git r done.

And don’t forget the racing stripes...

[skinkinthegrass]

Thank You, very much for information/conceptual ideas...i need my hp50...

[dr_lew]

Don’t waste time scoffing when you could be studying thermodynamics, a theory which Einstein opined, “... could never be overturned on its own terms.”

Extracting energy from the zero point field is a classic example of a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.

[BreezyDog]

Thank you for pointing out that a vision is the precursor to innovation...some posts pointed the posters’ lack of vision.

[Dallas59]

Concept designs for Star Trek TOS







Rendering of early Shuttle design from TOS

[skinkinthegrass]

thanks..I'll look them up.

[Fledermaus]

Quite a bit of that “fantasy” became reality.

The first major small cell phone engineers in mass production made then a flip-phone on purpose to mimic the “communicator”.

Spock used data packs for the computer which were thicker 5-1/4 inch disk. Kirk and others would electronically sign pads for data like fuel consumption. Thick and as big as a clip borad with lights on it.

Doors that open automatically were still novelties back then.

The rest are just good old science fiction stories.

[Fledermaus]

I got conned by a Nigerian that told me he had unobtainium but after he took my money he said it was unattainable.

[Fledermaus]

I don’t care which came first, the chicken or the egg. All I know is people ate chickens first or they wouldn’t know what all the strange animals they eat taste like.

[Fledermaus]

Of course, they filmed it in a studio! lol