So, what happens when you run into a speck of cosmic dust at that speed? Hmmm.....
Better have good replacement insurance on your windshield! OH and a glass company that makes LONG DISTANCE repairs!
The idea is that you won’t run into anything. By literally bending the fabric of space/time, you make a transfer point where your present location and desired destination are at the same point or close enough for practical travel.
Think of it as creating a “tunnel” between the Earth and Jupiter where we can walk into one end of the tunnel and walk out of the other end of the tunnel and be in the orbit of Jupiter. The length of that tunnel is technically finite.
It’s similar to 4 dimensional travel where you attach two points on a strip of paper and create a mobius.
At that speed, it happened in the future, so nobody will ever know about it....
Well, actually the idea is to not run into anything, the idea is to move space out of the way and and replace it with more distant space. Several theories say it can be done although only on subatomic scales.
Even Subatomic scales could be useful to communications and energy research, but I wouldn't look for any advances in this field for a few hundred years. The energy likely required would be rather huge.
It would be cool though to step into a machine and a second later be millions of miles away, just don't think it is going to happen for a long time, perhaps in a galaxy far far away.
If you fold space, you don’t have to actually go that fast, but your point is well taken.
Along the way you’d want to invent the ‘deflector shield’ first.
“So, what happens when you run into a speck of cosmic dust at that speed? Hmmm.....” Don’t forget, they will also need to invent artificial gravity and inertial dampeners too. ;-)
The Enterprise has a “deflector shield” that pushes the cosmic dust, gas, and small rocks out of the way. It is constantly “on”.