Warp drive experiments to begin

Originally posted by jaxnmarko
When people think of the familiar equation of E=(MC)2 they think of the mass moving similar to a beam of light but consider if a mass can SPIN at the speed of light...

It can't though. You have the same issues.

I thought that a Warp Drive could not be activated inside a gravity well?
or is that just Star Trek? or some other SciFi?

Whatever the case, active sniffing into this as a real-world feasible solution makes my little heart pitter patter.
Could we conceptually realize FTL in the next couple decades?

The thought makes me catch my breath in barely contained excitement just imagining.

reply to post by Druscilla


What if you found it to be real, but were told you would never be allowed to go?

What sort of reaction would THAT elicit?

reply to post by Bedlam


Wouldn't matter. If we as a species can get off this rock and effectively populate and explore at least our local neighborhood 200 Light year bubble I'll pee myself a little bit just from the vicarious joy of knowing all our eggs are no longer in one basket.

Besides that, they're certainly be some nifty spin-off trickle-down consumer tech that results from such ventures IF such ventures are indeed possible.
There indeed may come some spin-offs and trickle down just from testing, but, that's speculation.

We can't even invent a telescope powerful enough to see Apollo 11 on the moon. What makes you think we can travel any faster in space than we can now?

Originally posted by pacifier2012
We can't even invent a telescope powerful enough to see Apollo 11 on the moon. What makes you think we can travel any faster in space than we can now?

You may benefit from spending some time on the books studying Optics.
Perhaps then you'll understand how such things work and why atmospheric lensing/distortion and several other factors make this telescope you dream of something extraordinarily difficult.

540 + Free online University courses

Enjoy.

This is a bit like saying Star Trek Teleporters have taken a step forward to reality because scientists think they have teleported a Photon.
To scale this up to actually work on Humans we need a "Heisenberg Compensator" which is actually the theoretical key for operation.
.

If we do develop a FTL/Warp drive and we want to transport matter within this "field" we will also need to invent "Inertial Dampners" to negate the forces involved.

If we have FTL without inertial dampners and we take a theoretical journey to Alpha Centurai we would need to accelerate (change the relative speed) of the mass in the FTL/Warp field in increments meaning we couldnt immediately go from Zero to FTL / from FTL backto Zero as anything with mass would be squished in the process.

This may mean we have to slowly accelerate to FTL then slowly apply the brakes a third of the way into the journey to allow us to slow to zero for arrival at Alph Centurai.

This in fact may mean that the journey takes substantially longer than if we were travelling at near/post lightspeed.

TLDR: Manufacturing/harnessing a mechanism that negates inertia in mass is probably a bigger challenge than accelerating mass itself.

reply to post by Jukiodone


I thought the concept involved with warping spacetime worked in sense that there wouldn't necessarily be any inertia due that you as a passenger, and the warp ship proper aren't really "moving" at all in the respect that space time is being warped, stretched, and compacted such that space time itself is doing all the work while you and the warp ship cradled inside the warp bubble are basically sitting at a relativistic stand-still?

The Heisenberg compensator, I thought was a fictitious device relevant to the Star Trek universe as it applied to Transporter technology; having actually nothing to do with warp propulsion theory.

reply to post by Druscilla


You are correct. That is the description of the f-t-l warp drive, that was given by Dr. Harold White - the NASA man doing the lab testing of it. No inertia forces involved, inside warp-bubble movement.

Originally posted by Larryman
reply to post by Druscilla

 

You are correct. That is the description of the f-t-l warp drive, that was given by Dr. Harold White - the NASA man doing the lab testing of it. No inertia forces involved, inside warp-bubble movement.

Got to agree, you have to remember that you are not actually moving? It (space/time) is moving around you, but you have not moved ; hence no g forces.

Going to need artificial gravity/inertia dampeners as well. The "best" trip would take 11 years round trip to the nearest star even travelling at higher than light speed due to the time it takes to accelerate at a rate of G's that doesn't turn the body to mush. Even then the astronauts would be spending years pulling several G's in-between eating and sleeping.

No inertial dampers are required with a "Warp Drive"...the ship doesn't move (in the conventional manner), space does. You can just throttle up and off you go

This is excellent news though, I was having a conversation with a friend only a few days ago about interstellar travel, and how it was looking pretty bleak for the next 100 years or so, this may be a game changer though

seems to me that if you got a family of self deluded, troublemaking, idiots hellbent on pushing themselves on everybody and everything and if you dont like it, well they will destroy you and if need be, themselves in the process, who just figured out there was more than their house. No social skills with others, and they figured out how to build a car, I would probably not be very happy. Now take that context and move it over to us going into space. If I were an alien I wouldnt like it. We need to fix our problems down here before we ever start thinking of mingling with our intergalactic neighborhood.even without the alien context, yay, lets build a warp drive to go trash up another planet. Im not against invention, but lets invent something of this magnitude to fix our planet first.

reply to post by Chargeit


so we will be gods to starting civilisations....how do we handle with it.....???

GREAT!!!!!!! (Sarcasm)

Can't wait to spread earth's disease, humans, onto other beautiful planets to be plundered, destroyed, religious wars spread, and third world babies making babies for starvation's sake!!!!!

Yay!!!!!

Originally posted by pacifier2012
We can't even invent a telescope powerful enough to see Apollo 11 on the moon. What makes you think we can travel any faster in space than we can now?

In general, that's not going to be possible.

Using conventional lenses and mirrors, the best resolution of any telescope is set by its aperture and the wavelength of light passing through it. That's a limit set by physics. See also: Rayleigh's Criterion

Originally posted by yorkshirelad
Going to need artificial gravity/inertia dampeners as well. The "best" trip would take 11 years round trip to the nearest star even travelling at higher than light speed due to the time it takes to accelerate at a rate of G's that doesn't turn the body to mush. Even then the astronauts would be spending years pulling several G's in-between eating and sleeping.

If this was to work, you could travel to the nearest star in a matter of weeks. That's only in the beginning, over time, it would surely be improved upon by goodness knows how much. With warp-drive, your ship isn't the thing that's moving, so there is no need to slowly increase acceleration to cater for human safety. You could turn it on & hit FTL speeds pretty much instantly & suffer no ill effects.

So even though inertial dampers aren't required for the FTL part of the journey, they would prove useful for your ship once it reaches the targeted location as you would then navigate through the new solar system on regular engines.

If you wanted to travel 100's or 1000's of light years, then artificial gravity would be a much needed invention. Without it, the best you could do was to stop once every few star systems & spend a bit of time on the surface before moving on again.

Originally posted by Druscilla

Besides that, they're certainly be some nifty spin-off trickle-down consumer tech that results from such ventures IF such ventures are indeed possible.
There indeed may come some spin-offs and trickle down just from testing, but, that's speculation.

It would be awfully high-powered physics. Generally, that sort of thing can also be used as a weapon. What if the trickle-down included a radical new weapon capable of more damage than thermonukes? Maybe even one that a third world country could build without easily spotted isotopic separation technology?

See also: "the Kzinti lesson"

Originally posted by dominicus
GREAT!!!!!!! (Sarcasm)

Can't wait to spread earth's disease, humans, onto other beautiful planets to be plundered, destroyed, religious wars spread, and third world babies making babies for starvation's sake!!!!!

Yay!!!!!

What a lovely view of humanity you have. Holidays with you must be delightful. Heh heh....

Originally posted by Isee1111

Originally posted by dominicus
GREAT!!!!!!! (Sarcasm)

Can't wait to spread earth's disease, humans, onto other beautiful planets to be plundered, destroyed, religious wars spread, and third world babies making babies for starvation's sake!!!!!

Yay!!!!!

What a lovely view of humanity you have. Holidays with you must be delightful. Heh heh....

Doesn't mean it's not the truth though!