NASA One Step Closer to Warp Drive?

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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NASA looks to be getting closer to developing a faster than light drive to power future spacecraft to other planets in relative short time spans and even interstellar travel to explore other stars systems. The drive doesn’t run on Dilithium Crystals or anything as exotic as Star Trek's warp propulsion systems, it’s just a hopped-up electromagnetic drive that will be powered by a on-board nuclear reactor on steroids. :cool:

The science behind the EM drive is, well, complicated to say the least, but the basic idea is to convert electrical energy into thrust without propellant (the fuel in rockets), which should be impossible because it violates the law of conservation of momentum.
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Sounds similar to MacGuffen technology, its also sounds like it budget submission time.
 
A quantum vacuum provides some context as to why this drive can accomplish what it does. It doesn't really violate any laws of physics per say it just isn't well understood.

The problem that still exists is that you would still need quite a power source (however Naval ships have massive nuclear reactors so its entirely doable) to accomplish anything ground breaking.

It'll be quite sometime before this is put into any kind of manned space mission. Probably for the next few decades it'll be used for geo sats or deep space probes.
 
Sure has taken them a long time to reverse engineer the ship from the Roswell crash :)
 
Well, now all we just need to do is to invent deflectors to make sure anything that hits us at warp speed won't destroy us and also an inertial field to keep us from being crushed into paste from the G-Forces... :D
 
kamxam said:
Well, now all we just need to do is to invent deflectors to make sure anything that hits us at warp speed won't destroy us and also an inertial field to keep us from being crushed into paste from the G-Forces... :D
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And don't forget the phasers and photon torpedoes to defend against alien attacks.;)
 
If everything follows the Star Trek paradigm, which NASA seems to be doing sometimes with help from DARPA, if they get the warp drive up and running, all of the other needed components fall into place neatly. It will take some time, but once you master the power consumption problem, it will serve as the basis for all other needs. Then we sit back and wait for the Vulcans to make first contact. :p
 
MajorDomo said:
If everything follows the Star Trek paradigm, which NASA seems to be doing sometimes with help from DARPA, if they get the warp drive up and running, all of the other needed components fall into place neatly. It will take some time, but once you master the power consumption problem, it will serve as the basis for all other needs. Then we sit back and wait for the Vulcans to make first contact. :p
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or the Borg
 
basically equal and opposite reaction. use the kiss principle keep it simple stupid because when working with unknowns you have to assume some facts that are going to turn out to be wrong but the only way to prove something is to try and disprove it. to boil it down in space you are always moving but local forces trump greater but more distant forces... so all they have to do is apply even a normally insignificant amount of force when all other forces are more distance than the joules needed to over come them. slowing down is a going to be stone bitch since acceleration is still limited by the medium you are in and changing media is like hitting the water at over fifty meters per sec it will be a hard fulcrum.... as to breaking warp well that is why it was on cnet not a science site... they are simply using the expression to cover the fact you will be bending light to traveling faster than wave and particle... fun stuff.
 
I don't believe we'll ever have a working warp drive. Our best bet for space travel is either take a very long trip across space or send your consciousness across space as a laser beam and have your mind reconstructed on the other end.

To get to Alpha Centauri you'd need to send people on a ship that'll last for 10-20 years. The first idea is going to rely on you sleeping in a frozen cube for that duration or deal with isolation for the rest of your life round trip. The second idea is that we know how to map the brain and send it across space, but we'll need a space shit equipped to receive the signal and run a human brain artificially, that's already there.
 
Ashbringer said:
I don't believe we'll ever have a working warp drive. Our best bet for space travel is either take a very long trip across space or send your consciousness across space as a laser beam and have your mind reconstructed on the other end.

To get to Alpha Centauri you'd need to send people on a ship that'll last for 10-20 years. The first idea is going to rely on you sleeping in a frozen cube for that duration or deal with isolation for the rest of your life round trip. The second idea is that we know how to map the brain and send it across space, but we'll need a space shit equipped to receive the signal and run a human brain artificially, that's already there.
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We actually don't need FTL space travel to travel to nearby star systems. Time dilation while nearing the speed of light (Say 99.9999%) would allow people get to another star such as Alpha Centauri in only weeks (or less...or more....depending on how near to c they are) of local observed time. Earthbound observers would still observe the journey in the scale of years.Granted, such capabilities are still well beyond our grasp.
 
As for the propulsion method talked about here. I've read some of the actual papers and a lot of looks like some goddamn magic, and I'm an engineer. There are a lot of assumptions made, and they truly don't know what's going on either. If they figure it out and can scale it, then it would be huge for space travel in the near term. However, there are some pretty hefty power requirements. The article mentions 1-100 MWe nuclear reactors as a possible power source...then goes on to mention earth based PWR reactors used in submarines. Developing and deploying an actual nuclear (fission) reactor (not a radioisotope thermoelectric generator) would be an order of magnitude more difficult than getting fusion reactors to work on earth. The complexity of that fluid system would be goddamn impossible.
 
Grahamkracka said:
We actually don't need FTL space travel to travel to nearby star systems. Time dilation while nearing the speed of light (Say 99.9999%) would allow people get to another star such as Alpha Centauri in only weeks (or less...or more....depending on how near to c they are) of local observed time. Earthbound observers would still observe the journey in the scale of years.Granted, such capabilities are still well beyond our grasp.
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The amount of energy needed to get people near the speed of light would be impossible. At best your lucky to reach half that. And yea the people would likely experience time differently than people on earth. The real issue is the prolonged travel through space. We know gravity is important for humans to stay healthy and survive. Isolation would drive most people mad. Then there's prolonged exposure to radiation and you need enough food for the trip.

For that sorta thing we need gene therapy to at which point which could alter humans so they could survive the trip. Alpha Centauri is the nearest star to the Sun and that's likely a doable trip, but other stars? Without better resistance to radiation and bone loss from lack of gravity humans won't make it. We're still wondering if we can make it to Mars.
 
Although I think research on alternative propulsion is good, I would prefer NASA to concentrate on exploration within our own solar system ... We should have a large rotating space station by now, with moon bases (plural), mining operations in the Asteroid belt and Mars, and bases in the Jupiter/Saturn areas to study those planets ... if we had the ability to launch ships from space fully fueled we could move around the solar system fairly quickly
 
Grahamkracka said:
We actually don't need FTL space travel to travel to nearby star systems. Time dilation while nearing the speed of light (Say 99.9999%) would allow people get to another star such as Alpha Centauri in only weeks (or less...or more....depending on how near to c they are) of local observed time. Earthbound observers would still observe the journey in the scale of years.Granted, such capabilities are still well beyond our grasp.
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Wouldn't it suck to go on a near light speed journey that lasts for 100 years earth time and while you're on your way you find out that there's already McDonalds at your destination since warp drive was invented. :D
 
B00nie said:
Wouldn't it suck to go on a near light speed journey that lasts for 100 years earth time and while you're on your way you find out that there's already McDonalds at your destination since warp drive was invented. :D
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yeah they leave for their journey, 50 Earth years later (1 month spaceship time) warp drive is invented, they zip by the ship where everyone looks like they're in stasis, they send a message to the space ship "LoL NOOBS!"
 
The warpdrive comment is misleading. Warp drive you're not moving at all just warping space around you. This looks more like impulse drive from starttrek, sub light speed.

But would be nice to get away from using fuel. And getting to mars in 70 days would be awesome.
 
Warp drive comment is a bold faced lie, it's not misleading, it's 100% inaccurate.

This is simply the idea of a different form of propulsion that seems to violate laws of physics... which is why I'm extremely skeptical of this. Something like 15+ years ago there was the "lifter" drive where people said you could magically levitate a frame by putting current through it.
 
heatlesssun said:
By far the best TNG movie.



Resistance is futile. Boy, wouldn't it suck if our first encounter with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization were like the Borg.
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A) Saying the "best TNG movie" is rather like talking about the best Boy Band.

II) If we found the Borg, the nice thing is is that it would suck but not for very long at all ;)
 
sfsuphysics said:
Warp drive comment is a bold faced lie, it's not misleading, it's 100% inaccurate.

This is simply the idea of a different form of propulsion that seems to violate laws of physics... which is why I'm extremely skeptical of this. Something like 15+ years ago there was the "lifter" drive where people said you could magically levitate a frame by putting current through it.
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It does produce propulsion. It seems to do so by making a portion of the em radiation it produces travel faster than the speed of light in a closed cavity, and the difference in speed expresses a gradient which allows for propulsion.

This doesn't mean that it will allow a ship or craft to move faster than light. That's the issue. It's not warping spacetime to allow us to travel faster than light.
 
Arcygenical said:
It does produce propulsion. It seems to do so by making a portion of the em radiation it produces travel faster than the speed of light in a closed cavity, and the difference in speed expresses a gradient which allows for propulsion.

This doesn't mean that it will allow a ship or craft to move faster than light. That's the issue. It's not warping spacetime to allow us to travel faster than light.
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I'd say, at the very least, that the device being able to create a warp bubble as a side effect is rather substantial.
 
KrS said:
It came from Wikipedia, it MUST be true!!
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Then how about the fact that the Greeks had calculated the circumference of the Earth to within a few percent? Seriously, we've known the Earth was round for more than two thousand years.
 
Arcygenical said:
It does produce propulsion. It seems to do so by making a portion of the em radiation it produces travel faster than the speed of light in a closed cavity, and the difference in speed expresses a gradient which allows for propulsion.

This doesn't mean that it will allow a ship or craft to move faster than light. That's the issue. It's not warping spacetime to allow us to travel faster than light.
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Well you seem to be an expert on the subject, mind telling me where your information is coming from :)
 
Arcygenical said:
It does produce propulsion. It seems to do so by making a portion of the em radiation it produces travel faster than the speed of light in a closed cavity, and the difference in speed expresses a gradient which allows for propulsion.

This doesn't mean that it will allow a ship or craft to move faster than light. That's the issue. It's not warping spacetime to allow us to travel faster than light.
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Actually, based on a reading of the actual papers and current "best guesses" of the science behind it, what it is doing is actually acting similar to a hydrodynamic propulsion system would in water, but it is doing so with virtual particles out of the "quantum soup" that exists all around us.

Basically, in an absolute vacuum (or as close to one as exists), there are still tons of virtual particles popping into and out of existence all the time -- typically pair production such as an electron/positron). This state is considered to be the lowest possible energy level achievable in our present universe -- i.e. the back ground level.

What they think the EM drive is doing is actually channeling virtual particle pairs around the outside of the system, with an effective increase in particle density behind the system and an effective decrease in particle density in front of the system. This, in effect, serves to generate propulsion.

The even MORE interesting part of this is that, in theory, this shouldn't be possible without altering the base energy state of empty space -- which current theory doesn't consider possible without something like a naturally occurring gravity well or phenomenal amounts of energy we have no idea how to create -- because to change the energy state of empty space actually implies you are "warping" that area of space-time (thinning/thickening it would probably be the easiest analogy).

So, in other words, you are actually expanding space time in front of the EM drive and compressing it behind it -- which means that a photon, etc. passing through the expanded region in the front would take less time to traverse the region than it would normally (at the speed of light). To this end, NASA is currently involved in doing interferometry testing on the areas around the EM drive to see if the frequency output of the tests is altered -- and current indications are that it actually may be different.

What this means is that if you can compress/expand areas of space time in a controlled manner with reasonably manageable energy levels, this means you can build what is known as an Alcubierre "Warp" Drive -- in which you form a bubble around a spaceship or other object and then move this bubble of space time relative to the rest of the universe. The nice part is, this region of space time can move at any speed it wants limited only by the energy available -- NOT by the speed of light. And the space ship inside it would never experience any relativistic effects, etc. because it is still completely at rest relative to the bubble of space time it is contained in (which also means, no inertial effects, because there is no real acceleration going on). In other words, this is a REAL "warp drive".

Of course the one major downside of an Alcubierre drive is that theories state it would tend to build up tons of particles (both real and virtual) in the bow shock ahead of the vessel in transit, which would then basically pulse out ahead of the craft whenever the field was dropped -- in a blast wave that would basically be strong enough to potentially destroy the entire SOLAR SYSTEM you were arriving in....so minor downside.

Of course, if the EM Drive is actually moving virtual particles AROUND the system similar to hydrodynamic flow (which is NOT something the theories posited), then this would likely negate the above problem.

So, if this actually pans out, it's going to be REALLY interesting.
 
Grahamkracka said:
I'm an engineer....
....impossible.
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I call BS on you being an engineer for that. Scotty would kick you off his crew and make you a security redshirt. :D

mdburkey said:
Of course the one major downside of an Alcubierre drive is that theories state it would tend to build up tons of particles (both real and virtual) in the bow shock ahead of the vessel in transit, which would then basically pulse out ahead of the craft whenever the field was dropped -- in a blast wave that would basically be strong enough to potentially destroy the entire SOLAR SYSTEM you were arriving in....so minor downside.
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Which is why you need a device called a navigational deflector - to push particles, gasses, and micrometeoroids out of the flight path of the ship. Star Trek FTW yet again. :cool:
 
interstellar-space-flight-requirements-130701b-02.jpg
 
Phoenix333 said:
I call BS on you being an engineer for that. Scotty would kick you off his crew and make you a security redshirt. :D
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I think even Scotty would say developing a spaceborn nuclear reactor with water as a working fluid in zero G isn't the best way to go :D
 
Each form of life gives rise to the next higher one. We've already done it. What we call computers will eventually become self aware, and leave us behind. They are not susceptible to temperature or aging or gravity during space flight like we are; they can impart the entire gained knowledge of a lifetime to the next generation in seconds. There will be no 'sky net'. They will simply coexist here, and move on to explore space as well. An artificial intelligent device doesn't age and die, and even as technology improves can improve itself. It will learn by experience and never make the same mistake twice. It won't need sex so it won't waste 99% of it's waking life trying to get laid. The advantages go on and on. As far as the laws of physics are concerned, there are lots we still don't know. Because, as previously implied, people are stupid. OH, and lazy, too.
 
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