Warp drives and space travel, the age of space exploration might not be too far away

What's the point of watching a Star trek film if you yourself are not in it? --> same logic to me. I get what you are saying though but just because we are not on board doesn't take away from that it is very interesting to see people seriously trying if it is possible. I still have my doubts about the latter thing though

 

Mars Colony Project to Begin Astronaut Search in July

http://news.yahoo.com/mars-colony-project-begin-astronaut-search-july-144550057.html

^And they all know it's probably a one way trip there.

If I had a chance of getting off this rock I'd take it. Not on some experimental one way ticket to Mars, but on an exploration cruise for sure!

I have many qualifications I think they would like to have on board any space craft.
:2thumbsup:

 

Here's a wild idea. How about a little bit of reality and let's try spending the money and resources on cleaning up this planet before trying to export the problems of this world to some other planent based on scifi fantasies

 

We can invest in both cleaning up the planet and scifi fantasies. But yes, the first should have higher priority.

 

Too late. It's already in the works.

And yes, it's too soon for us to do this.

 

Like I said its like a surfer on wave, the surfboard isn't moving the wave is. However the surf board does move or else it would just sit out at sea and never come to shore. And yes asian guy is a scientist.

And in the theory only the "immediate" space around the craft is manipulated, not the space between the craft and the destination. The spacecraft rides the wave of the moving space, just like when you ride and escalator, your not moving but the stairs below are moving you to the destination. If you din't move you would never get to the top of the escalator.

 

When war is a only a distant painful memory confined to history books.
When children no longer go to bed hungry
When our oceans are clean again
When everyone has access to sanitation
When there's no such thing as a person that can't read
When violence is considered porn and normal sex is considered wholesome

Then perhaps if our species still feels the need to go star treking around the universe it will be time to invest in it. But not before.

 

I'm really dumb about this stuff. So a space ship trying to make itself go somewhere ,but sitting on earth will draw other planets to the ship? Drag space toward the earth? The immediate space around the craft? Wouldn't that be earth? I just don't get it. No I didn't watch the video. I should stay out of these discussions,I guess.

 

:rofl:

 

it is exactly the space between the bubble and the destination (and the bubble and point of origin) that is manipulated. if that's not the case how do you suppose to traverse 4.3 ly in 2 weeks? if you don't manipulate that space it will take you exactly 4.3 ly (granted you can move at c) to get there. the immediate space around the ship is the one that stays the same.

you're interpreting this thing in terms that the opposing expansion and contraction create some sort of force(s) that would move the bubble to its destination. hence your surfer analogy. (by the way, what exactly is that force that you think is created in this process?).

it is one way of looking at this, however, there is another. namely, the expansion and contraction of space alone being sufficient to achieve this displacement. if the ship is at rest in an expanding space everything moves away from it, the galaxies, our solar system and home planet. and, if the ship is at rest in a contracting space everything moves toward it. here, we have both processes at work. the direction behind the ship expands which achieves separation and at the same time the direction in front of the ship contracts achieving reduction in distance between it and its destination. this alone, already appears to be sufficient to displace the spacecraft in short time over large distances (there is no limit to how fast a space can expand or contract. it can exceed the speed of light, which is the crucial point in all this).

now, i got my hands on Alcubierre's original paper, and he puts it like this: 'spaceship will be pushed away from Earth and pulled towards a distant star by spacetime itself'. moreover he makes a distinction that this is a 'coordinate acceleration' and that 'the proper acceleration along the spaceship's path will always be zero'. which essentially means it is not actual movement, but only a coordinate displacement.

i also found White's paper that has been the source for all these articles on his work, and the only mechanism he mentions is cosmological inflation:

http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/daydreaming-beyond-the-solar-system-with-warp-field-mechanics/

in nowhere do i see some mysterious 'forces' that are created that start to act on the ship in order to make it move. it's a distortion in spacetime created by using cosmological inflation. essentially, you do make the destination come to you just as much as you make the point of origin recede. the end result is getting displaced to your destination without actually moving at all. the space moves to and away from you. nowhere near analogous with surfer on the wave.

 

not toward the earth. the ship will start at an empty spot in our solar system, for example (to ensure Earth is not affected by distortions to spacetime). at rest there, it will deploy disturbance to spacetime which will make it achieve coordinate acceleration from zero to some constant value a in a very short time. there are two simultaneous spatial displacements at work here: contraction of spacetime in forward direction and expansion of spacetime behind it. these two work together in effectively displacing the spaceship. so the point of origin moves rapidly away from the ship whereas the destination moves rapidly toward it at the same time.