# NASA Physicist Unveils Warp Speed Spacecraft Design



## micropage7 (Jul 26, 2014)

I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to Sci-Fi. I love movies such as The Empire Strikes Back and Stargate, and as a kid I really enjoyed escaping reality by watching TV series like Star Trek. To me, the idea of traveling to distant stars or planets via wormholes or using a spacecraft, still gives me a sense of wonder. Maybe someday we will accomplish these feats and it won’t just be in the minds of people like George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.





If it is going to happen, then I suppose mankind’s best efforts would come out of NASA. Faster than light (FTL) travel, may not be so far off in the future after all. NASA’s Harold White has been working over the last four years to develop a warp drive, which will allow a spacecraft to travel at speeds faster than light. White’s team has been working on a warp drive that would transcend space and shorten the distance between two points. This would allow the craft to break the speed of light and would be a spaceship with no speed limit whatsoever.

White currently heads up NASA’s Advanced Propulsion Team. He spoke about the concept of an FTL starship at a conference last year. His project has reached a new level of interest this week however, when he unveiled images of what the craft may look like. The images were created by artist Mark Rademaker, who has based them upon White’s designs. They show a technologically detailed spacecraft, which took more than 1,600 hours to complete.






Last November in Phoenix, US at the SpaceVision 2013 Space Conference, White discussed his design, the concepts, and the progress that’s been made in warp-drive development. The idea of a “space warp,” is a loophole in the theory of general relativity, which would allow for colossal distances to be travelled quickly, thereby reducing the travel time from thousands of years to just days.

During his speech, White described space warps as distant galaxies, which can bend light around them. The idea works on a principle of bending space in front of and behind a spacecraft. This would theoretically allow for the empty space behind the spacecraft to expand. The result would both push and pull it forward simultaneously.

White said at the conference, “There’s no speed limit on the expansion and contraction of space…You can actually find a way to get around what I like to call the 11th commandment: Thou shall not exceed the speed of light.”

Obviously the technology to create an FTL spacecraft or the warp drive itself, dose not exist as yet. But the artistic renderings Rademaker created may potentially be a model for the future. White says he drew from Matthew Jeffries’ 1965 sketches of the starship ‘Enterprise’ from “Star Trek,” in his design, as he says parts of that ship were mathematically accurate. He worked alongside Rademaker and graphic designer Mike Okuda to update the mathematics and produce what he believes to be a viable spacecraft.


http://news.filehippo.com/2014/07/nasa-physicist-unveils-warp-speed-spacecraft-design/


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## Steevo (Jul 26, 2014)

Where can I get a job drawing "concept" art based off old TV shows for 1600 hours? 

We have no idea of how any structure would handle the forced involved, much less how big the body would have to be to hold a reactor with enough energy to warp spacetime, for all we know they may look like minivans or shoe boxes.

Stuff like this is why Nasa is hard to fund, 40 weeks to make a drawing is all I read from that, how about 39 weeks 38 hours to clean up trash and 2 hours to copy a drawing off some other site another nerd made and pay him $50? We can't figure out how to keep planes in the sky, our internet free, CEO's from treating employees like crap, people from dying of preventable disease, starving and clean water, but we can afford to finance some jerkoff to draw and then go parading around a office showing it off like a 2nd grader with ADD?


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## the54thvoid (Jul 26, 2014)

micropage7 said:


> I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to Sci-Fi. I love movies such as The Empire Strikes Back and Stargate, and as a kid I really enjoyed escaping reality by watching TV series like Star Trek. To me, the idea of traveling to distant stars or planets via wormholes or using a spacecraft, still gives me a sense of wonder. Maybe someday we will accomplish these feats and it won’t just be in the minds of people like George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I think it would help if you remove the picture of the 1965 Enterprise sketch as it has little relevance to the actual technological piece you're talking about.  The craft they are referring to has twin orbital rings (your first pic, though zoomed in so doesn't show the rings very well).


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 27, 2014)

The final frontier would be leaving the Milky Way galaxy for another but even going from one solar system to another will be challenging.


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## RejZoR (Jul 29, 2014)

You're not actually going faster than light here, you just travel larger distances than the light would travel in the same time. Meaning if you bend the space and "step through the gap" of bent space, you cover enormous distances and thus travel faster than light would. Ie faster than light.


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## RCoon (Jul 29, 2014)

FordGT90Concept said:


> The final frontier would be leaving the Milky Way galaxy for another



And we'd probably ruin whatever's there too. I say we head out and leave all the politicians behind to fight over the broken rock they created.


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 29, 2014)

I think my head is gonna explode.  It's hard to get my head around travelling without following a straight line between two points, LOL.


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