Would You Go?

[Aeson]

Say a new technology is proven, and a spaceship gets built. By some twist of fate you get selected to go on the mission. You're 10 or 20 years away from visiting an alien world but have no idea what will be there, and you'll probably never see Earth again. Are you going?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18283-engage-the-x-drive-ten-ways-to-traverse-deep-space.html

Alcubierre drive

This is essentially the warp drive from Star Trek. It was first proposed in 1994 by Miguel Alcubierre, a physicist working at the University of Wales in Cardiff.

The drive would use as-yet-undiscovered stuff called "exotic matter": particles that have a negative mass and exert a negative pressure. This could distort space-time, causing the space ahead of the spaceship to contract and that behind it to expand. The ship, cocooned in a "warp bubble", could effectively travel faster than light without breaking the laws of relativity.

Unfortunately, the Alcubierre drive has a host of problems. For one thing, the amount of energy needed to sustain the warp is greater than the total energy of the universe, although modifications to the shape of the bubble might help. The drive would also kick up a lot of radiation, which would threaten the astronauts' lives. And there is no evidence that exotic matter even exists.

Perhaps crucially, calculations published in 2002 showed that it would be impossible for the ship to send signals to the front of the bubble, meaning that crew members could not control, steer or stop the ship. In fact, it seems that no matter how much energy is available, it would be physically impossible to generate the warp bubble.

Plausibility: apparently impossible

That one sounds like a fun ride!

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

There have been considerable refinements in the theory in the four years since that article...

[Lorizael]

Sure, I'm going--as long as we send robot probes ahead to spruce up (build infrastructure/terraform/contain native flora and fauna, etc.) the place first.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

How NASA might build its very first warp drive
George Dvorsky Filed to: Daily explainer 11/26/12 10:13am






A few months ago, physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity. We contacted White at NASA and asked him to explain how this real life warp drive could actually work.

The above image of a Vulcan command ship features a warp engine similar to an Alcubierre Drive. Image courtesy CBS.


The Alcubierre Drive

The idea came to White while he was considering a rather remarkable equation formulated by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. In his 1994 paper titled, "The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity," Alcubierre suggested a mechanism by which space-time could be "warped" both in front of and behind a spacecraft.





Michio Kaku dubbed Alcubierre's notion a "passport to the universe." It takes advantage of a quirk in the cosmological code that allows for the expansion and contraction of space-time, and could allow for hyper-fast travel between interstellar destinations. Essentially, the empty space behind a starship would be made to expand rapidly, pushing the craft in a forward direction — passengers would perceive it as movement despite the complete lack of acceleration.

White speculates that such a drive could result in "speeds" that could take a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in a mere two weeks — even though the system is 4.3 light-years away.





In terms of the engine's mechanics, a spheroid object would be placed between two regions of space-time (one expanding and one contracting). A "warp bubble" would then be generated that moves space-time around the object, effectively repositioning it — the end result being faster-than-light travel without the spheroid (or spacecraft) having to move with respect to its local frame of reference.

"Remember, nothing locally exceeds the speed of light, but space can expand and contract at any speed," White told io9. "However, space-time is really stiff, so to create the expansion and contraction effect in a useful manner in order for us to reach interstellar destinations in reasonable time periods would require a lot of energy."

And indeed, early assessments published in the ensuing scientific literature suggested horrific amounts of energy — basically equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter (what is 1.9 × 1027 kilograms or 317 Earth masses). As a result, the idea was brushed aside as being far too impractical. Even though nature allowed for a warp drive, it looked like we would never be able to build one ourselves.

"However," said White, "based on the analysis I did the last 18 months, there may be hope." The key, says White, may be in altering the geometry of the warp drive itself.


A new design

In October of last year, White was preparing for a talk he was to give for the kickoff to the 100 Year Starship project in Orlando, Florida. As he was pulling together his overview on space warp, he performed a sensitivity analysis for the field equations, more out of curiosity than anything else.





"My early results suggested I had discovered something that was in the math all along," he recalled. "I suddenly realized that if you made the thickness of the negative vacuum energy ring larger — like shifting from a belt shape to a donut shape — and oscillate the warp bubble, you can greatly reduce the energy required — perhaps making the idea plausible." White had adjusted the shape of Alcubierre's ring which surrounded the spheroid from something that was a flat halo to something that was thicker and curvier.

He presented the results of his Alcubierre Drive rethink a year later at the 100 Year Starship conference in Atlanta where he highlighted his new optimization approaches — a new design that could significantly reduce the amount of exotic matter required. And in fact, White says that the warp drive could be powered by a mass that's even less than that of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

That's a significant change in calculations to say the least. The reduction in mass from a Jupiter-sized planet to an object that weighs a mere 1,600 pounds has completely reset White's sense of plausibility — and NASA's.


Hitting the lab

Theoretical plausibility is all fine and well, of course. What White needs now is a real-world proof-of-concept. So he's hit the lab and begun work on actual experiments.

"We're utilizing a modified Michelson-Morley interferometer — that allows us to measure microscopic perturbations in space time," he said. "In our case, we're attempting to make one of the legs of the interferometer appear to be a different length when we energize our test devices." White and his colleagues are trying to simulate the tweaked Alcubierre drive in miniature by using lasers to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million.

Of course, the interferometer isn't something that NASA would bolt onto a spaceship. Rather, it's part of a larger scientific pursuit.

"Our initial test device is implementing a ring of large potential energy — what we observe as blue shifted relative to the lab frame — by utilizing a ring of ceramic capacitors that are charged to tens of thousands of volts," he told us. "We will increase the fidelity of our test devices and continue to enhance the sensitivity of the warp field interferometer — eventually using devices to directly generate negative vacuum energy."

He points out that Casimir cavities, physical forces that arise from a quantized field, may represent a viable approach.

And it's through these experiments, hopes White, that NASA can go from the theoretical to the practical.


Waiting for that "Chicago Pile" moment

Given just how fantastic this all appears, we asked White if he truly thinks a warp-generating spacecraft might someday be constructed.

"Mathematically, the field equations predict that this is possible, but it remains to be seen if we could ever reduce this to practice."





What White is waiting for is existence of proof — what he's calling a "Chicago Pile" moment — a reference to a great practical example.

"In late 1942, humanity activated the first nuclear reactor in Chicago generating a whopping half Watt — not enough to power a light bulb," he said. "However, just under one year later, we activated a ~4MW reactor which is enough to power a small town. Existence proof is important."

His cautious approach notwithstanding, White did admit that a real-world warp drive could create some fascinating possibilities for space travel — and would certainly reset our sense of the vastness of the cosmos.

"This loophole in general relativity would allow us to go places really fast as measured by both Earth observers, and observers on the ship — trips measured in weeks or months as opposed to decades and centuries," he said.

But for now, pursuit of this idea is very much in science mode. "I'm not ready to discuss much beyond the math and very controlled modest approaches in the lab," he said.

Which makes complete sense to us, as well. But thanks to these preliminary efforts, White has already done much to instill a renewed sense of hope and excitement over the possibilities. Faster-than-light travel may await us yet.

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will...rst-warp-drive

[Lorizael]

Ah, the Alcubierre drive. Wild (but fun) speculation. In truth, I don't expect us to send real live humans to other worlds unless we do come up with some kind of FTL. Plausible possibilities for sending humans of some sort include: cryonically-stored humans, uploaded minds, or robots who possess the biological material and expertise necessary to built humans upon arrival.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Going on a space colonization trip is a thing I regard not unlike a new game - let the impulsive and the spendthrifts do my beta testing and give the worst bugs a chance to be fixed before I consider it.

Also, I would miss my mommy.

[FlameFlash]

My wife and I have actually had discussions about this. Once the kids are out of the house we'll sign up for anything to Mars if it becomes a thing.

[AAAAAAAAH!]

No. It would suck.

[Nikolai]

No. Would not go.

[gwillybj]

Would I get car sick?

[Lorizael]

Space sick. It's much worse.

[AAAAAAAAH!]

Everything is worse in space.

[Lorizael]

I beg to differ.

[gwillybj]

I beg to differ.

Ah. yes. The view is spectacular.

[Sava]

Are there women?
What is the male to female ratio?
Will there be weed?