• NASA looking to design warp drive ships akin to Star Trek, name the first one "IXS Enterprise"
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[quote]NASA engineer and physicist Harold White announced a few years ago that he was working on a potentially groundbreaking idea that could allow space travel faster than the speed of light. Yes, like in “Star Trek.” And now, to boldly go where no designer has gone before, Mark Rademaker — who is collaborating with White — has created a CGI design concept for the “warp ship.” They’re calling it the IXS Enterprise. “We wanted to have a decent image of a theory conforming Warp ship to motivate young people to pursue a STEM career,” Rademaker said in an e-mail interview. “It does have some Sci-Fi features that might never transfer to a possible final design, unless we really want to.” A warp ship such as the IXS Enterprise could allow travel to interstellar space in a matter of weeks rather than, say, centuries. And the science behind why it might be possible is truly mind-boggling. An over-simplified explanation is that the concept seeks to exploit a “loophole” in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity that allows travel faster than the speed of light by expanding space-time behind the object and contracting space-time front of it. Io9 explains more: [quote]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.[/quote] White, whose title is “Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate,” has mathematically calculated a plausible way to accomplish this using far less energy than required by the original theory, which was proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. His concept requires using large rings that surround the spacecraft (which you can see in the image above) to greatly reduce the amount of energy needed to warp space-time in front of and behind the spacecraft. “The rings are most important as they will form the Warp bubble,” Rademaker said in his e-mail. “The way they are designed now will reduce the energy requirement needed to form the bubble. (By quite a large factor.) Also we tried to fill up as much space within the rings, it’s expensive to leave that open or unused.” White and his team at NASA’s Eagleworks Labs are now working to create a “proof of concept” for this idea. [/quote] [img]https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/14038693038_0da3b292a6_b.jpg&w=1484[/img] [url]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/06/11/this-is-the-amazing-design-for-nasas-star-trek-style-space-ship-the-ixs-enterprise/?postshare=8611457222159404&tid=ss_fb[/url] Not sure if I read it correctly that they're actually designing it or if they're just making CGI models for the hell of it. :johnnymo1:
nah it was just some concept design [quote=the article]June 11, 2014[/quote]
[QUOTE=salty peanut v2;49881283]nah it was just some concept design[/QUOTE] Oh jesus christ why did this pop up on the news feed as if it's just announced??
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;49881270]Not sure if I read it correctly that they're actually designing it or if they're just making CGI models for the hell of it. :johnnymo1:[/QUOTE] Either way, it looks cool and it's fun to think it might be real one day.
cool as hell CG design, but in practice we should probably first figure out how to warp space-time before spending money building the ship this thread probably should be closed
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