Re: Re: starship-design: starship design: Alcubierre Drive... How?

[KellySt@aol.com]

> > >==Once we understand these factors, we may be closer
> > > to knowing what it takes to travel faster than light. Who
> > > knows? It might turn out to be simpler than what we
> > >  currently think. But I don't think we will be able to
> > > do it for at least a few hundred years.
> > >
> >> Kyle R. Mcallister
> >
> > Don't bet on that.  Now-a-days things go from weird physics concepts, to
> > marketed products REAL fast!  NASA's funding research into this stuff.  
They
> > obviousl expect something far less long term then centuries.
>
> Well, to do that we will likely need to know about the following:
> 
> 1. Inertia control. Such as preventing it from skyrocketing 
> when C is approached. It has been suggested that 
> relativistic 'mass' increase might be circumvented if we 
> knew how to 'mess' with the cause of inertia. Note: many 
> top physicists are beginning to doubt Mach's inertia
> theory. It would also be nice to accelerate at 1000g's and 
> not be turned into chunky salsa.

> 
> 2. Space-time modification. Pretty obvious.
> 
> 3. Learning more about light speed and what it is based 
> on. Or: how can we exceed C and live to tell about it? 
> Like I said, when we know the fundamentals, FTL might
>  not require warps as complex as Alcubierre's.
> Something simpler might exist.
> 
> Less than a century to do this? It would be nice, but I 
> don't know...
> Kyle R. Mcallister

All the things in your list are being researched.

In the last hundred years we've learned about mass/energy conversions, 
fission, fusion, quantum mechanics, relativity, distortions of space and 
time, etc.  None of that would heve seemed reasonable in the late 1800's.  
But of course progress is far more rapid now than then.

All this work, and far more, will be developed or proved impossible in a 
couple decades.  In ceturies we'll be WAY beyond these questions.

Kelly