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

["AJ Crowl" <ajcrowlx2@ozemail.com.au>]

Hi Group,

Alcubierre's original design was flawed by the size of the warp-bubble which
requires immense amounts of energy to create. Such bubbles have an energy E
~ R^2 / Lp , where Lp is the planck length [1.6 x 10^-35 m !], so for any
velocity V the total energy for his design was ~ -6.2 x 10^62 kg * v, which
is about 10^10 times the mass of the visible Universe for even just
lightspeed. So how to avoid such a HUGE energy bill? Make the geometry
different and fit your flat space [R ~ 200m] into a tiny warp bubble {tiny ~
2000 Lp}which is possible. Doctor Who's TARDIS couldn't do better. For the
same energy [milligrams] as the bubble slows down it gets larger, until you
can get out again, but the bubble walls become thinner than Lp very quickly,
so it's unclear whether it can be done. Planck's length is the limit of
space fuzz, as far as we know. Chris Van Den Broeck, the designer, is a bit
unclear and he's not too sure what process would produce enough negative
energy to make an Alcubierre warp, but he hopes that his proof of principle
study will inspire more brains to work on it.

So that's our challenge...

Adam



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