starship-design: FTL and Special Relativity

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Ben Franchuk writes:
 > FTL is a IMPOSSIBLE problem with Special Relativity. Has anybody
 > really checked out Mr. Einstein's theories from first principles or
 > has most people just taken his word that that he is right?

Special and general relativity have been verified in many, many
experiments.  Scientific theories are tested by experiment, not by
questioning "first principles", whatever that means.

FTL is not inherently impossible in general relativity, although there
is no obvious physically realizable way to achieve it.

 > Lucky for us somebody has questioned the math, and found a few
 > mistakes made.  Check out http://www.autodynamics.org/ for the theory
 > of autodynamics. Here FTL may be restricted to special cases but much
 > more work needs to be done, to find just what conditions apply and to
 > what.

Oh please.  Autodynamics is just another pseudoscience crock.
Einstein's math is just fine; he would have been laughed out of physics
if he hadn't been able to do his math right.