[Unknown Target]

Thought this was interesting:

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=16902006

AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.

[Deepblue]

Not really new for the US government to put money in these types of things.

[Kosh]

At least this is something I wouldn't mind having.

[an0n]

I can see 8 problems:

• There's absolutely no guarantees that it will work in the slightest.
• A powerful enough magnetic field to generate the hyper-drive would wipe out all technology on the Earth.
• The field would have no definable limits, so you could potentially find a huge chunk of the Earth suddenly deciding to move through space.
• The most fundamental concept in science is that to move forward, you have to apply pressure to something behind you. This 'drive' pushes against nothing.
• It still needs energy. It's totally useless if it requires 3 weeks worth of output from every power plant on Earth just to get 10ft.
• Jumbo jets still need wheels. Anything big enough to actually mount and run the drive would undoubtedly be of the 'OMFG! Did you hollow out a mountain?!' variety and as such would require hundreds of trips into space to build, at a cost exceeding the GDP of France.
• Who says the dimension it shifts too will have a faster speed of light?
  
• Even if the speed of light were faster, you'd still need to generate the thrust to get it upto and past OUR speed of light.

[Mefustae]

Shhhh! Don't tell them it's a completely moronic idea at the moment! The US futzing even more with its economy is a good thing... at least for everyone else...

The prospect is kinda cool though, but I agree wholeheartedly agree with an0n that the US is much more likely to vapourize a large chunk of the planet than get this up and running. I'm thinking someone at the Pentagon has been watching faaaaar too much Babylon 5...

[knn]

  5 years? They must be kidding.
The closest thing to a working FTL drive is the Alcubierre warp drive and it's improved version, the micro-warp drive, and even that's still far away.

This reminds me of when Nasa asked George Lucas to give them ideas about future propulsion systems.

Oh, and Alcubierre's been watching way too much ST, but at least his theory isn't based upon assumptions like 'the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster'

The same theory is used in Event Horizon BTW, nothing new

[Kosh]

The whole point of the B5 hyperspace dealy was that the shortest path to your destination is a straight line. Time and space are curved.

[WMCoolmon]

He said the engine would enable spaceships to travel to different solar systems. "If the theory is correct then this is not science fiction, it is science fact," Prof Hauser said.

O noes, he used the f-word!!!

[an0n]

I thought Hawking was supposed to be working on a warp drive?

[Kamikaze]

Generating gravity fields through magnetic fields? Uh-huh.

I hope the DoD folks aren't dumb enough to take this seriously.

[Turnsky]

Welcome to Mars express: only a three hour trip

o/` "a three hour tour.....a three hour tour" o/`

    it had to be said.

[Flipside]

Next problem, scraping the crew off the back of the cockpit when it arrives

[Fineus]

Would it have that affect though? Granted I'm not too up on physics but assuming the ship didn't rip itself apart - I don't remember there being any problems from firing rockets in space... I mean the astronauts don't even get pinned against the wall.

So it shouldn't be that bad if the accelerate to the speed of light, should it

[Flipside]

iirc, it's not the target speed that is the problem, it's the rate of acceleration. I suppose it really depends on how it's done etc, but it's always been the problem which near c travel, is how to accelerate to it without taken something like 4 years speeding up and 4 years slowing down to keep the crew safe.

[Fineus]

I don't suppose putting the crew in some kind of concentrate syrup / liqued solution would help would it? Kinda like the hibernation tanks for the Lewis and Clarke in Event Horizon.

[Rand al Thor]

I remember reading that, if possible in the first place, the speed of light could be reached in 1 year if a constant acceleration of 1G was maintained. That might have just been an abstraction or approximation though.

Good to see they're at least thinking about it and not reverting to the mantra, "the speed of light cannot be exceeded". Although technically they wouldnt be doing that.

[Col. Fishguts]

I remember reading that, if possible in the first place, the speed of light could be reached in 1 year if a constant acceleration of 1G was maintained. That might have just been an abstraction or approximation though.

Good to see they're at least thinking about it and not reverting to the mantra, "the speed of light cannot be exceeded". Although technically they wouldnt be doing that.

That's classical physics: v=a*t  --> t = v/a
With speed of light c and acceleration a = 1g = 9.81 m/s² we get t = 353.9 days

The problem is that when we reach relativistic speeds (say a few % of c), the mass of a body increases, thus we need more energy to further accelerate it. If you reach c, your mass is infinit and you need an infinitive (sp?) amount of energy to accelerate any further.

And the mantra of c being the ultimate barrier still stands, as long as none of the wild theories yield not more than technobabble.

[Flipside]

Hmmm... Some kind of 'velocity responsive' gel might work (one that solidifies under pressure) or possibly short bursts of high G acceleration. For short journeys, such as to Mars, the Gel would probably be better, but for longer journeys, where the pilots would not be able to rely an oxygen supply from breathing apparatus and would instead need to recycle air in the same way that Nuclear subs do, the latter might be a better idea

[Fineus]

Would it be possible to accelerate faster than your mass can keep up with... thereby punching through the barrier before physics has time to catch up... allowing for infinite speed before infinite mass takes note?

(Shot in the dark.. I know).

[Flipside]

Well, I'll admit, my knowledge of physics in Space travel is about 20 years old in places, so some of these problems may have already been solved.

I suspect that if we discovered that something like the 'Graviton' existed, you could 'cheat' physics by adding another vector to the equation, so you could match the pull backwards with a nose mounted gravity source pulling the pilot forwards at equal or near equal force. It'd be a delicate balance, but, purely in theory, could work.