In before QA shiats all over the thread.

QA?

We don't get warp drive until 2063.

SuperT: In before QA shiats all over the thread.

Fark has QA testers?

Probably because we don't have a moon base.

The genuinely high energy experiments we'd have to do are things you wouldn't want to do withing a few thousand miles of civilization.

Another stupid "warp drive" article? Is it today again?

Honest Bender: How come? Are you 6, subby? Adults use the word why.

Probably better to use the words "how come," as that suggests a question of capability, whereas "why" is moreso indicative of questions regarding motivation.

Nurglitch: QA?


Q rang?

Unoriginal_Username: SuperT: In before QA shiats all over the thread.

Fark has QA testers?

They're necessary. Fark threads can be terribly buggy; they often get stuff in infinate loops. Especially the in politics tab.

sendtodave: Unoriginal_Username: SuperT: In before QA shiats all over the thread.

Fark has QA testers?

They're necessary. Fark threads can be terribly buggy; they often get stuff in infinate loops. Especially the in politics tab.

That's due to a lack of checking the input for garbage code.

on to the topic, I suggest they fund the guy on Rocket City Rednecks, Travis S. Taylor
No really he's a redneck who's also a rocket scientist

Ok, maybe cause I read some of his novels for free, and would like more

Unoriginal_Username: SuperT: In before QA shiats all over the thread.

Fark has QA testers?

As a member of the software quality profession, I resent any implication of commonality between us and that thread shiatter.

Meh. There are easier and safer ways than the Alcubierre drive to get around the lightspeed limit.

Warrener: Unoriginal_Username: SuperT: In before QA shiats all over the thread.

Fark has QA testers?

As a member of the software quality profession, I resent any implication of commonality between us and that thread shiatter.

Have you seen some of the products that make it to the end user?

He should be insulted

Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Meh. There are easier and safer ways than the Alcubierre drive to get around the lightspeed limit.

Such as? I'm always interested in sticking it to Einstein. There's a lot his wife didn't think of.

I once had a warped drive shaft. Does that count?

Pfft. We've already GOT working warp drives. The technology is being active suppressed by ExxonMobil.

Cybernetic: I once had a warped drive shaft. Does that count?

No, but on the plus side, if it's an upward bend, it can be helpful in stimulating the G-spot...

because math is hard.

Nurglitch: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Meh. There are easier and safer ways than the Alcubierre drive to get around the lightspeed limit.

Such as? I'm always interested in sticking it to Einstein. There's a lot his wife didn't think of.

Think waveguide. Think quantum displacement. They do it now for particles. The ramp-up is mainly an engineering and computer processing power issue.

Lack of an inertial dampening field?

SavageWombat: Lack of an inertial dampening field?

It's not the warping, it's the stopping.

SuperT: In before QA shiats all over the thread.

He may have gotten tired of having his ass handed to him in every space related thread.

At least he kinda knows to just shut up once he has been proven to be a vapid assclown.

Lt. Cheese Weasel: Because it's only a theory? And Einstein was high as a kite when he wrote that shiat anyway.



/look up the primary definition in a dictionary.

give me doughnuts: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Nurglitch: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Meh. There are easier and safer ways than the Alcubierre drive to get around the lightspeed limit.

Such as? I'm always interested in sticking it to Einstein. There's a lot his wife didn't think of.

Think waveguide. Think quantum displacement. They do it now for particles. The ramp-up is mainly an engineering and computer processing power issue.

They do it from one lab to another. How are you going to get the "receiving" equipment all over the galaxy?

We're better off building a warp-drive.

Yeah, that would be a problem. My thought, though, is that you could mimic the conditions of a receiving "lab" ahead of the starship (maybe just a extremely short distance (perhaps even inches or fractions of an inch) in front of the starship.

So point A is a only one millimeter from point B. The ship "translates" from A to B in zero time. It is NOT traveling faster than the speed of light, but it has "traveled" one mm from A to B. Do this enough times each second and you have a ship that is (to all intents and purposes, and from the perspective of an outside observer) traveling at multiples of lightspeed.

Problems: intersteller dust. Would interfere with the creation of the "lab structure." Would also do bad things to the crew. Everyone would eventually become radioactive. You couldn't have any kind of shield to deflect dust, because you are not traveling through the dust. You are instantly occupying the same space as the dust. Perhaps that would be obviated if the ship was translating fast enough, I don't know.

Just Another OC Homeless Guy: give me doughnuts: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Nurglitch: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Meh. There are easier and safer ways than the Alcubierre drive to get around the lightspeed limit.

Such as? I'm always interested in sticking it to Einstein. There's a lot his wife didn't think of.

Think waveguide. Think quantum displacement. They do it now for particles. The ramp-up is mainly an engineering and computer processing power issue.

They do it from one lab to another. How are you going to get the "receiving" equipment all over the galaxy?

We're better off building a warp-drive.

Yeah, that would be a problem. My thought, though, is that you could mimic the conditions of a receiving "lab" ahead of the starship (maybe just a extremely short distance (perhaps even inches or fractions of an inch) in front of the starship.

So point A is a only one millimeter from point B. The ship "translates" from A to B in zero time. It is NOT traveling faster than the speed of light, but it has "traveled" one mm from A to B. Do this enough times each second and you have a ship that is (to all intents and purposes, and from the perspective of an outside observer) traveling at multiples of lightspeed.

Problems: intersteller dust. Would interfere with the creation of the "lab structure." Would also do bad things to the crew. Everyone would eventually become radioactive. You couldn't have any kind of shield to deflect dust, because you are not traveling through the dust. You are instantly occupying the same space as the dust. Perhaps that would be obviated if the ship was translating fast enough, I don't know.

I googled for central vacuum system in a lame joke attempt, turns out the first result is Galaxie Central Vacuum Systems (YLMV, I got the .be on the Belgian Google). Apparently they already have that covered.

Lt. Cheese Weasel: Obviously you have no idea about me. Hence the kneejerk, 'he must be a god bothering creationist'....far from it. But it is just a theory, nonetheless.

Often even laws are representations of things that we only partly understand, for example Laws of Gravitation and Coulombs Law of Friction.

Both are laws for things we only roughly understand, and the solutions are just the effects of observable geometry interacting with matter.

So the distinction of Theory vs. Law is not one of increased reliability, credibility, certainty or understanding.

turboke: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: give me doughnuts: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Nurglitch: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Meh. There are easier and safer ways than the Alcubierre drive to get around the lightspeed limit.

Such as? I'm always interested in sticking it to Einstein. There's a lot his wife didn't think of.

Think waveguide. Think quantum displacement. They do it now for particles. The ramp-up is mainly an engineering and computer processing power issue.

They do it from one lab to another. How are you going to get the "receiving" equipment all over the galaxy?

We're better off building a warp-drive.

Yeah, that would be a problem. My thought, though, is that you could mimic the conditions of a receiving "lab" ahead of the starship (maybe just a extremely short distance (perhaps even inches or fractions of an inch) in front of the starship.

So point A is a only one millimeter from point B. The ship "translates" from A to B in zero time. It is NOT traveling faster than the speed of light, but it has "traveled" one mm from A to B. Do this enough times each second and you have a ship that is (to all intents and purposes, and from the perspective of an outside observer) traveling at multiples of lightspeed.

Problems: intersteller dust. Would interfere with the creation of the "lab structure." Would also do bad things to the crew. Everyone would eventually become radioactive. You couldn't have any kind of shield to deflect dust, because you are not traveling through the dust. You are instantly occupying the same space as the dust. Perhaps that would be obviated if the ship was translating fast enough, I don't know.

I googled for central vacuum system in a lame joke attempt, turns out the first result is Galaxie Central Vacuum Systems (YLMV, I got the .be on the Belgian Google). Apparently they already have that covered.

LOL! There you go. Just "translate" a gigantic robotic vacuum cleaner ahead of the ship to clear out all the dust. [thinks........] Damn. It might work. But it would look funnier than hell.

ytterbium: The other day my 9 year-old told me the secret to speed-of-light travel was finding a way to create mini-black holes set at points in space. I should show him this article.

The "Starrigger"/"Red Limit Freeway" /"Paradox Alley" series by DeChancie uses massive, rapidly rotating dual cylinders to form wormholes that the space truckers drive through. Link Link Link and Link

and Link

I'm going to go with "Because pretty much nothing that's ever been featured on the cover of Popular Mechanics has ever come to pass" for $500, Alex.

/Really would like it to exist
//Wired has the same problem

Sorry folks, but we ain't going nowhere at "warp speed" at least while we're made out of meat.

FTFA "Even if scientists knew how to stop the bubble once it started, decelerating would release high-energy particles from the front-facing side. Anything at the destination "would be high-energy-particle blasted into oblivion," according to a paper from the University of Sydney."

Only if you go in a straight line

The real question is how come we don't have warp drive yet? No....

FTFA: "In mathematical models, the sides of the bubble would require energy per unit of volume to be less than zero. We're not sure this "exotic energy" exists."

The real question is why people expect engineers can just handwave through this one problem?

Let's see if we repeat the previous warp drive threads: doctors in Sci-Fi Lit and Orion Women's Studies throw out accusations of other people being small minded; if only we tried hard enough/threw money at it instead of Wars for Oil (tm)....

It'd be refreshing to see a serious posting about proposals on how to create/detect "exotic energy" in a lab environment that doesn't come from a cold-fusion/HAARP/Nazi UFO tech conspiracy site.

wildcardjack: Probably because we don't have a moon base.

The genuinely high energy experiments we'd have to do are things you wouldn't want to do withing a few thousand miles of civilization.

[sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net image 836x960]

ManateeGag: because Zefram Cochrane hasn't been born yet, duh!

How do you know? His warp flight was in 2063, or 50 years from now. James Cromwell looked about that old in the movie.

Actually OP, sooner than you think.

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

I suppose all you have to do is find one of those masses of pure energy that's about 5 cubic meters large.

The rest should be relatively easy, what with only requiring materials with negative mass.

/who cares if you destroy everything in the process? warp drive!

Prussian_Roulette: Let's see if we repeat the previous warp drive threads: doctors in Sci-Fi Lit and Orion Women's Studies throw out accusations of other people being small minded; if only we tried hard enough/threw money at it instead of Wars for Oil (tm)....

We could have a space elevator right now.

All we'd have to do is take down all the satellites in an equatorial orbit and construct the largest structure ever out of materials that we can only make in inch long quantities. Oh and we have to do it in space. We'll figure out how to maintain it later.

I think if FTL travel is ever invented, it will be an accidental discovery. Some unknown scientist will be playing around with a new superconductor and it will vanish and reappear halfway around the world in an instant. Peltier wasn't trying to create a refrigerator when he made his discovery, but his electrical experiments led directly to today's solid-state refrigeration systems. The list of discoveries that were made just from someone thinking to themselves "what happens if I do this?" is amazing.

"If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs."

Just because locally warping space is theoretically possible doesn't mean building a warp drive is. Anything involving negative mass or other "exotic matter" qualities is (by definition) theoretically impossible if you're using the Standard Model. This nonsense is not a matter of engineering. It's a matter of the universe having laws other than what we currently observe.

As someone who studies Physics, I'm all for innovating and pursuing speculative applications, and developing materials to make them possible. A space elevator would be a massive undertaking, fraught with the possibility of spectacular failure, but it's worth pursuing and it's worth raising the public's awareness to further that end.

Getting people worked up about "warp drive" is idiotic, and counterproductive. It's not going to happen. Let's move on.