If we ever want to truly "boldly go where no man has gone before," we're going to need a faster way of traveling through space: that means we're going to need a spaceship capable of moving faster than the speed of light, or in Star Trek terms, a ship designed to travel at warp speed.
That might seem impossible, but NASA engineers recently designed a spaceship based on the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, one that could potentially handle faster than light travel.
The aptly named IXS Enterprise would allow interstellar travel in weeks, rather than hundreds of years, a limit set by our current limited knowledge and technology. But most interesting is the science behind this concept ship: one day, this spaceship might actually become a reality.
NASA found a loophole in the theory of relativity, which technically tells us that faster-than-light travel is impossible, or at least highly improbable. However, the IXS Enterprise's design has technology that makes it capable of expanding space-time behind it, which propels the ship forward faster, and contracting space-time in front of it. This creates the capability to travel faster than the speed of light.
This new theory comes from NASA engineer and physicist Harold White, who collaborated with Mark Rademaker to create a CGI version of a "warp ship." Although this ship isn't completely a possibility just yet, its concept could inspire future generations of scientists and engineers to improve upon it.
"We wanted to have a decent image of a theory conforming Warp ship to motivate young people to pursue a STEM career," said Rademaker said in an e-mail interview with The Washington Post. "It does have some sci-fi features that might never transfer to a possible final design, unless we really want to."
The following video explains the theories behind the ship's warp drive:
The concept art Rademaker created for the IXS Enterprise is on his Flickr account.
Star Trek has often inspired science, giving scientists ideas to create many of the things we now use every day, such as personal computers, mobile phones, tablets, biometrics, Bluetooth and even sliding doors.
Here's hoping Star Trek will continue to inspire generations of scientists once the new CBS series debuts next year.
