This isn't true. Nuclear pulse drives built with currently available technology could achieve .05C [1], meaning a 4 light year trip would take ~80 years.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...
Edit: I'm also having a slight chuckle at the estimated costs presented. Somehow, I'd think that just getting 40,000,000 t of spaceship into orbit would cost a bit more than 1 year of US GNP.
You could literally lift a city-sized space ship to orbit on the cheap with this technology. The problem is the nuclear fall-out for those left on the ground.
Consider a warp drive that transports you from, say, earth's orbit to pluto's orbit. Now, you fall back towards earth's orbit. This means that the warp drive, in order to not violate conservation of energy, must require at least as much energy as the potential energy difference between the two positions.
In fact it is possible to build a perpetuum mobile by just filling some region of space with dark energy. This region of space will then expand at constant energy density, therefore creating energy.
Maybe that's really what killed the dinosaurs.
Is your family at home going to be older when you come back from one of those trips?
I don't know enough special relativity to do the calculations, but if this device is constructible I would expect to have huge modifications in the time coordinate. Just in case, say goodbye to everyone before leaving.
Basically, the ship is able to traverse distances faster than light can, but it isn't actually moving faster than light.
Time dilation occurs at speeds far less than the speed of light. For instance GPS satellites and jet planes experience measurable time dilation.
I am very curious about the time effects of such a drive. Does the ability to warp space using such a device necessarily include the ability to warp time? Is it possible, within a frame of reference, to locally reverse the arrow of time and thereby reverse entropy within that pocket?
>A beam of light inside the warp bubble will still travel faster than the ship, for instance.
But that beam of light seen from outside the bubble will appear to travel faster than the speed of light.
For instance, assuming the 'string' was made of a tough alloy, would it snap and the coin remain where it was at that time, would the ship be dragged back to where the coin is, or can the question not yet be answered by science?
I ask because, presumably, if the coin can exit and be fine, this could be the basis for some kind of inter galaxy bus, no need to slow down the bus, merely drive your spaceship off the bus and exit the bubble when at your destination.
Even if that was not true, how will the warp-drive propagate the warp-bubble field itself faster than C to grab onto space-time in a timely manner?
It would seem to me this would cause the space-ship to feel that it's traveling faster than C, but to an outside observer it would only be traveling at C or less.
Warp drive will allow humans to pollenize, not colonize, other planets.
