First Look at Warp Ship Designs

Article by Ian O'Neill who interviewed Dr. Richard Obousy who had develope some concept designs for what a theoretical starship/warpship would look like.

Now, the physics behind the Warpship are purely theoretical. Dark Energy is still not understood or even harnessed. A warpship would need vast amounts of energy to generate a "warp field."

Dark Energy is the energy theorized to permeate throughout the entire universe. Cosmologists think that it was a part of the reason for the rapid expansion of the universe after the Big Bang 13.73 billion years ago. Example in the article given as a balloon inflating. On the 2-dimensional surface of the balloon, it is stretching in the inflation process. In 3-dimensional space, that action is propelling the galaxies away from one another.

If Dark Energy could be harness, then a future Warpship could manipulate the space-time surrounding it. Quoting the article directly, Dr. Obousy says that, "the extra dimensions as predicted by superstring theory could be shrunk and expanded by the warp drive through manipulation of local dark energy. At the front of the warpship space-time would be compressed, and it would expand behind.

His design for the Warpship was choosen to optimize the manipulation of dark energy (to create the spacetime bubble). However that bubble is created, time inside the craft would remain the same, but forward in the direction of travel, space-time would compressed, and to the rear of the ship, space-time would expand.

Dr. Obousy was concerned about some practical issues that would have to be overcome such as preventing the creation of artificial black holes, as well as a catastrophic warp bubble collapse when the power is switched off.

Four images were included with that article. The last one showed how the warpship would actually be "surfing" on a space-time wave to achieve its faster-than-light-speed travel.

Well, the ships in Star Trek looked better to me personally. But this thing that Dr Obousy has conceived in intriguing to me.

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REf. Discovery.com "Introducing The Warpship" image credits Richard Obousy Consulting and Alex Szames Antigravite. June 16, 2009.(http://dsc.discovery.com/space/slideshows/warpship/)