[Captain Tom Coughlin]

That is just a bunch of nonsense. You can't bull**** a bull****ter Saquist.

I think you watch too much Sci Fi.

Yes, we know that theoretically space can stretch faster than the speed of light. We have no idea how to do it. None.

The truth of the matter is, as of today we don't even know if FTL travel is even possible. The smart money would be on no. And if it is, it's a long, long way off.

[Commodore]

Originally Posted by Saquist

In Trek it's not exactly aerodynamics. Apparently it's Temporal-dynamics which makes some sense as we're dealing with the contraction and expansion of space time and a ship's movement through it.

Call it what you will, but it's ultimately the same thing if it means the more streamlined the object, the easier it can move through a medium.

But ultimately a field is a field. We've never encountered another type of energy but that generated by the electromagnetic Force. Trek has illustrated ships as magnetic dipoles which is the reason they really need two nacelles.

Ultimately, yes, the shape of the ship shapes the field which interns decideds how easily the ship passes through space time....makes sense but the true unknown is what if any stresses space time would put on a FTL ship.

Nice speculation, I guess, but we don't even know if FTL is possible, much less if it employs any kind of field at all. The shape of a vessel may be totally irrelevant and a moot point.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

That is just a bunch of nonsense. You can't bull**** a bull****ter Saquist.

I think you watch too much Sci Fi.

Yes, we know that theoretically space can stretch faster than the speed of light. We have no idea how to do it. None.

The truth of the matter is, as of today we don't even know if FTL travel is even possible. The smart money would be on no. And if it is, it's a long, long way off.

Yep, big difference between theoretically possible and practically feasible. Just because some guys have written a few papers on it doesn't imply that it is around the corner.

We wouldn't need warp drive to travel through space, we could simply build a ship with a kick-a*s engine that accelerated to .99c and due to time dilation we could travel relatively fast. Sure, we'd be a museum ship, a messenger from the past but still we could travel far away.
Sounds nice but first we'd need that kick-a*s engine, that computer which could navigate the ship through space as our reactions would probably be too slow due to time dilation and so on. I guess the practical problems of a warp drive would be far larger, thus making it virtually impossible.

[martok2112]

Originally Posted by Saquist

A Caveman wouldn't know the concept of air flow to generate lift.

Wow! The world's just ganging up on me!

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by Commodore

Call it what you will, but it's ultimately the same thing if it means the more streamlined the object, the easier it can move through a medium.

The biggest difference would be an ultra streamlined design would be extremely unstable because EM field lines break or weaken around sharp corners. While the most stable field occurs around a sphere. And you can see that concept played with the Daedalus Class ship which means that that needed the most stable shape because power production could not stabilize the field as effectively.

Nice speculation, I guess, but we don't even know if FTL is possible, much less if it employs any kind of field at all. The shape of a vessel may be totally irrelevant and a moot point.

If it's a gravitational field it won't matter at all.
If's it's electromagnetic it will matter.

Star Trek supposes that the subspace field is a blend of the two.
Modern theories on Dark and Negative energy that would be used to produce these fields from exotic matter seem to suggest this is PURELY a gravitational force. If it were linked to an EM source we would have detect this sort of phenomenon from Earth by now.

If current human societies were constantly advancing in the Space Program ...researching as well as testing I'd say this would be almost right around the corner. Some of the missing elements seems to just be motivation. Humanity has alot of great ideas but none of them have been implemented. (Right around the corner meaning the next century)

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

I highly doubt that these breakthroughs are right around the corner. The reason it's called dark energy in the first place is that they have no idea what it really is, they have theories. Competing theories at that.

[Commodore]

Originally Posted by Saquist

The biggest difference would be an ultra streamlined design would be extremely unstable because EM field lines break or weaken around sharp corners. While the most stable field occurs around a sphere. And you can see that concept played with the Daedalus Class ship which means that that needed the most stable shape because power production could not stabilize the field as effectively.

(Shrug)
Same song, different cover version.

If it's a gravitational field it won't matter at all.
If's it's electromagnetic it will matter.

Star Trek supposes that the subspace field is a blend of the two.
Modern theories on Dark and Negative energy that would be used to produce these fields from exotic matter seem to suggest this is PURELY a gravitational force. If it were linked to an EM source we would have detect this sort of phenomenon from Earth by now.

If current human societies were constantly advancing in the Space Program ...researching as well as testing I'd say this would be almost right around the corner. Some of the missing elements seems to just be motivation. Humanity has alot of great ideas but none of them have been implemented. (Right around the corner meaning the next century)

All of this, of course, could be rendered totally moot if a true FTL drive doesn't work this way or is just flatout impossible.

[DNA-1842]

If you wanted to generate a field the best ship shape would be a sphere. Not a Dædalus class ship, but an actual spere, nothing sticking out. No streamlining, no nothing. Best volume to surface ratio too. Anything else is just æsthetics, and the opportunity and technological sufficiency to allow structures that are first of all ungainly, and then later more streamlined.

Assuming of course that you need a field generated in the same fashion that an EM field would take after.

[omegaman]

Forget ships. The only way were going to get to other planets in another solar system in our own galaxy is with a kick a*s*s transporter powered by an immense power source like the Sun.

[DNA-1842]

Originally Posted by omegaman

Forget ships. The only way were going to get other planets in another solar system in own own galaxy is with a kick a*s*s transporter powered by an immense power source like the Sun.

Collapse the Sun into a black hole and use it to power dimensionally transcendental things that travel through time and space.