[omegaman]

When do you think it will be developed and how will it operate?

[jerhanner]

When? Perhaps in my grandkid's lifetime.

How? I don't think it will be based on big engines. I think it will have to do with bending gravity - kind of like the tesseract.

[Livingston]

I don't know, that's tough. We've had an explosion of technology in the last century compared to the few before. Just imaging placing someone from 1900 into 2000, I'd say they'd have a much more difficult time adjusting than someone from 1800 being placed in 1900. My point is that once you reach a certain level it seems technological jumps happen exponentially, look at a computer of 1980 compared to present day computers or ones just a few years ago. If the same pattern holds this century would bring great leaps in technology, but would it be enough to develop a star drive, interstellar travel? Who knows.

How ever it operates it would take a huge amount of power I'd imagine. I remember in a TNG episode they said the Romulans use a quantum singularity for their power source. The Federation use antimatter, incredibly powerful interactions. My guess would be that if something like warp drive is possible, then it'd be easier than wormholes, or folding space, if you could just manipulate space like a warp engine does, constricting the space in front of the ship and expanding it behind, then it wouldn't require as much power as creating a wormhole or folding space like in Dune, cause you wouldn't be manipulating space as much. Most practically I suppose something that would take generations to arrive at it's destination would be the best. Ion propulsion, some sort of nuclear fusion, something that can produce that sort of power. I suppose that is not as theoretical as warping or manipulating space. Anyway I'm not sure.

Like the signature by the way. Been awhile since I've been to Keb!

[MrQ1701]

I hope to see some sort of interstellar travel possible before the end of my lifetime. I don't think manned interstellar travel will be possible by then, but maybe probes will be able to handle the immense strain. I have no idea what type of propulsion will be available, but warp drive has always facinated me because it seems so plausible.

[MissionTrek08]

My guess would be that we won't develop true interstellar drive until we at least create and use interplanetary drive to establish our presence throughout the solar system.

I think it's a matter of steps: the first being the technology to create a feasible starship which can sustain interplanetary travel, protect passengers/crew and operate safely and reliably; the second step being advances in the technology arising from interplanetary missions leading to new tools, techniques and theories which could advance us to interstellar travel.

Watching "When We Left Earth" confirms (to me, anyway) that the progress of our space program and ambitions is a rather plodding but necessary string of achievements and advances. This would seem to relate beyond NASA to hold true through human exploration of the past as well: when Europeans landed on the "New World", their next step was not to colonize the California coast.

Make first dangerous steps, establish a tenuous foothold at a milestone, build up to comfort reaching that outpost for supplies, then take a next step, then another. Even the boldest steps and developments from the Apollo program "only" led to the Shuttle missions, which lead (eventually) to a busy space station... to help us get back to the Moon... and eventually Mars... then....

All with LONG gaps of development inbetween each giant step.

[Zardoz]

I hope humankind lasts that long....

[FanWriter45]

Ion drive already exists.

We could build a nuke pulse drive within a couple of years.

If you are thinking about "warp drive"... several thousand years, if ever.

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by FanWriter45

Ion drive already exists.

We could build a nuke pulse drive within a couple of years.

If you are thinking about "warp drive"... several thousand years, if ever.

Hmm I would say more like hundreds at current technological leaps.

[Commodore]

I think that we'll definitely have something very similar to Star Trek one day, but it'll be confined to our own star system though. With "impulse ships," we'll be able to rapidly cross the Sol System to explore and establish permanent settlements on Mars, some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and construct lots of space stations from here to Pluto (or wherever the Sol System ends now).

Faster than light, travel? Eh...I wouldn't hold my breath for it. We still have to prove that it's possible, because for all intents and purposes we'd either be converted to pure energy at the FTL threshold or spend eternity stuck at 0.999999999999+c because time would pretty much crawl to a stop aboard a spacecraft at that point.

Science fiction definitely makes a lot of us hope that we can have something like warp drive in a very feasible amount of time, but most ideas about FTL travel involve changing the very fabric of reality or bending the laws of the physical universe to our whim. Who needs God once we're able to do that?

Uh-oh...probably shouldn't have said that...

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by Commodore

I think that we'll definitely have something very similar to Star Trek one day, but it'll be confined to our own star system though. With "impulse ships," we'll be able to rapidly cross the Sol System to explore and establish permanent settlements on Mars, some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and construct lots of space stations from here to Pluto (or wherever the Sol System ends now).

Faster than light, travel? Eh...I wouldn't hold my breath for it. We still have to prove that it's possible, because for all intents and purposes we'd either be converted to pure energy at the FTL threshold or spend eternity stuck at 0.999999999999+c because time would pretty much crawl to a stop aboard a spacecraft at that point.

Science fiction definitely makes a lot of us hope that we can have something like warp drive in a very feasible amount of time, but most ideas about FTL travel involve changing the very fabric of reality or bending the laws of the physical universe to our whim. Who needs God once we're able to do that?

Uh-oh...probably shouldn't have said that...

But, as you said, we haven't prooved it impossible yet.