Ok so if everyone remembers reading about the EmDrive since 2015 that it uses electromagnetisism or microwaves and some other propulsion system to achieve warp drive speeds, then about like four months ago I think they said something is not right, now a peer review by a scientist was done and is now going to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

There were a few results done by a few universities and other technology facilities that did tests on it in 2015 and in 2016 like one in Texas if I remember correctly that said it has promising results.

The other thing is NASA just turned off a ion engine that was running for like five years if I remember that correctly as well.

Then there are plans for NASA to get funded money for Research and Development (R&D) for warp drives by 2050 after 2018 or so after the launch of SLS or whatever it's named.

I don't know much about Aerospace engineering and physics, but passing peer review like from Dresden and Eaglelabs is huge, HUGE news.

We are also on the verge of achieving fission and fusion.

Germany successfully turned on a fusion nuclear power reactor a few months ago.

I think before 2050 we will finally achieve faster than light speed travel in space or close to it? We will be able to travel to the next solar system by us in a matter of months or maybe even like around two years or so.

I usually don't talk about stuff like this I usually talk about video games, but this has gotten me extremely interested.

We even detected gravitational waves this year for the one hundredth anniversary of Albert Einstein's theory, which turned out to be true.

Here's the article with all of the information about it.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-nasa-eagleworks-paper-has-finally-passed-peer-review-says-scientist-know-1578716

What are people's thoughts on this?

All I can say is this defies our current understanding of physics.

Whose excited to see more of this space propulsion technology get advanced in the next twenty years?

We achieved fission in 1945.

I think I meant fusion.

A little bit too excited when I read the article and some NASA stuff.

I think I have a few more mess ups in there possibly.

Creating engines that can accelerate a craft to faster-than-light speeds is just step 1, though. We can't just slap such an engine onto a ship, put people in it, and send it on its way for the same reasons that you can't send your dog to the veterinarian by putting it inside a steel barrel and shooting it there with a cannon. I could maybe see unmanned FTL missions by 2050, but I'm skeptical about manned trips. We'd still have to figure out how to protect humans from intense radiation, collisions with asteroids and space debris, and from being squished into paste by rapid changes in inertia, just to name a few...not to mention how we'd keep the ship from being damaged by those things. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like propulsion is just the first of many problems to solve.

Yeah we are going to have to have some people who are brave enough to be astronauts to test new technologies and develop new technologies for them to have in their spaceships so they don't die or something.

Like how we made airplanes have pressurized cabins.

Safety technologies like that for the spaceships we will have to develop and test right?

I would hope so! I mean, unless we want to ask for volunteers and have them sign a "you're probably going to die soon, m'kay" waiver like they're getting those Mars One loonies to sign.

But think of the fuel you'll save taking your pet to the vet like that .

I do agree even IF the first FTL engine is made there still needs to be extensive testing with UAV drones/ probes and maybe some experiments on chips (this is going to go over well with PETA but it has to be done in the name of science) on FTL travel before we make ships with warp engines for human. It's nice to know that the first steps are there though .

I think with Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) of robots advancing a lot every year.

We should make robots with cameras or somehow get live film of them in a spaceship traveling faster than the speed of light to see what happens to them.

Because we have no idea what faster than light travel will do to a human being.

Interestingly enough they say that by 2050 or 2100 Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) should be smart enough to also do some tasks on their own like self aware aloneness.

I'm a doctor Jim, not a bullet.

you have pretty much summed it up Softnerd..

its not quite the same thing.. Airplanes still travel at a speed where inertia isn't that much of an issue.. in FTL speeds, the inertia alone would result in death from so many causes near simultaneous.. we then run into the issue where a single glitch in the system would be far more dangerous then it is now (these days most astronauts are trained in basic computer maintenance and repair incase something goes wrong.. actually, the computers on the ISS atm are still on running on XP believe it or not, they have the manually reset them all each morning so garbage data buildup doesn't cause a crash wrecking their air purification or something)..


i'd say we still have over a hundred years at least before a manned FTL mission would be conceivable.. unless we find some ruins on mars with alien tech to reverse engineer, but in that case we better start preparing for the reapers

I have to ask this, but since this technology now defies our understanding of physics.

Can there be more physics of how our universe works and that with technologies like this and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN detecting new particles?

Is it possible we are on the verge soon to find out what dark matter is?


Could the black hole theory from the Interstellar movie be real that stuff doesn't get ripped to shreds, but it actually travels back in time or to another universe?


Could we be a simulation in real life like the Matrix movies?


I'm beginning to believe everything we know we actually don't know.

Do you think it's possible for medical science to find out how to make human beings or any living things like animals and plants to live forever?


We do know ageing is a disease. We do know that our cells replicating so much as we get older wears out to the point where we lose pigmentation in our hair that it goes grey or white and lose our elasticity in skin.

I probably won't be alive twenty years from now, but if medical science discovers how to cure ageing and extend our lives so we can live to 150 years old or 500 years old or forever.

I'm wondering it has to be possible, we need to keep studying how life ages.

I believe that in science and technology there's limitless possibilities you just have to make it happen even if you have to work with other people to accomplish that goal.

When you talk about inertia being a problem in this context, precisely what do you mean? I would assume you're talking about the physical stresses of acceleration ('g-force', which can turn people into puddles if it's substantial enough), but "Airplanes still travel at a speed..." seems to contradict that assumption -- as far as I'm aware, speed is irrelevant to g-force (which is a matter of the rate of change in velocity).

I've only a very shallow, general knowledge of physics, so I'd appreciate that gap being filled .

2050. It's a shame I won't be here. It's not the dying part that bums me out, it's the me not being able to see these events happen. Can you imagine being the astronaut that sees another solar system before anyone else?

It would be like Hanno seeing gorillas.

I'm really excited about this. All through history, people have have said things were impossible, only to have been proven wrong.

G-forces happen during acceleration and decleration, not an issue with warp drive, as the ship travels with conventional speeds trough warped space.
Not faster than light, but cheating past the speedlimit

But where are you going to get the energy to to run such drive? Even fusion reactors, if that ever works, won't solve that issue, the energy requirements are... well, astronomical

Dark matter might be the next step.

We are on the verge of discovering what it is.

No, we're not.

Once we get this warp drive we could possibly be. Or the tests done at CERN.

We've done fusion too, in 1952. It was just the weakest form we could. Hydrogen bombs blend two hydrogen nuclei together, hydrogen being the smallest element.


Weak sauce.


Well, they're uber-powerful bombs, for sure, but... They could be even stronger.


It would be like bringing the Sun to the Earth.


I don't really envy the day this becomes commonplace.

Something about the fusion reactor that Germany put online this year made it stronger than ever before.

If what I read correctly and that it will last longer than regular nuclear powered power plants.

It's tough stuff, especially if they can solve the heating problem. *pulls at collar* Things get a little hot in there.

There we go that's the problem they say they solved.

The heating problem.

Thank you very much for bringing it up so I can remember.

That reminds me of something I meant to point out in my previous post: As far as I can see, the Emdrive has nothing to do with 'warp'; all it does is provide thrust. It may be a great leap forward in terms of propulsion, but it dun warp nuffink and is still afflicted by many of the downsides of conventional space travel... because it is just a (potential) new tool for conventional space travel.

Nah mate, unobtianium is key -- once we figure out how to make it, we'll finally have something light enough, non-reactive, strong enough, radiation-blocking enough, and a perfect reagent for refining all sorts of potential energy sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOoFkwj91pk

I'm fairly sure actually traveling at the speed of light is impossible for anything containing matter as you have to be energy to travel that fast. Not to mention the amount of energy needed to propel matter increases exponentially with increased mass. Traveling faster than the speed of light is pure science fiction. What you guys are probably discussing is using electromagnetism to bend space time around a craft to bypass the laws of relativity. Your not actually traveling faster than light, your just taking a shortcut around that pesky limitation.

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-spherical-tokamak-fusion-energy.html

Apparently the original design for the electromagnetic field apparatus was doughnut shaped but new R&D has recently discovered a more efficient method may be in changing the shape to more of a "bottle" shape. While there is still A LOT of testing to be done before its actually fired up things do look promising.