White (of NASA) reported in 2013 with a short review of the Alcubierre warp drive metric and described how the phenomenon might work based on the original paper. The canonical form of the metric was developed, which provided key insight into the field potential and boost for the field which remedied a critical paradox in the original Alcubierre concept of operations. A modified concept of operations based on the canonical form of the metric that remedies the paradox is presented and discussed. The idea of a warp drive in higher dimensional space-time (manifold) will then be briefly considered by comparing the null-like geodesics of the Alcubierre metric to the Chung-Freese metric to illustrate the mathematical role of hyperspace coordinates.
The net effect of using a warp drive “technology” coupled with conventional propulsion systems on an exploration mission will be discussed using the nomenclature of early mission planning. Finally, an overview of the warp field interferometer test bed being implemented in the Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory: Eagleworks (APPL:E) at the Johnson Space Center was detailed. While warp field mechanics has not had a “Chicago Pile” moment, the tools necessary to detect a modest instance of the phenomenon are near at hand.
Introduction
How hard is interstellar flight without some form of a warp drive? Consider the Voyager 1 spacecraft, a small 0.722 mT spacecraft launched in 1977, it is currently out at ~116 Astronomical Units (AU) after 33 years of flight with a cruise speed of 3.6 AU per year. This is the highest energy craft ever launched by mankind to date, yet it will take ~75000 years to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star at 4.3 light years away in our neighboring trinary system, Alpha Centauri.
Recent informal mission trades have been assessing the capabilities of emerging high power EP systems coupled to light nuclear reactors to accomplish the reference Thousand Astronomical Units (TAU) [2] mission in ~15 years. Rough calculations suggest that such a Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) robotic mission would pass Voyager 1 in just a few years on its way to reaching 1000 AU in 15 years. While this is a handy improvement over Voyager 1 statistics - almost 2 orders of magnitude, this speedy robotic craft would still take thousands of years to cross the black ocean to Proxima Centauri. Clearly interstellar flight will not be an easy endeavor.
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