Stephen Lanier

Fence

Jumping the Fence: The Alcubierre Drive’s Potential for Interstellar Exploration

By: Stephen Lanier

For as long as mankind has had the technology to explore space, we have known that our playground is fenced in. With current technologies, our radius of travel is limited probably to our solar system, definitely to our galaxy. Anything else is too far to feasibly travel in a lifetime, both for an individual and a species: the nearest star to our Sun is 75,000 years of propulsion away.

Even science fiction has a difficult time grappling with the dilemma. Most recently, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is confronted with the hurdle of getting humanity off earth, and [SPOILERS] they only accomplish that goal with the help of an unsourcable wormhole (don’t go for the science, go for McConaughey, Hathaway, and Chastain). Science fiction doesn’t even propose that we can achieve travel to other solar systems by ourselves.

But NASA has announced plans to work on that problem.

Travel between stars, also known as interstellarspace exploration, is most hindered by two things: slow travel speed and large fuel weight. Using traditional propulsion and rocketry, an interstellar vehicle would weigh more than any other spacecraft by several orders of magnitude at 54,000 metric tons (54,000 mt or 119,000,000 lbs), 92% of which would be fuel. In comparison, the International Space Station (ISS) and Voyager 1 Spacecraft weigh in at approximately 400 mt (882,000 lbs) and 0.722 mt (1,591 lbs) respectively. And as mentioned, the sun’s nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years away, equaling approximately 75,000 years of travel.

NASA’s proposal of an Alcubierre Drive, however, made possible by a famous equation solved by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, eliminates both the limitations of time and weight. The model of spacecraft used with an Alcubierre Drive would weigh approximately the same as the ISS and reach Proxima Centauri in only approximately 0.43 years of travel time.

The Alcubierre Drive does not overcome the obstacle of distance by achieving a velocity greater than the speed of light, per se, as traditional models of propulsion would require to quickly travel distances of light years. Instead, the drive works by contracting the space in front of itself and expanding the space behind.

Warp Zone

Locally, in the unwarped zone immediately surrounding the drive, the craft would not move faster than light, but because space is being “piled up” in front of the drive, it would cover the compacted distance in less time. The model then, technically, never exceeds a velocity of light, but pushes the space together in front of itself, creating an effect like faster than light velocity. If one were to look at the craft moving, it would appear to be moving fast forward.

[SPOILER] Interstellar’s explanation isn’t inadequate, but a little exaggerated. A piece of paper is folded almost in half, and a pencil is poked through to demonstrate how space can be warped to make a larger distance shorter. The warping effect of the Alcubierre drive isn’t unlike folding space. In fact, the space-trench-paper-fold resembles the first half of the Alcubierre model’s effect.

We’re a long way from making interstellar travel a reality, but for the first time in human history the prospect is not unfeasible.

 

Works Cited

White, H. G., and E. W. Davis. “The Alcubierre Warp Drive in Higher Dimensional Spacetime.” AIP Conference Proceedings 813.1 (2006): 1382-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2169323. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.

White, H. G. “Warp Field Mechanics 101.” NASA. n. d. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936.pdf. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.

Title Picture taken from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

writing in the natural sciences