In het artikel
The Warp Drive Could Become Science Fact wordt gesuggereerd dat sneller reizen dan dat licht door een "normale vacuüm ruimte" gaat misschien toch mogelijk is. En dat niet alleen, maar ook dat de daarvoor benodigde energie mogelijk ooit binnen praktisch realistisch bereik zou kunnen komen te liggen, hoewel zelfs de massa-energie van Voyager 1 uiteraard nog steeds erg groot is. Volgens
de gegevens van de Nasa over Voyager 1 is de massa van Voyager 1 gelijk aan 815 kg. Dit is gelijk aan een energie van 815 maal het kwadraat van 300 miljoen joules = 73,35 exajoules (exa is 10 tot de macht 18). Ter vergelijking: volgens
deze bron was de totale wereldwijde energieconsumptie over heel 2008 gelijk aan 474 exajoules.
A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel -- a concept popularized in television's Star Trek -- may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.
A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.
Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially bringing the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.
"Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light."
With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.
The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.
But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.