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We could travel to new worlds in NASA's starship EnterpriseUS space agency commissions design for its first warp speed spaceship
By Rich McCormick on June 13, 2014 06:34 am Email 38COMMENTS
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NASA announced in 2012 that it was working to build a "warp drive" that could enable "faster-than-light" travel. Two years later and the space agency hasn't built a spaceship capable of such speeds yet — but thanks to artist Mark Rademaker, we now know what one could look like. The result is the IXS Enterprise, a ship that shares similarities with both its science fiction Star Treknamesake, and NASA's real-world space shuttle.
Rademaker worked together with NASA's Dr. Harold White to produce visual concepts for the craft. White and his team at NASA are hoping to make "faster-than-light" travel possible with Alcubierre drives. The drives, named for physicist Miguel Alcubierre, theoretically work by distorting space-time. By expanding the space behind a ship and contracting the space in front of it, the IXS Enterprise could drastically speed up our space travel potential, making the 4.3 light-year journey to Alpha Centauri in around two weeks.
Rademaker says he was influenced in the design for his Enterprise by Matt Jefferies' sci-fi artworks from the 1960s. But where famed aviation artist Jeffries, who helped create the spaceships of the Star Trek universe, imagined spindly craft with thin rings, the IXS Enterprise sits inside two circles chubby enough to power its Alcubierre drive. The spacecraft is fatter than most of Jefferies' sci-fi ships, too, capable of bearing four cylindrical pods on its flanks, and sporting a wide, flat, duck's bill of a command module. Speaking at the SpaceVision conference last year, Dr. White justified the design, saying that "if you're going to go to all the trouble of making it that big, you might as well fit all you can in there."
Until NASA announces a breakthrough in its research of Alcubierre drives and "faster-than-light" travel technology, Rademaker's concepts will remain only concepts. But his visualization of the IXS Enterprise still gives us a glimpse of the kinds of vehicles we'll hopefully one day be able to use to travel to strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations.
All images courtesy of Mark Rademaker.
Hint: Use the 's' and 'd' keys to navigate
 An Alcubierre drive is theoretically capable of warp speeds, but the travel time to our nearest neighbor is still two weeks. Any "faster-than-light" craft will need to be big enough to have room for staff and supplies to survive out beyond the edge of our solar system.
 Rademaker's images imagine the ship during its construction. His design is shown to be modular, with space for four pods on the side of the ship that could house living quarters, supplies, or — in keeping with the ship's name — a holodeck.
 The number of sponsors suggests NASA is expecting the commercial space travel sector to keep growing. Squint at the bottom right of the nameplate and you might see a familiar logo: Weyland-Yutani, the nefarious fictional megacorporation from the Alien movies.
 The body of the IXS Enterprise is suspended inside two large rings, a design decision that means the craft can sit safely inside the warp bubble generated by its Alcubierre drive. A good thing, too: any appendages that jutted outside would be subjected to unimaginable effects as the ship distorted space-time.
 The concept of a warp drive-enabled spaceship is still fanciful at this point in human development, but Rademaker's images blend elements of real-world tech with sci-fi suggestion. The Enterprise's side solar panels look like they've been borrowed from the International Space Station.and we wonder why NASA is renting the russian launchers to reach the ISS, they spend money on fantasy projects and fail to see the present.
they don’t even build a spaceplane and they are already talking about wrap drives…are you guys still sane(nasa staff). build a new space shuttle and we can talk again, otherwise sell this to michael bay fast and say thank you for the money.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 6:41 AM Reply
 greg.episcopo
No way. The space shuttle is and was a joke. Private business is the way to go for the time being. Also capitalism is gonna get us to the Moon and Mars far faster than government setups because more than half of the populace of the world seems to have no clue how science and long term thinking works. You have to depend on corporations and people’s lust and greed to get out there it seems.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 6:54 AM Reply
freesets
i realised that even more after i saw this post images….NASA have totally lost it. in 100 years when it will be feasible to have something similar we will look at those pictures like we look at those 1900 city of the future posters:
im sure they will provide a good insight laugh, because the real ship will look nothing like those pics
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:06 AM Reply
heather “hhrosa4” rasso
Sweet pics
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:17 AM Reply
 doc_eigen
Those are great! And look, 1999 and the Twin Towers are still up!… that’s accuracy for you.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:11 AM Reply
 Simon Stewart
Does that mean that people should not bother?
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:24 AM Reply
 dicobalt
Fantasy it’s not. Actual experiments are encouraging so far. Certain power limitations of the Alcubierre drive have already been solved.
youtube.com
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:21 AM Reply
greg.episcopo
You are what we call a dreamer who is a bit… naieve and unrealistic. You only factor in science and science alone when such factors as society, government, and people’s apathy and ignorance play a significant factor in whether things get funding or hype.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:26 AM Reply
dicobalt
Put it this way, if rockets are the only solution then we have no solution.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:49 AM Reply
markos.pena
You sir, know nothing about space travel. <-NASA staff here
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:48 AM Reply
birdsflysouth
Well he can’t put people into space. NASA can’t put people into space. I fail to see the distinction.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:12 AM Reply
markos.pena
You sir, know nothing about space travel. nasa staff here
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:49 AM Reply
 Fauxton
wrap drives
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:11 AM Reply
kretonime
Let’s do this.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 6:50 AM Reply
greg.episcopo
Is a bridge window actually necessary and practical to have on a space-faring ship like this? Doesn’t that pose a greater threat to the safety of the ship due to debris and what-not? It’s a nice design and all, but everyone reading this article and marveling at the concept art will most likely be dead in the ground before such a thing is truly made and used. We are still in the nascent stages of space exploration, and it will take a century to finally start to venture out to the outer planets of this solar system alone with humans on board a ship.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 6:52 AM Reply
doc_eigen
Once you take away viewports, you take away the romanticism of the effort and romanticism is what the public, who will have to fund this thing, eat up. That was played up in the movie, ‘The Right Stuff’, and it’s true. In actuality, humans don’t even have to go to space, we can continue to send robots and everyone can sit at home wearing an Oculus Rift and be ‘involved’..
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:08 AM Reply
 Adrian Holland
Also by the time this is possible we’ll have Gorilla 45 glass, stronger than carbon.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:21 AM Reply
sobu
This is more likely
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 6:55 AM Reply
freesets
they failed to even build that:
even with europe help.
i will say, back to the Apollo era capsule at best.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:11 AM Reply
Adrian Holland
He meant it being build in 2086…it’s the same ship..IXS Enterprise from the post.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:10 AM Reply
dicobalt
This is what NASA should be working on. Developing the core physics and technology knowledge to create spacecraft that are capable of true spaceflight. Rockets aren’t a reasonable solution beyond Earth orbit.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:19 AM Reply
challengeaccepted
What’s up with that one logo being blurred out in the first couple of pictures?
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:24 AM Reply
anthonyrinaldi
It’s the NASA logo. These probably came off his site, and since they commissioned him to do the work, he might not be able to use it for personal gain. Just an educated guess…
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:37 AM Reply
DrDenim
NASA being a government agency I think anyone can use the logo? Since we all paid for it..
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:25 AM Reply
 Luscofuco
These days NASA is just like …..hustling man!!….few days back some of the came out saying unequivocally about millions of planets in our Galaxy with life in them…and how they were going to find them…..if they get their moneys……in the end it is but money….nothing else.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:43 AM Reply
Droppo
I seem to recall a few scientific theories that state that we cannot travel faster than light speed. Did something change? Or is that why they haven’t been able to design one yet? Nice drawings though.. They would fit in nicely in the science fiction section of the book store.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:44 AM Reply
DERSS
The theory behind this warp drive is that Einsteinian gravity field can stretch and compress faster than light.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:53 AM Reply
doc_eigen
No, the curve of the distortion is not a faster than light transition… the graphics likes to show the compression as very tight, almost the size of the ship itself, but in reality, the distortion may be a light year in size, so you can see from that… the transition would be so slow that the speed of light is never exceeded.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:04 AM Reply
Adrian Holland
Theories change on a yearly basis.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:13 AM Reply
 OneBagTravel
Makes me wonder where we’d be if we funded NASA like we did in the Cold War over the years.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 7:56 AM Reply
asendra
No need for that much contribution from only one country. A collaboration between, US, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Brasil, etc would provide enough funding without putting too much pressure in any given country.
There just need to bee an important and big enough common goal, or incentive.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:13 AM Reply
birdsflysouth
Manned space exploration has no return on investment. No habitable place is within our reach, or even discovered yet. We know there aren’t any in our solar system.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:15 AM Reply
doc_eigen
In order to be funded to ANY degree, ‘people’ must believe in the possibility. So, even a fantasy can fuel that appitite to go to the stars, and these CGI pics are just the ticket, so accurate or not, cost effective or not, realistic or not, … I applaud them. Listen folks… without these, Dancing with the Stars… wins!
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:00 AM Reply
Adrian Holland
When years ago they had the idea of dropping a minivan on Mars by lowering it with cables from a hovering shuttle…
People said SURE!
Anything we can imagine as possible is possible.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:16 AM Reply
taita25
What I want to know is how they are going to avoid obstacles at that speed. It’s all well and good to be able to travel fast but that first asteroid they hit before they even see it is going to really ruin someones day.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:16 AM Reply
Adrian Holland
Debris will be scattered over lightyears.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:18 AM Reply
taita25
I’m sure they could plot a course to avoid major obstacles and minor ones would be few and far between in open space but there in lies the problem. It’s a major assumption to just say you won’t hit anything when traveling at that speed for two weeks. And at that speed a pea sized object would obliterate this ship.
Posted on Jun 13, 2014 | 8:25 AM Reply
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