A photo from open sources
James Aerospace Research Scientist James O’Donoghue (James O’Donoghue) assessed the capabilities of the starship with the so-called warp engine. This is a device that theoretically allow spacecraft to travel with superlight speeds. After the calculations, the scientist with bitterly admitted that on a galactic scale it’s too much slow.
O’Donoghue takes the fictional USS starship as an example Enterprise (from the Star Trek series), specifications which were taken as a basis for further calculations. Data characteristics were set out in 1991 by two scientific series consultants in a special guide.
The manual presents a scale of super speeds that determined by warp factors. A warp factor of 1 corresponds to speed of light. The upper limit at which the warp factor equals 99.99, the speed of light is exceeded 2140 times.
A spaceship moving at the speed of light will be 5 28 hours to get to Pluto, located at 5.9 billion kilometers from our star. To the star closest to us – Proxima This spaceship will get a centaur in 4 years and 3 months. However, with 5 warp factor (213 times the speed of light) USS Enterprise gets to Pluto in 1 minute 30 seconds, and to Proxima Centauri will be getting a week. At maximum warp factor flight to Pluto takes 10 seconds, and to Proxima Centauri is only 18 hours.
However, the scientist believes that on the scale of the Milky Way, even the most high warp speed will be too slow. For example, to fly from edge to edge of the Milky Way, a spaceship will need 96 years. Even if this spaceship moves with “transvarpovskoy” speed, exceeding the speed of light by 8323 times, then the disk of our galaxy will be crossed only after 24 years. For example, to the Andromeda galaxy, located at a distance of 2.4 million light-years, USS Enterprise will travel 300 years.
According to O’Donoghue, these findings are not optimistic, so how humanity is currently unable to reach the tenth fractions of a percent of the speed of light. All that scientists have is only theoretical calculations that indicate the possibility of creating superlight engine, however, how to create it is unknown.
Andrey Vetrov
Milky Way Galaxy Universe Pluto
