Declassified US defence documents reveal plans to develop real-life Star Trek-style warp drives to hunt for aliens. Newly released files include a 2010 report exploring warp drives, similar to those in the sci-fi series.
The report was produced under the Defense Intelligence Agency's Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP). It analyses whether faster-than-light travel is possible, which would allow astronauts to travel the Universe searching for extraterrestrial life.
How a warp drive would work
The study states: "The basic idea is to create an asymmetric bubble of space that is contracting in front of the spacecraft while expanding behind it.
"Using this form of locomotion, the spacecraft remains stationary inside this 'warp bubble' and the movement of space itself facilitates the relative motion of the spacecraft."
In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a mathematical framework for such a concept. However, creating the bubble appeared to require far more energy than humanity could produce.
The study's authors said a warp drive could theoretically be built, but with current energy access, the spacecraft would not lift off. "Garden snails can crawl faster than this," the author said.
Dark energy as a game-changer
The key would be harnessing dark energy, a little-understood force that expands the Universe. The defence paper examines how dark energy could be exploited to make a warp drive practical for space travel.
Katy Clough, of Queen Mary University of London, said the paper made theoretical sense but was unashamedly speculative. She said: "I had low expectations because using dark energy to build warp drives is a common crackpot notion. Once you start discussing warp drives you are well into the realm of bonkers and then it is more a question of the degree.
"There are so many practical objections to warp drives that I don't know where to start. If you just want one, travelling faster than light allows us to go places faster, which is great.
"But it also potentially means you could break causality and change the past, which probably isn't so great."
NASA's nuclear-powered alternative
Two years ago, NASA chiefs predicted a new nuclear-powered super rocket under development could use Star Trek tech to cut the journey time to Mars to just two months. They predicted the Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) would trigger a "whole new era in space exploration". It uses a fission-based nuclear power system that obtains energy from the controlled splitting of atoms to generate thrust.
The USS Enterprise in Star Trek used a similar nuclear fusion-based propulsion system. Space experts said the real-life rocket, under development by US firm Howe Industries, was far more efficient than any other deep space propulsion method.
Using current technology, it would take at least nine months to travel 140 million miles to Mars. NASA said the new rocket could cut a round trip to under six months, the average stay on the International Space Station.
The technology would also carry heavy payloads, allowing experts to install extra shields to protect the crew from galactic cosmic rays, harmful high-energy particles experienced during the journey.
Phase I of the rocket's development has been completed, including powering the engines. Experts are now understood to be working on optimising spacecraft design and performing proof-of-concept experiments. NASA said the rocket would bring them closer to establishing a permanent human base on the Red Planet. Until now, only robot rovers have visited on unmanned craft.
"The PPR enables a whole new era in space exploration," a NASA spokesman said. "The system's high efficiency allows for manned missions to Mars to be completed within a mere two months."
The new rocket would still not reach "warp speed". That term first appeared in the pilot episode of the original TV series in 1966, when a character stated the speed needed to reach planet Talos IV was "time warp factor seven". In a second pilot, "time" was dropped, with Captain James T Kirk ordering speeds in a simple "ahead warp factor one" instruction that became familiar from then on.
