How It Works

How It Works – Issue 94, 2016 - your future in space

Your future in space: Where we’ll go when we leave Earth

Has NASA designed a warp drive?
by Gemma Lavender, 27 April 2015

We take a look at the answer to this intriguing question

NASA hasn’t designed a warp drive and is not looking to in the near future.

Asked by Jon Terrance

NASA has not designed a warp drive and it does not plan to in the future. In fact, the idea of a warp drive is still, in scientific terms, at a level of speculation rather than true science. The main issue with this technology is that nearly all of the scientific knowledge we have acquired suggests that faster-than-light travel is impossible.

One scientist, Miguel Alcubierre, suggested a model a for warp drive in 1994 that involved compressing space in front of the object, rather than making the object travel faster than the speed of light. However, subsequent calculations proved that a vessel would require negative mass in order for this to be possible!