I've never considered subluminal warp drives, but it'd be really exciting if we can create warp drives that are some healthy fraction of c.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
Why would removing this be a benefit? It means when you arrive at your destination you are older than you would have been if you had the normal time dilation, and if you head back, the people will have aged just as much in your round trip as normal, the only difference is that you’ve also aged as much as they have.
Right?
If you have a non-accelerating subliminal warp bubble, and you shift to a frame of reference where it is not moving, then wouldn’t you just get a region where time moves more quickly? Or.. ?
Either what I said is completely wrong, or this is completely wrong. I think it is the latter.
You experiencing time dilation doesn’t make it so when you get to your destination, people have aged more. It makes it so you have aged less. If the round trip takes 2 years from the perspective of an external stationary observer, because it is a round trip of like, 0.9 light years in both directions, Then by the time you get back, people have aged 2 years. Removing the time dilation in the ship just makes is so the people on the ship also aged 2 years instead of less than that.
That’s not really helpful.
Unless you can go faster than c, you can’t go 50 light years away and come back to people having aged less than 100 years. If you did, you would have gone faster than c. Basically by definition of speed?
If you go to Europa and then head back, Joe here on earth will have aged the same amount by the time you get back. The only difference is whether you aged the same amount as Joe, or less than Joe did.
The warp bubble doesn’t make you miss any more of Joe’s life. It just changes what ages you are when you experience the parts of Joe’s life that you do. (Specifically, warp bubble makes you age more quickly, same rate as Joe)
To me this seems like the logical next step after using chemical rockets to populate a moonbase. Plop some big lasers on the moon and use them to push things really fast. No weird physics needed, just improvements on what we already have.