The fact that Alcubierre was inspired by Star Trek to come up with something (theoretically) workable does not mean that the warp drive as originally conceived was somehow “grounded in physics.” At the end of the day, the similarities are pretty superficial.
I’ll go ahead and concede my point. I haven’t watched enough original Star Trek and definitely dont have enough knowledge in physics to argue this further. My understanding was that the warp drive was kept just vague enough to be argued to be theoretically possible. But honestly, I’m not a physicist, so I am probably missing something obvious.
In the original Star Trek, that Alcubierre was inspired by, it wasn’t explained at all. You just had warp engines and impulse engines. Warp engines made it so the ship could go at warp speed, but go too fast, and they could come off the ship, or the ship would explode.
It was later series that tried to have an explanation for how they worked.
Although I don’t think the writers cared particularly much for whether they were theoretically possible or not, anyway. They work through subspace, and that doesn’t exist in reality, so a lot of oddities could just be brushed under that.
That’s circular reasoning, though.
The fact that Alcubierre was inspired by Star Trek to come up with something (theoretically) workable does not mean that the warp drive as originally conceived was somehow “grounded in physics.” At the end of the day, the similarities are pretty superficial.
I’ll go ahead and concede my point. I haven’t watched enough original Star Trek and definitely dont have enough knowledge in physics to argue this further. My understanding was that the warp drive was kept just vague enough to be argued to be theoretically possible. But honestly, I’m not a physicist, so I am probably missing something obvious.
In the original Star Trek, that Alcubierre was inspired by, it wasn’t explained at all. You just had warp engines and impulse engines. Warp engines made it so the ship could go at warp speed, but go too fast, and they could come off the ship, or the ship would explode.
It was later series that tried to have an explanation for how they worked.
Although I don’t think the writers cared particularly much for whether they were theoretically possible or not, anyway. They work through subspace, and that doesn’t exist in reality, so a lot of oddities could just be brushed under that.