All that would be required is to distort the fabric of space-time into a bubble surrounding a spaceship. In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre proposed moving not a spaceship, but space itself, faster than light. The cruiser travels to the star Altair, 16.7 light-years from Earth, in 378 days. The technology and style of ' Star Trek' was influenced by the 1955 film 'Forbidden Planet.' United Planets Cruiser C-57D (above) used its quanto-gravitic hyperdrive to greatly surpass the speed of light. 'Doc' Smith describes a spaceship traveling at a speed 'thousands of times greater than that of light' in his novel 'Skylark of Space,' written between 19 and serialized in 'Amazing Stories' magazine in 1928.

USS Enterprise Evolution in Photos (Gallery) Under the new scale, a starship could get from Earth to Alpha CentauriВ in about 37 hours at warp factor 8. By the era of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' the warp speed scale was recalibrated.

In reality, the script writers arbitrarily allowed the EnterpriseВ to get to wherever it was going, as fast as was convenient for storytelling. Warp factor 8 equals the cube of 8 (8 times 8 times 8), or 512 times light speed.Д®ven this velocity is too slow to allow starships to travel as quickly as they appear to on TV. The crew of the Enterprise measures velocity in warp factors.

Why do voyagers nacelles move