Warp Speed (3 page)

The flight attendant helped me with my overhead bag and I headed for a very crowded rental car counter. Thank God for all the air miles I had that made me a gold medallion customer, which enabled me to go to the front of the line. Then I had to catch a shuttle from the rental car desk to the rental car parking lot.

The trip to the hotel was typical. I took Interstate Ninety-five down to Highway One. The "Parkway" was bumper-to-bumper and it took thirty minutes to get off One and onto the Greenbelt where my hotel was. By the time I got checked in to the hotel I was beat. I tried to rehearse my view graphs, but after about three of them I said, "screw it" and went to bed.

The alarm clock scared the living daylights out of me! I was so tired I don't even remember dreaming. I hate nights like that. Since I sleep on my back, I tried to raise myself sit-up style; nothing doing! My ribs still were causing me a lot of pain. I broke my hand once when I was a teenager. It seemed to take about a week before the really big pain subsided to a dull ache. I still get a dull ache in it just before it rains and it's been over twenty-three years. It must have something to do with the low-pressure systems usually accompanied by rain. I've asked physicians about that before. They always laugh and say it's in my head. There's enough crazy stuff in my head. Why would I put that in there too? Stupid alchemists.

Anyway, I had to tuck my left hand over my ribs and hold myself tightly. Then I rolled over counterclockwise and sort of fell out of bed. Getting shaved, showered, and dressed was just as tough, and I said many bad words that my great aunt Meg would've been proud of.

The "Breakthrough Physics Propulsion" Workshop or BPP Workshop was held in an auditorium-sized room. The start of the meeting was fairly standard for a technical conference. The director of the conference said a few words and corrected a few scheduling mistakes. One in particular caught my attention.

"Our guest speaker and new director of the BPP, Colonel Tabitha Ames has requested to be moved from first speaker this morning to last. So, make a note of that. Let's get started then. This change makes the first speaker this morning Dr. Anson Clemons from Metric Engineering Inc. Dr. Clemons is also a faculty member of the Physics Department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and he is a member of the National Space Science and Technology Center or NSSTC as it has come to be known. Dr. Clemons."

It was a damn good thing I wasn't late. I slowly moved up to the front of the auditorium and handed a CD with my slideshow to the audio/visual person. I fiddled around with the clip-on microphone for a minute or so, then got comfortable with the slideshow remote/laser pointer. Clearing my throat, I began.

"Hello, I'm Anson Clemons as you were just told, and I plan to talk to you today about the status of spacetime metric engineering and how close we're to demonstrating faster-than-light space travel. Of course, everybody realizes that we can't go faster than the speed of light in the vacuum, but as Miguel Alcubierre showed us in 1994 it is possible to effectively create a region of spacetime that's 'warped' in such a way that the vacuum speed of light is increased tremendously. So, instead of the vacuum speed of light being one, assume it can be increased to one thousand. This means that a spacecraft could possibly travel at hundreds of times faster than the vacuum speed of light and never notice any Special Relativistic effects: no time dilation, spacetime contraction, nothing.

"Alcubierre himself stated up front in the abstract of that wonderful 1994 paper in
Classical and Quantum Gravity
that in order to accomplish this 'warp bubble' that a tremendous amount of exotic matter would be required. Of course, we all know that the exotic matter implies negative energy and the number of papers supporting, opposing, or correcting the Alcubierre warp theory absolutely snowballed over the next decade. I know that many of us here in this room are guilty of writing several of them." I gave a quick guilty smile and harrumphed in response to the chuckles coming from the audience, and then I added, "On a more personal note, it was one of these papers that inadvertently caused me to leave NASA and start my own company.

"This was the theoretical paper that showed up at the BPP Workshop in '07 on the possibility of using a very large static electric field on oppositely rotating conductor plates to cause a gravity-shielding effect. This paper was at first dismissed as the old Podkletnov spinning superconductor effect shown in the late nineties. It turned out to actually be a correction to the General Relativity. Where General Relativity must be gauged, using the Dirac type
zytterbewegung
oscillations as the reference frame thus yields an ungauged General Relativity! This was first reported by Maker in 2000. Then it was more precisely described in the '07 paper. Discovering this, I immediately gathered up as many grad students as I could find and started my own research effort to measure this effect.

"Thanks to funding from the BPP and almost three years of hard work, we at Metric Engineering can say that the experiment not only works, but we have observed electrons moving at near the speed of light simply disappear after passing between the spinning plates. We have no idea where they went!"

I paused at this point to see what type of reaction I'd get. Claims have been so strange in the past BPP Workshops that most folks wait until all the data is displayed before they decide whether or not you're a nut. Well, I'm not a nut, and most of the people in the room knew that I was a careful scientist. I don't make cold fusion claims or yell that the sky is falling unless it really is. But nobody is perfect and I'd been wrong in the past. That is part of science; you can't be right all the time.

The talk continued for some time with a lot of graphs from data and some theoretical analysis in that crazy Einstein tensor notation I mentioned previously. I finished up to a resounding applause after stating that the problem still remains that there are sixteen equations, with four unknowns each, making it damn near impossible to get an analytical solution, which describes the experimental data. I also mentioned that if anybody ever does solve the Einstein equations for the warp field and if they win a Nobel Prize that he or she should share it with Miguel Alcubierre.

Then the questions started. Imagine a room where every person in that room believes that he or she is the smartest person in the world. Now imagine that you have somehow insulted every one of those people's intelligence. Forget that. Imagine that you have been dowsed in blood and fish guts, and then thrown into a shark tank during a feeding frenzy. That best describes what happened next.

There were questions like, "How do you know the electrons disappeared? Where did they go? Are you sure you didn't just make a sloppy measurement? They probably just got attracted by the conductor plates, moron!" Okay, that last one was not a question. These are the kinder comments. The only real question was, "Have you figured out a way to decrease the amount of energy required to sustain a warp bubble?"

That last question hit home. Even if we solve the Einstein equations and show that warp drive is possible, the latest and greatest calculations still suggest that over 1x10
joules of energy are required constantly to maintain the warped spacetime bubble! That's more energy than the entire human race generates in one year. One problem at a time please!

At some point the frenzy subsided and the director introduced the next speaker while I gathered my stuff and headed back to my seat. About halfway back I noticed that the next speaker was tapping on my shoulder. I turned and he smiled at me, "I think I will need the microphone." He laughed.

"Hunh?" I was confused.

"The microphone," he said and pointed at my tie where the wireless clip-on microphone still remained.

"Oh sorry. I was hoping to keep it for myself." I laughed with the rest of the room, untangled the microphone from myself, and handed it over.

Once I got back to my seat I noticed that Colonel Ames had slipped into the back of the room. I gave her a nod and she smiled at me--sort of. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Not that I was attracted to her that much, however she is a pretty woman. She is about five or so years younger than me and only about two inches shorter. Me, I'm five feet ten inches, in shoes. Her red hair was in some sort of military bun or something. What would you call it? I'm not a hairdresser. In fact, I've not even combed my hair with anything other than my fingers since 1987. At any rate, it wasn't a major attraction that I had for the colonel at that time; it was more a feeling of growing professional admiration and respect. After all, she is an astronaut. And if you believe that one, let me tell you about some swampland my grandmother is trying to sell.

After several more speakers and one coffee break, it was her turn to speak. Just before she began to speak something tickled my nose and I sneezed horribly. Twice! I also groaned once in agony and hugged myself tightly as I doubled over. Tabitha looked up realizing who had made all the noise. For a second she gave me a sort of motherly empathetic frown. One of those,
Oh sweetheart you have skinned your knee, haven't you?
kind of looks that your mom used to give you.
Let Momma kiss it and make it all better.
Had I not been in such pain I would've liked it. Oh, what the hell, I liked it anyway. Then she had to go and ruin it all with her talk.

"As many of you may already know, I have recently been appointed the directorship of the Breakthrough Physics Program. Since 1999 about sixty million dollars of the NASA budget has been spent on theoretical analyses and experiments with very--" then she hesitated for dramatic effect, I guess, "---questionable results. I by no means am making statements regarding the quality or heroism required for involvement with this program. On the other hand, for the past ten or more years very little has been accomplished." This time she paused due to the rumbling sound coursing throughout the room.

"The BPP hasn't been canceled but it is being reorganized and given a new focus. Instead of focusing on projects that are extremely high risk, the BPP will now be directed toward breakthrough physics that can be more readily applied to the space program in the near term. There is a lot of research needed on new launch vehicle propulsion, stronger materials for solar sails, safer fission reactors for nuclear electric propulsion concepts. Perhaps we should face it that the physics is just not quite ready for warp drive. I'm excited by the efforts made thus far in the warp field theory arena, but it isn't going to be the focus of this program any longer."

Her talk continued with budget charts, and a list of all the projects funded, and the errors in those projects. I can hardly continue describing her talk. How is a measly sixty million dollars over eleven years really going to affect the NASA budget? There were rumbles of "I will call my congressman you just wait" and "This isn't over yet!" I threw in a couple of much nastier comments myself: one particularly that I had heard my grandma use on a state trooper when I was twelve, but y'all don't need to hear that. Then it hit me.

"Hey! Quiet the hell down for a minute. What about the contracts already in place and the funding already promised to various organizations throughout the country?"

"I was expecting someone to ask that." Tabitha nodded. "This directive came from way above me and NASA HQ. Rumor is it comes from the Joint Chiefs, though I'm not sure why. So don't kill the messenger. The good news is that all contracts in place now will be continued throughout this fiscal year. As of FY 12 the funding will be reduced to half on currently funded projects and then phased out completely in FY 13."

"That's not very long," I muttered to myself. I was close. I could taste it. I only had ten months of full funding left and then a year at half that. Without other funding sources I would lose the company for certain. I said "Shit!" under my breath and hung my head. The only thing that I could think of at the time was, "Screw y'all. I'm going the hell home." I gathered up my toys and left.

It felt good to get home even if I did have bad news. Of course, Friday was the only one home and she didn't care. I opened the door and damn near stepped on her. She is a lazy and stubborn cat. I tried dogs when I was younger, but I could never figure out how to keep them from jumping on me with muddy paws just when I was wearing a white shirt. No matter how much pepper spray I would put on the flowers, they still dug them up and slept in the flowerbeds. Besides, I like cats: old man Farnham, Maureen Johnson, and Lazarus Long liked cats, 'nuff said!

I tapped the machine as I came in. Beeeep! You have seven new messages. Message one. "Hi Anson, this is Jim. I got something you ought to see as soon as you get back. You said something about the Casimir effect in your drunken stupor between the hospital and the hotel Sunday night. When I got back in Monday I went straight to the lab. I think I've got an answer to the energy problem! Call me when you get in. Oh yeah, hope you're feeling all right. Bye." End of message one.

Message two. "Neil Anson Clemons this is your mother! Where were you Saturday? I called and called and you never answered! You missed your brother. He came to town for a surprise visit. Oh well, call us when you get in. We love you, bye." End of message two.

Message three. "Yes Mr. Clemons, this is Angela Landry with the credit union. We noticed a lot of traffic on your debit card in St. Louis and then in Maryland over the past week and we just wanted to make sure it was authorized. Please contact us at your earliest convenience." End of message three.

Message four. "Hi, Dr. Clemons. This is Colonel Ames from the BPP Workshop. You left before we got to talk further. Could you please contact me? My contact info is on the BPP website and in the agenda for the meeting. It was nice meeting you. Okay, bye." End of message four.

Message five. "Hey Anson. Do you believe that crap about cutting the BPP? You bugged out of Goddard pretty quick man. I wanted to know what you thought. Didn't you tell me that you thought it would be good to get an astronaut as the BPP director? Boy, were you wrong. Oh well, call me. By the way, this is Matt Lake." End of message five.