Probably Gene Roddenberry? The warp metric is a solution to the EFE so the concept of a warp drive is the 'child' of relativity. Miguel Alcubierre found the warp solution in the mid 1990's. After Star Trek began. LOL. The warp has amazing properties, such as the geometry of the warp spacetime can be manipulated for shielding the spacecraft. Then it has the unphysical 'thing' where the metric violates the weak energy condition requiring 'huge' negative energy to create the warp spacetime and keep it from collapsing. Because that part 'seems' like science fiction I like the relativistic rocket.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html
The science fiction about the relativistic rocket is how does your ship 'maintain constant acceleration g_earth' without pushing it? One idea is a sublight warp where you generate a localized gravitational field with electromagnetic charge. Where the ship would be constantly falling into a gravitational well] at whatever delta g the 'motor' is operating at. So how many nuclear reactors will we need, to tow along, to generate a big enough charge to do this [assuming the delivery technology is feasible] ? Duh, huge. Just a rough guess would be equivalent to 1/1000 the mass of the earth ...
The author of the link below provides the derivation for a specific solution to the field equations which is associated with this idea. ...
http://www.modernrelativitysite.com/chap7.htm
Your first link is excellent.* Following quote from it is a quite general consideration for ALL space travel at large fraction of speed of light:
"One major problem you would have to solve is the need for shielding. As you approach the speed of light you will be heading into an increasingly energetic and intense bombardment of cosmic rays and other particles. After only a few years of 1g acceleration even the cosmic background radiation is Doppler shifted into
a lethal heat bath hot enough to melt all known materials."
And of course space is not empty of matter either. Most of it, far from stars, is hydrogen atoms or ions but there a dust particles too. Most of them were blasted out of asteroids by cosmic ray local heating, especially those outside the orbit of Pluto in the Kuper belt, (or from "zillions to the zillionth power" of asteroids weakly bound to other stars) where they have very low "escape velocity" from them and sun/star. If traveling at 2/3 of the speed of light (200,000,000m/s) with space craft of only 1m^2 frontal area, and about 10 hydrogen masses per cm^3 or 10,000 per m^3 with much more in a "gas cloud" like our solar system formed millions of years later; then each second at that (2/3)C you run into: 200,000,000 x 10,000 = 2E12 Hydrogen mass equivalent
The mass of hydrogen atom is: 1.6605402 x10-27 kg. With neglect of any realistic mass increase, and KE = 0.5mV^2 that is, in watts (1.66/2)E-27(2E12)x (2E8)^2 = 4x1.66E^(12+16-27) = 6.64E1 = 64.6 watts but it is NOT EVENLY SPREAD OUT. I.e. It is hitting only 10,000 very very tiny (atom sized) spots. So is blasting away many dozen (>100)atoms of your space craft with each impacting particle. Conservatively your frontal erosion rate is MORE than a million atoms per second.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml said:
"{interstellar space} averages roughly 1 atom per cubic centimeter, but density as great as 1000 atoms/cm3 and as small as 0.1 atom/cm3 have been found."
And
"In certain regions of outer space the temperature is about 3 K, and there are approximately 5 × 106 molecules per cubic meter."
And
"The interstellar medium also contains cosmic dust. These particles are much bigger than hydrogen atoms. However, there are far fewer particles of cosmic dust than there are hydrogen atoms in the same volume of space. It is estimated that cosmic dust is 1000 times less common than hydrogen atoms in the interstellar medium.*"
* I assume the average "dust particle" has at least 9,000 times the hydrogen atom mass, as many of its atoms may be more than 9 times heavier than hydrogen, to get conservative estimate of 10^4 "H Mass equaling" per M^3 you will be running into. As most of the mass is NOT ionized there would seem to be no way to prevent it fron striking the space craft and heating it very much more than the Doppler shifted cosmic rays do.
SUMMARY:
Extention of your life into the future, as in the "twin paradox," is very, very, limited, and NOT by technology, but just by fact space is not empty vacuum. Just staying on Earth, and eating a proper diet, with modest exercise, and no smoking (or getting hit by bus, etc.) will let you, on average, postpone your death date dozens of times more distant into the future than the best possible "time dilation" high-speed space travel can.
posting now to not lose - more to come.
PS: If you don't space travel by fast rocket, but could do a "space warp" that most think is not possible and even if were would require continuous negatve enegy generation at power levels greater than the sun's total power output.
But assuming all that were some how possible by "advanced technology" the nature of space would still "cook you" more than red hot.
I.e. At the edge of the "warped space" you have extreme gravity gradients. They greatly accelerate the particle flux that was already very lethal, even before that acceleration of those particles, just due to your high speed thru the >10,000 Hydrogen equivalent mass per M^3 - I.e. your "space warp" is stronger than any other man-made accelerator and worse - it accelerate neutral partice which other man made accelerators can not.
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* Now for a critical comment on
burcep's first link: They assume 100% efficiency in conversion of fuel mass energy into thrust energy, by mass / anti mater production of gamma rays; but actually there is very little if any thrust as that reaction must conserve momentum.
For example, if electron and positron pair annihilate, you get two 0.511MeV gamma rays
traveling in opposite directions. To get net thrust, you need to stop half of them (going the "wrong direction") in a thick hemispherical shell of some heavy metal, like lead. This not only greatly adds to the space craft weight but worse, if even a tiny fraction of G net thrust is achieved, that lead would be so hot that it would be liquid, if not vapor!
