We need speed, epic speed. We don't really need our cars to go any faster, but it would be nice. We need incredible speed to reach other stars and planets outside of our solar system. The distances are so great, even between us and the closest star, that in practical terms, we can't really reach it yet. One thing that we don't want to do, is have to use up lifetimes traveling to these places and for most of them, a lifetime is not long enough to get there. It is possible that speed will not turn out to be the answer. The answer could be something as exotic as interdimensional travel, or something that we haven't even thought of yet. Many of our ideas have come from science fiction, especially from Star Trek. Remember those communicators that they used? It turns out they looked an awful lot like the cell phones we use today, as a matter of fact, the cell phones look even more advanced than the communicators did. I was looking at an old Star Trek Voyager the other day and someone asked them how fast they were going and they said that in old Earth terms, they were moving at eight billion miles per second. There was no mention of folding space, or worm holes, just pure speed.

If something could travel at such speeds, I have to wonder what would happen to the vehicle if even a grain of sand hit it? Obviously it would need some sort of shield. Apparently in the show Star Trek. Enterprise, there was no shielding being used yet. Still the ship was traveling mighty fast without any worries. Supposedly they did something called polarizing the hull plating. This has always made me wonder what they were doing? They made it seem that doing this protected the ship in some way from weapons fire. I decided to look up polarizing in Webster's online dictionary and this is what I came up with:
" (1): the action or process of affecting radiation and especially light so that the vibrations of the wave assume a definite form (2): the state of radiation affected by this process b: an increase in the resistance of an electrolytic cell often caused by the deposition of gas on one or both electrodes c: magnetization 2 a: division into two opposites b: concentration about opposing extremes of groups or interests formerly ranged on a continuum". It is kind of hard to figure out from these definitions,what hull polarization had to do with anything. It seems to indicate that the weapons that are used against the ship must all be light based for this process to be effective, because the definition seems to indicate that light is connected with this process somehow.

There is one theme that seems to run through all the Star Trek variations and that is the fact that the engines use anti-matter. Science believes that anti-matter explosions are very powerful and might be able to supply the power needed to allow a starship to travel through space. We know that Einstein stated that nothing would ever be able to power a starship as fast as the speed of light, a speed that is so slow when we talk about space travel, that it is almost useless for interstellar travel. If we had an engine that would allow us to reach the speed of light, it would still take years to reach the nearest star. If we decided to travel to a star in a light speed ship, we just might have to think about some form of suspended animation. If we didn't use this method to travel in such a slow ship, we would need all sorts of supplies and the ship would have to be thoroughly reinforced against cosmic rays. In a suspended animation ship, only one room would have to be protected. That room would contain the sleeping crew, devices and all sensitive electronic equipment. Using such a method to travel would mean that the passengers and crew would have to put their lives in the hands of a computer, not a very encouraging thought.

The question is, is anti-matter propulsion practical? Maybe not. The reason that I say this is that when an anti-matter particle meets it's positive particle, it draws it near and they annihilate each other, but they produce gamma rays. Gamma rays are hard to convert to propulsion. All is not lost however, if we use anti-protons and protons, they will also annihilate each other, but the result will be the production of pions first. An average of three positive pions are produced and two neutral ones. The neutral ones produce gamma rays, but the positively charged pions produce sixty percent of all the energy from the explosion. Technically we may be getting close to an anti-matter engine, but it may just turn out to be the anti-proton one. Much more work has to be done in this area of course. Close is one thing, having one of these engines is yet another and who knows, maybe the anti-matter production of gamma rays will somehow be turned into usable energy, even though we can't figure out how to do this today?

We have to realize that rocket engines are not the answer to space travel. They usually use about ninety percent of their fuel just leaving Earth's gravity. That means that they have only about ten percent of their fuel left for their mission. Another problem with rocket engines is that they are far too slow for space travel. They are okay for traveling to the Moon, this assumes that you don't mind taking a few days to get there. Rockets are notoriously inefficient. We have made a slight advance in our propulsion technology, first with the Ion engine, then the improved version of the Ion engine. The Ion engine sends out particles that are too weak to power anything on Earth, but in space they produce enough thrust to power a vehicle. One of the drawbacks of this engine is that the vehicle it is in, has to build up it's speed over a matter of time. It is said that the improved version of the Ion engine, an engine that was developed in Europe, is fast enough to travel to close stars. This depends on how long you want to take to travel. Having said that, the engine will be perfectly serviceable for traveling around the solar system. Another drawback is that you will have to travel from Earth to the ship with the Ion engine, since it will have to remain in space. Lastly, it is not capable of landing on a planet, so some sort of shuttle will have to be used to travel from and to it. NASA describes the ionization process as, " An ion is simply an atom or molecule that is electrically charged. Ionization is the process of electrically charging an atom or molecule by adding or removing electrons. Ions can be positive (when they lose one or more electrons) or negative (when they gain one or more electrons). " The funny thing is that while a rocket engine's speed is limited by thermal reactions, the Ion engine is only limited by the voltage applied and therefore it is theoretically unlimited.

Will we ever achieve speeds that will allow us to fulfill our destiny as explorers of the universe? I think that we will, of course that is if we don't destroy ourselves first, or some disaster hits the planet. The good thing about science fiction is that it pushes us to improve our exploration of space and also provides us with some really good ideas. Not all programs and books are as fertile a territory for ideas as Star Trek, but there are plenty of ideas out there. Sometimes a good science fiction writer can be more powerful than a scientist. They seem to be a lot more open minded. Will we get more ideas from science fiction writers? Undoubtedly we will and it might even help us solve our speed problem. I have to wonder what would happen if a science fiction writer was put on the staff of a space laboratory, such as JPL, maybe that just might turn out to be helpful?