Near Light Speed Travel Possible After All?

DrStrabismus writes "PhysOrg has a story about research that may indicate that close to light speed travel is possible. From the article: 'New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts. On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light.'"

Comments

Star Trek IV

[nmccart]

And, once we whip around a star, we can go back in time to save the whales and invent transparent aluminum (which, of course, my physics professor showed us was impossible to create).

Pretty cool but useless

[SargeantLobes]

Near light speed travel is a prett cool achievement, but it's completeley useless, here's why:

We can't go faster than light (the speed of light is the maximum speed of "things in the universe" light just happens to travel that fast, simply because it can't go any faster). But even at light speed th closest galaxies are still years away, so we really can't 'go anywhere'

Even at short range this is still probablamatic. A ship can't accelerate to the speed of light too quickly otherwise all of its passengers (and equipment that's not bolted down) will crash into the rear bulkhead (because of your momentum, you won't accelerate as fast as the ship. Even if you're strapped in, accelerating too fast will cause MAJOR dammage to your internal organs.). You'd have to spend several hours accellerating, and then decellerating, so a trip to mars would still take a long time.