NASA scientist and Advanced Propulsion Team Lead Harold White has the kind of job thousands dream of and few achieve — he’s in charge of the space agency’s efforts to determine if a faster-than-light warp drive is actually possible and, if it is, how we might create one. Now, in conjunction with artist Mark Rademaker, White has unveiled a new starship model that illustrates how our consideration of the concept has evolved over the decades. Rademaker designed the first theoretical warp ship concept to consciously echo the Matt Jeffries design for the UEV-47; the first faster-than-light version of the Starship Enterprise. This new version of the ship is chunkier, more compact, and according to Harold White, a better match for what the mathematics of an Alcubierre warp drive currently predict.

Have we found any proof a warp drive can exist?

While a pretty concept design is nice, it still isn’t clear if a warp drive can actually exist. NASA’s current experiments are an attempt to measure whether the warp bubble Alcubierre theorized could exist can exist in our universe. There’s an enormous gap between saying “Mathematically this doesn’t violate any of the known laws of physics,” and saying “We’ve detected an actual warp bubble in the real world.”

The inferometer experiment White oversees is designed to measure such an effect at nanoscale. Currently, data is inconclusive — the team notes that while a non-zero effect was observed, it’s possible that the difference was caused by external sources. More data, in other words, is necessary. Failure of the experiment wouldn’t automatically mean that warp bubbles can’t exist — it’s possible that we’re attempting to detect them in an ineffective way.

Nonetheless, the fact that we’re struggling to even discover if a warp bubble can form is evidence of how much work remains until we could plausibly tap the effect for space exploration. This new ship is as much a PR move as a demonstration of capability — but the implications of a warp bubble that allowed for even fractional light-speed travel are enormous. The ability to move at 1% the speed of light would put the entire Solar System within our reach; 0.1% light speed would make exploration and colonization of Mars or the Moon a much simpler problem.

One good piece of news is that early fears that a hypothetical warp drive could be a star system-annihilating event have been disproven by a better evaluation of the mathematics. New data suggests this is unlikely to be an issue, though vessels observing the warp drive ship in close proximity could still be at risk. Energy requirements have also come down sharply, from Alcubierre’s initial calculation that planetary-sized power sources would be required to more recent data that suggests we could build a ship with a power source the size of Voyager 2 — if we can create the necessary effect at the appropriate scale. [Read: The hunt for alien, star-encompassing Dyson Spheres begins.]

For now, a warp drive remains science fiction — but if we can ever build one, the impact on human civilization could rival the invention of fire. Despite some bombastic reporting in other places, it’s not a “real-life” Enterprise — not yet — but the fact that news of warp drive research continues to grab headlines is an example of just how exciting this technology could be.

For more on NASA’s warp drive tech, scrub through to the 40:30 mark in the video below and listen to White discuss the ship at SpaceX’s SpaceVision 2013 conference.