“We wanted to have a decent image of a theory conforming Warp ship to motivate young people to pursue a STEM career,” Rademaker said in an e-mail interview. “It does have some Sci-Fi features that might never transfer to a possible final design, unless we really want to.”

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A warp ship such as the IXS Enterprise could allow travel to interstellar space in a matter of weeks rather than, say, centuries. And the science behind why it might be possible is truly mind-boggling.

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An over-simplified explanation is that the concept seeks to exploit a “loophole” in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity that allows travel faster than the speed of light by expanding space-time behind the object and contracting space-time front of it. Io9 explains more:

Essentially, the empty space behind a starship would be made to expand rapidly, pushing the craft in a forward direction — passengers would perceive it as movement despite the complete lack of acceleration. White speculates that such a drive could result in “speeds” that could take a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in a mere two weeks — even though the system is 4.3 light-years away.

White, whose title is “Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate,” has mathematically calculated a plausible way to accomplish this using far less energy than required by the original theory, which was proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.

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His concept requires using large rings that surround the spacecraft (which you can see in the image above) to greatly reduce the amount of energy needed to warp space-time in front of and behind the spacecraft.

“The rings are most important as they will form the Warp bubble,” Rademaker said in his e-mail. “The way they are designed now will reduce the energy requirement needed to form the bubble. (By quite a large factor.) Also we tried to fill up as much space within the rings, it’s expensive to leave that open or unused.”

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White and his team at NASA’s Eagleworks Labs are now working to create a “proof of concept” for this idea.

So how quickly can this all become a reality? According to White, in an interview with i09, proving that the math can become a reality in the lab is the first and probably most important step in the process:

What White is waiting for is existence of proof — what he’s calling a “Chicago Pile” moment — a reference to a great practical example. “In late 1942, humanity activated the first nuclear reactor in Chicago generating a whopping half Watt — not enough to power a light bulb,” he said. “However, just under one year later, we activated a ~4MW reactor which is enough to power a small town. Existence proof is important.”

White explains in great detail the science behind his quest in this lecture: