The Great Breakthrough

In 1994 the Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre published a solution to the equations of general relativity which described a possible form of superluminal propulsion (FTL), visibly inspired by the concept of the warp drive made popular by the well-known television series Star Trek. The model envisaged the creation of a region of space-time in which space contracted ahead of a vehicle and expanded behind it. The starship, placed inside this region, would not locally exceed the speed of light: it would be the deformation of the surrounding space that allowed it to move at effective speeds greater than c.

The so-called Alcubierre metric at first remained a theoretical solution: realizing it would have required distributions of negative energy incompatible with ordinary matter and, as if that were not enough, in quantities enormously greater than those obtainable with the technological capabilities of the time. Negative energy densities had previously been measured in certain quantum phenomena, such as the Casimir effect, but only on extremely small scales and with no known method that would allow their use on a macroscopic scale.

2021-2030

Research continued over the following decades through programmes devoted to the physics of the vacuum, to unconventional quantum states and to the manipulation of local energy conditions.

The first significant results came from the study of certain rare natural resources, later designated precursor materials. Suitably refined and arranged in matrices subjected to extremely intense electromagnetic fields and to particular conditions of confinement, these substances made it possible for the first time to generate and hold stable an energy configuration which until then had only been hypothesized on the theoretical level. The phenomenon was initially interpreted as an artificial and metastable form of exotic matter and was given the name Voidmass.

The definition remained controversial for many years. Despite what the name might suggest, Voidmass was not a substance occurring in nature, nor a form of exotic matter that could simply be extracted or collected. Subsequent studies showed that the matrix constituted only the support needed to nucleate and confine a metastable configuration of the vacuum capable of producing gravitational effects unobtainable from ordinary matter.

The observed behaviour soon proved compatible with the energy distributions required to obtain the warp geometry predicted by the Alcubierre models. The availability of Voidmass therefore provided for the first time a practicable means of generating such conditions on a macroscopic scale. From that moment on, the development of warp propulsion depended above all on the capacity to produce Voidmass in sufficient quantities, to stabilize it and to keep it under control for periods compatible with operational use.

2031-2040

The first refining and production plants were thus built: enormous, inefficient and costly. Production required large quantities of energy and of precursor materials, some of which had to be refined to levels of purity scarcely obtainable with the technologies of the time. A large part of the resources employed was consumed or irreversibly altered during the process, while the containment systems had to operate without interruption for the entire duration of the production cycle. Voidmass production also generated considerable quantities of residual heat, toxic by-products and irradiated materials that were extremely difficult to dispose of. To these effects were added those deriving from the extraction and refining of the precursor materials, demand for which rose rapidly with the passage from laboratory experiments to the first industrial programmes.

Voidmass production was complicated by the fact that the economically exploitable concentrations of the precursor materials, as well as the infrastructure needed for their extraction and refining, belonged to supply chains already considered strategic before its discovery. It was therefore soon evident that no single country possessed the resources and industrial capabilities needed to control the entire production chain. This mutual dependence favoured the emergence of international consortia, supply agreements and collaborations between governments, universities and large industrial groups.

2041-2050

The scarcity of the supplies available on the planet rapidly directed research towards space: spectroscopic observations and the models of nucleosynthesis and planetary formation indicated that the same materials could also be present on asteroids, moons and planets, in concentrations far higher than those of terrestrial deposits. Those resources, until then considered inaccessible, suddenly became reachable thanks to the development of the first warp propulsion systems usable within the Solar System. Those first drives, though rudimentary, drastically reduced the times and costs of interplanetary missions.

Thus was established the economic relationship that would characterize the first phase of this renewed “space race”: the precursor materials present on Earth made it possible to produce the Voidmass needed to reach new resources, while access to new resources allowed Voidmass production to be increased still further. The new “substance” also had applications going well beyond warp propulsion: its use as a confinement system in fusion reactors made it possible to obtain quantities of energy until then unattainable, offering an answer to the growing demand of an industrial system ever harder to sustain through the energy resources available on the planet. Access to new deposits therefore became a necessity as much for space expansion as for the energy supply of the Earth.

The increase in the scale of production also made a second problem progressively evident: the concentration on the Earth’s surface of plants with high energy consumption, specialized refineries and containment structures entailed growing environmental and safety costs. A significant part of the industry’s subsequent development would therefore be oriented towards moving the most dangerous and polluting phases of production away from the main inhabited centres and, later, off the Earth altogether.

At the end of this first phase, warp propulsion had passed from mathematical possibility to experimental technology. Its diffusion remained limited by the availability of precursor materials, by the cost of production, by the capacity of the plants and by the still unresolved problems of the first drives. These limits determined the economic and political organization of the decades that followed.