The three main technologies that I will be examining are warp drive , defector shields , and transporters.
If warp drive is a possibility then in order to travel to a nearby star one
would have to collapse the space in front of the space ship and expand it
behind the ship.
This would require a huge amount
of mass (or energy, as the two are equivalent according to Einstein). More
than could possibly be generated by todays means. In Star Trek this is done
by reacting matter with anti-matter, (see picture of reaction chamber on
the 'Voyager') but in reality even this, almost 100% efficient energy source
would not create enough. But if the generation of energy was not a constraint
then it would be possible, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity.
It would however, neccesitate a ship many times the mass of the sun to create
such a huge warping of space, considering the sun only warps the space around
it enough to deflect a light ray from a distant star a matter of a few degrees.
In the world of Paramount, deflector shields and cloaking devices are activated
at the touch of a
button. But in the real world how would they work? Space ships
would have to create massive gravitational fields to deflect light and light
weapons. This would need something many times more massive than our sun.
When we are talking about something only about half a mile long, this seems
unlikely.
If you wanted to transport someone you would need a 40 000 km telescope to
resolve in enough detail to see where each of the person's atoms, electrons
etc. Even if you could 'see' where they are,
then
you would still not be able to pin point each electron due to the Heisenburg
Uncertainty Principle. If, somehow you could get round this problem, then
you would need to heat the person up to about 100 billion degrees centigrade
to turn the matter into a stream of quarks, which could then be sent to the
desired destination. But even then the quarks would have to penetrate the
hull of the space ship, and anything else in the way.