Me too, it seems to me to be more of an attempt to extrapolate from modern technology into how any "real" Star Trek universe could happen.
That's not what I remember from Skunk Works (great book, check it out). Computing is what allowed them to go from the harsh angles of the F-117 to the more subtle lines of the B-2. And no one, not even the author realized the potential of the work originally.
It's pretty meta, but yeah, I could actually get behind that idea as a reboot/prequel. The fictional story of the "real" Star Trek based on the fictional "Star Trek." Alcubierre/White warp drive, I.M./Pulse drive, ship-mounted high-output lasers rather than phasers, that kind of thing. That'd actually be kinda badass.
Yes, the progress of computing power made modern "smooth" stealth aircraft possible. (A smooth surface can be thought of as one that has many, many very small facets.) But the software--Echo 1--used to design the first Have Blue prototypes would have been much more difficult to create 10 or 15 years earlier. And computers small and powerful enough to be used for the flight control system would not have been available in the early 60s. The development of stealth, from the beginning, was tied to computer resources.
I don't know what the bridge will look like but I'm pretty sure people won't be dancing on it, due to artificial gravity not being a thing. Yet, anyway. It may actually be impossible, who knows.
If you can figure out how to bend space enough to allow FTL travel, a little thing like artificial gravity shouldn't be too tough to figure out.
Particularly since the real world equivalent of warp theory involves, well, large scale artificial gravity.
Warp drives, like wormholes, are acceptable mathematical solutions in general relativity. However, that doesn't mean that those solutions actually exist in reality. A more refined physical explanation of the universe (for example, a theory that combines relativity and quantum mechanics) could very well show us that warp drives and wormholes are impossible. For example, consider a right-angled triangle: given the lengths of two of its sides, you can calculate the length of the third side easily using Pythagoras' theorem. However, when you apply the theorem, you need to calculate a square root, which gives you a positive result and a negative result. The positive result is obviously true, but the negative result is not (because a length, i.e. the distance between two points, can never be negative). That means even though a theorem is meaningful, not all of its solutions must necessarily be meaningful in the real world. In respect to warp drives and wormholes, we're currently at a point where we simply don't know if the results we're getting are meaningful. My guess is: they're not.
^Absolutely. Real "warp drive" depends on several very speculative ideas (negative energy, controlled inflation/deflation of local space, etc.). And, EVEN IF those ideas turn out to be possible, the PRACTICAL hurdles to making them real may be insurmountable.
I know that scientists like to say that the universe is "far more interesting than humans can imagine," but I hear that and all I can think is, "Okay, so where's the fucking Martians, then? 'Cause Deja Thoris' titties would be way more impressive than a bunch of sand and rocks." So, I'll certainly not be surprised if we discover there's no loopholes around the cosmic speed limit.
