No less than 43 of them! http://www.space.com/14291-photos-future-interstellar-starship-visions-spaceflight.html
Those are very cool. One of the things I've never understood well is Einstein's theory of relativity related to time distillation. As I understand it as you move closer to the speed of light the passage of time for those on the space craft begins to get out of parity with the passage of time here on earth. So, if that' correct - a space craft traveling very fast reaching even 1/10 the speed of light would mean for us here on earth it would still be years for the craft to reach Mars but for the passengers of the craft a fraction of the time. Is that correct? A better example probably would be a space craft traveling to Alpha Centari very fast but the passage of time here on earth. Wouldn't it be decades here on earth before the craft reached Alpha Centari but only a matter of a few years for the passengers of the space craft?
For a ship traveling at 0.1C there wouldn't be much of a difference. Even for 0.5 C, time dilation isn't very significant. The time dilation wiki has a nice graph of time dilation versus velocity. Unfortunately, as the ship velocity gets high enough to make dilation very useful to the crew, particle impacts start generating extremely high energies.
Thank you. so as the ship approaches the speed of light the dilation increases? Just out of curiosity how did Trek address this issue when ships were traveling close to light speed but at sub light speeds but at impulse as they approached the speed of light? Especially where their "warp field," was disabled? Wouldn't they also face the dilation I'm guessing they did not. Nonetheless it's a problem with super fast speeds created in the real world because the people traveling at them wouldn't know anyone when arriving at their destination who was living when they left.
I think that if you are able to generate the energies needed for a warp drive ship, that you are able to generate technology or find a means to counter time dilation. I know that ships in Star Trek operate in subspace when traveling at warp, so it's possible to me that this space operates independently of normal space, and to me this space may have an effect on the time factor.
^Warp drive does not suffer from time dilation, neither the Star Trek version nor the alcubierre version.
Some nice pictures of Daedelus in that bunch Here's a link to a very nice slide show (do watch in full-screen!) with some space ships in the mix... more SciFi than science really. All by Syd Mead
Gotta love Mead. For some reason I always get a strong horizontal element from his work. Never knew he was a Gundam fan.
Yes Daedelus is well represented in those images!! Syd Mead isn't necessarily a fan, he got a commission to do work for Gundam. RAMA
Some NTR concepts FISO list http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/archivelist.htm NTR http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Borowski_6-27-12/Borowski_6-27-12.ppt Micro ship model http://gizmodo.com/5983003/watch-these-lasers-print-a-microscopic-spaceship-in-under-a-minute Nukes at scale http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=18724 Space toys http://www.space.com/19702-space-age-toys-land-in-nyc-sunday.html
Trek ships traveled at sub-light speeds all the time - especially when damaged but never for what ever reason obeyed the scientific laws according to Einstein related to time dilation as you approach the speed of light. So either he was wrong or Trek is - I'm betting on Trek.
It's not canon, but the TNG Technical Manual made by members of the show's art department established that in addition to impulse engines generating a low-level subspace field, most sublight flights are limited to a top speed of 0.25c (full impulse), with faster speeds up to 0.92c and beyond possible, but not desired for lengthy flights due to time dilation effects that would still wreck mission timetables, if nothing else. But back to the OP, I love those spacecraft designs and wish there was a dramatic TV series where they'd be featured regularly.