Obviously we're talking about a fictitious drive (though NASA might have made one work using an existing drive by firing lasers through it), but I'm curious about even the theoretical concept. Firstly: Defining the drive Say the drive works by 1. Constricting the fabric of space in front of the ship allowing it to traverse more distance in the same time; the constriction also "pulls" the ship towards it 2. Stretching out the fabric of space behind it, effectively pushing the ship along 3. Some thing is used to hold these two distortions together Yes, I'm describing something like the Miguel Alcubierre Drive Is there anything to suggest the bubble would take a certain amount of time to form (i.e. form the bubble in the front and back, and cinch it together) Secondly: Turning Say, the instant the drive is turned off, the distortion goes away Say the ship can accelerate to a maximum speed in 15 seconds Provided the ship will stop accelerating the instant it turns away from a previous heading, yet will accelerate/maintain speed on a the new heading: Is there any formula that could be used to determine how quickly it would either 1. Do a 180 turn provided no speed change occurred based on acceleration and heading change 2. Slow down as it turns Thirdly: Collisions Say you have a vessel of 4,000 kg Say the vessel is moving at a real velocity of 8 kps (orbital velocity about) Say a "warp drive" was used to accelerate it up to just a mere 140 kps: Would impact force be 8 kps, 140 kps, or some in between figure Say a "warp drive" was used to accelerate it up to 0.25c: What would happen to impact forces? Would the front end of the field (which effectively constricts the fabric of space and acts like a gravity well) pull apart the object it ran into depending on the intensity of the bubble? Would this act like a deflector of some sort (parting objects out of the way). I know these are "deep questions" but I was thinking of an idea for a scifi-series (either Trek based or non)