ome say that faster-than-light travel is impossible, but the creators of Stardrive beg to differ. Their site is dedicated to the idea of real starships; vehicles that could travel between the stars in years, rather than the centuries or millennia that conventional theories dictate.
The front page of this site includes links to plenty of people and organizations that would love to build a starship and who have a few theories on how that might be accomplished. The "Starship Builders" article on the site explores several proposals for breaking (or appearing to break) the universe's speed limit. Other articles delve into theories that either directly relate to FTL travel or that could have an effect on it.
All of the articles here are extensively footnoted, providing the answer to the inevitable question "Where do they come up with this stuff?" The footnotes refer to specific documentation and, where possible, links have been included.
Speculation about star drives and FTL travel naturally leads into a discussion of extra-terrestrial life and UFOs. Stardrive also offers articles and links about both. On the article front, it features researcher Saul-Paul Sirag's history of the infamous Face on Mars. The article's time-line format gives the pro-artifact view of NASA's handling of the Face's discovery, from the first pictures taken by Viking to NASA's latest findings as of June 1998.
While the site offers a good amount of its own content, it also features a number of links to stories and sites about such topics as water ice on the moon, newly-discovered extra-solar planets and model starships.
Just this side of impossible
Looking at the zooming, quick-loading starship image that hits visitors on the first page of this site, it's clear that something different is going on here. Stardrive's creators have built an engaging site dedicated to ideas so cool they can set eyeballs spinning.
A degree in physics isn't required, but it may be helpful in coming to terms with what's possible and what's probable among the site's featured theories. The headlines are certainly eye-catching, but they can also be mind-numbing. "The Wallace Inventions, Spin Aligned Nuclei, The Gravitomagnetic Field, and The Tampere Experiment: Is there a connection?" is just one of the headlines that could have readers reaching for a painkiller as they pick through a mix of interesting ideas and difficult jargon.
On the design front, the site's title page is long and somewhat jumbled, but it's so packed full of great tidbits and links that readers won't mind having to scroll through a few screens. Internal navigation is a snap, with convenient "back" links on every page to return readers to where they started.
The news section includes a dozen stories and links about a variety of cutting-edge ideas. The archive section provides a somewhat disjointed look--a new indexed version is promised--at articles featured in previous editions of the site.
Stardrive's links and stories aren't all radical--it has a number of NASA links, including one for the latest Mars Global Surveyor photographs--but most of them are. Those who come to the site expecting a mundane interpretation of the universe's rules are going to be disappointed. Those with open but skeptical minds should love it.
