faster than light travel

The only matter so far observed travelling close to light speed is a proton dubbed the Oh My God Particle.

& Neutrinos. Also the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven (& others) is designed to accelerate particles up to 99.something% of lightspeed.

Cheers,
~Al

When we talk about warping space and shortcuts from A-B etc does this take relativity out of the equation. ie. JOurney at close to relativistic speeds to alpha Centuri takes 4 years from the travelers perspective but 400 or 4000 from ours here on Earth .etc and on a grander scale from our perspective that photon from M31 took 2 million years to get here but from the photons perspective it only left Andromeda a few minutes ago.

Cause if relativity is still part of the equation then I just can't see the powers that be investing in such an undertaking. "Hey guys, we're sending you to Alpha Centauri. When you come back, everyone and everything you have ever known will be dust, Oh and to the public? We are going to invest half our GNP in this great undertaking and just think, your great, great, great,great,great.....etc etc children will find out what our guys found at alpha centauri!!"

Nasa can't even get a few billion to fast track to Mars!!

If the technology can side-step relativity, and the governments investing in this can see the fruits of their labours within their members lifetimes, then maybe just maybe they would be prepared to fork up the cash.

Thats my opinion anyway.

Could not have put it better myself, if fact, by the time they would return to excite us with thier adventure stories....we would probably all have left on superior ships and swithched out the lights.....hello is there anybody there?.....guess where we have been? hellllooo... :shock:
I can't conceive of any technology that would allow us to visit the cosmos in an effective way except maybe deep space probes, even then it would be more for our ego's than for science. Im sure that mankind, like a person who asks a question: the longer we have to wait for the answer, the less relevent the answer becomes.

You're not wrong guys. Government will never stump up the cash for such things - though the military might kick it about for a bit. However, private enterprise may have a different take on it. If there's a buck to be made anywhere in it then it will get serious attention. Space no longers belongs to governments, private enterprise will be the next great leap, starting with Virgin.

Could you imagine Ryan Air getting involved......space suit, "that will be extra". bring your own sandwitches......flight to saturn....and you are dropped off at Jupiter.....cargo still on Mars? ....and you still have to get the shuttle service the rest of the way to your destination :shock:

Ryanair aren't that bad.
They do tend to use obscure little airfields a "bit" further away, so I think you're exagerating when you say "drop off at Jupiter" - I'm sure you know that Ryanair operate from a perfectly "accessible" base on Enceladus, and that's close enough. What do you expect for €2.50 to Saturn. The return trip will be more expensive though (keeping with Earth traditions) €45M plus taxes.