Is You Is, Or Is You Ain’t, Got No Warp Drive?

So tell me Mr. NASA.

Is you is, or is you ain’t…….got you no warp drive, eh Mister N?
‘Cause you say dis an’ you say dat, but ain’t nobody understand.
So is you is, or is you ain’t, got you no warp drive? 

You have to pardon my skepticism.  The messages go from warp zero to full thrusters, and I still don’t have a clue what the truth is, although I’m leaning towards the idea that WE’S GOT ONE! 

Why do I say that?

Type into any search engine the words NASA Warp Drive and the first thing you see is NASA’s front page, proclaiming loudly that ‘they ain’t got it!’.  According to NASA’s own website, which has been updated as of July of 2016:

Just in case you missed it, I took the liberty of highlighting the speculative nature of the imaginary Warp Drive so you will have no doubt as to their official position on this matter.

As of July 20, 2016, NASA ain’t got no Warp Drive.

Never you mind the fact that it takes longer than five months to build one up from scratch.

Heck, from July 20 to November 19, that’s barely five months, and they had to do all sorts of stuff to go from ‘absurd theory’ to ‘Da Shiz Fer Real!’

Cause you know…it takes awhile to pound out them math equations on that old scientific calculator, and then it takes some serious chalk dust to draw up them math formulas on the old chalk board.  Heck, they prolly used ladders to cover them YUUUGE boards with chalk writings and equations, I bet.

And then they gotta squeeze the gubmint for the money, ’cause you know, nothing happens without money.  After they got their hands on the dough, they gotta hire drafters to draw up the designs for the hardware. And then those there designs gotta go to some manufacturing plant to produce the parts.

Of course, once the plans go into production, you gotta order the raw materials, and that ain’t cheap–a lot of them raw materials got weird names like iridium and palladium (I hear they don’t rust…although I don’t think rust is that big of a problem out there in space)  Personally, I’d use gold-plating over something non-brittle, but hard-as-hell, but that’s just me.

Then when you get your gold-plated parts back, you gotta write the software codes to get it to work.  And then you gotta QA test that thing, both software and hardware. You gotta do all sorts of stuff, and I’m pretty sure I left a bunch of things out.

How they fit ALL THAT in FIVE MONTHS, I haven’t a clue, BUT THEY DID IT!

If you look back at the Google search page and skip the NASA non-event, the next listing proudly proclaims that NASA’s long-awaited EMDrive paper has finally been peer-reviewed and published.  [2]

‘Despite the fact that they’re still unsure of how it works, NASA scientists have finally confirmed that the seemingly-impossible EmDrive is legit!’, yells another headline.  [3]

Heck, we even get the name of the scientists who’ve been sweating bullets over this thing for…decades?  Dr. Harold Sunny White.  Yep, that there be his name, and that there be his Beast of Burden.

Purdy, ain’t it?

But wait a gosh darned minute here.  Something ain’t right.

How the hell do you get a working prototype up and running but ain’t got the foggiest notion ’bout how it works?

If you don’t know how it works, then how in heck were you even able to peer review the thing, let alone build it?

Makes no sense to me, but who the hell am I to question the gods of NASA?  I’m just a lowly Taobabe.

Next thing you know, somebody’s bound to mutter something ’bout all this being ‘alien technology’ and all.  And funny as that may sound, that would make sense, now wouldn’t it?  We can figure out how to make it work, but our math and physics ain’t quite there yet, so that’s why we can’t quite figure out how it’s done.

Well.  It’s a good thing NASA figured out all this Warp Drive stuff because they just now told us all about TRAPPIST-1 and the seven dwarves. [4]  Good timing or what?  (wink)

Heck yeah!!! Look out Universe, here we come!