Is it true NASA has perfected a space warp drive and is keeping it from the public? While rumors are to the Net what corn is to Kansas, what Happy Meals are to McDonald's and what paved national forests are to the Bush administration, it's also possible to trim these shaggy stories using the Web. A NASA aerospace engineer named Marc Millis launched a site called Warp Drive When?, which probably is where the germ of the rumor you read about starships that go eleventy-something miles per second began. Highlighting NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program, Millis assesses the prospects for "achieving the propulsion breakthroughs that would enable such far-future visions of interstellar travel." Examining the obstacles that make star-to-star travel much harder than catching Amtrak from New York to Chicago (though the ride would probably be smoother and have nicer bathrooms), Millis sizes up current technologies for near-light speed travel and surveys cutting-edge theories, such as "wormholes, tachyons, the Casimir effect, quantum paradoxes, and the physics of additional space dimensions." You know, like the plot of the latest craptacular Julia Roberts schmaltz-fest. Far from being just an abstract, in-the-clouds discussion, Warp also details some practical plans to actually build a real pedal-to-the-bionic-metal starship, not that clunky K-car a/k/a the space shuttle. Project Orion, for example, was introduced in the megaton-madness of the 1950s and 60s: nearly 5 nukes per second would be dropped out the Orion's back, then ignited like an atomic Weber grill. A massive shield with shock absorbers would protect the crew inside. Where would they find people to volunteer for it, Dr. Kevorkian's Rolodex? So, as you can see, it may be quite some time before you're cheesecaking in some cheap Betelgeuse space-bar picking up some 12-tentacled babe the color of astroturf and with more eyes than a convention of opthamologists like Captain Kirk on shore leave. On the other hand, NASA has had great success with Deep Space 1. Launched in 1998, the probe uses an experimental ion engine that generates 10 times as much thrust per pound of fuel as more traditional, Dick Cheney-style, big-butt-of-fire fossil-fuel, chemical-pollutant rockets do, while using up an Ally McBeal-ish one pound of fuel every four days. This warp drive myth canceled like Bette Midler's TV show, the responsible journalist in me should add that the long-standing rumor *is* true that NASA rewired all the important devices for John Glenn on the space shuttle Discovery to be operated by the Clapper. Kath <mzmouser@earthlink.net> ~`* `*' `*' `* `*' `*' *' `*' *' `*' `* `*' *' `*' ~~~