Space.com- 5/23/13
Another "Star Trek" film just hit the screen — featuring the venerable Starship Enterprise. To enable such fantastical star flight, we need faster-than-light (FTL) flight, control over inertial and gravitational forces, extreme energy prowess, and the societal discipline to harness that much power safely. Between the sensationalistic hype and pedantic disdain, how much progress is really being made?
For starters, the technical goals ceased to be just science fiction decades ago with a legacy of pertinent publications (see editor's note below). To be clear, this does not mean that these breakthroughs are on the threshold of discovery. What it does mean is that these notions have advanced to where they are now problems that are able to be attacked. A graduate-level treatise, along with next-step research options, is available as the compilation "Frontiers of Propulsion Science" (AIAA, 2009).
For much more on this story please see Space.com
