Man today can go up to Mach 18 in the space shuttle, man on earth regularly goes at Mach 2 with advanced fighters and the now retired Concorde. But how feasible it is to go really fast? I think everyone watches Star Trek at least once and a while. You regularly hear Worp speed, is it possible for man to achieve that type of speed. Can man get to light speed ever? Or is it a pipe dream? What theories exist that could offer a explanation.

p.s. I don't know if it is true but didn't Einstein say that when we go the speed of light time slows way down?

...Can man get to light speed ever?...
p.s. I don't know if it is true but didn't Einstein say that when we go the speed of light time slows way down?

We can't go the speed of light while we have mass because as we speed up our mass increases, and you would need infinite mass to cross over the threshold of the speed of light.

According to the physics that we know today we cannot attain the speed of light or anything close to it. As was stated above the reasons we cannot do it now. That doesn't mean in say 50 or 100 years they won't have a genius to develop new physics that we don't even know about . Physics is very dynamic and I never will say we won't ever reach the speed of light but I keep an open mind about it. :)

The Space shuttle cannot go at a Mach speed because the speed of sound in space is zero!
If we were to take the speed of sound at sea level however we would find that the shuttle regularly goes at Mach 23.

The fastest speed ever attained by man I believe is about Mach 30 in space.

Keep in mind that speed is relative. You can accelerate all you want--you just won’t find yourself moving faster than the speed of light relative to anything else. For example, if your accelerator were a spinning dial with no limit, you could spin the dial as fast as you want for as long as you want and you would continue to accelerate, continue to be pressed against your seat back, and continue to get to destinations faster & faster. You’d never reach a wall, but neither would you measure your velocity faster than the speed of light relative to anything. Instead, measures of distance and time elapsed alter; that’s what the theory of relativity discusses.

If we ever have close-to-light-speed ships, it will be more convenient to discuss speeds in terms of effective multiples of the speed of light, as opposed to actual measured speeds which will always be less than the speed of light. For example, it is possible in principle to have a spaceship that can cover the distance between Earth and a star 4 light years away, in just 2 years on the crew's clock. That's an effective average speed of 2 times the speed of light. Such effective multiples are possible without actually exceeding the speed of light because, from the crew's perspective, the distance between Earth and the star shrank during their trip.

It is impossible to accellerate to the speed of light. Perhaps we could bypass it entirely? Also, past the speed of light, relativistically wouldnt your mass be negative? There are also possibilities of folding space/time etc, although the technology is far beyond anything we could do now.

i thought your mass would be infinite?
we could probably travel up to like 99.9999999999% of the speed of light, i mean, they have already done it with protons and stuff, so just have to wait until they create the powerful enough technology...
i think it is possible to travel faster than light. im quite interested in the 'quantum entanglement' theory where if you change the spin of one of the pair, the other flips.

it was said that this actually has no purpose in real life, but surely:
i im on one side of the universe and your on the other (assuming there are sides lol) and we each have one particle each. I flip the spin. yours then flips immediatly. i flip again, and sens either a morse code like signal where the interval between flips = a simple language, or each spin represents a 0 or a 1 and the signal is translated to computer language then deciphered. what is wrong with this? please tell me...

From a more philosphical perspective......when we realise in physics that distance is not a necessary dimension, that is when we can really go places.

Even if we did travel at "c" it would still be unfeasable to go places as travel distances are way to vast.

So I would suggest that the effort be more in the understanding of the true nature of space itself than worry about trying to go 'c'.

The Space shuttle cannot go at a Mach speed because the speed of sound in space is zero!The shuttle hits Mach speed while still in the atmosphere.

To the original quesiton, we don't really have much hope without a huge scientific advance. Trying to figure out what this advance might be is like betting on a horse. Everybody has their favorites and their reasons why, but it's really just a guess.