http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-03/warp-factor?single-page-view=true

Warp Factor
A NASA scientist claims to be on the verge of faster-than-light travel: is he for real?
By Konstantin Kakaes Posted 04.01.2013 at 11:03 am

Last September, a few hundred scientists, engineers and space enthusiasts gathered at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Houston for the second public meeting of 100 Year Starship. The group is run by former astronaut Mae Jemison and funded by DARPA. Its mission is to “make the capability of human travel beyond our solar system to another star a reality within the next 100 years.”

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Over the course of several days, attendees could join symposia on such exotic topics as organ regeneration and organized religion aboard a starship. One of the most anticipated presentations was titled “Warp Field Mechanics 102,” given by Harold “Sonny” White of NASA. A nine-year agency veteran, White runs the advanced propulsion program at Johnson Space Center (JSC), down the road from the Hyatt. Along with five others, he recently co-authored the agency’s 16-year “In-Space Propulsion Systems Roadmap,” which outlines NASA’s goals for the future of space travel. The plan calls for all manner of propulsion projects from improved chemical rockets to far-forward systems like antimatter and nuclear engines. White’s particular area of research is perhaps the most far-forward of them all: warp drive.

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White shows me into the facility and ushers me past its central feature, something he calls a quantum vacuum plasma thruster (QVPT). The device looks like a large red velvet doughnut with wires tightly wound around a core, and it’s one of two initiatives Eagleworks is pursuing, along with warp drive. It’s also secret. When I ask about it, White tells me he can’t disclose anything other than that the technology is further along than warp drive. A 2011 NASA report he wrote says it uses quantum fluctuations in empty space as a fuel source, so that a spaceship propelled by a QVPT would not require propellant.

White’s warp experiment is tucked into the back corner of the room. A helium-neon laser is bolted onto a small table pricked with a lattice of holes, along with a beam splitter and a black-and-white commercial CCD camera. This is a White-Juday warp field interferometer, which White named for himself and Richard Juday, a retired JSC employee who is helping White analyze the data from the CCD. Half of the laser light passes through a ring—White’s test device. The other half does not. If the ring has no effect, White would expect one type of signal at the CCD. If it warps space, he says “the interference pattern will be starkly different.”

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http://spaceref.com/nasa-hack-space/propulsion/clarifying-nasas-warp-drive-program.html

Clarifying NASA's Warp Drive Program

By Keith Cowing
Posted April 12, 2013 1:27 PM

Few people know this but NASA actually has a warp drive program underway at Johnson Space Center. A recent article on the program created some open-ended questions that needed to be answered. The article seemed to imply that Harold White (who heads the project) had signed non-disclosure agreements such that he could not discuss public-funded research. That's a little unusual for NASA. So I sent a series of questions to Harold White and NASA PAO.

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Did Harold White sign NDAs as an individual or as a NASA civil servant? Who did he sign these NDAs with?

White has not signed any NDAs. The article has it backwards. In order for the Popular Science author to get briefed on the referenced technology, he would need to sign an NDA with the government as the noted technology has an invention disclosure. An NDA is the mechanism to protect the IP content, but still allow access to interested parties for consideration.

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What scientific publications have White and his team made on advanced propulsion/warp drive research?

Talks and Publications on Space Warps to date:

- White, H., Warp Field Mechanics 101, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, accepted 2013.
- Physics Colloquium on Warp Field Mechanics requested by Dickinson College, 2013.
- Encore of Warp Field Mechanics 102, technical presentation requested by SpaceVision 2012, Buffalo, NY 2012.
- Warp Field Mechanics 102, technical presentation given at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, Houston, TX, 2012.
- Encore of Warp Field Mechanics 101, technical presentation requested by AIAA, Houston Chapter, Gilruth Center, Houston, TX, 2011.
- Warp Field Mechanics 101, technical presentation given at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, Orlando, FL, 2011, available at: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016932.pdf
- Successful defense of published paper "A Discussion of Space-Time Metric Engineering" as part of Ph.D. candidacy process in Physics at Rice University 2007.
- White, H., E. W. Davis, The Alcubierre Warp Drive in Higher Dimensional Spacetime, in the proceedings of Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF 2006), American Institute of Physics Conference Proceedings, Melville, New York, 2006.
- White, H., A Discussion of Space-Time Metric Engineering, General Relativity and Gravitation Journal, November 2003."