I know next to nothing about anything, but my assumption would be that the solution would probably be bi-directional canary probes. If the probe didn’t ram into anything on its warp travel and makes it back, it’s a reasonable assumption that you can make the same journey.

The thought did occur to me that the the probe may even map the entire route using sensors and develop a temporal computer model for just how much time the route will still be safe to travel. But then I realised that the warp drive bends space-time, distorting photographs and other sensors.

Failing this, we decide to only use warp drive in parts of space that are very well mapped. It would allow instantaneous travel throughout the solar system, which would facilitate trade and colonisation. But warping into the dark unknown would be foolish.

This assumes that objects in space are static, but they move, so the dust/pebbles/boulders one ship would hit, would be different from the ones another ship would hit.

This largely depends on a lot of the properties of what “warp” actually is.

Could you fly the ship at 5*warp and then have a drone canary in a squiggle/back and forth pattern at 50*warp in front of the ship?

If it hits something, depending on how warp works, you may be able to instantly stop the ship?

Travelling at any interstellar velocity seems to also be so, because even pretty tiny dust specks can take out a space ship at appreciable fractions of c. So you'd need extremely good radar to avoid/deflect/destroy it (and you don't have long to do so).

Though I suppose at least you can conceivably hope to detect them since you can actually see them at all since the approach is subluminal.

>> BTW I wonder what they're going to do about the possibility of plowing into a small rock fragment at several times the speed of light?

They will use superintelligent AI to pilot the ship and it will avoid obstacles automatically.

[Edit: jokes aside, a warp drive doesn't move the ship. It only distorts the spacetime around it. So there's no danger of hitting anything. Effectively, the ship remains immobile inside its little warp bubble and the warp bubble is displaced along space without actually moving. You know, like cats.]

Sounds like a great way to get yourself a Butlerian Jihad.

Yeah, we’re going to need a lot of spice melange…

Warp drives even if they one day are implemented, almost certainly won't allow FTL speeds, because it will break causation. According to Special Relativity, any way of transmitting information faster than light is equivalent to passing it into the past in some frame of reference. Warping space-time doesn't really solve it, provided you plan to unwarp it back once you've reached your destination.

The solution is to add spice.

Some version of warp travel depicts that the ship itself is stationery but the space around the ship is warped to propel the ship forward. So there is no debris to hit as it would also be warped around the ship.

The trick is precursor vehicles.. basically fire a stream of bullets at space and expect the precursors to annihilate any obstacles.

Is that a solution though? unless you send your ship instantly after those bullets another objects could still just come in from the side after they've passed, unless these bullets cover significantly more than the front facing area of your entire ship it won't work, and if you do send it directly in front of your ship immediately before your flight then you've just invented metal shields, and if they do hit something you're still going to be hitting shrapnel and spalling at appreciable fractions of the speed of light.

Yeah, we could use the same simple trick clear space debris from Earth's orbit!

Since pieces of rock move this wouldn't be a foolproof solution.

obviously an energy shield