Faster than Light Travel

One of the most prevalent themes in science fiction is the galactic empire. Star Wars and Star Trek (and all their spin-offs) take place in a galactic empire; Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is about the decline and fall of a galactic empire. My own novel Pawns of Tomorrow and its sequel Knights of Tomorrow are about a galactic empire based on a chess game. While writing these stories, I did research about our own Milky Way galaxy. What I found out was that a galaxy is a hell of a big place.

To illustrate: The NASA space probe Voyager 2, traveling at approximately 93,000 mph, took twelve years to travel to Neptune. If this same space vehicle were to travel to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, it would take it over 370 years to reach it. Okay, but that's reality. Let's assume that we have a starship capable of faster than light travel (impossible according to some scientists). How much faster? Let's say it can reach Proxima Centauri (4.22 lightyears away) in four days. Pretty fast huh. That's one lightyear a day or fifteen lightdays per hour. Okay, now let's say we want to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. The galaxy has an estimated diameter of 100,000 lightyears. The trip would take 100,000 days or almost 3,000 years.

In galactic terms, 100 lightyears or even a 1000 lightyears is in the neighborhood. As a result, even with FLT (faster than light) speeds, our empire could not be very large. Even then, travel from one star to another would take a lot of time, a hundred days (over three months) to go to a stellar system a hundred lightyears away, a thousand days (over three years) to go to a system a thousand lightyears away.

But interstellar travel may not be possible. As mentioned above, the speed of light (186,000 miles a second) is supposed to be a cosmic speed limit. But is it really? Under the special theory of relativity, a slower-than-light particle with nonzero rest mass needs infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, although special relativity does not forbid the existence of particles that travel faster than light at all times.

Some physicists think that unusually distorted regions of space-time might permit matter to reach distant locations faster than what it would take light in the normal or undistorted space-time. This would allow a starship to travel long distances a faster than light speeds through a wormhole, if such things exist or could be manufactured.

My own thoughts about this cosmic speed limit (which doesn't mean much) is that perhaps it is an illusion. Here's why I say this. Let's say that my spaceship accelerates to some speed where relativistic effects are supposed to occur. I measure the speed of light; it is still 186,000 miles a second. I measure the length of my spaceship in the direction of travel. It has not changed. Now, according to the theory of relativity, my friend on earth has equipment for measuring my spaceship. His measurements show that my spaceship has shrunk in the direction of travel and that my mass has increased.

On the other hand, since from my point-of-view it is the earth that is moving away from my spaceship at near light speed. (Einstein postulates that there is no absolute frame of reference. This is why it is called the Theory of Relativity. All measurements are relative to the location of the observer.) So, I take the same measurements and find that it is the earth that is shorter and has more mass. Hence, I see no reason why I cannot accelerate my spaceship more. I would really like a refutation of my premise. Please free to comment.