A faster-than-light spaceship would actually look a lot like Star Trek's Enterprise

"Inside those nacelles, the show's creators imagined, lay the secret that made those trips possible: a warp drive that could crease spacetime itself, folding the universe in front of the ship while unfurling it behind, allowing faster-than-light travel not through speed but through geometry. For decades, physicists dismissed it as beautiful nonsense-a prop master's fever dream. But now the math has caught up to the dream."

""the resemblance to the twin nacelles of [Star Trek's] USS Enterprise is not merely aesthetic, but reflects a potential convergence between physical requirements and engineering design, where science-fiction architectures hint at practical pathways for real warp-capable configurations." In other words: When White and his research colleagues came up with a design that could bend spacetime but also keep a crew safe inside the ship, the optimal geometry that emerged was twin engine pods arranged around a central habitable zone."

The USS Enterprise features twin nacelles attached to a central saucer and relies in fiction on a warp drive that folds spacetime, allowing faster-than-light travel via geometry rather than speed. Physicists long dismissed such warp concepts as fanciful or impossible. Mechanical engineer and applied physicist Harold "Sonny" White, who worked on warp-drive concepts at NASA's Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, has proposed a new warp-drive geometry in a peer-reviewed paper. The proposed design yields an optimal configuration with twin engine pods surrounding a central habitable zone, balancing spacetime-bending requirements and crew safety. The resemblance suggests that physical constraints limit efficient arrangements of exotic energy.

Read at Fast Company