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Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Ummm... actually, we don't know that FTL cannot exist. In fact a number of scientists have found loopholes in Relativity that would allow FTL travel. In particular, wormholes, Alcubierre warps and Krasnikov tubes all are consistent with Relativity. They all have problems (possibly, even most likely, unsolvable problems), and they could simply be an artifact of the mathematics that has no real world counter part.
That being said, from a Science Fiction perspective, these loop holes can be used to achieve FTL without actually violating any physical law as we now know it. Granted many sci-fi writers, especially ones who don't write hard sci-fi (though even some that do), just use a hand wavy solution and rightly proceed with the assumption that the reader won't care, but some take their time to get it reasonably right. Robert Forward wrote a Hard Science Fiction story about FTL travel and its implications called Timemaster.
Bill
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It is also possible that our understanding of Physics and how the universe works is so incomplete, that we are missing huge chunks of what there is to know.
I mean, people in the 19th century didn't know anything about Fission or Fusion and still their steam engines worked fine. So what if we know a lot about rockets, gravity and electronics, but are missing "hyperdrive physics" or "wormhole physics"? Not knowing that doesn't necessarily affect the stuff that we are constructing on our current basis of knowledge.