Originally Posted by solletica

Rather, I believe the reason mankind hasn't yet taken to the stars is due to a kind of artificially induced scientific ignorance, stemming from interference by people/creatures, etc. who have traveled back in time and deliberately (yet covertly) thwarted efforts by humans to discover the theoretical breakthrough

that would make warp drive (i. e. superluminal travel within general relativity) possible given the substances known to man.

Why would these creatures do this? Because once you have warp drive, you also automatically have the ability to travel back in time (those well-versed on relativity know this), and if mankind had that ability in this day and age, with short-sighted warmongering pols running loose all over the place,

bad things could potentially happen to the timeline, i. e. if some bonehead pol/maniac decided to (covertly) authorize a trip back in time to alter history more to his liking. I. e. mankind doesn't currently have the ability to enforce a temporal directive, and so, can't responsibly handle warp technology, if it were to exist today.

There is, of course, the possibility that any alterations made to the timeline do not affect our existence because such alterations will merely fork new parallel universes, or that alterations to the timeline are fundamentally impossible. If either of these are the case, then my theory goes out the window.

Otherwise, certainly (however bizarre it sounds), it has merit.