Like those before him, Zefram Cochrane, the scientist generally credited with the development of modern warp physics, built his work upon the shoulders of giants. Beginning in the mid-twenty-first century, Cochrane, working with his legendary engineering team, labored to derive the basic mechanism of continuum distortion propulsion (CDP). Intellectually, he grasped the potential for higher energies and faster-than-light travel, which signified practical operations beyond the Solar system. The eventual promise of rapid interstellar travel saw his team take on the added task of an intensive review of the whole of the physical sciences. It was hoped that the effort would lead to better comprehension of known phenomena applicable to warp physics, as well as the possibility of "left field" ideas influenced by related disciplines.

Their crusade finally led to a set of complex equations, materials formulas, and operating procedures that described the essentials of superluminal flight. In those original warp drive theories, single (or at most double) shaped fields, created at tremendous energy expenditure, could distort the space/time continuum enough to drive a starship. As early as 2061, Cochrane's team succeeded in producing a prototype field device of massive proportions. Described as a fluctuation super impeller, it finally allowed an unmanned flight test vehicle to straddle the speed of light (c) "wall," alternating between two velocity states while remaining at neither for' longer than Planck time, 1.3 x 10-43 second, the smallest possible unit of measurable time. This had the net effect of maintaining velocities at the previously unattainable speed of light, while avoiding the theoretically infinite energy expenditure which would otherwise have been required.

In early CDP engines - which were only informally dubbed warp engines - met with success, and were almost immediately incorporated into existing spacecraft designs with surprising ease. Although slow and inefficient by today's standards, these engines yielded a substantial reduction of undesired time dilation effects, paving the way for round-trip flights on the order of a few years, not decades. Cochrane and his team eventually relocated to the Alpha Centauri colonies (a move that took "only" four years because of CDP-powered space vehicles), and they continued to pioneer advances in warp physics that would eventually jump the wall altogether and explore the mysterious realm of subspace that lay on the other side.

The key to the creation of subsequent non-Newtonian methods, i.e, propulsion not dependent upon exhausting reaction products, lay in the concept of nesting many layers of warp field energy, each layer exerting a controlled amount of force against its next-outermost neighbor. The cumulative effect of the force applied drives the vehicle forward and is known as asymmetrical peristaltic field manipulation (APFM). Warp field coils in the engine nacelles are energized in sequential order, fore to aft. The firing frequency determines the number of field layers, a greater number of layers per unit time being required at higher warp factors. Each new field layer expands outward from the nacelles, experiences a rapid force coupling and decoupling at variable distances from the nacelles, simultaneously transferring energy and separating from the previous layer at velocities between 0.5c and 0.9c. This is well within the bounds of traditional physics, effectively, circumventing the limits of General, Special, and Transformational Relativity. During force coupling the radiated energy makes the necessary transition into subspace, applying an apparent mass reduction effect to the spacecraft. This facilitates the slippage of the spacecraft through the sequencing layers of warp field energy.