Interstellar Travel

http://100yss.org/initiative

Thoughts?

I can't believe that anyone is actually willing to fund this project. Should be interesting to see where it goes.

I have written the software this afternoon, now for the hardware.

Too late for me - I wont be buying a ticket.
:wink:

I see Boffin1 has beaten me to it with the software. I nearly had it sorted. Now, about this 'blink without delay'....

millis () will roll over 345634 million times on the first stage of the journey :slight_smile:

We may not be that far away from sending humans to other solar systems. If we had the technology to grow a baby in a bottle, we could send a frozen embryo on a 67,000 year journey to the nearest solar system. We would also need a robot capable of caring for a baby until it reaches maturity. How far away is that technology? 200 years, maybe 100 years?

we could send a frozen embryo on a 67,000 year journey to the nearest solar system.

I am not sure why we would want to do that, we have nearly messed up one planet , at least we are quarantined here with our greed !

Their reality check needs a reality check of it's own.

The trip to the moon was about 240k miles one way. That's about 10 times the circumference of our planet. Fairly comprehensible numbers.

The trip to our nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is about 4.3 light years, or 252,700,000,000,00 miles. That's a bit over 100 million times the distance to our moon. To put it another way, the logistics of making a trip to Proxima Centauri are about 100 million times more challenging than making a trip to our moon.

We need some incredible, ie revolutionary, breakthroughs in Research and Development. I can understand the desire to reach for the stars, but we haven't even put a man on another planet in our own Solar system yet. I think a good analogy would be something like Columbus talking to the queen about planning a trip to the moon before he even made it across the ocean to the new world.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that we should be focusing more on just returning to the moon and establishing a completely self-sufficient base of operations there before even setting our sights on a target like Mars. The only trouble with that is it just doesn't capture the interest of the general public, so it becomes difficult to drum up support and funding for such an endeavor.

"Forget about it. Don't look at those distant shores and think that some day we'll be able to build an engine for that rowing boat. A little outboard motor wouldn't get you very far -- you'd likely run out of gas before the island is out of sight! Heck, you'll probably starve before then anyway.

Just go home. Why are you still planning on building a big boat -- that sci-fi notion of a metal-hulled "ship" no less! -- when you should be worrying more about your little island? We have problems here! Our resources are dwindling, people are starving! Your dreams mean nothing in our everyday lives."

http://news.discovery.com/space/interstellar-travel-is-hard-dont-bother-120913.html#mkcpgn=fbdsc17

I'd also like to see some form of habitat on the Moon. Especially since theres no way we're launching any kind of large spacecraft from the ground on Earth. You would burn 90% of the fuel getting off the ground, leaving 10% for the remaining 252,700,000,000,00 miles.

Whether you live on that little imaginary island or living on a planet in an empty region of the Milky Way, the arguments are similar.

The arguments are indeed similar, but the scales are completely and utterly out of whack.

That author needs the same reality check. These people clearly have little comprehension of just how far a light year really is. May as well start planning intergalactic travel. After all, what's a few more orders of magnitude?

Let's master intrastellar travel before we put any focus on interstellar travel.

Are we there yet?

jraskell:

Whether you live on that little imaginary island or living on a planet in an empty region of the Milky Way, the arguments are similar.

The arguments are indeed similar, but the scales are completely and utterly out of whack.

That author needs the same reality check. These people clearly have little comprehension of just how far a light year really is. May as well start planning intergalactic travel. After all, what's a few more orders of magnitude?

Let's master intrastellar travel before we put any focus on interstellar travel.

You seem to be misunderstanding the purpose of this project. They aren't proposing that we start building a ship for interstellar travel now, and have it ready by 2112. They simply want us to have one ready by 2112. Step 1 is still just building an unmanned probe.

I would also like to point out that we had civilian air transports flying around before we fully "mastered" flight.

CrossRoads:
Are we there yet?

I don't think we can get there from here....

First we need to get off the planet more easily.
The space elevator sounded like a good idea if it could be built.

This falls short of that but it is interesting that a 20km steel tower could support its own weight.

How would you construct it though?

There was an idea to build a 1km concrete tower to generate energy but I seem to remember they would have to pour concrete round the clock for years to build it.

The Burj Khalif in Dubai is 800m tall. Another 200m and we're there. The video gave me no clue what so ever why the air should be 70 at the foot of the tower.

I have a theory about our energy problem: we paint the earth black. It will absorb all sun light in visible and some infrared and ultraviolet spectrum. We then get the most out of the sun, period. But then we cook to death. A solar panel is essentially black. If you cover the planet with these panels, we probably get a lot of energy, but this energy will turn into heat as we waste them away in activities such as motorizing everything and driving our electric cars. Essentially accepting more from the sun is not a solution, cutting consumption is.

Thoughts?

I've just finished reading C M Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" - I find the similarity striking.

I have a theory about our energy problem: we paint the earth black.

I remember an article in Omni magazine in the late 70s, saying the solution to global warming would be to paint the State of Texas white.

If it is energy you want you don't need to paint the planet black, just build a Dyson-Harrop Satellite [nothing to do with the vacuum cleaner/hand dryer man].

Building a shpere is a bit ambitious as you would need all the matter in the solar system, but a satellite sounds do-able :expressionless:

In fact any advance civilisation worth its salt will have one hence this paper to detect advanced civilisations by detecting the satellites.

Meanwhile NASA are looking at a faster than light drive so theat we can pay a visit.
The spacecraft does not actually travel faster than light it just bends space around it to achieve the same result - so that is okay then. Apparently they think it can be done without needing several stars to power it.