I didn't mean that NASA was part of the military - just that the cost of the mission, especially when spread over several decades (which is generally the case with these things) isn't that great when you consider that the annual US military budget is $750bn ish. I disagree that we'd need alien tech in order to travel to the stars, unless you mean the sort of near instantaneous "warp drive" propulsion systems you see in eg: Star Trek, in which case, I'd agree, We could almost certainly build unmanned interstellar probes in the very near future. We could probably even build a basic manned interstellar ship tbh, but the trips would be very long and unfortunately, one way so the spacecraft would need to be constructed as self-contained "ark" environments. Obviously things like the problem of food production and environmental control would be difficult though probably not impossible to solve. Given what lockdown has taught us about the effects of confinement on mental health, the bigger problem might actually be psychology rather than physics and biology. In the absence of some sort of hibernation tech they'd very likely need to be multi-generational too. There are propulsion systems that could, in theory, be built now and others which could be built in the new future that would achieve high enough velocities (ion drives and nuclear detonation pulse propulsion) via constant 1g acceleration. One thing that we may never get around though, is the relativistic time-dilation effects that are (on our current understanding of physics) a side-effect of travelling at very high speeds, which mean that while time would pass at a "normal" rate for those on the ship, if they returned to Earth after, for them, a 30 year journey, they'd find they were hundreds if not thousands of years into the future.
Shorter version. Remember,* only 200 years ago some scientists believed that that humans would suffocate if they travelled at more than 25mph and powered trans-Atlantic crossings were impossible possible because a steam ship could not carry enough coal for the voyage. Around 150 years ago, the most advanced form of long distance communication was scratchy morse code beeps transmitted by undersea cable and was only accessible to a very few people, but now almost every man, woman and child owns a handheld device into which high quality porn and low quality politics can be beamed instantaneously from Space. There were only 63 years between Orville and Wilbur making a short and dangerous flight across a field and humans walking safely on he Moon. I think we could get to the stars if we put our minds and money to it. Unfortunately I think the next 100 years are going to be more focused on fights for survival than the sort of flights of fancy just for the sake of it which are necessary to make progress. * I know your posts frequently to ask people to "remember" so I thought I'd return the favour.
High quality 4k images of the surface of Mars from previous missions. Photo's from Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. Just amazing!
Amazing achievement. But what's the point. Expensive both is money and environmental costs. (yes I know they commercialise some of the stuff thats designed and used)
I understand your point. But like cutting pollution in cars. The first 95% reductions came so fast and so easy. Like say the wright Brothers until now. All the things you mentioned were fantastic in actuality and in perception. But the reality is they were all low hanging fruit compared to interstellar travel. I specifically meant with Humans aboard, but even without it will go like this... We create something that seems like it is so fast that we try to send something to another star. It takes your 100 years to develop it and the rest of the tech surrounding it. Think of how far it would go in one hundred years... Yet 100 years later we would have tech that was so much faster that from the time of it's launch to when it caught the first one, the first one would probably have only traveled maybe 10% further before the next one waved as it passed it by. Alpha Centauri: The nearest star system is 4.3 light years away, or 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km) So unless we are going the speed of light, and using light to communicate it will take way too long. So right now according to my 3 seconds of research... NASA Helios 2 space probe is the fastest man-made object ever. It set a record speed of 157078 mph during the mission. What is the fastest thing ever? Laser beams travel at the speed of light, more than 670 million miles per hour, making them the fastest thing in the universe. And as they used to say... "You do the math" Whoops Google did. We need to go over 4200 times faster than that probe to reach light speed. https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...&ved=0ahUKEwjo4dvjr_buAhUCU80KHd83D2EQ4dUDCA0
You don’t need to travel at the speed of light to make it worthwhile. According to a site I just looked at (I did 3 times as much research - approx 18 seconds) a journey of a century or thereabouts is a pretty good estimate using current potential tech ie: nuclear detonation pulse propulsion. "Though hardly elegant by modern standards, the advantage of the design is that it achieves a high specific impulse – meaning it extracts the maximum amount of energy from its fuel source (in this case, nuclear bombs) at a minimum cost. In addition, the concept could theoretically achieve very high speeds, with some estimates suggesting a ballpark figure as high as 5% the speed of light (or 5.4×107 km/hr). At this velocity, it would take an Orion spacecraft about 85 years to transport a crew of colonists to Proxima Centauri. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the time needed to get the spacecraft up to speed and then decelerate before arrival. So in reality, it would be more like a little over a century, which is still pretty impressive." https://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/
I'm sure I am not going mad but I thought someone posted a message in the early hours along the lines of them imagining the sound of clanging metal when they look at my avatar, but it seems to have been deleted. If so, that would be me cannibalising the engines of my 4 Ducatis to make a V8 constant drive propulsion system. However, I pulled the plug on the project when I realised that the cost of belt and valve services would exceed the annual NASA budget and UK GDP combined.....
May be in to something there. About as likely as Wales and IOW. Expect an enterprise scheme or crowdfunding page soon
One thing to consider is that in such a long journey time wise, the risk of getting hit and damaged by something must be quite relevant. Imagine getting wiped out after completing 99% of the journey.
That very true. I can’t remember the precise numbers but IIRC hitting a sub-mm sized speck of dust at 25% light speed would punch a hole in and destroy the craft. However particles of such size are rare in interstellar space but the smaller specks would probably erode the surface of the ship and at those sorts of speeds even the very thin interstellar gas could be heated up to enormous temperatures and could potentially melt its surface. Maybe form of magnetic/charged shielding rather than a physical “cow catcher” type arrangement would be the solution?
I remember reading a short sci-fi novel, where a ship is flying the first manned mission to Alpha Centauri. They do not have near speed of light technology (yet) for this first trip, but they do have cryo, so the crew is sleeping through most of the 100 years trip, when they are suddenly woken up by the ship central system, earlier than scheduled, near the end of the trip. Ship detected transmissions coming from their destination. They finally get there only to find out that while they were sleeping, the rest of humanity had discovered speed of light propulsion and overtook them to destination, deciding to let them finish their trip as scheduled. Deep trauma for the crew...
