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Hyperdrive and Space Propulsion
Interested reader writes "MSNBC has an article covering the recent Space Technology and Applications Forum in New Mexico, which included a frontier physics session on hyperdrive, wormholes, and other blue sky ideas. The idea is a revival of NASA's long-dead (and heavily criticized) Advanced Propulsion Project."
Well, I don't know about the hyperdrive, but I clicked on the hyperlink in the article and I was immediately on page 2! Amazing!
I believe the proper technical term is: pie in the sky ideas.
NASA has no comment, but are reportedly checking into the technology of Lost in Space to determine the validity of Star Trek's claims.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I agree that we should be taking care of this planet as best as we can, but that should not stop us for pursuing the means to find and reach others.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I would say that I would be very surprised if any propulsion of the sort noted here will be put into production in my life time. But I also have no doubt that we will at some point, discover a way to permit us to distant stars.
We wont find this breakthrough if we dont look for it. As long as the false and impossible ideas are shot down, whats the harm in listening to these wild ideas?
Afterall, some day, someone my actually be on to something. It would be a shame to disregard the idea just because it sounds impossible on the face of it.
END COMMUNICATION
If we stay stuck on Earth we are going to continue to overpopulate the planet until we consume ourselves to death. Population control is inevitable if we do not expand, and with population control comes the cheapening and commoditization of every human life.
Of course the alternative is we can find new worlds to populate.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I keep getting an image in my head of Newton's Laws of Whittlin', and it won't go away.
Everything you say is true. However, we have a lot to gain from gathering precious minerals and raw materials from other planetary bodies, moons, etc. The fact is we are running out of a lot of important resources, many of which could be easily obtained from elsewhere if we only had the means to reach "elsewhere".
Here's what people said about other blue sky ideas:
You will fall off the edge of the world.
Man cannot fly!
I can go on, but I'll just leave this as a quote from someone else.
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. Arthur C. Clarke
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/03/12/busines s/news/20_27_233_10_06.txt
Charging customers to send them into space is a lofty goal for any business owner, and perhaps particularly in an area whose economy draws much of its strength from the availability of cheap land.
But that's the goal that Bill Sprague has set, and he even said that he chose Temecula largely because of its low cost of living relative to the coastal cities where his aerospace suppliers are based.
Sprague is building a 52-foot rocket. By October 2007, he hopes, passengers with $250,000 to spend will be able to ride it to the edge of outer space, where the curve of the Earth is visible and where the planet's gravity is slightly weaker than at the surface.
"If they look in any direction except at the Earth, they'll see black," Sprague said. "It'll be just the sun sitting in a sea of blackness. The stars will be visible."
Cool article, although the fact the rocket parts are only valued at $3mil right now would make me concerned about riding in it.
Why not deal with a quantum mirage or other quantum mechanical effects than to try to accelerate ourselves to fractions of the speed of light? Special relativity tells us that the faster we go the massive we get, and not to mention the acceleration itself would be a huge stress to the occupants or payload, unless you want to take weeks to accelerate to high velocities.
Why bother with those complexities when you have the possibility to "travel" faster than the speed of light by using alternative methods?
As an experimentalist, it's refreshing to see someone making such a comment.
The owls are not what they seem
I bet you could get there on a scooter by the time your comment gets modded up.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
Actually one scientific theory holds that it is extremely unlikely we're ever to meet any non-terran organisms that are comptabile with our own physiology. So while we might find inhabited planets, even ones that aren't too different from our own at a glance, our biology will be completely incompatible with theirs, so if we tried to eat each other, we'd die from starvation. Makes diseases transmitting extremely unlikely.
Think of something you despise. Not just anything, an idea. Say, freedom of speech. (This is purely hypothetical, mind you.)
Now, how do you resolve the ensuing conflict (whereby you believe, to the point of valuing it over your life, the non-freedom of speech) that happens when you meet a believer in freedom of speech (also to the point of valuing it over their life)?
Do you see the problem? It's a very gross oversimplification, but the fact of the matter is the problems of Earth aren't Earth's problems at all - they're the problems of humanity. And some would go as far as saying they aren't problems at all, but what makes us human.
So long as men and women have beliefs for which they would gladly die, there will be conquest and there will be war. Thus it has been since the dawn of time, and thus it likely shall always be. To die for an idea - that's something uniquely human. Of all the forms of life we presently know of, only we will do that.
Humanity has gotten along just fine over the past ten thousand years or so, even with conquest and war. So why should we face annihilation through gross short-sightedness, just because humanity doesn't follow the rules of some utopian fantasy?
"that they're planning to conquest other worlds instead of fixing the one they live in :-/"
;-).
Which sounds like a real argument but isn't. While it would be nice to fix this world, the one and the other have nothing to do with each other. And I'd rather the high and wild physics guys would keep their attention fixed safely somewhere outside the solar system I'm living in thank you (just joking, but a grain of real concern nevertheless
This planet is unfixable, nobody cares enough. A lot of people care, just not enough. And apart from some professional care takers' opinions and programs, the average solution put forward by your average shocked person are laughable. So if we're really messing it up too far, well, maybe we'll try and clean up a little. Let's hope we find viable alternatives for our more messy activities before we pass some critical treshold.
For the rest, just look at every humanitarian, ecological or political issue that in itself forms a sizeable threat to us or this planet. See if you like how we're "fixing" it. Not that some people aren't doing what they can and some organizations aren't great. Just, if you look at it all, you realize it isn't a bad idea to have some mad scientists look outside the solar system as well. They wouldn't be any good anyway in finding "solutions for this planet".
Most things are easily fixed anyway. It just takes investments (paid with money), sustained effort and lots of coordinated actions. Starting with good will between people with opposing viewpoints and different interests. Ahahahaha.
Simply put: take the combined budget of the US and Europe on military spending for ONE year, and you already have the money to fund half a century of all programs on acknowledged "big" problems like poverty, disease, education, clean water, most environmental issues etc etc etc. on a world scale, yes sir.
Problem is, even saying this is deemed political, liberal etc etc etc. So, while most problems are easily solved, we think it makes more sense to invest in a better club to hit our neighbor with. And well, for a talking monkey society that even makes a sort of horrible sense. After all, how can you trust that other alpha male and his friends NOT to kick your country in the bollocks and steal your mates? You can't, you just can't. Even Bush starts to make sense with his pre-emptive strike thing (the bloody uber-religious idiot fascist), which is fancy for "I saw you looking at my mate, so I'll kick you inna fork FIRST".
So, in short, without all the emotion: let's just try to do what we can on ALL fronts that aren't at least directly geared at killing us off as fast as possible, eh? Warp? Bloody good idea. Helping mankind? Sounds great.
Bet you half a dollar we'll have warp drive first.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
The problem I see is that while it may be possible to break the light barrier without breaking causality and using up infinite amounts of energy (and getting infinite mass), we ourselves may be keeping us from discovering it. He's right; this needs non-mainstream thinking. Creativity is severely dampened by this-is-impossible cries. Some might see a challenge in it to disprove this, but even then, the fact that it is considered impossible is cemented in the mind, thereby having an impact on creativity. Also, the fact that sometimes, the scientific community behaves like the church condemning heretics (just read the part with the difficulties getting a hearing about this exotic propulsion concepts), and that consequently, there are MANY crackpots in these "forbidden zones" which create an enormous noise, do not make things really easier. This might be too complicated for an innovation made by some weird genius in his basement, but the powers that could handle it might be too narrow-minded.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Your opinion is yours. but it sounds awfully like the 19th century opponents of trains. "ooh the human body cannot sustain speeds in excess of 20 mph, it's just unnatural". Railway travel (general) "I see what will be the effect of it; that it will set the whole world a-gadding. Twenty miles an hour, sir! - Why, you will not be able to keep an apprentice boy at his work! Every Saturday evening he must have a trip to Ohio to spend a Sunday with his sweetheart. Grave plodding citizens will be flying about like comets. All local attachments will be at an end. It will encourage flightiness of intellect. Veracious people will turn into the most immeasurable liars. All conceptions will be exaggerated by the magnificent notions of distance. -- Only a hundred miles off!--Tut, nonsense, I'll step across, madam, and bring your fan'...And then, sir, there will be barrels of port, cargoes of flour, chaldrons of coal, and even lead and whiskey, and such like sober things that have always been used to slow travelling -- whisking away like a sky rocket. It will upset all the gravity of the nation...Upon the whole, sir, it is a pestilential, topsy-turvy, harm-scarum whirligig. Give me the old, solemn, straight forward, regular Dutch Canal - three miles an hour for expresses, and two rod jog-trot journeys -- with a yoke of oxen for heavy loads. I go for beasts of burden. It is more formative and scriptural, and suits a moral and religious people better. -- None of your hop skip and jump whimsies for me." Source: From the Western Sun of Vincennes, Indiana, July 24, 1830, as quoted by Seymour Dunbar in A History of Travel in America, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1915, Vol. III. p. 938. http://www.foresight.org/News/negativeComments.htm l
Just keep your horse then...
Simply put: take the combined budget of the US and Europe on military spending for ONE year, and you already have the money to fund half a century of all programs on acknowledged "big" problems like poverty, disease, education, clean water, most environmental issues etc etc etc. on a world scale, yes sir.
Tried that. Didn't work.
Problem is, even saying this is deemed political, liberal etc etc etc. So, while most problems are easily solved, we think it makes more sense to invest in a better club to hit our neighbor with.
No.
Take Africa, for example. It would be easy to make sure that every child in Africa had enough to eat. There's more than enough food left over in America and Europe to do that.
But if you ship that food to Africa, it ends up rotting on the docks, or stolen by thieves, or armed rebels, or the government (if you can even tell the difference). These people are profiting by making other people's lives a misery. Sending more aid just results in more theft. You could send in troops to protect the food, but (a) that would cost far more than the food itself, (b) the countries in question won't let you, and (c) hey, you just spent the entire military budget on rice.
So, to summarize, while solutions are simple, implementing them is not. I'm sure it's not too hard to interpret my ramblings that way. And my main point was: it's no use to lament the fact that physicists are looking at warp drives to solve interesting puzzles instead of looking at for instance world hunger. Lots of people look at that, find solutions which are in itself simple enough but need too much good will and sustained effort (and not only from the haves, also the have nots, or the haves among those countries that have lots of have nots).
Cheers.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
> The engines don't move the ship at all. The ship stays where it is and the engines move the universe around it!
OK team, it's like this: the science guy says rip the engines off the ship and bolt them to the universe. We can't move the damn ship 6 inches and now he wants to launch Nevada...
Until propellantless propulsion is invented any long range space travel is just a hallucination of virtual reality.
> Sure, a few blackboards for a few mathematicians and physicists might seem like a cheap way for NASA to look like it is doing something
Administrator #1: "If we start a Department of Mathematics, all we'll need to buy is pencils, papers, and erasers."
Administrator #2: "If we start a Department of Philosophy, we wouldn't need to buy the erasers."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Its not FTL but baby will it get the ball rolling. I'll just run this by everyone here... With all the talk lately about a space elevator, I got to thinking after a sort of recent slashdot discussion, just what advantages would a space elevator offer over a tower launch? I contacted the man responsible for a similar idea, the skyramp (warning: hideous javascript menu may break firefox), Carlton Meyer, and had a dialogue in which he pointed me to a tower launch archive.
The ideas I see bandied about there are similar to what I had in mind, which would be essentially an 11km tall tower (think pylons rather than skyscrapers, based at sea), with evacuated airless launch tubes, using nuclear reactors to power a maglev or pulley system to accelerate vessels to escape velocity. These would then emerge above the end of the troposphere, with it's associated weather and air pressure, and have little to no fuel needed to escape the earth's gravity, meaning you could do a lot more while you were up there. At 1m/s acceleration, you would be at escape velocity when you exit the top of the tower.
Not only would this enable multiple launches daily, it is, unlike the space elevator, readily achievable with today's technology, and financially viable as well. Given NASA had an annual budget of $16.2 billion for 2005, and a nuclear power plant costs a cool billion to build, give or take, we could have this up and running in a few years. And once we are up there...
Space has got vast, essentially unlimited resources. One recent story pointed out the trillion dollar iron asteroid up there. The thing has about 5 tons of steel for every man, woman and child on earth. And thats just one of god knows how many... billions more?
Once we leap the cost to escape hurdle (as I think I have managed), we can proceed to use these resources. There are several obstacles in the way of this, first of which is zero gee mining, we have no idea how to do it. We can either mine the ore out there, or bring the asteroid back into orbit and slice it up there. Or slice it up and send it back to orbit. I would be opposed to moving it back into orbit for processing, purely for the debris issue. Perhaps a lunar base would have some merit there.
So we set up a mining and processing operation either on the moon or in deep orbit, and start cutting and processing one of those bad boys. Whats the first thing we build? A bigger processing and mining operation. Space exploration, much like the internet, has to be a largely incestuous affair at first, existing solely for its own benefit.
Once we have that mastered, we can move to algae pods in orbit for food production, oxygen refining, and fuel production (biodiesel or chemical engines), all of which can be powered by the immense energy of the sun, and use the raw materials abundantly available in space. Whether you ship that stuff back to earth or use it for further colonisation, its a vital step.
The production of automated scouts is also a high priority; a vast amount of surveyor and prospector drones to sweep and map every square inch of every rock and gas in the system, out to the Oort cloud, and figure out what they are made of. I'd err on the side of quantity rather than quality, still no reason not to have either. This could be combined with deep space observatories that would make hubble look like the end of a coke bottle.
So now we have a manufacturing bridgehead, a good idea of what's interesting out there, and a cheap means to launch to orbit. Actual manned system ships would come next, to either colonise or investigate the system. The rest, as they say, is (future) history.
A lot of this would require automatio
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Disclosure: I am a neuroscientist.
I think the most likely way we're going to get intelligence to other stars is to send AI computers, since they wouldn't mind the long wait. Even if creating AI is hard, if Moore's law holds, in 50 years we'll be able to simulate every neuron in a whole human brain on a computer in real time, so even if we don't understand intelligence, we'll be able to reproduce it. And if biological life is so important to you, send some frozen embrios (or info about their DNA on hard drives, and stock chemicals for building embrios from scratch) and artificial wombs with the computers too - let them build a colony, then defrost their kids.
Far-fetched? In my opinion, it's much more likely than being able to keep whole humans happy on a 100 lightyear trek. Yes, Moore's law might not hold up, but I predict we'll be able to upload brains before sending our fragile bodies intact to distant stars.
Patrick
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
They're perfectly safe.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Waiting for the old guard to die is a popular belief, but I'm not convinced it's necessarily true.
One thing that DOES have to happen is that enough anomalies have to build up in the old theory that people start looking for a new one. Then that new theory has to be rigorously formulated and tested. So yes, it does take time, but I'm not convinced that people dying is a necessary component.
Now, if you mean waiting for the general public to accept a new paradigm, then that might well take a generation, but the general public's acceptance doesn't really matter that much anyway. They'll happily drive their horseless carriages even if they do think they run on magic.
The problem with the NASA hyperdrive program is not that it costs money, the problem is that people like you think it's going to be an alternative to cleaning up our act here at home.
You will not get off this planet, and neither will many generations to come. There won't be self-sustaining space colonies, and there won't be interstellar travel. We either live on this planet or we die on this planet. Deal with it.
Here's another way to view the math - if you start at standstill (i.e. v(0)=0) and expect to be moving at 11km/s at the exit of the tube, your average velocity is Vaverage = (v(exit) - v(0))/2 = 5.5km/s. Using this number you can calculate the time to traverse the launch tube: t = distance/Vaverage = 11km / 5.5 km/s = 2 seconds. You can also calculate the acceleration: a = v(exit)/t = 11km/s / 2 = 5.5km/s^2. So relative to 1 g = 9.8m/s^2, your launch system will require occupants and payload to sustain about 561 g's for the 2 second launch.
For electrical and mechanical payloads, that's achievable. Many small atmospheric-study payloads have been gun-launched to orbital altitudes, but on ballistic trajectories. Cited accelerations are on the order of 12000-14000 g's for very short durations.
For people and critters: pink goo.