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Can We Travel To That Exciting New Exoplanet?
An anonymous reader writes "The news last week that exoplanet Gliese 581g may be in the 'Goldilocks zone' and could therefore hold liquid water and alien life got everyone all excited, with good reason. A potentially habitable planet — and only 20 light years away! But to put things in perspective, here are a couple of estimates on what it would take to travel to Gliese 581g. One scientist puts the travel time at 180,000 years based on current space flight technology, while another explains that it could be quite quick if we build a matter-antimatter drive, and can figure out how to bring along 530 times as much mass in fuel as is contained in the ship and cargo itself."
Would it not make sense to communicate first? Radio at 20 light years is a 40 year round trip. You never know, somebody might answer with instructions on how to get there quicker.
Hey! That's given me an idea for a great film. Is Jodie Foster available for the lead?
I'd really love to see some college actually do a study on if it would be possible or not. It's hard to say without real research just how much and what kind of resources an ark ship would need over those kinds of timescales. What's the theoretical rate of atmosphere loss? How efficiently can waste be recycled and put back into the ecosystem?
Using a sperm bank to dramatically increase genetic diversity would significantly reduce the minimum size of the crew, an all woman crew would further reduce the size but would probably cause all new problems. A vegan diet reduces the need to support non-human animal mass, but adds a requirement to be able to synthesize some vitamins and proteins. Enough redundant manufacturing to produce spare parts for everything, including the manufacturing facilities. IMO, it looks hard but not impossible with today's technologies.
There is no gap between stars. By the time you get close to exiting our solar system, you will already be closer to a neighboring star then you will be to Sol.
The idea that we will build a ship to go to another star on a direct route is a child's fantasy, much like terraforming Mars. We need to figure out how to live in space. Once we have figured that out, we can go anywhere or nowhere. The resources in space that are close to the Earth dwarf the resources that exist on this planet.
What we need to be working on is automated fabricators and such. Propulsion is over-rated. Just start seeding the path with resources from our automated fabs and then when we do want to go somewhere, we can take our time and not have to bring everything with us.
Gene Roddenberry had it right. We need a wagon train to the stars.