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Starships In a Century?
An anonymous reader writes "In the New York Times, Kenneth Chang writes about the 100-year starship conference, where 'an eclectic mix of engineers, scientists, science fiction fans, students and dreamers' discussed ideas for how to travel across interstellar space, including 'how to organize and finance a century-long project; whether civilization would survive, because an engine to propel a starship could also be used for a weapon to obliterate the planet; and whether people need to go along for the trip.' Some of the proposals were pretty far out, such as Joseph Breeden's concept for an engine-less starship (propelled using a gravity slingshot on a near-sun trajectory). Others were a little less forward thinking, although still futuristic by current standards of space exploration: nuclear rockets, fusion, lightsails, and so forth. So, can we go to the stars? Wait a hundred years, and we'll see!"
Sci Fi convention regurgitates things they've seen on TV so far.
The standard razor for any vaporware tech is,
"Five years away" = "we have the general physical principles down but there are a lot of implementation details unresolved".
"Ten years away" = "we're not really sure about the physics, and/or the economic feasibility has yet to be established".
"Twenty years away" = "some guy wrote about this in a journal and a few people in the field may believe it could work".
Now, "100 years away" = "Not. Happening. In Your Lifetime, or anyone else's".
Dog is my co-pilot.
Project Orion
I find all the BS that gets thrown around about how technology from the middle of the last century like space travel or fourth generation nuclear power is "only X decades away" rather annoying. It makes me feel like we're living in decline portrayed in the Foundation novels.
Who let an article through with a paywalled source?
SAMZENPUS!!!!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I believe this is the site for the project.
Does this mean if we settle on a planet going round some other star the city there will be built... on rock and roll?
If so, I suspect that radio communication may prove a problem due to interference from some guy called Marconi playing the mamba. Personally, I don't care who goes to that type of place though.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
We went from the Wright Brother's primitive wooden airplane that carried two passengers and could fly for about a minute; fast forward to where we have an Airbus A380 that can carry around 900 passengers, fly 15,000kms at a speed of 900km/hour. That is progress.
We need only perfect cryogenic technology; once we can preserve our bodies for hundreds of years on end, it won't really matter how long it takes to get to the next star. Indeed, it is more likely that a human designed AI piloted craft/probe will reach the next star before our biological selves. Of course, one hundred years from now, humans will most likely be very different than we are now (genetic, nono-machine enhancements ect...)
"propelled using a gravity slingshot on a near-sun trajectory"
Nice idea, but Space is non-empty. there is enough dust and whatnot out there to slow such a ship and leave it slower and slower. Not good.
And then, when you get where you're going (as if you're choosing where you go), you get to decelerate. Unless orbiting a star was the intention all along. In which case, we got this star right here, plenty of orbital slots available.
No, we'll be using engines.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Undiscussed problem areas:
1) It seems a stable biosphere is bigger than "biosphere II" which was pretty freaking big for just a couple people.
2) It seems humanity needs something a bit bigger than West Virginia to not screw up genetically. Too much kissing cousins is not so good. I did date a total hottie from WV in the 90s who made jokes about her home states genetic issues, its not that they're ALL messed up, just a high (and growing?) proportion, which is worrisome. On the other hand, "tropical islands" seem to have turned out OK.
3) Who goes? The "Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy" implied all the Nobel prize winners might be a winning combination, for them, but I'm thinking maybe all the politicians, mbas, and illegals might be a winner, for us. Also see HHGTTG.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Unless we can harness the energy of the atom much better, and design propulsion systems around Fusion Explosions with enough power to hyper accelerate us at higher than gravitational effect of earth, star travel is going to be very unlikely.
Unnecessary. I'll never visit Fiji but humans DO have airline service to Fiji.
How long can you stand to travel as opposed to being "home", lets say a year. Build a station, send it out one years distance, however far away that is. Build the next station, send it out two years distance. Keep pushing stuff on the train and you'll eventually hit the next star.
Your argument is we "need" for some unspecified reason, to have all this high tech junk so there's only about 4 of these stations between us and the next star. My argument is who cares if there's 4 or 400 or 4 million stations between here and the next star, it'll all work just as well as a colonization / space travel policy. Much as I like the idea of air service to Fiji, I frankly don't care if I need to make 15 connections stops and transfers were I to try it. Even if my body could never reach Fiji, we still technically as a species have flight service to Fiji.
The majority of the human population might therefore eventually live "enroute" on various stations. OK, so what?
And nobody knows the effect of 2G acceleration over long term (probably worse than weightlessness) because we can't simulate it for more than very brief periods.
Sure we can. Take a large (to get lots of data) melting-pot of a nation (to remove racial effects) and have their corporate owned government propagandize them to eat grains and corn syrup and other carbs until their weight doubles. Wait a lifetime, analyze the results. Hmm, I wonder where we could run this experiment? It would seem that a lifetime is not so good, a year or so is frankly no big deal.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
We will have interstellar travel when we decide that interstellar travel is more important than bread-and-circuses, that personal responsibility is more rewarding than entitlements, and that "long term investing" involves a time period greater than one fiscal quarter.
...yeah. I'll get back to you on that.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
The article has been reprinted several other places on the web. Try this link, for example:
http://aerospaceblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/not-such-a-stretch-to-reach-for-the-stars/
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The difference is that out military budget is mostly wasted on profits for corporations, as well as dead-end research projects. The cost of research, engineering and manufacturing is much higher here. Plus we have extremely expensive and intricate hardware we strap into our machines that is ridiculously expensive to replace. We also have a higher cost of living, so our soldiers are more expensive. We also have a significant disadvantage when it comes to population, and the Chinese don't care if their population doesn't want to get drafted. Any war with the Chinese would be a pretty fair match if it didn't result in a full nuclear exchange (even then I guess its technically a fair match).
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Since I was a small child at Expo 63 and Expo 67, they have been promising fusion power and interstellar travel in 10-20 years ...
Let's get real and realize we're more likely to be able to use technologies we actually have patents for now, not pipe dreams that are always "in the future".
Robots we send off into space will do perfectly well, and then they can merge with alien civilizations and come back to destroy their makers.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not quite yet, the cuts are supposed to happen over time. I don't dispute the need for a military, and I am glad ours is the most technologically advanced. I'm not very happy with how its used, but that's a different issue. I actually have quite a bit of respect for soldiers, as I am pretty sure I couldn't do it as I don't believe in the afterlife and I'd rather not die. Its not that I am incapable of killing or out of shape or something, just not really willing to put my life on the line, call me selfish. However, its pretty sick that we spend more than any other nation in the world, yet our carriers, missiles and armored vehicles can get shot down by technology based on decades old technology, our UAV's can get infected with viruses, our APC's and Humvee's can get taken out by improvised devices, or http://www.usni.org/news-and-features/chinese-kill-weapon. This pretty much points out the flaw with just throwing money at a objective rather than thinking it through. People need to think outside the box so to speak and come up with innovative solutions rather than paying mega-corps billions of dollars for something that can get taken out by something that costs a few thousand to a hundred thousand dollars. The AK-47 is still the #1 weapon used in the world because it just fucking works. The M-16 has gotten better, in fact I really love shooting that weapon, but you can't just bury it in the sand and expect it to work. One reason the MIG's were such great aircraft was that they wouldn't be taken down by EMP due to a reliance of vacuum tube technology. Anyway, rant over.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
doesn't work that way, from point of view of people inside craft you can accelerate at 1 G indefinitely, from observer on earth they would see ship accelerating at smaller and smaller fraction of 1 G. That fraction becomes smaller as light speed approaches, such that of course light speed is never reached.
Again, I don't think sitting around waiting will bring that utopia; I know it seems a little cart-before-the-horse, but it seems like many times you need people to push the boundaries before all the conditions are "perfect". If everyone just sits back on their laurels waiting for the race to mature, for governments to stop fighting wars, etc., then you get something called "stagnation", and that never works out very well. If someone starts pushing the boundaries of space technology, then you might see more governments join in and people collaborate; people like to jump on bandwagons after all. We just need someone to convince enough parties and people that going into space is worth the cost (and it absolutely is, if you take a long-term view of the situation: energy, raw materials, and asteroid deflection are 3 big reasons; technological spinoffs is a 4th that was demonstrated by the Apollo program).
yes, I worked for over a decade at place that accelerated things to near light speed, and also collided things that moved at near light speed in opposite directions. we're VERY sure about what I described for the case of normal matter and also antimatter.
Just don't ask my former coworkers about neutrinos of various energies and lightspeed, they'll get back to the world on that in about five months.....
Vinge was one of the authors in attendance. Talking over drinks with him, and some of the other authors during the social on the last night (fun game of public storytelling), they seemed to believe in the concept as much or more than most attendees. Although we were able to make a game of how much they mentioned "singularity" during their panel (20+), they still noted that ideas only come to fruition if they are discussed and worked on. Waiting for a hypothetical singularity to solve all hurdles helps no one. It may not even happen. There is a very real possibility that energy limits will hamper our current trend of short term, exponential growth.
Also, as needs to be constantly reiterated, the idea of the 100 YSS project is not to build a starship right now. It is to develop a long lasting (100+ years), financially stable organization that can develop the capabilities, technologies, and social movements necessary to complete such a task. Not nearly as sexy as warp drive, but damned necessary. Unfortunately, the pop-sci view was reflected in attendees, with financial / economic panels lightly attended vs packed rooms for warp bubble discussion.
- yeah, let's just decide that we want to enslave generations of people to live in a tin can their entire lives without having any choice on the matter whatsoever.
If they don't like it? Well, they can always just commit an interstellar suicide and open the hatches somehow or blow it up to smithereens.
Let me guess, you aren't a big believer in individual human rights, are you?
And...is that terribly different than "just deciding" that some people will live in a favallia their entire lives, or Sudan, or Chinese villages, or Earth for that matter.
If somebody decides to join a generational spaceship heading for some new planet, it's true that they make an irreversible choice for their children and grandchildren. But, the same statement is true for the person who decides to remain on earth. Besides, I highly doubt people will decide to leave on generation ships until they are much nicer than the ISS. Maybe a travelers offspring will be forced to live on that ship for 80 years, but the original traveler is still probably committing to 50 years on the ship. If it was going to be a horrible life, who would commit their entire life to getting say 1/4 of the way from Earth to some other planet.
I highly suspect the first such trips to be highly ideological in nature. E.g. the Scientologists might decide they should be the first to get to someplace, because there aren't thetans on that other planet (only Earth).