Bill Clinton Backs 100 Year Starship

astroengine writes "The light-years between the stars is vast — a seemingly insurmountable quarantine that cuts our solar system off from the rest of the galaxy. But to a growing number of interstellar enthusiasts who will meet in Houston, Texas, for the 100YSS Public Symposium next week, interstellar distances may not be as insurmountable as they seem. What's more, they even have the support of former U.S. President Bill Clinton."

Comments

Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her

[Isaac-1]

The reason it is about to run out of juce as you put it, is that the material in the thermocouples have degraded, the Plutonium in the RTG's is still very hot, it is just the part that converts this heat to electricity is breaking down. In a manned ship it would be a relatively simple matter of pulling out the worn out thermocouple and inserting a fresh one. (of course a manned ship would likely need a much larger power source than an RTG could ever provide) This of course brings up the point of limited space for spare parts and needing to design everything with universal plug in modules and have onboard micro fabrication facilities.

Re:Bill, why do you flip flop on science?

[codepigeon]

Clinton has said recently that not finishing the super collider was one of his biggest regrets from his entire presidency. ..and it wasn't even his fault. Congress controls the purse.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/31/us/stating-regret-clinton-signs-bill-that-kills-supercollider.html

Re:in 150 years you can go anywhere in the galaxy.

[CrimsonAvenger]

If you built a spaceship that accelerated at 1G constantly then in 100 years it would be going the speed of light.

No, you won't. You'll be going near the speed of light. Of course, you'll be doing that in ten years.

Note that if you can handwave a constant 1G boost, you can reach anywhere in the galaxy in 20 years, including deceleration time.

And no don't tell me I can't accelerate faster than the speed of light. You can. in your own frame.

No, you can't. In your own frame of reference, you'll still be going sublight, and the Universe will look rather odd (blue shifted in one direction,red-shifted in another, and VERY, VERY FLAT!).

If you experience 1G of acceleration for 100 years, you know you have changed your speed by about 3E10M/sec.

Alas, it doesn't actually work that way....

Now an outside observer might not see it that way of course. But who cares. It's me that's going somewhere not them.

Not only will an outside observer see that you're not going lightspeed+, he won't see you at all. since it will take you ~3E44 years as the universe measures time for you to accelerate for 100 years at 1G. And you'll be about that many lightyears away by then (note that the universe is only about 1E13 lightyears across, by one estimate).

Note, by the way, that by that time, the Milky Way Galaxy, if it still existed (it won't - the collision with Andromeda in a few billion years will see to that, much less the death of every star in both galaxies long before), would appear (to you, in your speedy little spaceship) to be ~1/1000,000,000,000,000 of a nanometer wide.

Oh, and the entire sidereal universe would by approaching a nanometer in width (to you)....