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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."
I agree completely with your overall point, but with constant 1g acceleration, the passengers in a ship could arrive somewhere within 100 years due to time dilation,
Of course, the energy required and the engineering challenges are immese, but theoritically the nearest star could be reached in less than 40 years (passenger time).
Voyager I. Thirty-five years and you know how far it is from earth? Seventeen light *hours*. And it's about to run out of juice at even that paltry distance.
Now go build something to travel at least 4.2 light *years*.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The scales you're talking about with interstellar travel are almost humanly unimaginable. The fastest probe we've ever launched would take over 100,000 years to reach even the closest solar system
Eh who cares. The proper model isn't a moon landing visit and return stunt but more like the national highway and railway network. It would take 100 years for me to visit every road in the US road network but I really don't care, as long as I can travel around my local area. So the proper solution is to take 10 million years to set up 10 million space stations each about a year apart. Much like the original ancient silk road, no one would ever travel the length of it, but you'd live along it and adsorb the benefits of it.
Its like arguing its stupid for boats and sea travel to exist because no human being or individual boat could possibly last long enough to sail every route on the map or visit every port... "eh". None the less, sailing is fun.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Because Voyager 1 & 2 are somewhat old technology. If we built two new spacecraft they would have better propulsion systems and more efficient energy sources. Just read about the Martian Rovers, they are some impressive machines.
Because of the time scales mentioned above, space ship capable traveling to nearest start would be incapable of supporting life. That is it will have to reconstruct life on the arrival and travel completely dormant.
As a civilization we do have enough time before estimated heat death of our universe to visit even most distant corner of the galaxy. With that said, every trip will be one-way, by the time "we" (whatever form it takes) arrive anywhere original civilization will be long since gone.
As a result multi-star civilization is extremely unlikely, you could have a civilization existing on multiple stars, just not at the same time. With this realization humanity's energy should be directed toward a) fully utilizing our system b) fully utilizing energy of the sun c) fully utilizing matter in our system. Only after all of this is achieved does it make sense to fire one-way, never-heard-back-from seeds at the stars.
The problem is that 0.25c is unimaginably fast by human standards, and would require a truly mind boggling amount of energy to achieve for any vessel with enough mass to support people onboard. Even 0.025c is insanely fast (27 million kph), and would require a generational ship or some sort of stasis (and rotating crew) to make the journey. This assumes you solve the problem of what to do about invisible space junk (micrometeorites for instance) colliding with your ship at an equivalent energy much larger than the largest nuclear explosion ever detonated by man.
We're not traveling between the stars without a major revolution in physics.
I read the internet for the articles.
The idea of FTL is not 'out for the count' by a long shot, despite Einstein...
Er, well, to be clear... FTL is out for the count because of Einstein, so for FTL to be possible means a up-ending of one of the fundamental assumptions of Relativity. It is hypothetically possible that this is the case, but it is not to be presumed lightly (unless you're writing a sci-fi story.)
We would all like for it to be true. Believe me, a huge number of people were hoping that despite the odds the "FTL neutrinos" would turn out to be real rather than an equipment failure.
In the same fashion we pressurize our airplanes and remain quite oblivious to the outside conditions, we have to find a way to encapsulate a piece of space time in our little ship while it zips along at warp 9...
But in the same fashion where, despite your comfort within, the airplane itself still must obey the rules of aerodynamics so too must this hypothetical spacecraft deal with the rest of the universe while violating the rules of said universe. And it's not the environment of space that prevents FTL, it's causality. The only way to "encapsulate" something against causality is for it to never interact with the rest of the universe again.
Now cue the naysayers to tell me how crazy I am for even thinking it. Radical, yes, but no crazier than the idea of man on the moon, or human flight. Faster than sound? I should be locked up for thinking up such insanity!
It's not crazy to think of it. It is crazy to act like it's a realistic possibility based on what we know of the universe, or that it is any way comparable to the other things you mention. The physical principles that would allow flight, supersonic flight, or traveling to the moon were well-known for a long, long time. It was, in essence, an engineering problem of how to work the well-known laws of nature such that you could fly, or rocket off the face of the earth.
Whereas FTL violates the known physical principles of nature.
So, once again, it could be possible, and damn I hope it is, but it's not at all like those other things.
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm sorry, but most of the difference between Voyagers and modern space probes is electronics - a technology that was just beginning to be developed in the 60s and 70s, and is only just now reaching maturity. They use pretty much the same propulsion sources and power sources. There might be a 20% difference, or even a factor of two or three, but that won't make a dent in the problems that need addressed. The energy sources in both are pretty much exactly the same, and the plutonium energy source used in both is very short-lived (40 years or so) on the order of interstellar travel. If you like, compare New Horizons with Voyager. Voyager still has the upper hand in velocity leaving the solar system - although most of that was aquired through interation with large planets.
The technology of chemical propulsion and RTG power sources has pretty much played out, so don't expect much improvement in these areas. The only reasonable power source for an interstellar trip is fission or fusion, and space portable units that can do this is the only thing on the map that has any hope of revolutionizing space travel to beyond the solar system. The multiple order of magnitude changes we see in the development of electronics is the exception with regards to technology. We don't see jet engines a million times more powerful than the first generation jet engines, nor do we see internal combustion engines a million times more powerful than the first generation. Using the technological development rate in electronics to justify that newer propulsion or more efficient energy sources will solve all of our interstellar travel problems at some future date is rather proposterous.
This was one of panel discussions at SETIcon II earlier this year. This DARPA study also funds people doing research to ask what kinds of people need to be selected for the trip? How will they get along? What is the minimum number? They will have to breed, researchers looking into how many people did it take to originally populate north american continent (answer was about 70). What kind of culture(s) of people, other studies show people will bring their own culture with them. Also have to grown own food, how much top soil needs to be packed? Other ways to grow food? how do you keep the soil healthy? It seems when we research and plan for a 100 year starship, we are actually looking back at ourselves. How do we keep our current "spaceship" functional. Really, a common expression of earth itself in the early 1970s per the new ecology movement.
There was a lot of other subjects raised in this discussion, go buy the video of what was presented at http://seticon.com/products/#category=saturday
All Aboard the 100 Year Starship (Panel Discussion) Price: $10.00 Featuring Mae Jemison, Richard Rhodes, Dana Backman, Bill Nye. Moderated by Adrian Brown.
mfwright@batnet.com
The correct equation is 1.94 arccosh (n/1.94 + 1) apparent years : where n = number of light years to travel. This takes into account 1g acceleration and deceleration. The andromeda galaxy can be reached in 28 years, not 3,115.
Here's a link for the derivations.
We're not going to get by fundamental physics with improved engineering.
I like 'Trek and SF as much as the next Slashdotter, but certain facts remain facts, and must be faced.
Your can't do attitude is why YOU will fail, but thankfully it won't stop humanity as a whole.
That's pretty flamebaity, but let me try a reasonable response anyway.
As I see it, the military budget has two purposes: (1) prolong global US hegemony for as long as reasonably possible, (2) stimulate and maintain strategic domestic industries, both in terms of production facilities and in terms of R&D - basically, the military budget is Keynesianism in a guise that appeals to Republicans.
It seems fairly clear that goal (1) can be achieved on a much smaller budget, if that budget is used more intelligently, i.e. not wasted by getting into unproductive quagmires. We can argue about the exact numbers, but just compare the size of the US military budget to the next runner-up country. It's clear that there is much more than enough of a "safety margin".
Goal (2) can easily be achieved by an ambitious space program. Such a program could require domestic production of parts, as well as pretty advanced domestic R&D.
So, obvious political issues aside, I see no compelling rationally justified reason not to shift a pretty significant piece of the budget from the military to space exploration.