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That actually sounds... more plausible than I would have expected. Like, doable with technology I can imagine being within reach in the next 50 years even if we
by kcorbitt 10y ago
That actually sounds... more plausible than I would have expected. Like, doable with technology I can imagine being within reach in the next 50 years even if we don't achieve any currently-unforseen breakthroughs.
- blueprint 10y agoWhich begs the question, why haven't we at least even tried to have done anything like this already? Do we really need to repeatedly spend comparable amounts of money on yet another dramatic TV special about humans traveling to Mars, as narrated by a favored celebrity? We really are running out of time. And it almost seems like it's pre-determined to happen. :\
- raspasov 10y agoIt sounds like you have a startup idea on your hands : )
- blueprint 10y agoYou've no idea. But for the first step, I need to find one or two very truthful physics grad students / electrical engineers who feel some responsibility for Earth or saving themselves. You wouldn't happen to know someone?
- komali2 10y agoHow would this generate returns on investment? Monetary returns, that is. I mean if I somehow magically become a billionaire I intend to throw money at the problem with no hope of ever making a return because I believe humanity's last hope is an offworld colony, but I doubt I'll convince any VCs to join in.
- semaphoreP 10y agoA Russian billionaire is trying: https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3 https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3
- blueprint 10y agoI'm talking about establishing a self-sufficient colony somewhere other than Earth. We have a major crisis on our hands. And few are even willing to consider let alone research and confirm that we're talking about an extinction event much sooner than we thought, maybe on the order of just a couple years out. Problem is, we don't know. Bigger problem is, we're not doing anything about it.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoIf its affordable to send people to an off world colony then its affordable to bomb it when war on Earth breaks out. Fleeing isn't going to help in a wartime situation and the idea it will not be targeted by world powers is a little naive.
- blueprint 10y agoI said nothing about war..?
- tempestn 10y agoThere's no other conceivable extinction event that could occur "a couple years out". If you're talking climate change, then I agree that's a major problem, but on the order of at least decades.
- K0SM0S 10y agoThis is precisely what we don't know. If you're talking averages, then sure it takes decades to observe a meaningful change. However climate change of the sort we're anticipating now isn't about averages. It's about peaks, it's about records, and possibly major shifts in equilibrium. Basically what we witness so far and will keep on seeing are spikes in all directions of the spectrums (e.g. record high temps, but also record lows; rain in the Death Valley and droughts in formerly wet areas). More critically, what little we've been able to gather on how fast climate eras shift from one to the next, it appears that whereas in-cycle change happens rather slowly (change within an era, because averages), climate era shifts could happen very quickly (because chain of events). We're talking going from a warm era to a glacial one within a few years, sometimes months even. A high speculation is that some thongs might upset the Gulfstream and you'd observe climate evolve from year to year.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThe launch cost of launching the mass of the pyramids of gaza into orbit would bankrupt the richest economies. No your hypothetical engine won't be 100% efficient. This is completely unfeasible. Low mass spacecraft are our only real options. A nano-sized solar sail craft powered by the sun or lasers from Earth can hit up to 20% lightspeed theoretically and its launch costs would be affordable, if not relatively cheap. We could have a spacecraft at Alpha Centauri in merely 20 years. Or simply launch them by the dozens or hundreds to various locations. Stephen Hawking has proposed this system in the past and we've had trial launches of solar sails via the planetary society and others. Its a solid and most likely doable concept at scale. Yes, your kids or grandkids will hear the results, but not you. Is that such a problem, especially when the alternatives are never launching a probe to those systems? To be fair, the proposed Centauri mission would be within a person's lifetime. 20 years to get there then another 4 and half to get the data. So if we launch when you're in your 40s or even 50s, you'll still see the data. We can even use this concept on heavier ships in the solar system to get to Mars quickly. How quickly? Three days quickly for a 100kg craft. This is a bit more pie-in-the-sky of course: http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-scientists-are-investigating-a-propulsion-system-that-could-reach-mars-in-3-days http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-scientists-are-investigatin...
- drewrv 10y agoYou can't really just extrapolate the current cost of launching materials by the kilogram. A project of that magnitude would generate economies of scale and probably some innovations along the way that would bring down the cost. The "nearly perfect" fusion engine is really the hard part.
- Arizhel 10y ago>The launch cost of launching the mass of the pyramids of gaza into orbit would bankrupt the richest economies. No your hypothetical engine won't be 100% efficient. This is completely unfeasible. Not necessarily. You don't need to launch the mass of the pyramids from Earth, you just need to find a source of fuel somewhere else in the Solar System that's in a shallower gravity well, like on the Moon. This is why a lot of people want to work on mining asteroids, and building mining/refining/manufacturing infrastructure offworld.
- matwood 10y agoNASA is not standing still. Europa just went to the next stage for exploration. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6755 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6755 It just takes a lot of time to plan and build ships for space travel.
- blueprint 10y agoYou're completely missing my point. We've known about climate change for a long time. Since the 60s/70s, no? But nobody has been able to realize what it really is, because scientists do not understand gravity yet. I've been begging people to confirm this for themselves instead of believing what others say about it. If people really knew what global warming was they would have started working on ships decades ago. My point is, people on stable self-sufficient colony outside of Earth is priority number one. Not sending a probe to Europa. But somehow I get the feeling you have no interest in this reality.
- Arizhel 10y agoYou sound a little unhinged to be honest. If you're really worried that climate change on Earth is going to cause big problems for humans (which is not an unreasonable concern; climate change threatens to cause significant sea level rise which will cause big problems for people living in sea-level coastal cities), building self-sufficient colonies offworld is a rather extreme answer to that. A simpler answer is to simply move inland, and make sure your structures can handle extreme weather. That's a lot easier than trying to build an offworld colony. The real reason to build an offworld colony is because you're worried about a big asteroid strike. But here again, it's a lot easier to just build observation systems to spot these threats, and weapons systems to handle these threats, than to build an offworld colony that's truly self-sufficient. Finally, offworld colonies have gigantic problems with them: 1) people don't handle radiation well, and no place in the Solar System protects us from radiation the way the Earth does, so we'd probably have to burrow underground to mitigate it, and 2) we really don't know how well the human body can handle low-gravity conditions, but we do know that the human body does not handle zero-g well and that it causes massive health problems. There's no place in the Solar System with close to Earth-normal gravity, except for Venus which is a hellhole hot enough to melt lead (on the surface). Mars is only 1/3g, and the Moon is only 1/6g, and pretty much everything else is even less except the gas giants which obviously aren't livable. Now what climate change and offworld colonies (in this system at least) have to do with our lack of understanding of gravity, I have no idea.
- neaden 10y agoIsn't part of the problem that any ship capable of interstellar travel is also capable of being turned into a WMD? I imagine a lot of people would get really nervous if someone for instance parked a bunch of radioactive material in low earth orbit, and even with fusion there would be the fear that someone could turn the ship around.
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoTo be fair kinetic bombardment is stupid easy to do once you can put stuff into orbit. Put a few, 20 foot long tungsten rods into orbit and you can effectively nuke, without radiation, any location that you orbit over [1]. Sure this is a problem but it's one that already exists today, not necessarily only when we start building space craft in orbit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
- literallycancer 10y agoContract SpaceX to bring the rods into orbit, then bill per strike. KBaaS, disrupting warfare since 2017. Back of the envelope calculation: rods with length of 6m and radius of 5cm weight little over 900kg. Falcon 9 can bring 22.8 tons to LEO. So we can get up about 24 of these in one go. If we want to use the USAF dimensions of 6.1m and radius of 0.15m, then it's only 2 of them, maybe 3 with some adjustments to the rocket.
- neaden 10y agoWell I assume is the USG let alone SpaceX decided to put some 20 foot tungsten rods in orbit a lot of people would start raising objections pretty quickly.
- yongjik 10y ago> ...a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite). Well, that's a bit underwhelming. Sounds a bit like Russian polonium tea, that is, less like a matter of efficiency, and more like showing off the sheer extravaganza of killing somebody in the most colorful, expensive way.
- Balgair 10y agoThe engineering issues are really tough, though surmountable. Currently, we just can't engineer the parts that will last that long in hard vacuum. Mostly because we can't test in that environment easily. Also, what do you do when all the light bulbs have burned out or gone haywire, what does that fault-tree look like for the billion and one parts on the craft? For a short journey of ~7 years, it's not a very big deal, it's just engineering issues. When you get into generation ship discussions then it becomes a human rights nightmare to trap newborns in a ship for their entire life and the lives of their descendants.
- blueprint 10y agoYeah I'm to be honest just trying to awaken people to the priority being that we need to establish a self-sufficient colony somewhere other than Earth.
- Spare_account 10y agoElon Musk is working on that. http://www.spacex.com/mars http://www.spacex.com/mars
- blueprint 10y agoAnd you're certain enough that he's going to be able to do it in time and that he's doing it properly enough that you don't have to do anything about it. And you'll continue to go about doing the exact same things. Got it.
- Spare_account 10y agoIn no way attempting to deflect from my own regrettable inaction, I'm curious to know what you're doing about it?
- maverick_iceman 10y agoAre you a space activist of some sort?
- emmelaich 10y agoHow about http://www.mars-one.com/ http://www.mars-one.com/ ?
- JesseObrien 10y agoIf you're curious on more than a surface level, this book is an excellent resource from an ex-astronaught on why things are lagging. "Safe Is Not An Option" https://www.amazon.com/Safe-Not-Option-Rand-Simberg/dp/0989135519 https://www.amazon.com/Safe-Not-Option-Rand-Simberg/dp/09891...
- maverick_iceman 10y agoPolitics, specifically the PTBT[1]. Otherwise Project Orion[2] would be a reality now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
- grondilu 10y agoProject Daedalus seems more appropriate for interstellar travel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus
- wallace_f 10y agoIs it plausible for anything we'd build to travel .998c and survive the journey?
- delecti 10y agoJust going that fast isn't really risky at all (assuming you don't hit anything, which isn't actually a safe assumption). The tough part is making something capable of a constant 1g of acceleration for a 7 year trip. Most of the craft we make only accelerate for the first small percent of a trip. We can do accelerations that high, but not for very long, and we can't even manage acceleration for such a long duration even at a small fraction of 1g.
- wallace_f 10y agoMy layman's reading of physics-for-layman books has taught me that if we were to travel at the speed of light, we'd convert into energy. However, I'm not so sure about 99.999999% the speed of light. That's really OK, as far as we know?
- chris_va 10y agoYou are technically travelling at 99.99999% of the speed of light right now, relative to something.
- wallace_f 10y agoWhat determines my speed limit? Is it set at 0 here on earth? What if I travel to another galaxy, this one was going at .5c relative to me when I was on earth. Then after trillions of years, inflation causes all of the galaxies to separate beyond sight from me in this new galaxy. Now, the centre of this galaxy appears at rest. Does my velocity get "reset?"
- intrasight 10y agoinflation/expansion of space is not limited to the speed of light.
- elastic_church 10y agoAll about funding. NASA, for example, is about 35 years behind schedule by my math, solely from funding. Now whether throwing money at a public agency would have made advancements in lensing, transistor along with propulsion technology happen quicker. Thats a tougher question that leans towards the "unlikely".
- maverick_iceman 10y agoFunding is not the only issue. Their planning was also a disaster. The Space Shuttle wasted so much money with very little return. If NASA continued with Project Orion and NERVA a Mars colony would have been well established by now.
- bb611 10y agoThe Space Shuttle was fundamentally flawed because NASA compromised with DoD to get it funded. Had NASA been fully funded for space exploration alone they would have made better choices.
- NegativeK 10y agoThe problem is far easier to state than implement.
- sbierwagen 10y agoEDIT: My math was totally wrong. 10 trillion dollars, 0.1x world GDP. (Still a lot of money though) Leaving the old text below so the replies make sense. --- To move 6,000,000 megatons of fuel into low earth orbit would take 111,111 Falcon Heavy launches, at a total cost of $10,000,000,000,000 dollars. (10 quadrillion dollars, 93x world GDP) Something that takes the total global economic output of the planet a century just to lift the fuel into orbit doesn't read as plausible in the next 50 years to me.
- mozumder 10y agoYou wouldn't gather that fuel from earth.. you'd gather it from an icy asteroid or comet or moon (Europa).
- TurplePurtle 10y agoI'm not sure if your error is in the number or in the words, but the number you wrote down is 10 trillion dollars.
- DenisM 10y agoNote to mention that Falcon Launches would get significantly cheaper if we have to do 100,000 of them.
- sbierwagen 10y agoOops.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rocqua 10y agoThe rocket equation is the biggest block. Getting a constant thrust of 1g for 7.3 years is hard. It takes an incredible amount of fuel, and an incredible specific velocity.