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The brighter a craft is, the less efficient it is. Every photon it emits in a random direction is energy that could have been better used to push it toward its
by okonomiyaki3000 8y ago
The brighter a craft is, the less efficient it is. Every photon it emits in a random direction is energy that could have been better used to push it toward its destination. So, if any civilization out there really is super advanced, their ships may be extremely hard to detect. Also, a situation like Star Wars or Star Trek where beings in space vessels just cruise around the galaxy for personal reasons is highly unlikely at any technological level. We shouldn't expect to see a lot of ships out there.
- squirrelicus 8y agoThe brighter a craft is, the more thrust power (watts) it emits. Both rocket efficiency (exhaust velocity) and thrust (newtons) contribute to thrust power multiplicatively if I remember correctly. Any craft capable of moving things in our medium size realm or larger will glow. If you want to direct your exhaust along a cohesive line, you're basically talking lasers. And those can't really provide much thrust power. If the hypothesis is that there are interstellar civs out there that don't exchange beings or materials, it's pretty hard to call them interstellar.
- okonomiyaki3000 8y agoIf you want to travel back and forth between inhabitable stars, forget rockets. They're just never going to get you moving fast enough. I'm basically talking about a propulsion system that we haven't imagined yet. Because nothing we've (realistically) imagined would make an interstellar civilization possible. I didn't say they wouldn't exchange beings or materials at all. I'm just saying that individuals will not be hopping in their space cars and cruising off to the crab nebula for the weekend.