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> A century ago we DEFINITELY conceived of visiting a divine body. 121 years ago a science fiction movie about landing on the moon was released, based on a scif

> A century ago we DEFINITELY conceived of visiting a divine body. 121 years ago a science fiction movie about landing on the moon was released, based on a scifi book released _158_ years ago. I said "almost everyone". If you go to 1920s and ask a million people if humanity will be able to walk on the moon within their lifetimes, not a single one would say yes. And yet, we were able to do it. Similarly, we have been conceiving of interstellar travel for decades. > Try a few dozen thousand years, my dude With constant acceleration, ship time is very different. With constant acceleration using controlled nuclear fusion, we can do it in less than a century. Project Orion is not constant acceleration. Now before you point out issues in constant acceleration, remember that if you were in 1920s, you (and I) would also point out issues in moon landing. How can humanity ever leave Earth's gravity, go accurately to the moon, decelerate, LAND without crashing, walk, LAUNCH from moon again, go accurately to the earth, handle extreme atmospheric temps, and LAND without crashing. Well, we did all of that. So surely, given a century, we can figure out interstellar travel.

samplatt 4y ago
I suspect you're getting ion propulsion confused with nuclear fusion. In order for deuterium and tritium to be useful for fusion, you're going to need kilograms of it, not individual atoms. And tritium is required to be radioactive for it to be useful for fusion, but it has a halflife of about 12 years, meaning any fuel we take with us will be useless pretty quickly. And that's even before you take into account the idea of "constant acceleration"... some sort of magical sustained explosive reaction that would go on for 100 years? And that's after sourcing the unobtanium required to shield/support the "constant" detonation. I suspect you're thinking of an ion drive, which uses fancy magnets to accelerate mass (pea-sized pellets all the way down to individual molecules), which is a slow start but is fine for constant acceleration over tens or thousands of years. The problem there though is that the acceleration is SLOW, much less than 1G, hence the 20-80-thousand-year estimate to get to our closest star. >If you go to 1920s and ask a million people if humanity will be able to walk on the moon within their lifetimes, not a single one would say yes. I'm not sure I agree with that. Spaceflight and lunar (and even Martian!) colonisation was a pretty common scifi idea by 1920. Cars and planes were already 20 years old by that point. If you asked a million people in 1920 I'm pretty confident you'd get a decent chunk of people saying "yes".
- AlexanderTheGr8 4y ago
  Try this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus Also, I agree that the idea for interstellar travel has some holes. Let me rephrase my argument as follows : for every accomplishment of mankind (airplanes, spaceflight, moon landing, nuclear, computers, internet), there have been just as many critics claiming that it isn't possible (they had their own set of reasons). And all of these technologies were much more infeasible compared to interstellar travel (and yet we did that). 5 years ago, would you have imagined ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion? Tech moves fast. There is no doubt in my mind that in a century, we will see interstellar travel like we do airplanes today. But this may well be wishful thinking because I really want this to be true.
  - samplatt 4y ago
    >Project Daedalus That's not a manned craft, which is what we've been talking about so far. It also doesn't have the deceleration stage - Daedalus would flyby Barnard's Star at 12% the speed of light. If you hit a rock along the way at that speed, you're not gonna get any pretty pictures :-) >5 years ago, would you have imagined ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion? Absolutely! I think most people in my industry would have imagined ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion as they appear now 20-30 years ago, let alone 5. >And all of these technologies were much more infeasible compared to interstellar travel (and yet we did that). See... again, most of the problems faced by the "smaller" feats like airflight are engineering problems, not "this breaks Einsteinian physics" problems. When you're talking about interstellar flight you're running up hard against many fundamental constants of the universe, not just "we can't do that yet"
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Any serious fusion proposal will breed tritium. Power to weight is going to be abysmal though. Also slow acceleration is not the millenia long problem you're making it out to be, 0.01g will get you to 0.1c in under a century. Ion drives are largely limited by the weight of the power source even with current tech. Any fusion reactor capable of working without prohibitively large radiatiors will have enough control over the plasma to just eject it for thrust directly. ISP will be your limit, not thrust. Q-drive is a fairly compelling proposal compare to other options. Use some kind of magnetic solar sail to soar along the heliopause until you can make the trip in decades.

samplatt 4y ago

I suspect you're getting ion propulsion confused with nuclear fusion. In order for deuterium and tritium to be useful for fusion, you're going to need kilograms of it, not individual atoms. And tritium is required to be radioactive for it to be useful for fusion, but it has a halflife of about 12 years, meaning any fuel we take with us will be useless pretty quickly. And that's even before you take into account the idea of "constant acceleration"... some sort of magical sustained explosive reaction that would go on for 100 years? And that's after sourcing the unobtanium required to shield/support the "constant" detonation. I suspect you're thinking of an ion drive, which uses fancy magnets to accelerate mass (pea-sized pellets all the way down to individual molecules), which is a slow start but is fine for constant acceleration over tens or thousands of years. The problem there though is that the acceleration is SLOW, much less than 1G, hence the 20-80-thousand-year estimate to get to our closest star. >If you go to 1920s and ask a million people if humanity will be able to walk on the moon within their lifetimes, not a single one would say yes. I'm not sure I agree with that. Spaceflight and lunar (and even Martian!) colonisation was a pretty common scifi idea by 1920. Cars and planes were already 20 years old by that point. If you asked a million people in 1920 I'm pretty confident you'd get a decent chunk of people saying "yes".

AlexanderTheGr8 4y ago
Try this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus Also, I agree that the idea for interstellar travel has some holes. Let me rephrase my argument as follows : for every accomplishment of mankind (airplanes, spaceflight, moon landing, nuclear, computers, internet), there have been just as many critics claiming that it isn't possible (they had their own set of reasons). And all of these technologies were much more infeasible compared to interstellar travel (and yet we did that). 5 years ago, would you have imagined ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion? Tech moves fast. There is no doubt in my mind that in a century, we will see interstellar travel like we do airplanes today. But this may well be wishful thinking because I really want this to be true.
- samplatt 4y ago
  >Project Daedalus That's not a manned craft, which is what we've been talking about so far. It also doesn't have the deceleration stage - Daedalus would flyby Barnard's Star at 12% the speed of light. If you hit a rock along the way at that speed, you're not gonna get any pretty pictures :-) >5 years ago, would you have imagined ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion? Absolutely! I think most people in my industry would have imagined ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion as they appear now 20-30 years ago, let alone 5. >And all of these technologies were much more infeasible compared to interstellar travel (and yet we did that). See... again, most of the problems faced by the "smaller" feats like airflight are engineering problems, not "this breaks Einsteinian physics" problems. When you're talking about interstellar flight you're running up hard against many fundamental constants of the universe, not just "we can't do that yet"
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Any serious fusion proposal will breed tritium. Power to weight is going to be abysmal though. Also slow acceleration is not the millenia long problem you're making it out to be, 0.01g will get you to 0.1c in under a century. Ion drives are largely limited by the weight of the power source even with current tech. Any fusion reactor capable of working without prohibitively large radiatiors will have enough control over the plasma to just eject it for thrust directly. ISP will be your limit, not thrust. Q-drive is a fairly compelling proposal compare to other options. Use some kind of magnetic solar sail to soar along the heliopause until you can make the trip in decades.