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250,000 kph isn't fast enough for you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes DARPA and NASA are working on it.

by dm2 13y ago

250,000 kph isn't fast enough for you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probes DARPA and NASA are working on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred-Year_Starship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred-Year_Starship What's needed is either a faster-than-light drive or the ability to cryogenically freeze people and bring them back once the spacecraft arrives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive If we can't bend space-time (using something like a worm-hole) or travel faster than light then there will never be any communication between the 2 civilizations. Wouldn't it be much easier to just mine the planets we have already and build artificial planets or massive space structures out of existing planets and resources within our own solar system? Yes, the sun will eventually burn out but that's not an issue that our generation will face more than likely. Where should we go? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_terrestrial_exoplanet_candidates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_terrestrial_exo...

rbanffy 13y ago
> 250,000 kph isn't fast enough for you? No. 250K kps would be more adequate. Faster == better (but we'll need good ablation shields). > What's needed is either a faster-than-light drive or the ability to cryogenically freeze people If you manage to get close to the speed of light, you will, from the crew's perspective, be FTL without inventing new physics. Freezing the crew is also an option, but keeping everything going for very long periods of time is challenging in itself. > there will never be any communication between the 2 civilizations, We still have radio. No way to phone your friends, but, still communicate, share news, share knowledge etc.
- deleted 13y ago
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ufmace 13y ago
250K kph is nowhere near fast enough, by several orders of magnitude. That gives us a 4k year journey to the nearest star system, which AFAIK is not thought to have any habitable planets. And that's a tiny probe, close in to the sun. Leaving the solar system with that kind of velocity is a whole different problem. Voyager 1 is leaving the system, doing about 17 kph, reportedly. As far as I know, we don't have anything right now that can do much better than that. According to everything I've read, sending anything at all out of the solar system at a high enough velocity to get to another star system is way beyond any kind of engine technology we even have on the drawing board. We could probably build a fission engine if we really wanted to, but even that's still orders of magnitude less than we need. Much less propelling an actual starship, meant to contain hundreds or thousands of humans and keep them alive and happy for the journey, at those speeds. I do believe that we'll do it someday, but it's going to require propulsion technology that we can only imagine right now. Anything like FTL or wormholes or whatever is pure hand-wavyium at this point.
- dm2 13y ago
  Voyager 1 is traveling at about 57,000 kph. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=Voyager_1 http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=Voyag... The 250k being fast enough remark was just a joke. Yeah, space is inconceivably massive, that's why my main recommendation was that we focus on staying in our solar system for now. Autonomous robots can mine and build huge structures in space for us to expand to, or I guess we could build them on Mars, either way. Many NASA scientists don't think that a warp drive is impossible http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-... http://www.space.com/9882-warp-drives-wormholes.html http://www.space.com/9882-warp-drives-wormholes.html We can make antimatter, we can see trillions of miles away, we can talk to people on the other side of the planet instantly, we have computers that can simulate nuclear weapons, we have nuclear weapons, we can connect and talk to the human brain, and we can even theorize with pretty good certainty what happened to start the universe, a warp-drive or worm-hole isn't completely impossible in the near future. Humans are not too far off from becoming gods. We can create life, we can put life on other planets, we can even improve ourselves by fusing with machines, shits crazy these days. [0]
  - ufmace 13y ago
    That site is awfully vague about exactly when it was travelling at that speed. Every link I can find says that the speed of Voyager 1 right now, having left the solar system, is 17kph. It was travelling faster earlier, but getting away from the sun eats up velocity. That is an interesting link about Alcubierre drive work, but as far as I know, we still don't have any idea how to get the exotic matter required for it.
    - dm2 13y ago
      17 km per SECOND, not hour, if any site says hour then it's wrong. Here is Voyager 1 and 2s official website, you can see the distance being updated live, you'll notice that it increases very fast. http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ Make sure you are looking at distance from the sun, not Earth, the earth travels faster than Voyager 1 so sometimes it will actually be getting closer to earth. We do know how to create antimatter, just not how to create amounts large enough to be used (the LHC generates it I think). I'm not optimistic about traveling faster than light anytime soon, but it isn't 100% out of the question. And if an alien civilization captures one of our spacecraft: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec_more.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec_more.html

by dm2 13y ago

rbanffy 13y ago

> 250,000 kph isn't fast enough for you? No. 250K kps would be more adequate. Faster == better (but we'll need good ablation shields). > What's needed is either a faster-than-light drive or the ability to cryogenically freeze people If you manage to get close to the speed of light, you will, from the crew's perspective, be FTL without inventing new physics. Freezing the crew is also an option, but keeping everything going for very long periods of time is challenging in itself. > there will never be any communication between the 2 civilizations, We still have radio. No way to phone your friends, but, still communicate, share news, share knowledge etc.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

ufmace 13y ago

250K kph is nowhere near fast enough, by several orders of magnitude. That gives us a 4k year journey to the nearest star system, which AFAIK is not thought to have any habitable planets. And that's a tiny probe, close in to the sun. Leaving the solar system with that kind of velocity is a whole different problem. Voyager 1 is leaving the system, doing about 17 kph, reportedly. As far as I know, we don't have anything right now that can do much better than that. According to everything I've read, sending anything at all out of the solar system at a high enough velocity to get to another star system is way beyond any kind of engine technology we even have on the drawing board. We could probably build a fission engine if we really wanted to, but even that's still orders of magnitude less than we need. Much less propelling an actual starship, meant to contain hundreds or thousands of humans and keep them alive and happy for the journey, at those speeds. I do believe that we'll do it someday, but it's going to require propulsion technology that we can only imagine right now. Anything like FTL or wormholes or whatever is pure hand-wavyium at this point.

dm2 13y ago
Voyager 1 is traveling at about 57,000 kph. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=Voyager_1 http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=Voyag... The 250k being fast enough remark was just a joke. Yeah, space is inconceivably massive, that's why my main recommendation was that we focus on staying in our solar system for now. Autonomous robots can mine and build huge structures in space for us to expand to, or I guess we could build them on Mars, either way. Many NASA scientists don't think that a warp drive is impossible http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-... http://www.space.com/9882-warp-drives-wormholes.html http://www.space.com/9882-warp-drives-wormholes.html We can make antimatter, we can see trillions of miles away, we can talk to people on the other side of the planet instantly, we have computers that can simulate nuclear weapons, we have nuclear weapons, we can connect and talk to the human brain, and we can even theorize with pretty good certainty what happened to start the universe, a warp-drive or worm-hole isn't completely impossible in the near future. Humans are not too far off from becoming gods. We can create life, we can put life on other planets, we can even improve ourselves by fusing with machines, shits crazy these days. [0]
- ufmace 13y ago
  That site is awfully vague about exactly when it was travelling at that speed. Every link I can find says that the speed of Voyager 1 right now, having left the solar system, is 17kph. It was travelling faster earlier, but getting away from the sun eats up velocity. That is an interesting link about Alcubierre drive work, but as far as I know, we still don't have any idea how to get the exotic matter required for it.
  - dm2 13y ago
    17 km per SECOND, not hour, if any site says hour then it's wrong. Here is Voyager 1 and 2s official website, you can see the distance being updated live, you'll notice that it increases very fast. http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ Make sure you are looking at distance from the sun, not Earth, the earth travels faster than Voyager 1 so sometimes it will actually be getting closer to earth. We do know how to create antimatter, just not how to create amounts large enough to be used (the LHC generates it I think). I'm not optimistic about traveling faster than light anytime soon, but it isn't 100% out of the question. And if an alien civilization captures one of our spacecraft: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec_more.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec_more.html