Interstellar and intergalactic travel

current rockets are pretty much explosives.....

 

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And then some crazy sigaret smoking monk put one bird on a bean diet and the rocket got invented by the guy who stood 5 feet away

 

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what about ion propulsion? No need for messy nucleair explosions, it is a proven technology that can speed up a spacecraft (and slow it back down again) to insane speeds

is also relatively cheap to build.

 

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Ion propulsion is still very very slow. It cannot attain any greater speeds than what we have in chemical types today plus it cannot lift anything into orbit! It takes it awhile to attain speed as well.

 

well no the speeds it can attain are far greater than what chemical propulsion can do. Granted it takes thousands of hours to get to really big speeds, but when you are talking about years of traveltime that doesn't really matter. Also this is a young technique. While it has already proven that it works in practice, i would imagine there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Yes it cannot lift anything into orbit but I reckon it still is a great alternative to chemical propulsion for space probes. Only for long distance tho...it doesn't make sense to go to the moon with it...even mars is a bit silly i think

 

I think you need to go look at the schematics again. The only pictures I have seen of the proposed system have a single pusher plate, and it cannot be angled. So Orion can go in straight line, but it cannot steer, spin, nor slow down. So just how do you make sure it slingshots to speed up, and manages to slow down when it reaches it's destination?

Oh, it can't.

 

Great discussion!

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I particulary liked this post:

"at present where we literally have no idea how FTL travel will be accomplished." Or will it ever be acomplished.

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It can turn itself around and face the opposite direction to stop itself. I still think it is a waste of time to even bother with this nonsense.

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Where did that pic come from?

 

Like you said we've only been in space for 50 years. We'l probably already have begun terraforming mars in a 100 years from now, whill sending future versions of starwisps to the stars

 

http://www.elfwood.com/art/a/l/aliced2/big_d_02_adlun.jpg.html

 

I have always wondered, why is it exactly that nothing can exceed the speed of light?

If we can attain 75% the speed of light, I think that is superb. Even 20% the speed of light is good.

A destination? It should be obvious, Zeta Reticuli, about 39.9 Light Years away. It also has planets in the Goldilocks Zone and, in case you don't know, that is supposedly where the Grays are or whatever.





However, for all those that are looking for alternative means of travel, YOU guys are smart. One can travel in a straight line, but nonetheless shortening the space between us is even better, via wormhole.

For instance, here's another problem. Even if we somehow manage to travel at light speed, there are still plenty of things that are simply inaccessable. Communication would be difficult, for one (unless we find other means of doing so), but I was thinking more about the fact that there are still tons and tons of celestial bodies where are hundreds of light years away!

Even at light speed, Zeta Reticuli would take 39.9 years, so how are we ever to accomplish 100+ light year journies without resorting to suspended animation or generation ships, which are extremely risky (generation ships, for instance, are not plausible at the moment, are expensive, would require alot of resources and time to build, and there are alot of things that can go wrong).

How is Humanity ever to reach Andromeda or the Magenallic Clouds? I personally believe, as a member once said in this thread, that the possibilities are out there, we simply don't know of them. Remember, it once took months to go from America to England, and now it takes mere hours. So perhaps, we will find something.

But ultimately the goal is FTL travel, because even light speed travel (and that's already quite out of our reach) is simply not practical for major space exploration.

Colonies on Mars? That's a good idea.......but oh wait, there's no vegetation or water on mars!





Other threats which can be deadly if exploration is not taken with caution is things such as extraterrestrial diseases. If tropical diseases here on Earth are deadly enough, imagine what these distant worlds may hold?

Interstellar is our next goal, and then intergalactic, and perhaps even interuniversal.
I predict Humanity will stretch across the galaxy, at least, by the next few billion years.....if only I could live then though

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Ridiculous considering that every star is a giant fusion reactor . . .

 

Diplomacy. Alien civilizations, if we ever contact them, can offer us new things and we to them.

But a few billion years is a LONG time, I'm sure we'll have the capability for efficient travel throughout the galaxy, and colonization of space will be a very possible possibility.

 

Thx