New Horizons is cool.But to be correct, everything we've flung out into the vast reaches of interstellar space were outer planet flyby missions? The majority of the instruments won't even be working by the time they're past Neptune's orbit.I'm sure that interstellar space isn't particularly interesting, so maybe what I'm talking about would be pointless. But the expectations for our launching capabilities are clearly misrepresented ITT.Velocity we can send a probe at:A "constant technology" proposition may be to hold the specific impulse constant, as well as m_0 - the total mass including propellant. In the discussion about what we should sent out right now it makes sense to talk about the payload mass, m_1, and the purposing of systems in that payload.Someone mentioned that 0.1c = (10% of c) is possible "with current technology". The New Horizons craft weights half a metric ton, and like Voyager 1 will go close to 0.005% of c.dv_2 / dv_NH = ln(m_0/m_2) / ln(m_0/m_NH) = 10 / 0.005 = 2000The Atlas V rocket is 334 tons, although this may or may not be the appropriate value to use. Anyway, if you solve the above equation, you find that you can send like 10^-500 kg at 0.1 c. Obviously, in order to make the trips in question we have to use something other than chemical propulsion.I don't think we've ever really done that yet. Nor am I sure if it's a reasonable assumption to base space exploration plans on.
1/2/2012 4:29:27 PM
Project Orion could reach those speeds
1/2/2012 4:42:55 PM
"Both spacecraft also have adequate electrical power and attitude control propellant to continue operating until around 2025, after which there may not be available electrical power to support science instrument operation. At that time, science data return and spacecraft operations will cease."Project Orion has the capability to reach .33c. Sadly too much of our species currently thinks like The E Man and such projects will never come fruition in this generation of our species unless it is done in secret with a lot of private and hidden funding.
1/2/2012 11:05:52 PM
Instead of wasting time and resources on building log rafts to cross oceans, lets invest those same resources in RD for future technologies that can get us a real chance. Its really a much more forward, ambitious way of thinking than previously stated.
1/2/2012 11:08:57 PM
1492 - is to 1976 as1968 - is to 20xx Xi for one am very excited for the potentials here. i hope i live to see something like this. [Edited on January 2, 2012 at 11:26 PM. Reason : ,]
1/2/2012 11:24:16 PM
1/2/2012 11:46:09 PM
It can be a pretty good analogy but maybe not in the way he means.Imagine the human race as a civilization on an island. We could send out ships to try and colonize other islands, all of which are incredibly far away, almost all are totally inhospitable, and even the very best of which are still so hostile that just surviving on them, much less having a functional society, would be an endless struggle.Or instead, we could just build the ships to almost perfectly emulate life on our island and live on them. Sure we wouldn't actually be "on land" but is that really so important?Even if we somehow realize science fiction levels of technology like FTL travel, Anti/artificial gravity (true artificial gravity, not centripidal simulation), and easy terraforming, a planet is still an incredibly inefficient use of resources for supporting a population. Consider the Death Star (yeah I know but we're talking science fiction here). It's large for a man made structure yes, but astrologically it's fairly small. A sphere about 160 km in diameter. And yet something that size could house and support BILLIONS. It's also mostly hollow.Imagine how many massive space habitats we could make from the iron core of one lifeless planet if we didn't bother trying colonize it.[Edited on January 3, 2012 at 2:14 AM. Reason : ]
1/3/2012 2:13:58 AM
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/11/a-planet-for-every-star/Extra-solar planets are much more frequent than previously thought.
1/11/2012 4:27:09 PM
^^ It is a lot more effort to build land than it is to sail away and occupy land where-ever you find it. Teraforming mars to produce 144,798,500 km2 of fairly habitable area will require an imperceptibly tiny fraction of the effort and energy required to build an equivalent area platform floating in space. Send a few dozen crews out in search of ice asteroids of frozen atmosphere, attach thrusters, and send them into collision with mars. Engineer the right mix of plant and animal life, and be done with it. The inhabitants of the planet will never again need to worry about decompression, solar storms, or the downfall of civilization. People living in space do not survive a nuclear war.
1/11/2012 4:59:36 PM
1/11/2012 5:06:49 PM
1/11/2012 5:10:07 PM
1/12/2012 1:11:18 AM
1/12/2012 10:21:01 AM
1/12/2012 1:50:06 PM
the problem with terraforming mars is that if you DID get the atmosphere thick enough, it would dissipate over time in part due to mars' lack of magnetic field and lower mass than Earth.
1/12/2012 1:52:21 PM
1/12/2012 2:07:01 PM
I just don't feel like ending up like this on Mars:or this:]
1/12/2012 2:14:47 PM
1/12/2012 7:12:49 PM
Life has been on Earth for pretty much the whole time Earth has existed.
1/12/2012 7:15:19 PM
care to back that up? I mean, maybe I missed a few reports on it, but I highly doubt that life we would recognize existed in or on a mass of molten rock. I know there are extremophiles, but everything I've read suggests that such creatures evolved from creatures with far less tolerance to those conditions
1/12/2012 7:30:22 PM
Actually, it's about 3/4 of the Earth's existence.
1/12/2012 7:41:06 PM
If the lifespan of the earth was a single 24 hour day at the movies, life appeared with the 5am cleaning crew. Things really started to get interesting(things that look like real critters) during the after-dinner matinee. Dinosaurs arrived for the 9:30pm main feature. We showed up after 11:59pm for the Rocky Horror Picture Show and really trashed the theater.[Edited on January 12, 2012 at 7:54 PM. Reason : .]
1/12/2012 7:52:00 PM
The theater was in far worse shape after the dinosaurs left than it is now.
1/12/2012 8:25:16 PM
Yeah it sucked ass when they turned the HVAC system on around noon too.
1/12/2012 8:30:57 PM
1/12/2012 10:19:23 PM
Are your numbers right? They imply we might be done after directing in only one asteroid, as each of the asteroids you list weigh more than Earth's entire atmosphere by a factor of 10. I envisioned an automated process we set in motion and leave in motion, directing in many dozens or hundreds of asteroids containing the right atmospheric stuff (nitrogen, water, methane, etc). We don't need Earth's sea level density, as we are tweaking the contents to obtain the needed warmth at lower pressures. Which is important, as you say a deeper/heavier atmosphere is needed for the same pressure. Comfortable temperatures might require more than just asteroids, as natural super-greenhouse gasses (such as methane) seem unlikely to be found in asteroidal form, necessitating the construction of CFC production facilities on mars by the inhabitants that eventually settle there. Or, if the asteroid search goes well, perhaps we can just leave it running until mars has a super-heavy atmosphere more like Venus than Earth, obtaining the needed temperatures through sheer force of pressure. Would make airline travel cheap for martians. And how would the ability to live and work outside with only an oxygen mask not be that much better? Nevermind the ability to grow food and plants outside with regular rainfall? And after plant life gets going, even the oxygen mask would be optional at low elevations.
1/13/2012 9:27:32 AM
I don't know of any nearby asteroids that are mostly composed of frozen atmospheric gasses. to me it would make a LOT more sense to utilize in situ resources on mars, like the frozen CO2 at the poles to thicken up the atmosphere and kick up the greenhouse effect.
1/13/2012 10:55:41 AM
1/13/2012 10:56:18 AM
1/13/2012 12:02:49 PM
^oort cloud objects
1/24/2012 3:29:43 PM
^ how did we ever even detect the ort cloud?I mean, wtf scientists?
1/25/2012 1:26:17 PM
We haven't. It's hypothetical.
1/25/2012 1:44:28 PM
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0512256v1.pdf (several mb's)Comets are often considered to be the gateway for understanding Solar Systemformation. In fact, they are probably the most primitive objects of the SolarSystem because they formed in distant regions where the relatively cold temperature preserved the pristine chemical conditions. For this reason they havebeen the target of very sophisticated and expensive space missions like Giotto,Stardust and Rosetta for in-situ analysis or sample return. To best exploittheinformation collected by ground based and space based observations, however,it is necessary to know where comets come from, where they formed, and howthey evolved in the distant past. For instance, did they form at 5, 30 or at 100AU? Are they chunks of larger objects that presumably underwent signi?cantthermal and collisional alteration or are they pristine planetesimals that couldnever grow larger?In addition, the orbital structure of the comet reservoirs records informationof the dynamical processes that occurred when the Solar System was taking1shape. For example, it carries evidence of the migration of the giant planets,and/or of close encounters of our Sun with other stars. Modeling these dynamical processes and comparing their outcomes with the observed structures,gives us a unique opportunity to reconstruct the history of the formation of theplanets and of their primordial evolution.The purpose of this chapter is to review our current understanding of cometsfrom the dynamical point of view and underline the open issues which still needmore investigation. The ?rst part is devoted to the current Solar System. InSection2 I describe the orbital and dynamical properties of the trans-Neptunianpopulation: the Kuiper belt and the scattered disk. Section 3 is devoted to theevolution of comets from their parent reservoirs –the trans-Neptunian population or the Oort cloud– to the inner Solar System. As we know the currentSolar System quite well –the orbits of the planets, its galactic environment– theresults discussed in this part are quite secure. In contrast, the second part ofthe chapter focusses on more controversial topics, as it is devoted to the originof the Solar System, namely how the comet reservoirs formed and acquired theircurrent shapes. More precisely, section 4 is devoted to the formation of the Oortcloud, section 5 to the primordial sculpting of the trans-Neptunian populationand section 6 discusses a recently proposed connection between these events andthe Late Heavy Bombardment of the terrestrial planets. In the ?nal section Iwill speculate on a scenario of solar system primordial evolution that would putall these aspects together in a coherent scheme.[Edited on January 27, 2012 at 10:21 AM. Reason : ,]
1/27/2012 10:18:39 AM
welcome to 1962 india:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t33SXyAWOII
2/25/2012 9:07:12 AM
2/25/2012 12:11:12 PM
too bad it will be going 0 mph because the space elevator is an infeasible idea.
2/25/2012 12:22:44 PM
You’re the first person i’ve heard say it’s infeasible. Why do you say this?You do mean technically or politically or what?
2/25/2012 1:02:43 PM
First level:The material strength requirement needs manufacturing of the sort we have never even demonstrated at any production volume. The microscopic things they've made which presumably have the strength can't have a price tag put on them. Because of that, the space elevator would, at best, be put in the "list of things we would do if we had stronger materials". Material science affects all industries, and the existence of a material that can make the space elevator might make the space elevator obsolete. We don't know.Second level:Even if we just assume that we can make those materials in the quantity needed, the molecular structure and engineering tolerance is mutually exclusive with the radiation environment where it would be placed.
2/25/2012 2:09:39 PM
I vaguely recall seeing the DoD has a lab that’s pumping out carbon nanotube materials by the yard…And on all the websites ive seen about the topic seem to say that a nanotube tether is up to the task of handling the environmental issues.[Edited on February 25, 2012 at 2:14 PM. Reason : ]
2/25/2012 2:13:19 PM
Maybe DoD is making polymers that have Carbon nanotubes in them and participating in the linkage. It is certainly not sufficient strength for what the space elevator needs.The nonotubes might be up for handling the environmental issues, but it's still an open question as to whether this academic problem of a ribbon 1,000s of miles long made out of perfect Carbon nanotubes would work for this.Again, we would revolutionize all of construction if we could make this stuff, so why the lack of enthusiasm about that? Why is an elevator that takes 2 weeks to bring a few tons to GEO orbit such a great thing? We could accomplish that same thing with other launch methods.
2/25/2012 3:55:54 PM
2/25/2012 9:19:26 PM
2/25/2012 9:22:44 PM
You seem to continue to debate the feasibility of the space elevator.Even though I'm not willing to concede that point, if I do, it still never gets built. Under no circumstances.You fail to compare the space elevator against its alternatives. That's where you separate something you like thinking about from something that might actually matter someday. The space elevator won't.The space elevator would suck at its purpose. A very major reason is that its alternatives, aside from being far far far faaaaar cheaper and realistic, would have a faster launch rate. Mother fucking conventional launch systems could bring 100s of tons to orbit.http://autogeny.org/tower/tower.html
2/25/2012 10:33:42 PM
that's pretty cool actuallynot sure why but a magnetic launch system would be pretty cool too (thinking of that since i was on a roller coaster recently with that shit. you go from 0-60 in like .2 seconds)[Edited on February 26, 2012 at 11:10 AM. Reason : here it is.. like this ]
2/26/2012 11:08:00 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IXYsDdPvboThe Quicklaunch people lay out the details pretty well in this video. Magnetic railguns generally can't get the payload to the needed speed to reach orbit, or they haven't so far.That said, I don't think it rules out a space pier because the fact that we have an atmosphere creates a lot of the complications with the railguns. Although, I should distinguish between a railgun (which uses electrical contacts) from actual maglev type acceleration.Nonetheless, a simple sea-level Hydrogen gas launch system would make sense as per his arguments.
2/26/2012 11:30:07 AM
^that was actually pretty informative (long but informative)but i think i'm gonna stick with the space elevator and put my stock in Obayashi Corporation
2/26/2012 9:05:25 PM
We would be a lot better persuing a subsea civilization. Most people would disagree because of the pressure problems but even though its science in a different direction, being able to survive at high pressures could some day benefit space travel (living under the surface of europa or even inside of a gas giant. The main reason for living at the bottom of the ocean would be survival. A lot of the things that could possibly exterminate humanity could be avoided living in a sealed-off self containing dome under the ocean.
2/26/2012 10:38:52 PM
Bring back sealab?
2/27/2012 8:36:43 AM
Branson is working on this currently. Virgin Galactic gets all the attn but he has a big project going on in the ocean also
2/27/2012 10:41:16 AM
Why would we live inside of a gas giant when we could just live in space?
2/27/2012 11:06:28 AM