Short term, I’m not at all worried about air losses. I am worried about air and other component losses for long term space habitats, such as generation ships.
Proxima Centauri? Why? It seems like an enormous waste to send a ship on a mission to a star that is almost certainly of no real interest.
A thoughtful, well-written and slightly convincing essay, if a little discouraging. I’ve only read the first post. I’m glad I found this thread.
This.
I mean, I agree that interstellar travel that looks anything like Star Trek will require a bigger breakthrough than simple extrapolation. But considering the ridiculous acceleration in technology in just the past hundred years, this seems pretty likely. It’s not like we know enough about the principles involved to rule it out.
Ok let’s assume we have practically infinite energy from antimatter reactors or whatever. We can already make antimatter just in very small quantities. With a better energy source we will be able to make the quantities of antimatter required for an interstellar trip.
We could in theory generate a magnetic field powerful enough to deflect incoming radiation, by placing powerful magnets at either end of the ship.
The spaceship itself would be streamlined; it would be long and thin and the nose of the craft would gradually narrow to a fine point. There would be nothing for incoming particles to hit except the nose of the craft, which like a samurai helmet would be designed so that any incoming object that impacted directly would immediately find an angle and glance off.
Alternately, you could place a cone shaped shield in front of the craft, made of lead or something (maybe some compound we haven’t invented yet), that would just gradually wear down but would be designed to last the duration of the journey.
Another possibility is that somewhere in the universe there is “exotic matter,” which would allow for a warp drive without the infinite energy requirement.
Streamlining won’t work at interstellar speeds.
Why not?
No air. No boundary layer forms that could potentially push aside a dust speck. And at those speeds, even a dust speck carries a whopping amount of energy.
The Meteor Crateris about 1,200m in dia., 170m deep with 210-240m depth of debris in the middle. The meteorite is estimated to be only 50m across, impacting at 26-27,000mph.
Imagine even a dust speck at 10 times the velocity. (Hint: it’s not 10 times the energy)
Ship streamlining doesn’t depend on a boundary layer of air, it simply reduces the surface area that can actually by impacted. The shape of the ship causes material to be deflected around the ship rather than impacting it directly. If the ship was a long spear shape which very gradually tapered to a fine point then there wouldn’t be anything to be impacted directly. That’s what I was picturing but I have no idea if it has any feasibility.
Even deflecting involves a collision between ship and “space stuff”. And how long will the ship be to allow a section for the crew to stand up in?
If that doesn’t work, what about some kind of laser array that obliterates anything in the ships path at a safe distance?
For the most part the OP is correct. We will never traverse the Galaxy or interstellar space (to another Galaxy)…unless:
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there’s a transformation event such that we somehow evolve into 4th or 5th dimensional beings, capable of moving through space-time in a different way. Could it involve Kurzweil’s “singularity”?
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we may not need to ‘go there’ in person. We send out probes and create the Galactic Wikipedia. With enough information and the use of holographic interfaces, once probe data is received and entered, it will be like ‘being there’. Will it also take a ‘long time’? Yes. Nano-probes might be able to travel significantly close to SoL velocities. (see Von Neumann probes)
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the sad truth is that human physiology and biology and temperament is not suited to long space voyaging. If we do anything ‘in person’ it will be done using bio-engineered space-humans, resistant to radiation and other negative aspects of space travel. But as I said above, we may not need to travel ‘in person’ to explore.
Kudos to the OP for a well-explained piece.
I was just reading about the Oort cloud. Interesting stuff.
So, I see it’s been touched on, but instead of getting to another star system quickly so we don’t get bored, how about doing it the slow way? Really slow. Not generation ship slow. More like take civilization with you slow. Why not?
First we build moon bases and orbiting colonies. The moon’s gravity might be low enough that mining on the moon and shunting things up an elevator or something is economical and desirable. We’ll also be working on catching and using asteroids and comets for our needs. Eventually the orbiting colonies get bigger and better and naturally migrate outwards.
We’ll have some bases on Mars I suppose because people are naturally drawn to it, but we’ll probably also move colonies out that way, and on to the asteroid belt, where lots of loot is. We’ll have multiple generations of people living most if not all of their lives on orbiting, rotating colonies. Somewhere between Mars or the asteroid belt or Jupiter, the sun will become unimportant as an energy source and people will have gotten used to living indoors without a sun-filled sky to gaze at, unless we simulate it for health purposes or something.
We’ll be using whatever advanced fission/fusion tech we have for energy, and planets and the sun become unimportant. Recycling and efficiency technologies continue to improve and the colonies don’t require ridiculous amounts of raw material streaming in to take care of most day to day needs.
Eventually a globular cluster of colonies forms with a total population in the 100s of millions, or maybe even billions. The whole cluster slowly migrates outward, hunting comets and planetesimals, planning its course to intersect interesting, resource rich objects in the Oort cloud, and just keeps on going.
Yes, no?
You can never have bases on Mars. Mars has no magnetosphere. There is red dust and 200mph dust storms. If regolith caused problems on the Moon it’s nothing compared to the problem of the red dust.
In addition due to the low gravity and low atmospheric pressure it’s -very- difficult to do a soft landing.
Finally, you have the problem of deep space radiation and the long time for the journey. People might go, but they’ll die.
As to making space stations, yes, we should have had a Moon orbiting space station long ago and do Moon landings via a permanent orbiter.
I think moon and Mars bases are fine for tourism and science, but I don’t think planets are generally where you’d want to live permanently. When we talk about traveling to other stars, it’s always with an eye towards finding a “habitable” planet. Why? Planets are more trouble than they’re worth, and while it looks like virtually every star out there probably has planets, the odds of finding Earth’s near-exact twin would probably take millions of years and who wants to move back onto a planet when humanity has at that point been living on nice comfortable orbiting colonies all that time?
Speculative, at best. Right now physicists are trying to determine if any such warp effect can be physically real, never mind being able to actually build a working drive.
Well, for one it would require matter with negative energy density (“exotic matter”) which is hypothetically not impossible but which no one has ever observed or even firmly theorized how it would fit into the existing Standard Model of particle physics, much less how to actually produce it. Even if such particles do exist, the energy requirements to produce and stabilize them may be prohibitive (as in exceeding the lifetime output of the Sun), or may be inconsistent with the thermodynamics necessary to create a stable condition. So, Miguel Alcuberrie’s proposal is an interesting toy model which hypothetically allows for superluminal transit within the framework of general relativity as we currently understand it, but there is zero actual evidence, even theoretically, that it is a workable phenomenon.
Stranger
Regarding dust grains: a search for Voyager 1 dust impact reveals a couple of sites which say that V’ger, despite its relatively modest (in terms of interstellar travel) speed, is recording a few dust grain impacts per hour. Moreover, it’s considered likely that those dust grains are interstellar in origin, not solar system debris- the impact rate has gone up slightly as Voyager exits the solar system.
If that’s typical of interstellar space in the area around Sol, then dust is going to be a primary problem to overcome, not an occasional risk.