Mars One. How many of you think it will work?

[norseamd]

you all realize that you might build a generational ship that travels at a .1 lightspeed right?

 

[phucheneh]

Because everything that has ever been invented has already been invented. No more need to improve or strive for anything else again, ever.

ATOT's scientific expertise is worth as much as the Ordained minister certificate I bought off the Internet.

Oh jesus. You're probably the type to try building perpetual motion machines EFF YOU SCIENCE, YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. OPEN YOUR MIND, ISAAC NEWTON, THIS WILL TOTALLY WORK! *plays with magnets*

 

[norseamd]

Oh jesus. You're probably the type to try building perpetual motion machines EFF YOU SCIENCE, YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. OPEN YOUR MIND, ISAAC NEWTON, THIS WILL TOTALLY WORK! *plays with magnets*

and intersteller flight is actually perfectly possible considering certain timeframes

4 light years would take 40 years or so which actually is not even a generation

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

and intersteller flight is actually perfectly possible considering certain timeframes

4 light years would take 40 years or so which actually is not even a generation

4 light years is much further than 40 years. Not sure of the exact number with current tech but I'm sure you'd need to add a zero or two.
Edit: just googled it and it's something like 70k years.

 

[norseamd]

4 light years is much further than 40 years. Not sure of the exact number with current tech but I'm sure you'd need to add a zero or two. Edit: just googled it and it's something like 70k years.

and if you want to try using chemical rockets then you go ahead

you are going to need some more advanced technology than that

try fusion rockets and maybe also using solar or magnetic sails and maybe laser pushing propulsion

 

[norseamd]

so the fact that any of you guys are considering the possibility of intersteller flight is based off currently working technology is making this comment more applicable

ATOT's scientific expertise is worth as much as the Ordained minister certificate I bought off the Internet.

 

[norseamd]

so we should make a international lunar outpost for when the iss is deorbited.

we can at least invite the us, eu, and japan

 

[norseamd]

here is something that will affect space colonization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

so the fact that any of you guys are considering the possibility of intersteller flight is basee off currently working technology is making this comment more applicable

It's also a matter of physics. Stasis or suspended embryos are theoretically possible. Fantasies about transluminal travel requires divine intervention.

 

[phucheneh]

CHANGE THE SPACING OF THE MAGNETS. FIDDLE WITH THIS. FIDDLE WITH THAT. EVENTUALLY IT WILL SPIN FOREVER, I KNOW IT!

That's what you sound like. Keep sticking it to the man with your unbridled ignorance.

Some numbers:

As far as I can find, the fastest claimed speed for a modern spacecraft is around 30,000mph.

Apollo 10 maxed out at around 25,000mph.

That translates to, at maximum speed, a 9-10 hour trip to cover the distance to the moon. Fifty years ago. Eight hours today. Emphasis on the 'maximum speed' part. There are no great leaps to be had here.

But wait! Voyager 1 has actually gone faster! It's up to closer to 40,000mph! Man, that thing is smokin'! Surely, that must be, like, 10% of light speed, right? No? Maybe like...1% of light speed? ...0.1%...?

...0.0056% of light speed.

70,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to us.

If the last of the fucking Neanderthals had launched their asses into space...they'd be halfway there by now. Half.

 

[norseamd]

Fantasies about transluminal travel requires divine intervention.

what is transluminal travel

do you think there is anything wrong with generation ships?

 

[norseamd]

stuff

you are ignoring potential spacecraft propulsion that are entirely reasonable

 

[phucheneh]

you are ignoring potential spacecraft propulsion that are entirely reasonable

Please, Howard Johnson, inform us of this superior form of propulsion.

How big a gain do you think it could give us over current technology, I wonder?

Shit, I'll give you some heavy optimism here: Could you go seventy times faster than Voyager 1 is travelling right now? 2.7 million miles per hour?

If so, congratulations! You can get to a different solar system. Just one. And it will take a millennium. So you might want to use your genius to also invent a time machine in order to go back in time to the middle ages and shove your magic rocket up King Arthur's ass.

 

[BladeVenom]

Now, if Mar's atmosphere could be plausibly terraformed, yes, I would definitely be in favor of it.

But terraforming is impossible! Like, from the Industrial revolution and all of the CO2 we've dumped into the atmosphere, that's just a fraction of what would be needed to terraform Mars.

Mars already has more CO2 in their atmosphere than we do. That's almost all it is.

 

[Jeff7]

Please, Howard Johnson, inform us of this superior form of propulsion.

How big a gain do you think it could give us over current technology, I wonder?

Shit, I'll give you some heavy optimism here: Could you go seventy times faster than Voyager 1 is travelling right now? 2.7 million miles per hour?

If so, congratulations! You can get to a different solar system. Just one. And it will take a millennium. So you might want to use your genius to also invent a time machine in order to go back in time to the middle ages and shove your magic rocket up King Arthur's ass.

Ion engines: "Ion thrusters' exhaust velocity are often in the range of 15–50 kilometres per second." 33.5k mph - 112k mph.
That's current technology, already in use on spacecraft. No, it's not really good to get us to other stars. Currently. Fairly fast for the fuel load though, but takes a long time to accelerate because of the low thrust.


Project Longshot: Nuclear pulse propulsion. Intended to work using existing (1980s) technology + some development time. That lists a speed of 4.5% light speed, which would be 30,000,000 mph.

Project Daedalus: Fusion rockets. This would take a lot of development work and significant scientific progress. Maybe 100+ years away.
"The first stage would operate for two years, taking the spacecraft to 7.1% of light speed (0.071 c), and then after it was jettisoned the second stage would fire for 1.8 years, bringing the spacecraft up to about 12% of light speed (0.12 c) before being shut down for a 46-year cruise period [to reach Barnard's Star]."

0.12c = 80.5M mph.



So, no, we don't have anything built and ready-to-launch. Could we do it? Sure looks like it. Longshot sure looks like a nice option.
It'd be damn expensive though, and would take a few decades.


The closest we got for some good ion engines was Project Prometheus, which could have been a damn awesome spacecraft if it hadn't been canceled. :\ "Too ambitious." So was getting living people to the Moon and back.
A fission reactor to provide a lot more power than we have on any RTEG-powered probe now, high-end ion engines, powerful scanners, high-speed communications transmitter.....

 

[BladeVenom]

Ion engines: "Ion thrusters' exhaust velocity are often in the range of 15–50 kilometres per second." 33.5k mph - 112k mph.
That's current technology, already in use on spacecraft. No, it's not really good to get us to other stars. Currently. Fairly fast for the fuel load though, but takes a long time to accelerate because of the low thrust.

Ion engines, and we already have nuclear reactors for satellites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPAZ_nuclear_reactor and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romashka_reactor That's old technology.

 

[phucheneh]

Project Daedalus was a study conducted between 1973 and 1978 by the British Interplanetary Society to design a plausible unmanned interstellar spacecraft.[1] Intended mainly as a scientific probe, the design criteria specified that the spacecraft had to use current or near-future technology and had to be able to reach its destination within a human lifetime. Alan Bond led a team of scientists and engineers who proposed using a fusion rocket to reach Barnard's Star, only 5.9 light years away.

A fusion rocket is a theoretical design for a rocket driven by fusion power which could provide efficient and long-term acceleration in space without the need to carry a large fuel supply. The design relies on the development of fusion power technology beyond current capabilities

Nevermind the nonexistence of fusion...let's glance back at that Daedalus entry again...

...Due to the scarcity of helium-3 it was to be mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter via large hot-air balloon supported robotic factories....

We'll just stick with the 70's theme and consult Red Foreman for a better name for this one...what's that, Red? ...more like 'Project Dumbass'? Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

Longshot was more realistic...but...not. Still dependent on helium-3, albeit for use in an actual fission device that exists, rather than a fictional fusion engine. But still woefully underpowered. Optimistic math says it gets an unmanned probe there in 100 years.

Do you guys not get how big a ship we would need to send for a century-long mission? And how powering it becomes exponentially less feasible?

edit: also, it's pretty sweet how they spent all that money looking into these projects, and no one ever thought to mention that their unfeasible plan didn't even include the whole 'slowing down' thing. You know, the bit that would double their energy consumption.

 

[Greenman]

Do you guys not get how big a ship we would need to send for a century-long mission? And how powering it becomes exponentially less feasible?

This is the crux of the problem. Anything that produces any reasonable thrust is going to consume a lot of fuel, and the more fuel you need, the more fuel you need. Food is the same issue, how many times can you recycle and re-eat the same turd? The same applies to water, after ten years or so, that shared jug of piss just isn't going to be appetizing. The recycler they take along is going to have to be pretty darn good, and very small.

 

[phucheneh]

'Hey, Steve...you realize that right now, I'm eating, like, the turd of the turd of your turd of my turd of months of turds...we've consumed generations of turds...it's, like, the Turdocaust in here. It's Turdschwitz.'

'...maybe we should break out the Snickers bars already.'

Maybe we could just feed the astronauts a very specific diet and invent some kind of super-efficient methane reactor. If we could then come up with a durable way to harvest solar power...we could sail to Mars and beyond on sunshine and farts.

 

[norseamd]

Nevermind the nonexistence of fusion...let's glance back at that Daedalus entry again...

nonexistance of fusion?

whos the one being incredably ignorant now

not available now so must not exist then now does it?

 

[norseamd]

This is the crux of the problem. Anything that produces any reasonable thrust is going to consume a lot of fuel, and the more fuel you need, the more fuel you need. Food is the same issue, how many times can you recycle and re-eat the same turd? The same applies to water, after ten years or so, that shared jug of piss just isn't going to be appetizing. The recycler they take along is going to have to be pretty darn good, and very small.

this is a valid problem however any intersteller trip is centuries away and that is being optomistic

 

[Jeff7]

nonexistance of fusion?

whos the one being incredably ignorant now

not available now so must not exist then now does it?

The Sun is made of burning cheese, and our functioning fusion reactors actually make coffee.

edit: also, it's pretty sweet how they spent all that money looking into these projects, and no one ever thought to mention that their unfeasible plan didn't even include the whole 'slowing down' thing. You know, the bit that would double their energy consumption.

Because the intention of those things was "unmanned flyby probes to other star systems."



My money would be on something like my (android + sperm + eggs + artificial-womb) thing. Androids and small cells can sit in storage a lot easier than living humans.
A little different than Star Trek, but it could be effective at efficiently starting a colony in another star system.

 

[phucheneh]

The Sun is made of burning cheese, and our functioning fusion reactors actually make coffee.


Because the intention of those things was "unmanned flyby probes to other star systems."



My money would be on something like my (android + sperm + eggs + artificial-womb) thing. Androids and small cells can sit in storage a lot easier than living humans.
A little different than Star Trek, but it could be effective at efficiently starting a colony in another star system.

When I say fusion is nonexistent, I'm talking about the device for this application. We know how to use small fission reactors, but we currently cannot scale fusion down nearly enough. Then we get back to the whole 'giant spaceship' thing with the exponential issues in accelerating and decelerating it.

And if you sent a bunch of Brent Spiners and/or smartphones into deep space, you know DAMN WELL they're going to come back some time in the distant future under Borg control and exterminate humanity. Duh. ;P

 

[BUTCH1]

Please, Howard Johnson, inform us of this superior form of propulsion.

How big a gain do you think it could give us over current technology, I wonder?

Shit, I'll give you some heavy optimism here: Could you go seventy times faster than Voyager 1 is travelling right now? 2.7 million miles per hour?

If so, congratulations! You can get to a different solar system. Just one. And it will take a millennium. So you might want to use your genius to also invent a time machine in order to go back in time to the middle ages and shove your magic rocket up King Arthur's ass.

Many of the posters in this thread will come up with "well, who ever thought we'd land on the moon in 1901!" but what they are not considering is at 250K miles away the moon is spitting distance in terms of space travel, we've reached all the "low hanging fruit". to actually accelerate a huge spacecraft to anywhere near the speed of light would be impossible and even if it was obtainable who would like to live the rest of their lives in a spacecraft?, and as you already mentioned you would need an equal amount of energy to slow down again to do some exploring then another accelerate/decelerate cycle to get back home.

 

[ManyBeers]

That's what you sound like. Keep sticking it to the man with your unbridled ignorance.

Some numbers:

As far as I can find, the fastest claimed speed for a modern spacecraft is around 30,000mph.

Apollo 10 maxed out at around 25,000mph.

That translates to, at maximum speed, a 9-10 hour trip to cover the distance to the moon. Fifty years ago. Eight hours today. Emphasis on the 'maximum speed' part. There are no great leaps to be had here.

But wait! Voyager 1 has actually gone faster! It's up to closer to 40,000mph! Man, that thing is smokin'! Surely, that must be, like, 10% of light speed, right? No? Maybe like...1% of light speed? ...0.1%...?

...0.0056% of light speed.

70,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to us.

If the last of the fucking Neanderthals had launched their asses into space...they'd be halfway there by now. Half.

Actually Apollo 11 maxed out at 35,579 feet per second from the book Carrying The Fire-Michael Collins. None of the Apollo craft came close to 25,000 mph.