Microgravity Makes Interstellar Travel Impossible, Say Experts

Atomic Skull

New member
Jan 7, 2010
52
0
0
Raiyan 1.0 said:
Jiefu said:
Well, logically we have to start working on moving Mars around the galaxy as our mobile space base. Planets are easy to move, right?
Yeah, I mean, just use volcanic eruptions as thrusters.

Heh heh.
Mars's core cooled 4 billion years ago so there is no vulcanism on mars (or a magnetic field to protect you from the solar wind either)
 

ultrachicken

New member
Dec 22, 2009
4,303
0
0
omicron1 said:
In space, no one can get a C-section.

All his other complaints may be perfectly valid, but science has had a method to circumvent the "giving birth through birth canal" concept for years and years.
I think the biggest problem is the effects on a developing fetus, not the end result.
 
Aug 1, 2010
2,768
0
0
Oh really?

Like how if you go faster than 60 mph your organs will liquify?

Or how we can NEVER break the sound barrier?

Or how no object in the universe can go faster than light?

Listen guys, you know a lot. You have figured out a fare bit of the world we live in. But PLEASE stop saying things are impossible. They almost never are.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

Queen of the Edit
Feb 4, 2009
3,647
0
0
Why exactly is this an obtsacle? We're not going to send colonists into space if it's going to take centuries to reach the destination unless some very bad things are happening in Sol ... even then I'd say the greatest threat is people.

What do you think are the chances a person is going to succumb to psychological weaknesses when they spend decades in space?

Knowing that I will spend all of my life in a tiny little room, and corridors of plastic and steel, and that all too thin veneer of the hull seperated me from life and death and the *millions* of things that can go wrong .... well ... I think I'd lose it.

Lets remove Murphy's Law for a moment (which is a big fucking consideration given it is a craft thatmust be immensely powerful, and has to support the livelihoods of hundreds, if not thousands, of people for a century) ... what exactly do you do when you get there?

You make it to Sol's closest star and find out it's not such a great place (nigh inhospitable) to start a coloy .... what exactly would be the point of such an endeavour? You send a transmission back to Earth and hope that in the hundred of years it's taken you to get out here that Earth still cares about your predicament, if only because they have these lovely new warp nacelles that can go a million times quicker then your little piddly craft?
 

steeple

Death by tray it shall be
Dec 2, 2008
14,779
0
41
this isnt really news... I've seen a show about it a while back, and they said that we wont be able to be born and grow in space, unless we'd create artificial environments, which is a very possible solution...

so, now that this problem's solved, lets get back at acquiring faster-then-light speed again, shall we?
 

razer17

New member
Feb 3, 2009
2,518
0
0
A DARPA project, eh? Why are they wasting time on this when there are Metal Gears to be made?
 

The Lugz

New member
Apr 23, 2011
1,371
0
0
SERIOUS QUESTION!

why not just accelerate at a constant velocity = 1g
and decelerate half way from your target at a constant rate of - =1g

seriously? newton? anyone?
no ???

ion drives front and back, with thick shielding to protect from debris, and a spherical ship in the middle that can rotate so it is always facing away from acceleration
you could even turn the ion drives around as-well, so they both point the same way

it's a fact to even get up-to speeds capable of traversing the galaxy you'd have to accelerate for months with any current technology, so why not just use that to your advantage?
i really think that could work
but you still come back to the power / fuel requirements.
anything but ion is too fuel inefficient, but ion is too slow accelerating
what we need is a super ion drive ( impulse )
and a battery the size of a plannet.
actually, a diesel generator ion engine would be the roflcake
they had one on red dwarf. epic comedy value. all the worst parts of every drive system :D
i guess nuclear / uber ion is the only real option right now
it's just a matter of tricking ion drives into producing actual acceleration

and, i already know the spinning wont work, the ship has to be radically large to make that even feasible which means it needs a drive unit the size of an oil rig to spin it constantly
it just doesn't work.

steeple said:
this isnt really news... I've seen a show about it a while back, and they said that we wont be able to be born and grow in space, unless we'd create artificial environments, which is a very possible solution...

so, now that this problem's solved, lets get back at acquiring faster-then-light speed again, shall we?
i actually had an idea about that, if you built an enormous laser at the destination, and shone it at the craft to power it you could 'suck' the craft towards you by using an ion drive powered by the laser
all you'd need is a really enormous capacitor to store the power and some derivative of a steam engine or photo receptor to convert the light to power
that way you solve the ion engine fuel issue
but obviously you need to send the enormous laser out first, and create a ferry link.
this could be done with robots.

if you really want to get clever, you could fit it with a alcubierre drive
( WARP DRIVE )
really.
go look it up.
and that would tip the balance.
 

vivster

New member
Oct 16, 2010
430
0
0
yay me 10 space travel 0
most people just don't realize how many problems space travel would bring with it

and the space travel is only a small part of the problem
to actually find something in space is almost impossible
i mean people complain now that scientists are idiots...what if those said idiots got all the coordinates wrong by a few million light years

then we'll just drift through space until we either get destroyed or destroy ourselves
 

raankh

New member
Nov 28, 2007
502
0
0
The Lugz said:
SERIOUS QUESTION!

why not just accelerate at a constant velocity = 1g
and decelerate half way from your target at a constant rate of - =1g

seriously? newton? anyone?
no ???

snip

That is the generally most accepted form of practical space travel among theorists and hard scifi-geeks. 1 gee turns out to plenty of acceleration if you keep at it for years on end.

Due to time dilation as you go faster and faster, you will actually be able to travel incredibly far in your life time. If you by that method navigated towards the Andromeda Galaxy, some 2 million light years away, you might be surprised to find out that you would actually arrive there in a "mere" 28 years. Of course, would you make the round trip of 56 years you would be sad to find that 4 million years would have passed on the Earth.

By the same token, travel to a star within our galaxy, taking on the order of several years, would have you "lose" hundreds and even thousands of years after just a few journeys compared to someone back on Earth.

So although it's feasible for interplanetary (intrastellar) travel, the time travelling involved quickly becomes very uncomfortable for larger distances.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
Jegsimmons said:
actually i think the difference between stupid is science, is that in science you actually take time to predict the risks but do it anyway...so it's kinda more stupid.
Depends on how you go about it. Many scientists get someone else to do it. Stupid people tend to do their own experiments.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
Akytalusia said:
i never would. the possibility of anything is an incalculable factor based on the limitations of our scope of knowledge. you should never rule out possibilities which consider all information within and well beyond our scope.

probabilities on the other hand, are what these people and generaly most people are refering to when they speak of possibilities. probability considers only our scope of knowledge and can much more accuractly approximate the likelyhood of an event in the present or near future, though not the distant future, which leads into the realm of possibility.
That's fine, but don't be surprised when a dozen people sitting around determining cost-benefit actually do decide to make judgments based on what is currently known and understood.

Current model has interstellar travel as a bigger waste of money than a chain of clothing stores in a nudist colony.
 

Jandau

Smug Platypus
Dec 19, 2008
5,034
0
0
I thought we already have artificial gravity, if we really want it. You know, spin the ship at the correct speed and let the physics do the rest. Sure, you'd still get lower gravity as you move towards the center of the ship's structure, but just make sure the living quarters are in the outer sections and there you go, Earth gravity. Fill the center of the ship with machinery and such that doesn't need people poking through it all the time.
 

Mortuorum

New member
Oct 20, 2010
381
0
0
hittite said:
Altenatively, you could have the ship accelerate at a steady 1G until halfway there, then decelerate at 1 G the rest of the way. This, of course, comes with its own problems (for one thing, accelerating at 1G for 50 years will build up a lot of velocity, meaning that you reeeeeeaaaaally don't want to hit anything. Even a micrometeorite impact at C-fractional velocities would tear any ship to shreds.) But it's a simple solution, nonetheless.
The other problem (and probably the more serious) is that you would need to either bring a fuel source with you that could produce 1 G of acceleration for 100 years or devise a way to puck up fuel along the way (while moving at relatavistic speeds). I'm not sure if those huge hydrogen scoops various science fiction authors have proposed would be able to provide enough fuel to sustain 1 G acceleration (or anything even close).

EDIT: Considering you would reach 95% of light speed after only 90 minutes of accelerating at 9.8 meters per second squared, if you could devise a technology that allowed you to maintain constant 1-G acceleration, the issue of creating generation ships would become moot for anything short of intergalactic distances. Without brushing up on relativity, I can't give exact figures, but a journey of 100 light years would occupy (from the perspective of people on the ship) a duration of years (if not months) due to time dilation. It would still take over a century from the perspective of people on Earth.
 

LyonLee

New member
Aug 30, 2007
77
0
0
Hevva said:
Given that a trip to even our nearest star would take hundreds of years, this problem represents a significant hurdle.
Sorry about this, minor problem with the article. Our nearest star is the sun. The article should read "our next nearest star", even though I must admit that this sounds slightly more confusing.
 

JesterRaiin

New member
Apr 14, 2009
2,286
0
0
Hevva said:
Given that a trip to even our nearest star would take hundreds of years...
Does anyone really thinks about trying it ?
Let's face it - until we're a little bit closer to our sci-fi reality there's no plausible argument for doing it.
 

DasDestroyer

New member
Apr 3, 2010
1,330
0
0
1. Create a space ship where all of the living quarters constantly rotate around the centre of the ship to imitate gravity
2. Go with family to superdense planet (most likely) made of diamond
3. ???
4. HUGE FUCKING PROFIT
 

Frankster

Space Ace
Mar 13, 2009
2,507
0
0
Eugh...We are never going to colonize other planets in my lifetime are we?

Kinda wish i was born a century later...Or not, depending on the state of earth and human civilization.
 

Kenji_03

New member
May 12, 2007
134
0
0
Jegsimmons said:
Ok experts, you try it out. then we'll take your word as true.

Seriously...do scientist just make shit up just to piss off sci fi fans? cause i think they do.

remember when light speed couldnt be broken? yeah what then scientist!!! WHERES YOUR SCIENCE THEN!!!
I do agree that the level of empirical evidence for this is lacking. However, until the theory can be tested and broken -- "take it with a grain of salt".