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Ok, this is an article taken from www.telegraph.co.uk.
It's a bit long, so I'm going to put it in the next post, so it's not on the same page twice.
Bacially, I think it's quite interesing, but I don't really understand *all* of the technical details.
It's certaonly interesting that NASA is at least taking it seriously, but a multi-generation journy?
You start off on it, knowing that you'll die before you get there? That you'll die on the spaceship, away from the majority of your friends and family? No thanks.
But maybe you think differently?
Have a read and let me know.
It's a bit long, so I'm going to put it in the next post, so it's not on the same page twice.
Bacially, I think it's quite interesing, but I don't really understand *all* of the technical details.
It's certaonly interesting that NASA is at least taking it seriously, but a multi-generation journy?
You start off on it, knowing that you'll die before you get there? That you'll die on the spaceship, away from the majority of your friends and family? No thanks.
But maybe you think differently?
Have a read and let me know.
Page:
instead of thinking of sending space craft into space right now i think the giovernmants should putall their resources into inventing a different type of propulsion system, maybe even a way to break the speed of light, i know this is impossible but something in the realms of a WARP drive (as in star trek) is possible in theory, the scientist need to find a way to bend time and space then they will acheive faster than light travel, but even when they have invented a propulsion system they would have to invent a load of other thing to allow humans to live on a spaceship, like inersia dampeners (so you can't feel the inersia of exceleration) and they can at the moment make a false gravity, and another thing they would need is, an long, long life power supply, all these thing will be invented but it may take to long and we may have destroyed the earth and human race by then.
c.b.
c.b.
I agree that a lot of money is wasted but I still feel we should be out exploring space as it is such a mystery and such.
However I think the money would be more well spent in reserach into better engines and such... that diamond thing sounds good but you can't help thinking that after 40 years of travel something breaks and thats it.
:)
However I think the money would be more well spent in reserach into better engines and such... that diamond thing sounds good but you can't help thinking that after 40 years of travel something breaks and thats it.
:)
Quite an interesting topic. I think the giant sail idea has been knocking around for a while now, tho' I don't think its a particularly workable one.
On a related topic, have you read Ben Bova's Exile Trilogy. A sci-fi that deals with a Generation Ship (tho' not one with sails) and all the problems that might and do go wrong. Pretty good.
On a related topic, have you read Ben Bova's Exile Trilogy. A sci-fi that deals with a Generation Ship (tho' not one with sails) and all the problems that might and do go wrong. Pretty good.
I see your point and part of me agrees with you.
But unless we push our boundaries, and constantly try to do things/get to places we can't at the moment, then we will go stale, as a race.
It could be that when we get to other planets, we find a way of powering and feeding the whole planet easily, cleanly and cheaply, so there would be no more people starving to death.
Admittedly this is all a bit Star Trek at the moment, and it won't happen for many many years, but it's certainly a big step.
But unless we push our boundaries, and constantly try to do things/get to places we can't at the moment, then we will go stale, as a race.
It could be that when we get to other planets, we find a way of powering and feeding the whole planet easily, cleanly and cheaply, so there would be no more people starving to death.
Admittedly this is all a bit Star Trek at the moment, and it won't happen for many many years, but it's certainly a big step.
And they spends hundreds of thousands of dollors on this?
Surely the money could be much better spent on things that actually matter...Like people living in poverty.
Surely the money could be much better spent on things that actually matter...Like people living in poverty.
MANKIND could soon make 200-year trips to Alpha Centauri in spaceships with diamond sails, says Nasa. Roger Highfield reports
The first serious discussion of how mankind will one day set sail to the nearest star was conducted yesterday.
The possibility of a 200-year round-trip on a beam of light was described at the world's largest general science meeting by Dr Geoffrey Landis, who works on propulsion systems for the American space agency Nasa's Glenn Research Centre.
During the past 15 years, there has been a "small, almost underground effort" to study the possibility of interstellar travel, he said. Once thought impossible, the feat is now considered difficult but achievable in theory.
Nasa has traditionally ignored interstellar travel, but there has been enough progress made for the agency's Institute for Advanced Concepts to spend several hundred thousand dollars on a closer look.
At the same time, interest has been energised by the recent discovery that there are about 100 star systems with planets.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting was told by Dr Landis that a "multi-generation space ship" could be a serious proposition in 50 to 100 years.
He said: "This is the first meeting to really consider interstellar travel by humans. It is historic. We're going to the stars. There really isn't a choice in the long term."
The most promising idea for a colony ship, developed by Dr Landis, Dr Robert Forward and others, is to construct a vast solar sail, consisting of a diamond film hundreds of miles across but just 20 nanometres (billionths of a metre) thick. This sail would be pushed towards the star using a two-year duration laser blast, created from light gathered near Mercury.
If a square metre of a perfectly absorbing material is put in direct sunlight above Earth's atmosphere, and the light hits it at right angles to the surface, it feels a force of 4.7 micronewtons, or roughly one two-thousandth of the weight of a paper clip at the Earth's surface.
The advantage of using an ultra-thin sail, which is made of diamond to withstand temperatures of 1,200C, is that, in effect, the massive rocket engine can be left behind. The sail could reach 10 per cent of the speed of light - 186,281 miles per second - making it possible to reach a nearby star, Alpha Centauri, four light years away, in about 40 years.
One key problem is how to stop a starship travelling at these incredible speeds when the destination is reached. "You don't want to fly by at 10 per cent of the speed of light. It is just as hard to stop from 10 per cent of the speed of light as get to that speed in the first place."
The starship could have a "magnetic parachute" consisting of a 60-mile diameter superconducting loop that produces a giant magnetic field which acts to create friction on hydrogen atoms scattered few and far between in the interstellar medium to slow the ship. This process, however, could take up to 100 years.
Another problem is that "you might actually want them to come back", said Dr Landis. In his three-stage sail concept, the trip there and back would take about 200 years.
The starship would carry a colony module - a miniature city - consisting of nuclear fusion reactors to run life support, greenhouses to grow food, a shuttle craft, and so on.
Weighing several million tons, it would be more than 1,000 times bigger than the International Space Station and way beyond the capabilities of a single nation. "My guess is that it would take the resources of the entire Solar System to construct," Dr Landis said.
It would also have to be self sufficient. "Anything that breaks you are going to have to make with what you brought using some very sophisticated manufacturing."
Interstellar travel has already started. Nasa's Voyager probes, launched in 1977, are travelling beyond the Solar System at well under one per cent of the speed of light, 15 kilometres per second, and will take 75,000 years to cover the distance to the nearest star.
In other words, if the probes had been launched at the end of the Ice Age, 11,000 years ago, said Dr Landis, they would not even have covered one fifth of the distance to the nearest star.
The first serious discussion of how mankind will one day set sail to the nearest star was conducted yesterday.
The possibility of a 200-year round-trip on a beam of light was described at the world's largest general science meeting by Dr Geoffrey Landis, who works on propulsion systems for the American space agency Nasa's Glenn Research Centre.
During the past 15 years, there has been a "small, almost underground effort" to study the possibility of interstellar travel, he said. Once thought impossible, the feat is now considered difficult but achievable in theory.
Nasa has traditionally ignored interstellar travel, but there has been enough progress made for the agency's Institute for Advanced Concepts to spend several hundred thousand dollars on a closer look.
At the same time, interest has been energised by the recent discovery that there are about 100 star systems with planets.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting was told by Dr Landis that a "multi-generation space ship" could be a serious proposition in 50 to 100 years.
He said: "This is the first meeting to really consider interstellar travel by humans. It is historic. We're going to the stars. There really isn't a choice in the long term."
The most promising idea for a colony ship, developed by Dr Landis, Dr Robert Forward and others, is to construct a vast solar sail, consisting of a diamond film hundreds of miles across but just 20 nanometres (billionths of a metre) thick. This sail would be pushed towards the star using a two-year duration laser blast, created from light gathered near Mercury.
If a square metre of a perfectly absorbing material is put in direct sunlight above Earth's atmosphere, and the light hits it at right angles to the surface, it feels a force of 4.7 micronewtons, or roughly one two-thousandth of the weight of a paper clip at the Earth's surface.
The advantage of using an ultra-thin sail, which is made of diamond to withstand temperatures of 1,200C, is that, in effect, the massive rocket engine can be left behind. The sail could reach 10 per cent of the speed of light - 186,281 miles per second - making it possible to reach a nearby star, Alpha Centauri, four light years away, in about 40 years.
One key problem is how to stop a starship travelling at these incredible speeds when the destination is reached. "You don't want to fly by at 10 per cent of the speed of light. It is just as hard to stop from 10 per cent of the speed of light as get to that speed in the first place."
The starship could have a "magnetic parachute" consisting of a 60-mile diameter superconducting loop that produces a giant magnetic field which acts to create friction on hydrogen atoms scattered few and far between in the interstellar medium to slow the ship. This process, however, could take up to 100 years.
Another problem is that "you might actually want them to come back", said Dr Landis. In his three-stage sail concept, the trip there and back would take about 200 years.
The starship would carry a colony module - a miniature city - consisting of nuclear fusion reactors to run life support, greenhouses to grow food, a shuttle craft, and so on.
Weighing several million tons, it would be more than 1,000 times bigger than the International Space Station and way beyond the capabilities of a single nation. "My guess is that it would take the resources of the entire Solar System to construct," Dr Landis said.
It would also have to be self sufficient. "Anything that breaks you are going to have to make with what you brought using some very sophisticated manufacturing."
Interstellar travel has already started. Nasa's Voyager probes, launched in 1977, are travelling beyond the Solar System at well under one per cent of the speed of light, 15 kilometres per second, and will take 75,000 years to cover the distance to the nearest star.
In other words, if the probes had been launched at the end of the Ice Age, 11,000 years ago, said Dr Landis, they would not even have covered one fifth of the distance to the nearest star.
Ok, this is an article taken from www.telegraph.co.uk.
It's a bit long, so I'm going to put it in the next post, so it's not on the same page twice.
Bacially, I think it's quite interesing, but I don't really understand *all* of the technical details.
It's certaonly interesting that NASA is at least taking it seriously, but a multi-generation journy?
You start off on it, knowing that you'll die before you get there? That you'll die on the spaceship, away from the majority of your friends and family? No thanks.
But maybe you think differently?
Have a read and let me know.
It's a bit long, so I'm going to put it in the next post, so it's not on the same page twice.
Bacially, I think it's quite interesing, but I don't really understand *all* of the technical details.
It's certaonly interesting that NASA is at least taking it seriously, but a multi-generation journy?
You start off on it, knowing that you'll die before you get there? That you'll die on the spaceship, away from the majority of your friends and family? No thanks.
But maybe you think differently?
Have a read and let me know.
Page: