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A Tidbit On Our Chance Of Contacting Life Elsewhere / UFOs

rhinefire

rhinefire

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The Voyager spacecraft is leaving the solar system with a speed of 35,000 mph since a light year is 5,878,630,000,000 miles Voyager would take 19,000 years to cover a light year so and 500 light years would take 9,600,000 years. (plus a few years to decelerate on arrival.) 500 light years is the distance of what science is saying is an earth-like planet.

Now keep these numbers in mind when the discussion of man's ability to move in our solar system and universe. It isn't Star Trek, Star Wars or even Flash Gordon. Sorry to disappoint some but The Millennium Falcon could not out run my pick up truck in reality. Only The Way Back Machine can get us there.
 
If you ignore relativity then it would take 5 years at 1 gee to reach light speed.

Obviously you can do that because you can ignore relativity. But if you accelerate for 1 year at 1 gee you get 20% of c.

If you picture a space ship of a few hundred people then the distances appear to be far too vast for any travel.

If, however, you picture a large habitat of a billion people traveling across the void then why not head for the next star system that looks interesting? If it takes a generation or 2 so what? Got anything pressing to do otherwise?

Large habitats will be possible fairly soon. Us humans are guaranteed to fall out with each other at some point and some such group of humans will inevitably go off a wandering.
 
Tim the plumber said:
If you ignore relativity then it would take 5 years at 1 gee to reach light speed.

Obviously you can do that because you can ignore relativity. But if you accelerate for 1 year at 1 gee you get 20% of c.

If you picture a space ship of a few hundred people then the distances appear to be far too vast for any travel.

If, however, you picture a large habitat of a billion people traveling across the void then why not head for the next star system that looks interesting? If it takes a generation or 2 so what? Got anything pressing to do otherwise?

Large habitats will be possible fairly soon. Us humans are guaranteed to fall out with each other at some point and some such group of humans will inevitably go off a wandering.
Click to expand...

I already have the plans for the habitats.
 
PirateMk1 said:
I already have the plans for the habitats.
Click to expand...

Darn, I thought I was ahead of the game.

How are you doing the internal gravity?

I was thinking of using a maglev train style system running around a static cylinder which allows the mass of the cylinder to not load additional forces on the load bearing structure.

The whole interior of the spinning cylinder could be utilized. the lower gee bits could be used as the hydroponics zones. The plants only need to know which way is up, not to have it rammed into them.

Sad what your brain does when it's stuck in France doing up a house for 4 years.
 
Tim the plumber said:
If you ignore relativity then it would take 5 years at 1 gee to reach light speed.

Obviously you can do that because you can ignore relativity. But if you accelerate for 1 year at 1 gee you get 20% of c.

If you picture a space ship of a few hundred people then the distances appear to be far too vast for any travel.

If, however, you picture a large habitat of a billion people traveling across the void then why not head for the next star system that looks interesting? If it takes a generation or 2 so what? Got anything pressing to do otherwise?

Large habitats will be possible fairly soon. Us humans are guaranteed to fall out with each other at some point and some such group of humans will inevitably go off a wandering.
Click to expand...



I'll sit back and wait for that advanced civilization to load up a space ship with hundreds of people and head for a planet that "looks interesting".

At no point in the development of mankind has there ever been a good result of an advanced civilization meeting a lesser one.

Yes, we humans will have a "falling out" but with the already in-place weaponry who in their right mind would think the disaffected would use their resources to build such a device instead of doing what we have always done, try to wipe out the other race.

The net result of Star Trek, that horribly written and directed romance/fantasy with one part of one tune by Rochmananov for a fight theme, is that people actually believe Pohls' invention of bending space - or a "warp" drive...but it never occurs to anyone that in the advanced civilization of the Federation, every conflict was resolved pretty much with a fist fight.

If we're going anywhere "soon", shouldn't someone be, like planning an easy, test trip say to Mars? Shouldn't there be some funds allocated by someone to at least design the computers to build the ship?

That's not even on the drawing board and the arguing over it will take at least five, with an estimated is 20 + years to launch...for a the first of many test trips.

I suggest "soon" is a long, long way in the future
 
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^ I disagree.

There are plenty of billionaires doing rockets and space exploitation.

The first step will be the capturing of an asteroid and mining it. That will be the greatest single jump in human wealth ever. Materials will be suddenly very cheap.

Such asteroids will lend themselves naturally to becoming nice places to live in luxury.
 
Tim the plumber said:
Darn, I thought I was ahead of the game.

How are you doing the internal gravity?

I was thinking of using a maglev train style system running around a static cylinder which allows the mass of the cylinder to not load additional forces on the load bearing structure.

The whole interior of the spinning cylinder could be utilized. the lower gee bits could be used as the hydroponics zones. The plants only need to know which way is up, not to have it rammed into them.

Sad what your brain does when it's stuck in France doing up a house for 4 years.
Click to expand...

The cylinder is the way I want to go. The idea would be to literally print a reinforced concrete type material cylinder on the order of 1/2 mile diameter or better and about a mile or so long. Two reasons to slow the centrifugal spin rate and to make the habitat friendly to the phycology of us hairless monkeys. The cylinder would be divided length wise into four sections with a central transport tube. So a mile long 1/2 mile wide cylinder would be divided into 16 sections essentially and the transport utility tube. Each section would have depth and height and width that is very open and not claustrophobic. Then it would be further divided has bulkheads are placed every quarter mile along the length. This is for my initial design eventually I want to make a cylinder that would have no dividers or bulkheads and is completely open except for a train tube and a couple of spokes midway down. Separate cylinders would be designed for whatever function they are for. Industry or ag. The train would probably air lift as they don't require as much in the way rare earths, would run in the transport tubes which have little centrifugal effect.
 
Fearandloathing said:
I'll sit back and wait for that advanced civilization to load up a space ship with hundreds of people and head for a planet that "looks interesting".

At no point in the development of mankind has there ever been a good result of an advanced civilization meeting a lesser one.

Yes, we humans will have a "falling out" but with the already in-place weaponry who in their right mind would think the disaffected would use their resources to build such a device instead of doing what we have always done, try to wipe out the other race.

The net result of Star Trek, that horribly written and directed romance/fantasy with one part of one tune by Rochmananov for a fight theme, is that people actually believe Pohls' invention of bending space - or a "warp" drive...but it never occurs to anyone that in the advanced civilization of the Federation, every conflict was resolved pretty much with a fist fight.

If we're going anywhere "soon", shouldn't someone be, like planning an easy, test trip say to Mars? Shouldn't there be some funds allocated by someone to at least design the computers to build the ship?

That's not even on the drawing board and the arguing over it will take at least five, with an estimated is 20 + years to launch...for a the first of many test trips.

I suggest "soon" is a long, long way in the future
Click to expand...

I read recently where a married woman has been chosen to be part of a group making one-way trip to Mars in the near future to colonize the planet. Apparently her husband is okay with that, although he was not among those chosen. He stays on earth with the children, while she leaves forever. Talk about a need for alone time! Weird! That couple apparently thinks a bit differently than most other marrieds I have come into contact with. She says "bye, I'll be leaving and I won't be coming back," and his response is "cool, have a good time." Lots of love shown there, by golly! If only divorces were that amicable! :mrgreen:

Greetings, F&L. :2wave:
 
polgara said:
I read recently where a married woman has been chosen to be part of a group making one-way trip to Mars in the near future to colonize the planet. Apparently her husband is okay with that, although he was not among those chosen. He stays on earth with the children, while she leaves forever. Talk about a need for alone time! Weird! That couple apparently thinks a bit differently than most other marrieds I have come into contact with. She says "bye, I'll be leaving and I won't be coming back," and his response is "cool, have a good time." Lots of love shown there, by golly! If only divorces were that amicable! :mrgreen:

Greetings, F&L. :2wave:
Click to expand...



It would be my hope that both leave....forever.
 
Tim the plumber said:
^ I disagree.

There are plenty of billionaires doing rockets and space exploitation.

The first step will be the capturing of an asteroid and mining it. That will be the greatest single jump in human wealth ever. Materials will be suddenly very cheap.

Such asteroids will lend themselves naturally to becoming nice places to live in luxury.
Click to expand...

Unless there is a major drop in the cost of going to or getting out of orbit materials wont be cheap. This means building a series of beanstalks or some other means of routinely and relatively cheaply getting to and from orbit. What asteroids do provide is a inexpensive comparatively speaking way of STAYING and building in orbit and beyond. Bringing materials like steel and what not is not cost effective like bringing back gold or platinum or beryllium or iridium or the like. The exception would be ultra pure and refined materials which would be much easier to refine in a zero g environment. Or manufacturing large perfect crystals. Certain specialized stuff would become somewhat more accessible.
 
Tim the plumber said:
If you ignore relativity then it would take 5 years at 1 gee to reach light speed.

Obviously you can do that because you can ignore relativity. But if you accelerate for 1 year at 1 gee you get 20% of c.

If you picture a space ship of a few hundred people then the distances appear to be far too vast for any travel.

If, however, you picture a large habitat of a billion people traveling across the void then why not head for the next star system that looks interesting? If it takes a generation or 2 so what? Got anything pressing to do otherwise?

Large habitats will be possible fairly soon. Us humans are guaranteed to fall out with each other at some point and some such group of humans will inevitably go off a wandering.
Click to expand...

A billion people? Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to accelerate a billion people to 20% of c?

Assuming only the mass of the people themselves, a classical lower bound is 1.3X10^26 J. That's several thousand times the total estimated energy content stored in all remaining fossil fuel on earth.

That's not including the mass of the ship, food, supplies, fuel, etc which could easily increase it by a factor of 1000 probably more. And double it if you'd like to stop at your destination. And of course generation losses. And relativistic effects.

If we ever make a generational ship, it's going to be a few hundred people max. Why increase the energy requirement by several orders of magnitude? That's silly.
 
A recent enhancement of the Alcubierre Drive concept suggests that some kind of FTL-"bypass" may be quite possible... though we're still a long way from engineering such a thing.


Yes, I know it is "just a theory"... well so is gravity and evolution, but birds still fly and frogs still come back down when they hop. :)
 
PirateMk1 said:
Unless there is a major drop in the cost of going to or getting out of orbit materials wont be cheap. This means building a series of beanstalks or some other means of routinely and relatively cheaply getting to and from orbit. What asteroids do provide is a inexpensive comparatively speaking way of STAYING and building in orbit and beyond. Bringing materials like steel and what not is not cost effective like bringing back gold or platinum or beryllium or iridium or the like. The exception would be ultra pure and refined materials which would be much easier to refine in a zero g environment. Or manufacturing large perfect crystals. Certain specialized stuff would become somewhat more accessible.
Click to expand...

The cost of coming back is very low. You use the atmosphere to break. If you don't mind having a few scorch marks the old heat shield will do nicely.

If you manufacture a large ingot of say titanium, and shape it into whatever shape you want to use for entry into the atmosphere of earth, add a heat shield of carbon and drop it into the ocean, making sure that it has internal cavities so it floats all you have to do is fish it out of the sea and bring it to port.

The reason I like a cylinder within an enclosing structure is that the strength requirement of a rotating cylinder which has 1 gee internally is going to be huge. If the structure which supports it is spinning then the more you add to the structure the more you add to the mass and strength requirement. Nothing like concrete will ever be strong enough.

If on the other hand you have the supporting structure not spinning and providing the support to the spinning it via wheels or more likely maglev there is no longer such a problem. Concrete will do nicely.

Us naked monkeys are easily fooled. If the sky looks like it's a long way away it will feel fine. If the sky of the chamber you are in is made of an artificial projection of some sort then it need not be that far above you. This will allow more than 1 floor in your cylinder. Say 100m per floor. And that's only when you have a luxury habitat floor. If your radius is say 700m then you can have 40 floors of mostly industrial or commercial use. How many shopping malls have ceilings above 20m high?

Transport within it would be exceptionally easy. If you were to walk 100m to the nearest lift you can then get access to any floor quickly and then walk 100m to anywhere in those 40 floors. So that's a 200m walk to get access to 125,000 square meters. It would be the most efficient city ever.
 
the_recruit said:
A billion people? Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to accelerate a billion people to 20% of c?

Assuming only the mass of the people themselves, a classical lower bound is 1.3X10^26 J. That's several thousand times the total estimated energy content stored in all remaining fossil fuel on earth.

That's not including the mass of the ship, food, supplies, fuel, etc which could easily increase it by a factor of 1000 probably more. And double it if you'd like to stop at your destination. And of course generation losses. And relativistic effects.

If we ever make a generational ship, it's going to be a few hundred people max. Why increase the energy requirement by several orders of magnitude? That's silly.
Click to expand...

If you have an asteroid say 2km x 3km x 4km you have a vast amount of material. Much more than all the fossil fuel that has ever existed. Space is the best place to do heavy engineering.

If you are using either solar power in a vast way or fusion or something else and don't mind taking 50 years to use the engines and sling shot around the solar system it's very doable.

Imagine going back two centuries and explaining that one of the design constraints being discussed for the building of ships was the maximum size of vessel which could fit through the straits of Malacca. And that a good casino in Vegas would be more expensive than that.

The reason you would take a billion people is not that this mission is the reason for being but that that's the population of the habitat which decides to do it. Human nature being what it is with 25% of Americans not knowing that the Earth orbits the Sun I expect that some of the population would not know that they were traveling between the stars.
 
Tim the plumber said:
If you have an asteroid say 2km x 3km x 4km you have a vast amount of material. Much more than all the fossil fuel that has ever existed. Space is the best place to do heavy engineering.
Click to expand...

It's not an issue of material (thought that would be an issue too, for a billion person ship). It's an issue of energy. Mining an asteroid isn't a source of energy.

Tim the plumber said:
If you are using either solar power in a vast way or fusion or something else and don't mind taking 50 years to use the engines and sling shot around the solar system it's very doable.
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter what source you use, it's a hell of a lot of energy. Clearly, we're not going to be using fossil fuels to power interstellar spaceships. That comparison was just to get a sense of scale of the ridiculousness of your suggestion.

Tim the plumber said:
Imagine going back two centuries and explaining that one of the design constraints being discussed for the building of ships was the maximum size of vessel which could fit through the straits of Malacca. And that a good casino in Vegas would be more expensive than that.
Click to expand...

???

Tim the plumber said:
The reason you would take a billion people is not that this mission is the reason for being but that that's the population of the habitat which decides to do it. Human nature being what it is with 25% of Americans not knowing that the Earth orbits the Sun I expect that some of the population would not know that they were traveling between the stars.
Click to expand...

Just because a billion people want to go doesn't mean they have the resources to do so.
 
yeah, and the world's gonna overpopulate and collapse a LOT sooner than we're send a round trip to Mars, much less anywhere to another star. :)
 
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