Bill Clinton Backs 100 Year Starship 299
astroengine writes "The light-years between the stars is vast — a seemingly insurmountable quarantine that cuts our solar system off from the rest of the galaxy. But to a growing number of interstellar enthusiasts who will meet in Houston, Texas, for the 100YSS Public Symposium next week, interstellar distances may not be as insurmountable as they seem. What's more, they even have the support of former U.S. President Bill Clinton."
Methinks people don't appreciate the scales here (Score:4, Insightful)
The scales you're talking about with interstellar travel are almost humanly unimaginable. The fastest probe we've ever launched would take over 100,000 years to reach even the closest solar system (and that's a *MERE* 4.2 light years away). We'll be lucky to get a man on Mars in the next 100 years, much less a vehicle that could travel at a significant percentage of the speed of light (an absolute "must have" for an interstellar probe).
And even if you could reach Einstein's speed limit (and you would probably have to consume most of Earth's energy resources to do it), all you've got in the end is a ship that would still be laughably slow in the big scheme of things. Puttering along at near-light-speed in a universe 14 billion light years across would only remind you of how isolated we really are.
Shit, I don't even think we have the MATH to travel those kind of distances. The accuracy and tolerances for a trajectory that could get anywhere close to another body over light-year scale distances are all-but-impossible. It would be harder than throwing a dart in the U.S. and hitting a bullseye on a dartboard in China.
Anyone selling interstellar travel is selling snake oil...period. For all intents and purposes, and barring someone radically overturning Einstein, we're all alone.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, we do not even have the experience of building something that can stay 10 years in space without constant support from Earth...
It just makes for some headlines, for a long time.
Voyager one and two would like to say hello.
Re:Socialists love to build pyramids... (Score:4, Insightful)
How are socialists relevant to the discussion at hand?
Surely you don't think President Clinton is a socialist. Perhaps a corporatist, but if you think he is a socialist you have a lot to learn.
North Korea not run by socialists either, but much of europe is run by democratic socialists.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is we still think technology as a whole is advancing at the same rate it did in the 20th century where we went from the first powered flight to landing men on the moon in under 70 years, and today we have the U.S. Air Force still flying planes that first flew 60 years ago (B-52's) . The truth of the matter is some fields like computers and even microscale engineering do continue to advance, but many important fields for such a project have barely changed in the last half century.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:2, Insightful)
My country's successes weren't accomplished by the naysayers; step aside, sir.
I would love to step aside, but people keep trying to forcibly involve my money in such projects. I will gladly step aside, and to you I say, Go For It! Just do it on the dimes of people like you, and be principled and leave the naysayers out of it. Then you won't have to hear from us so much.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:2, Insightful)
The fastest probe we've ever launched would take over 100,000 years to reach even the closest solar system (and that's a *MERE* 4.2 light years away).
Totally irrelevant. The fastest probe we've ever launched was slow as shit because it doesn't have any decent engines, and IIRC doesn't have any engines at all, it's just carried by momentum from its initial launch and from some hydrazine thrusters to make small course corrections and take advantage of gravitational slingshots around the planets.
If we build a starship, it'd have to have real engines, using nuclear power, something like NERVA or Project Orion. It'd still be slow, so it'd have to be a generation ship or use cryogenics or something to achieve suspended animation, but the idea that we're limited to the speed of some slow-ass probes made in the 70s and powered with RTGs is just ridiculous.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:4, Insightful)
New York Times, October 9, 1903:
"The ridiculous fiasco which attended the attempt at aerial navigation in the Langley flying machine was not unexpected⦠it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years"
Orville Wright's diary, October 9, 1903:
"We began assembly today."
Your perspective is limited.