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."
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree completely with your overall point, but with constant 1g acceleration, the passengers in a ship could arrive somewhere within 100 years due to time dilation,
Of course, the energy required and the engineering challenges are immese, but theoritically the nearest star could be reached in less than 40 years (passenger time).
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:4, Interesting)
Voyager I. Thirty-five years and you know how far it is from earth? Seventeen light *hours*. And it's about to run out of juice at even that paltry distance.
Now go build something to travel at least 4.2 light *years*.
Put him on one (Score:0, Interesting)
Former President Bill Clinton has even stepped in to serve as the symposium's Honorary Chair. In a statement, Clinton said: "This important effort helps advance the knowledge and technologies required to explore space, all while generating the necessary tools that enhance our quality of life on earth."
- now there is a bunch of political nonsense, if you want to add some to your collection. Who exactly is going to benefit from this and how is this going to be paid for? Certainly if you spend billions or trillions you can 'invent' things, you can come up with certain technologies, but that's a side show, the main point is to send a hunk of metal out of this solar system somewhere else.
If somebody wanted to spend a bunch of money researching materials and technologies actually to 'enhance our quality of life on earth', they don't need to have it wrapped in an ultra-expensive 'send a tube to another star' project. It sounds wonderful and it may be a great project to work on for people who'll get those jobs, but unless this is done privately (and it's not, it's DARPA), then it's more taxes, borrowing and inflation.
Ok, if you want to spend a bunch of money employing a bunch of scientists just for the shit of it, hoping for some return on that investment, at least have them do something that is useful in THIS freaking solar system. How about mining asteroids? Mining the Solar system for fresh water? For whatever. Sending a tube into space so that 100 years later (hundred years) it can enter a foreign star system. If you want that as a goal, first stop all other government spending. Stop the wars, stop the retirement and health care ponzi scams (which they are, all the money is spent and bonds have to be sold, which means they have to be bought back with interest, which means taxes have to be collected again to pay back for the bonds, which means it's double taxation for the purposes of paying out the later entries into the pyramid scams, because the first batch of taxes was stolen already), stop all the other nonsense spending, then you can pretend that you can 'enhance our quality of life on earth' by sending a tube into another star system.
By the way, balls on that guy and stupidity of people who listen to him, pay him to listen to him. The guy put USA on a short term adjustable rate mortgage and thus allowed the deficits and debts to be so much bigger. The guy had the Fed chairman who was known for his 'Greenspan put', that's how much money they printed. Presided over the huge stock market bubble, which was created with all that cheap, fake money. Now most people think he was the best president, what a joke.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Eh who cares. The proper model isn't a moon landing visit and return stunt but more like the national highway and railway network. It would take 100 years for me to visit every road in the US road network but I really don't care, as long as I can travel around my local area. So the proper solution is to take 10 million years to set up 10 million space stations each about a year apart. Much like the original ancient silk road, no one would ever travel the length of it, but you'd live along it and adsorb the benefits of it.
Its like arguing its stupid for boats and sea travel to exist because no human being or individual boat could possibly last long enough to sail every route on the map or visit every port... "eh". None the less, sailing is fun.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:3, Interesting)
Because Voyager 1 & 2 are somewhat old technology. If we built two new spacecraft they would have better propulsion systems and more efficient energy sources. Just read about the Martian Rovers, they are some impressive machines.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Interesting)
As a civilization we do have enough time before estimated heat death of our universe to visit even most distant corner of the galaxy. With that said, every trip will be one-way, by the time "we" (whatever form it takes) arrive anywhere original civilization will be long since gone.
As a result multi-star civilization is extremely unlikely, you could have a civilization existing on multiple stars, just not at the same time. With this realization humanity's energy should be directed toward a) fully utilizing our system b) fully utilizing energy of the sun c) fully utilizing matter in our system. Only after all of this is achieved does it make sense to fire one-way, never-heard-back-from seeds at the stars.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Interesting)
We're not traveling between the stars without a major revolution in physics.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of FTL is not 'out for the count' by a long shot, despite Einstein...
Er, well, to be clear... FTL is out for the count because of Einstein, so for FTL to be possible means a up-ending of one of the fundamental assumptions of Relativity. It is hypothetically possible that this is the case, but it is not to be presumed lightly (unless you're writing a sci-fi story.)
We would all like for it to be true. Believe me, a huge number of people were hoping that despite the odds the "FTL neutrinos" would turn out to be real rather than an equipment failure.
In the same fashion we pressurize our airplanes and remain quite oblivious to the outside conditions, we have to find a way to encapsulate a piece of space time in our little ship while it zips along at warp 9...
But in the same fashion where, despite your comfort within, the airplane itself still must obey the rules of aerodynamics so too must this hypothetical spacecraft deal with the rest of the universe while violating the rules of said universe. And it's not the environment of space that prevents FTL, it's causality. The only way to "encapsulate" something against causality is for it to never interact with the rest of the universe again.
Now cue the naysayers to tell me how crazy I am for even thinking it. Radical, yes, but no crazier than the idea of man on the moon, or human flight. Faster than sound? I should be locked up for thinking up such insanity!
It's not crazy to think of it. It is crazy to act like it's a realistic possibility based on what we know of the universe, or that it is any way comparable to the other things you mention. The physical principles that would allow flight, supersonic flight, or traveling to the moon were well-known for a long, long time. It was, in essence, an engineering problem of how to work the well-known laws of nature such that you could fly, or rocket off the face of the earth.
Whereas FTL violates the known physical principles of nature.
So, once again, it could be possible, and damn I hope it is, but it's not at all like those other things.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:5, Interesting)
The technology of chemical propulsion and RTG power sources has pretty much played out, so don't expect much improvement in these areas. The only reasonable power source for an interstellar trip is fission or fusion, and space portable units that can do this is the only thing on the map that has any hope of revolutionizing space travel to beyond the solar system. The multiple order of magnitude changes we see in the development of electronics is the exception with regards to technology. We don't see jet engines a million times more powerful than the first generation jet engines, nor do we see internal combustion engines a million times more powerful than the first generation. Using the technological development rate in electronics to justify that newer propulsion or more efficient energy sources will solve all of our interstellar travel problems at some future date is rather proposterous.
100 YSS project is more than just a spaceship (Score:5, Interesting)
This was one of panel discussions at SETIcon II earlier this year. This DARPA study also funds people doing research to ask what kinds of people need to be selected for the trip? How will they get along? What is the minimum number? They will have to breed, researchers looking into how many people did it take to originally populate north american continent (answer was about 70). What kind of culture(s) of people, other studies show people will bring their own culture with them. Also have to grown own food, how much top soil needs to be packed? Other ways to grow food? how do you keep the soil healthy? It seems when we research and plan for a 100 year starship, we are actually looking back at ourselves. How do we keep our current "spaceship" functional. Really, a common expression of earth itself in the early 1970s per the new ecology movement.
There was a lot of other subjects raised in this discussion, go buy the video of what was presented at http://seticon.com/products/#category=saturday [seticon.com]
All Aboard the 100 Year Starship (Panel Discussion) Price: $10.00 Featuring Mae Jemison, Richard Rhodes, Dana Backman, Bill Nye. Moderated by Adrian Brown.
Re:WolframAlpha results (Score:3, Interesting)
The correct equation is 1.94 arccosh (n/1.94 + 1) apparent years : where n = number of light years to travel. This takes into account 1g acceleration and deceleration. The andromeda galaxy can be reached in 28 years, not 3,115.
Here's a link [ucr.edu] for the derivations.
Re:This is not the sound barrier. (Score:3, Interesting)
We're not going to get by fundamental physics with improved engineering.
I like 'Trek and SF as much as the next Slashdotter, but certain facts remain facts, and must be faced.
Your can't do attitude is why YOU will fail, but thankfully it won't stop humanity as a whole.
Re:Methinks people don't appreciate the scales her (Score:4, Interesting)
That's pretty flamebaity, but let me try a reasonable response anyway.
As I see it, the military budget has two purposes: (1) prolong global US hegemony for as long as reasonably possible, (2) stimulate and maintain strategic domestic industries, both in terms of production facilities and in terms of R&D - basically, the military budget is Keynesianism in a guise that appeals to Republicans.
It seems fairly clear that goal (1) can be achieved on a much smaller budget, if that budget is used more intelligently, i.e. not wasted by getting into unproductive quagmires. We can argue about the exact numbers, but just compare the size of the US military budget to the next runner-up country. It's clear that there is much more than enough of a "safety margin".
Goal (2) can easily be achieved by an ambitious space program. Such a program could require domestic production of parts, as well as pretty advanced domestic R&D.
So, obvious political issues aside, I see no compelling rationally justified reason not to shift a pretty significant piece of the budget from the military to space exploration.
Re:in 150 years you can go anywhere in the galaxy. (Score:2, Interesting)
No, you won't. You'll be going near the speed of light. Of course, you'll be doing that in ten years.
Oops you are right, it is ten years not 100, my arithmetic mistake.
Note that if you can handwave a constant 1G boost, you can reach anywhere in the galaxy in 20 years, including deceleration time.
No, you can't. In your own frame of reference, you'll still be going sublight, and the Universe will look rather odd (blue shifted in one direction,red-shifted in another, and VERY, VERY FLAT!).
Well this is somewhat of a semantic argument. First We agree that in 20 years you can reach anywhere in the galaxy at 1G so let's not lose sight of that.
The remainder of the argument is about what it means to go faster than the speed of light. I argued it was about perception. And you just made my point. If I can cross a 50 light year galaxy in 10 years (my wall clock, no decelleration), then any fool can see I just went 50 light years in ten years. To me that's faster than the speed of light. If I has a video camera filming my approach to a distant star on board then, ignoring doppler shift, I would see the star's apparent rate of approach to be faster than the speed of light.
Now we can argue that during my acceleration space shrunk and during my decelleration space expanded. But from my point of view I transitted a distance in a time that required faster than light travel.
No causality is violated, I can't kill my grand pa or know tommorrows stock prices today, or no time lines get crossed by that. I'm just going faster than the speed of light.
If you experience 1G of acceleration for 100 years, you know you have changed your speed by about 3E10M/sec.
Alas, it doesn't actually work that way....
Not only will an outside observer see that you're not going lightspeed+, he won't see you at all. since it will take you ~3E44 years as the universe measures time for you to accelerate for 100 years at 1G. And you'll be about that many lightyears away by then (note that the universe is only about 1E13 lightyears across, by one estimate).
I don't dispute that other people won't see me going faster than the speed of light. Or that it will take a lot of time from their point of view.
As I said the bottom line is how far can I get in a short time. that's my point of view. And you can cross 50 light years in less than 50 years. that's the important point.
that means were not trapped here on earth or even trapped in our lifetimes from travelling around the galaxy.