Project Icarus: an Interstellar Mission Timeline 265
astroengine writes "What would the infrastructure supporting an interstellar mission look like? Considerations such as fuel sources, mining methods, interstellar spaceship construction activities and maintenance are being analyzed, all of which would be carried out before even reaching the ultimate interstellar goal. Project Icarus is currently unravelling the complexities of this operation and recently created a nifty animation of how one of the many fuel tanks may be recycled as communication relay pods en route to nearby stars."
Escape the Solar System, and Galaxy (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless the Human Race spreads to other worlds, systems, and galaxies, we are dead as a species. The Universe is littered with the remains of races who never escaped their home solar system.
Wild Speculation provided by: HEX
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It may have been wild speculation but in fact I think these may be good predictions.
Firstly, the sun is eventually going to render the Earth uninhabitable so - assuming we survive that long - we'll have to leave.
Secondly, with the Universe being such a big place I'd wager my last penny on there being millions upon millions of intelligent species and so at least one that has died out confined to their planet.
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You clearly are the product of a deranged imagination. Everyone knows that the intelligent population of the whole universe is zero.
FTFY
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You clearly are the product of a deranged imagination. Everyone knows that the intelligent population of the whole universe is zero.
FTFY
You obviously don't know the quote.
"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero
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Nuts, you went and ruined it before I got a chance to type "42."
Pphhhtttt!
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Firstly, the sun is eventually going to render the Earth uninhabitable so - assuming we survive that long - we'll have to leave.
These are the words of someone who clearly has zero concept of the planet's past and future timelines, where we currently are in that timeline, and mankind's own history in relation to the planet's timeline.
Hint: An event that's expected to happen in 6 to 7 billion years isn't something we should worry about at all, especially when you consider that mankind has existed for 1 to 2 million years at most of the planet's 4.5 billion year history.
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Well, sure, the human race is in its infancy, but by that same standard, the planet is in its forties. So although it's not a crisis yet, it certainly is something we should be worrying about as a species, if only because it might take most of that six billion years to find with a viable alternative.
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That's a problem a bit farther out (quite a bit, as its theorized that most smaller red dwarf stars will have lifespans measured in TRILLIONS of solar-years - which is an odd unit of measurement on that time scale - by that time a Solar year will be about as completely arbitrary a measurement as we can imagine). I'm sure that EVENTUALLY it will be a problem for someone though. Maybe our descendants - maybe a different species.
Overall though, all successful life has an instinctual gravitation towards prese
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Given that our species in its current form has only been around for something like 300,000 years, I am not going to worry about the sun burning out in five billion years, at least not when there are so many other ways - and a lot of those self-inflicted - we could all kick the proverbial bucket.
Face it, if we haven't figured out how to get out of the way of the sun burning up by the time it happens, we don't deserve to survive.
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If anyone is looking for something to worry about, and can't find anything just from a cursory glance about the place, might I suggest worrying about unicorn vaccinations? It is more realistic than worrying about the death of the sun.
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Just to nit-pick, technology has been around much longer than "a few hundred years". The first time some dude figured out that hitting an animal with a heavy stick was more effective than kicking it, the club became revolutionary "modern" technology. Of course, later, there was the revolutionary "pointy stick" invention that took its place beside the "heavy stick". In a few hundred years, it will be just as laughable that magnetic data storage was ever considered "modern".
That said, I agree entirely. On
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Because in less than 50 years we probably have our first major die-off in centuries with a likely world war related to it.
And it's going to take a few hundred years to recover-- if we do recover. This might be it- our moment to get off earth or to end up with either the ruins of a civilization or a civilization so completely overwhelmed by massive overbreeding that it never has the resources to get off the planet again.
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Maxo, my man, you are thinking ass backwards here. If "WWIII" is the potential problem "Getting a few people off the earth in a big tin can" is not the answer. Stopping WWIII is the answer. What will those few dozen folks in the tin can do when the world blows up? You think they are going to make a go of it someplace else? Uh huh, sure they are. Maybe the answer to the potential problem of over-breeding is not a damn rocket ship, MAYBE it is a condom. If we are on the verge of never lifting off this rock ag
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This seems sadly necessary. All the social, political, religious and cultural baggage we've accumulated will continue to weigh us down until something terrible happens. We're not collectively going to grow out of it in time.
Also consider the fossil fuel problem - the 'easy' energy from fossil fuels is a technological leg-up, but once that's exhausted it will be much harder to research and manufacture the advanced materials and technologies needed to exploit alternative energy sources, unless said sources ar
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Actually, MTBF for Earth life is 50-150 MY and the last one was 65-66 Ma.
Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event (End Cretaceous or K-T extinction) – 65.5 Ma
Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (End Triassic) – 205 Ma
Permian–Triassic extinction event (End Permian) – 251 Ma
Late Devonian extinction – 360–375 Ma
Ordovician–Silurian extinction event (End Ordovician or O-S) – 440–450 Ma
End-Ediacaran extinction - 542 Ma
No, I don't think Humans have the a
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I agree with your basic point that if we don't do ourselves in-- then we are at the start of the window for an external event to do us in.
Which is why we should be putting more energy into asteriods (extinction) vs global warming (very annoying but not extinction level).
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The real question is, what will your atoms be a part of? Or will you be energy?
Maybe someday I will travel to another star system as a beam of light, and shine on the solar cell of a childs' toy.
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We are stardust, we're golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
20 Billion year old carbon.
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Thanks for bringing up great memories
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plan as soon as you like. let the practical aspects catch up.
your argument makes no sense - saying we should wait until we have the technology before we plan to develop the technology we are waiting for...
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It will be quite a bit less time than four billion years before life on Earth becomes increasingly uncomfortable: By the time that another 500 million years have passed the sun will be producing about 10% more heat, drastically reducing the availability of liquid water on Earth's surface.
Yes, 500 million years is a long time, it's about as long as fish have existed, and longer than plants on land. It's about 8 times longer than the dinosaurs have been extinct, but from the beginning of life on Earth to the
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No it is not. The long-term thing to worry about is the Earth becoming uninhabitable in the next several hundred million years due to the Sun heating up. At best we probably have only about a billion years left before Earth is too hot life. By the time the Sun becomes a red giant life on Earth will be a distant memory.
Re:Escape the Solar System, and Galaxy (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the Human Race spreads to other worlds, systems, and galaxies, we are dead as a species.
God, I am so sick of hearing that tired old cliche. Even putting aside the time scales we are talking here, there is absolutely no calamity, short of any earth-destroying asteroid (nothing even close to which has been encountered since MAYBE the strike that may have created the moon) or the sun going all Krypton on us (sure, in a few billion years) that is going to make the earth LESS survivable than any other planet or body in this solar system, and likely any other solar system for dozens of light years out (which are essentially unreachable by man).
If we had a Yucatan strike today, we would be much better off tunneling deep underground than trying to mount a ship to some Mars colony. Even a post-strike earth would still have water, supplies of oxygen, survivable atmospheric pressure, much more cosmic radiation protection, etc. compared to Mars. And it wouldn't require an extremely resource intensive journey to get underground. The earth of the only planet on which humans can survive for any length of time in a self-sufficient manner. Every other planet in the solar system is a death-trap (and there is no reason to suspect otherwise for any other solar system within reach--which currently includes no solar systems besides our own, BTW).
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+++ this. I've been trying to argue exactly this point for a while now.
Even 40-some years after Apollo, our ideas of "the space frontier" are still based on pop-culture mashups of the heyday of Elizabethan and Napoleonic sea-colonisation by way of the post-Civil War American West and the dogfighting scenes from World War II. Real space is not like that, and the #1 stupid idea in the pop-space zeitgeist is "we'll have to go to other plants because Earth will become uninhabitable".
No, short of a supernova, i
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The real problem isn't being wiped out as a species. The problem is the collapse of our civilization. See, we've already used up the easy-to-obtain energy sources. Doing that has raised our civilization to the point that it just might be possible for us to start exploiting the huge pool of resources available in the solar system - but if we blow it, if we miss this opportunity and our civilization collapses, then we may never get another chance to go into space.
I'll phrase all of that as a parable from an R
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Unless the Human Race spreads to other worlds, systems, and galaxies, we are dead as a species.
We are dead as a species.
FTFY - Heat death FTW
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And then their stars became red giants, and they all died.
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I care. Because 100 billion years of life is better than 4 billion years of life.
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I care. Because 100 billion years of life is better than 4 billion years of life.
You aren't going to have either, though. Those billions of years of life are nothing more than a phantasm in the here and now. You will never, ever know whether we as a species will make it a hundred billion years, four billion years, or four thousand years. It might as well be a gazillion years, because you won't be around for a hundred. And nothing, nothing you do in your lifetime will make a difference to the longevity of the species as a whole, and how we face problems four billion years in the future.
N
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Absolutely true!!
That's why I don't really bother too much with disposing of things correctly (old computer, monitors and everything else go straight into the trash to be picked up in front of my house)....I don't drive slow, and while I don't have a gas guzzler anymore...I don't go out of my way to conserve gas, I drive like a bat outta hell 'cause it is fun.
I mean...a generation from now...w
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Not what I meant, really. Caring about the future is one thing, but thinking "I'm going to save humanity from the death of the sun!" is NOT an example of caring about the future. It is an excuse not to care about the present, or the immediate future this present will lead to.
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I'd rather dream big and fail than dream of nothing.
You mention that the dreamers are "ignoring the real-world, present day problems" but you fail to recognize that those problems are laughably irrelevant in the longer term as well.
So not only are you keeping your head resolutely down, but you're glorifying focusing on irrelevant trivia as if it were something meaningful.
Most of the "problems" of today will be completely irrelevant 100 years from now, and almost certainly NOT because of people who refused t
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The only way the problems of today will become irrelevant is if we solve them. I'd say it is just as important to worry about unicorn vaccinations as it is to worry about the death of the sun. Seriously, it is ego-puffery to think that, because you are worried about the death of the sun, you are a more serious and realistic person than someone who worries about ending world hunger.
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Nice strawman. I don't think someone who worries about the death of the sun is more important, serious, or realistic than someone who worries about ending world hunger. And I didn't see anyone else make that statement here - you seem to be the only one who brought it up.
Aside from that, you're acting as if people aren't capable of thinking big while simultaneously looking at immediate-term problems and issues. People simply aren't that limited - my thinking about issues surrounding the death of the sun
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On the other hand, the solutions to those problems may be trivial in twenty or thirty years because of solutions to other problems that had little, if anything, to do with the original problem.
Take world hunger for example. World hunger is a trivial problem to solve. There's no real reason we can't produce enough food to feed the entire planet, nor is there any real distribution problem, per se. The real problem is ultimately one of poverty vs. greed, and more to the point, one of governments that take t
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Cold hard reality wrote:
How old are you?
Seldom have I seen a message whose poster's username was more appropriate :)
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Even if we do spread to other worlds, systems, and galaxies we're doomed as a species. Who cares if it happens in 4 billion or 100 billion years?
Those born between the year 4 billion and the year 100 billion?
Their ancestors?
Icarus? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, isn't Icarus associated with failed ambitions?
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"it will never get off the ground Orville" - Wilbur
this time i really think it wont fly
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Depends. As I understand it in Greece Icarus is the hero figure because he didn't play it safe. I guess it all depends on your point of view.
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Icarus aimed too high, too fast, too soon. We have better "wax" these days, and hindsight to guide our planning.
The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us shall take the stars!
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Icarus? (Score:2)
I suppose they are planning on a really close flyby to the star
Let's REALLY plan ahead (Score:4, Funny)
Let's assume full deceleration at the target star has been achieved ... By that time, near-Earth telescopes would be sufficiently advanced to verify and inform the Icarus computers ...
... that the pre-warp technology museum on Starbase 235 is prepared to receive it in docking bay 19.
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You can't say that FTL travel is impossible until we learn everything about physics.
It violates what we currently understand of physics.
Better than that (Score:2)
It violates what we currently know how to do, in Physics. 100 years ago, we didn't know how to produce anything like a laser, or how to split or fuse atomic nuclei on demand, or how to pack a billion switches onto a square inch of silicon. Today, we don't know how to bend spacetime in a way that lets us travel faster than the speed of light (according to an outside observer).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive [wikipedia.org]
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100 years ago, we didn't know how to produce anything like a laser, or how to split or fuse atomic nuclei on demand
We're still pretty crap at the last two. If we knew how to fuse nuclei on demand we'd be doing it right now, and if we knew how to split (and more importantly stop splitting) nuclei on demand we wouldn't still be hosing down reactor cores at Fukushima.
We know how to bang some rocks together and make them get a bit hot. Beyond that, we don't know much.
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How do you know this?
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Look up, for example, the work of Alcubierre, Van Den Broek, and others.
Yes, those would be the applications of General Relativity that require "exotic matter", which doesn't actually exist in our universe. If we had fairy dust we could also build a theoretically plausible Peter Pan Drive, if we had some fairies.
Also consider that warp (on a small scale) is what makes gravitational lensing possible.
Fun science fact: even in Newtonian gravity light beams are deflected by gravity wells [caltech.edu] (just with a slightly different deflection to what General Relativity predicts), so gravitational lensing in itself is not a particularly good example of GR-type spacetime warping.
Of
Aww (Score:2)
I saw "Project Icarus: an Interstallar Mission Timeline" and thought we were finally going to research a way to dial the ninth chevron. Alas, disappointed yet again.
Silly. (Score:2)
Just use an interstellar ramjets and cold sleep. At least until we make contact with the Outsiders and get hyperdrive technology.
And if you see something that looks like a pair of sock puppets do not trust it.
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Actually Larry Niven's Known Space.
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Interstellar niven did interstellar ram jets and cold sleep back in the 60s or I think. He started known space with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Ptavvs [wikipedia.org] in 66.
Don't know when he had ships with Embryos on them. But Clark did that with the short story Songs of Distant Earth published in 1958.
No Thanks! (Score:2)
These guys probably thought, with society's short attention span, they'd waited long enough to fool everyone! But I just watched Die Another Day [imdb.com] last night, so I know exactly what Project Icarus is! These guys are North Korean plants!
However, if they're willing to give me some quality time with Rosamund Pike [imdb.com]... I'll gladly turn a blind eye to their machinations.
Crew? (Score:2)
One major project 'section' I notice missing from their site is the crew. They cover the goal of reaching a star within a human lifetime, but I didn't see anything about it being multi-generation. Sending out a bunch of 20 year olds on a 50 year mission seems to leave little time for serious research at the destination planet, assuming they all even live that long.
I'm all for making some attempts at interstellar travel, but it almost has to be designed with a sustaining colony in mind. That means enough
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There is also the issue of what if they arrive at the target planet and discover it really isn't habitable? There probably need to be contingency plans to make the trip to the next possible candidate. This is something that they could be actively looking for during the trip itself.
That's why you're better off building fully self contained permanently habitable stationary colonies every couple months along the path. As a bonus, you'll probably end up with something like a trillion times earths surface area as permanently habitable stations. On the down side that is going to take a heck of a lot of material. It'll take a lot longer, but the rewards are greater.
Its a very American perspective to try to get their first, once, and just as a stunt. Much better to settle colonies all al
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That's why you're better off building fully self contained permanently habitable stationary colonies every couple months along the path. As a bonus, you'll probably end up with something like a trillion times earths surface area as permanently habitable stations. On the down side that is going to take a heck of a lot of material. I
Not just materials to build, but materials to sustain. Perhaps if the stations were built on planets (habitable or not) then this would be feasible. Without it you'd just have a massive string of floating space stations that need a constant stream of resources, no matter how sustainable they try to be.
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That's why you're better off building fully self contained permanently habitable stationary colonies every couple months along the path.
So you'll need to accelerate to interstellar cruising speed and decelerate to orbital capture every couple of months (assuming that there are mass points accessible within that timeframe; dwarf stars maybe?) That's a lot of reaction mass. Ouch.
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Icarus does not plan for a human crew. It's all robotic.
Also, similar to Project Daedalus on which Project Icarus builds, this is predominantly a concept to research the actual feasibility of going to another star using what science, technology, and production capability we have today as opposed to back in the 1970s.
Project Daedalus did not plan for a reverse Oberth maneuver at the destination star, but would shoot past it. Icarus plans to achieve orbit at the destination star. Also, I do not know what acce
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Icarus does not plan for a human crew. It's all robotic.
Hmm I guess I missed that part. I saw the comment about completing within a human lifetime and went with the assumption from that point.
Either way, a manned mission and colony is really the path for us to take.
Why spread the dysfunction? (Score:2)
Seriously, folks, why are we so eager to spread our dysfunction? Until we can manage the basics of sanity here on Earth, we have no business spreading to the stars. I'm not even talking about an idealised society of some kind; I'm just suggesting basic stability, justice and social order. Two thirds of the globe live in grinding misery,most of which is entirely preventable. I'd even go so far as to say that 85% of human misery is self-inflicted; the remainder is inherent in the human condition.
By any reason
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On the other hand, some say that we need to spread out beyond Earth because we are so dysfunctional, and now have the capacity to destroy ourselves.
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Additionally many have postulated that it would take going to the stars to truely put humanity in perspective and allow us to co-exist. There will always be political infighting, but going to the stars will make many of the things we squabble over seem rather minor in comparison. Additionally any generational craft like this would likely have to be a cross national mission, which has the potential to foster a more unified humanity as it progresses.
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going to the stars will make many of the things we squabble over seem rather minor in comparison.
Yes, just like going to the Moon made the last quarter of the 20th century entirely war-free.
Mind you, since building a starship means, by definition, building a large, extremely energetic kinetic missile steered by bored people in a small can who might get extremely pissed off and not consider themselves "Earthlings" after a few generations... that would make our other troubles seem rather minor.
Enterprise (Score:2)
Za'ha'doom (Score:3)
Icarus might want to avoid it. Just sayin' ...
I think we are already doing this... (Score:2)
I think the smallest possible intersteller vessel is probably an Earth-like planet in orbit
Why name it... (Score:3)
...after the guy responsible for the first pilot-error accident?
Exceeded the rated service ceiling of his aircraft, inducing a thermal environment that caused primary structural debonding, and left a parabolic trail of wax, feathers and Greek obscenities into the Sea of Crete...
rj
It Depends on How You Define Mission (Score:2)
I recall hearing about a fun concept. It would use a solar sail only 2 molecules in thickness and a single chip payload weighing only a gram or two. It would be accelerated by laser to 0.25 to reach Proxima Centauri in about 17 years and beam close-up pictures home. No need to decelerate.
Does that qualify as an interstellar mission?
Cost... (Score:2)
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I agree, though, that it is not particularly likely any time within the next hundred years.
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Sure, if you can build a spacecraft that can survive the 100,000 year journey, no problem. Alternately, you could build a propulsion system that could get to at least a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Only now you also have to invent a magic construction material that will allow it to withstand the incredible force of micrometeorite collisions at that speed (think of it as constantly hitting bombs several times more powerful than any nuke, head-on).
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No one knows exactly how sparsely these micrometeors are distributed, so the vehicle might not hit any of them at all. And depending on their size, they might not be all that powerful either (hitting a single molecule or atom will not hurt you even if you're going 1/2 the speed of light). In any case, it's better to try.
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Or you could, assuming that you knew they were coming, simply move the micrometeoroids out of your path, or liquefy them with a laser so that they add mass to your hull instead of puncturing it.
Re:Oh good grief... (Score:5, Funny)
1000 years ago: "Harrumpf! The world is flat! Sail on towards your oblivion, fools!"
100 years ago: "Harrump! If got meant for men to fly, he'd have given us wings!"
75 years ago: "Harrumpf! Faster than the speed of sound? Never!"
~50 years ago: "Harrumpf! There's no way we can get to the moon!"
40 years ago: "Harrumpf! Home computing? I think not!"
30 years ago: "Harrumpf! Who needs more than 64K?"
20 years ago: "Harrumpf! What good is this 'internet' thing for?"
ACs: shitting on everyone's ideas for 1000 years.
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1000 years ago: "Harrumpf! The world is flat! Sail on towards your oblivion, fools!"
That was closer to about 2200 years ago: Aristotle argued the world was round in about 350 BCE, and Eratosthenes had attempted to measure it sometime in the 3rd century BCE.
The reason the naysayers thought Christopher Columbus was a bit of an idiot was not that they thought the world was flat, but because they thought it was about 2.5 times as large as Columbus claimed it was (which was in fact true). The primary reason Columbus didn't end up starving to death somewhere in the middle of the ocean was becaus
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Aristotle argued the world was round in about 350 BCE, and Eratosthenes had attempted to measure it sometime in the 3rd century BCE.
Yes, and the Romans built great works of engineering [wikipedia.org] that were abandoned a thousand years later. The fact that ancient Greeks knew the earth was round does not imply medieval Europeans knew it. Sure, a few scholars did, but it was a counter-intuitive fact that went against all logic.
Of course, the king of Spain did have "technical" consultants that knew the classic Greek writings, so they knew about the theory of the round earth, but it probably had the same credibility as that of evolution in present day T
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The fact that ancient Greeks knew the earth was round does not imply medieval Europeans knew it. Sure, a few scholars did, but it was a counter-intuitive fact that went against all logic.
Wrong again. For example, Dante's Purgatorio, written somewhere around 1315, has many clear references to a spherical Earth. He has the western and southern hemisphere completely wrong geographically, but he definitely thought the Earth was round. As far as we can tell, this geocentric system was considered the standard view on the matter at the time. We have records of sermons that referred to the spherical Earth, which means that regular folks were expected to understand the concept, and that the view had
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You are making the mistake of equating the speed of aircraft as the main measure of progress in aircraft.
Since Concorde, however, the main areas of focus for aircraft development have been in making them safer, easier to maintain, larger and more fuel efficient.
For busy routes, larger aircraft reduce the number of flights needed, so reduce the landing fees, maintenance needed, number of flight crews, etc.
Compared to the first commercial passenger jet, the comet, the B747-100 introduced in 1970 used about
Yes, oh good grief is the right response (Score:2)
Good grief, what makes you think we know, now, that future tech will never find a way to get to the stars in any reasonable time with a reasonable energy cost?
Good grief, use current tech limits to whine that chemical rockets can't do the trick.
Good grief, whine that current physics knowledge won't allow faster than light travel or even communication.
Good grief, whine that we know everything today and will never ever come up with any new ideas. Wormholes? Science fiction without the science. Too afraid t
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Orphans of the Sky [wikipedia.org]
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To add to the list: The Dark Beyond the Stars [wikipedia.org] by Frank M. Robinson.
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Please get help, and get on some better medication. We've been watching you go downhill for years now. Schizophrenia is a hell of a disease, and untreated, it can lead to you becoming a danger to yourself and others.
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No, he did not.
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Preordained, perhaps, by the namesake of the project, well before motion pictures were even conceived? Remember, that time he flew too close to the sun and his wings fell off and he crashed into the ocean? I mean, why on earth would you want to name your flight-related project that? It's like launching a new cruise ship and calling it the Titanic. Really? Are there not enough Greek heroes whose missions went off without a hitch of which to name these sorts of things after? Was Apollo the only one we co
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Nope, that movie was the first thing that popped into my head too (oddly enough I just watched it for the first time last week).
I do agree though - given that in legend Icarus fell to his death, it's not exactly a great choice of names :).
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It was SUCH a good movie until they dragged in the requisite evil monster from hell that all SF movies seem to need these days. FUCK.
Oh, and somebody tell Boyle that you don't freeze just by being in shadow. Even in space.
Mea culpa! (Score:2)
Oops! I read the summary, logged it and went to the wrong article. Mea culpa!
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Unbuntu will never hit that target if they continue to push that Unity stuff down the throat of their user base.
Yep, and they might start an interstellar war if they send Unity to Alpha Centauri.
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As you seem to see the final episode, will salvation be as easy as Rush&Eli getting to install Linux at last (comes with a FLOSS driver for Chevron 9 out of the box) ?
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Einstein's solution was that space and time are warped by gravity
The idea of space per say being warped by gravity is a vague and probably inaccurate analogy rather than an observation. The warping is of a purely mathematical nature. That is, the analogy makes us believe that we understand the math even though we don't. The mathematics is able to make accurate predictions with or without the pseudo-idea of curved space, the idea of which was actually introduced by Minkowski [wikipedia.org], not Einstein. Minkowski was more a mathemetician than a traditional scientist-as-experimentalist
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These are all assumptions based on observations of objects moving at an incredibly slower relative velocity to the objects or phenomenon they are measuring (light).
No. These are theoretical prediction that have been confirmed for every case tested. Human beings accelerating things to very near the speed of light is a daily occurrence. Google "synchrotron" to see how many are currently operating.
1. We know that objects travel faster than light in at least one place in the universe – in a black hole objects are accelerated to speeds at which light reflecting off of their surfaces or emitted by the objects cannot reach escape velocity. Thus, things falling into a black hole must be traveling faster than the speed of light.
That's not true. From the perspective of an outside viewer, no object ever reaches the event horizon. It's a fall that takes an infinite amount of time. It's one of the pitfalls of using black holes for transit. You need to go back in time when you exit from the other s