stupidity squared
in a new universal law discovered by the team working on the 100 year spaceship, human stupidity grows in direct relation with proximity to another human
Wild-hare Pentagon boffinry bureau DARPA continues to forge ahead with its radical plan to get the first manned interstellar spaceships headed out of the solar system by the year 2111. The military tech agency yesterday issued a call for papers to be presented at the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium which is to be held in …
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Oh no the little yellow men are coming to get us!
Wait... didn't we say the same thing about the Japanese?
oh! and the Russians before that...
and the Germans before that?!
and the Germans again!
Probably someone before that, maybe the British in the Americans case...
People always seem to think that America will be toppled by these countries but at best they compete and even out. China will be no different, particularly with its current population/government...
Recently, thanks to a posting on an interesting blog about old American home workshop magazines such as Mechanix Illustrated, I found out that a service of this nature existed in the U.S. from 1939 to 1954, started by one Walter Morris, and a similar service in England had preceded it.
"We here on the Reg space desk will be wishing the 100 Year Starship project all the luck in the world, while acknowledging that that's just what they're going to need." ....
Luck plays no part whatsoever in such Great Games, El Reg, other than providing a ready excuse to be trottered out by myriad sceptics and cynics in a most disarmingly insecure justification for Field of Play Inaction.
"As regular readers of our 100 Year Starship coverage thus far will know, DARPA and NASA plan to sidestep the tricky question funding for the starship(s) by triggering off "the creation of a self-sustaining organization that will tackle all the issues and challenges", as opposed to having the US government do it." ..... A simple Memorandum of Understanding between the Super Technology and/or Methodology Supplier [a self-sustaining organization that will tackle all the issues and challenges] and the Global Fiat Money System aka the Banking Sector, that the latter shall be protected and strengthened by the former, rather than attacked and decimated by any rogue and renegade programs which have been developed and embedded in their systems, which are predominantly SCADA are they not, would easily supply all that is needed at no adverse or extra cost to anybody, and without the US government having to do anything ......... unless, that is, they are the Super Technology and/or Methodology Supplier.
"Or do you have an idea on how to modify the geometry of spacetime just in front of you into a desired configuration?"
Give it 100 years of the same type of exponential technological development we've seen the last 100 years and manipulating the geometry of local spacetime may not seem so far fetched. Granted, it's far beyond us right now, but we're talking about what we'll be capable of in 100 years.
Given the various theories for getting around the speed of light that I know of, the Alcubierre drive seems the most doable to me. Unless, of course, someone figures out how to make wormholes large enough and stable enough to actually use for travel (I don't see that happening).
No amount of tech. dev. is going to get round an impossibility ( if that is what it turns out to be )
In the whole history of scientific and technological progess no-one has found a way around the laws of thermodynamics for example. You might say "yet" but it looks like a pretty poor bet.
No reaction mass may be needed, but experimental evidence _is definitely_ needed.
If it works, it also means the universe is future-closed, so prepare for Singularity.
I like the Wikipedia Hopefulness [tm]:
"While some have expressed doubt about this hypothesis, no respected theoreticians have yet disproved it. If these doubts are unfounded it is conceivable that...."
No one has disproved the hypothesis? I CAN HAS STARDRIVE!
...some of the nearer stars are doable if you have a powerful enough engine. And some further ones if you're prepared to entertain generation ships (not that that ends well in fiction)
It's not such a looney idea anyway - all your eggs in one basket has never been a winning formula.
Of course there are some intermediate stages - unmanned probes to likely candidate stars and a serious industrial base out in space somewhere (moon, asteroid belt?) to build the necessary kit without having to lift it out of the gravity well. Go DARPA!
That's the first requirement even if all the other problems can be overcome. To get to the nearest stars in a 'reasonable' time (~40 years say) the energy requirements are truly awesome.
I calculate for 1 tonne moving at 0.1C ( ~40 years) the kinetic energy is ~4.5E17 J . That's equivalent to 14 1000MW power stations for 1 year.
You'd definitely need a BIG power source which would add it's own weight.
Solving the big energy question is a necessary step. (unless there really is some new physics as yet undiscovered)
Generation ships have serious moral problems. Anyone with a teenage child will know this: imagine "I didn't ask to be born" but in a situation where the child will spend her entire life in a metal bubble, with her social and breeding opportunities all pretty much fixed from birth. Ugly.
It takes about a year to accelerate to 99% of lightspeed (and another year to slow down) at 1G. From the POV of the crew. You'd need engines capable of accelerating at 1G, plus 4-ish years-worth of fuel to cover the travelling part. Accelerate and decelerate; there and back.
A 25-year mission of this type would put 8 stars within range. A 32-year mission would open up 38 possibles. Obviously these missions would appear to take a lot longer to Earth-based observers.
But it's perfectly possible -given the kit- to go to another star and get back alive. You'd have to make new friends when you got back, but I would think there would be some people prepared to go even so.
You'd have to carry enough fuel to keep the ship powered up while you're coasting and you'd need some really good shielding.
DIfficult and colossally expensive, sure, but it's not showstoppingly out of reach.
At 0.99C the relativistic kinetic energy is ~5E20 J PER TONNE - that's a staggering amount of energy. So you need (at least) that to accelerate to 0.99C and then again to decelerate.
All this assumes a propulsion system that is efficient and isn't totally burdened by it's own mass
Maybe it'd be possible to gain some of the energy on the way, with a Bussard Ramjet sort of device. Or a solar sail and launching lasers for a quick start and a lightening of the fuel you'd need to carry (by nearly half of the accelerating decelerating fuel; hoping the launching lasers would still be there upon your return). Or maybe there's an optimal speed/time for this sort of relativistic travel. Or an Orion-style nuclear explosion-powered craft.
There's a few options for packing the energy in there. Never say never.
>"The Pentagon men obviously don't care to mention Cyrano de Bergerac's L'Autre Monde: Où les États et Empires de la Lune, written in 1650, as this would mean no starship for 319 years or more."
Hey, it's worse than that; the earliest known fictional account of a journey to the moon is "A True History", written by Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century (AD). By that standard we could have as much as another 1800-odd years to wait....
I love the chaps that like to pile labels implying a bunch of crazies on DARPA. IM"H"O (*not so humble really*), DARPA acts like a well-funded group of stock speculators. Sure most of the bets aren't going to pay off, but the idea is that the few that do pay off, should pay off spectaclarly. We can poo poo every idea they chase as being unrealistic science fiction, but if you are trying to maintain the most effective fighting force available you don't wait to embrace every technology until it is proven. (If you wait then everybody has it and you have no edge).
Nobody would have believed stealth was anything but science fiction in the 70s, but the skunk works proved you can do some amazing things with plywood, paint, and angles. (Even with the non-scientists stick their noses in and demand changes that don't match up with the physics).
Frankly, we are destined for spectacular mediocrity if every scientific venture has to have a short ROI. Grow some long range vision people.
Alcubierre drive: The fact that according to the sums you'd need a little under three suns' worth of E=mc^2 *PER ATOM* tends to make this a little unlikely, yeah?
Screw the stars. Until we have the will and the technology to get people to any other astronomical body *AND* stay alive there indefinitely, anything more is pissing money up the wall. It took 62 years to get from Kitty Hawk to the Moon. It's now been 42 years since the Moon, and technology has actually regressed since then.
Sure it's "speculative". But any speculation when we're this far away is a complete waste of time, because real engineering is likely to make all this speculation obsolete. It's like all those Victorian futurists anticipating incredibly advanced, streamlined steam trains for mass transportation, with no idea that personal transportation would stomp all over that model.
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We effed up this planet, so let's go and look for another one we can mine to death! We barely got the internet off the ground before the money-men moved in to capitalize on it, the same thing will happen when we eventually get out "there".
Still you can't stop that human spirit! I plan to have a burn-up when I pop my clogs, last thing I need to do is wake up in some cryo tube on a starship bound for flip knows where, while a hideous monster roams free around the ship!
"Or do you have an idea on how to modify the geometry of spacetime just in front of you into a desired configuration?"
Simple - just work out what shape of planet made out of metallic hydrogen or neutoronium you need, and build it right in front of you!
Oh, better patent that now then, eh?
Oh, and DARPA I'm having a sale today, you can get the plans and specs for that at a 75% discount for today only, that will be $102,250,799 ext. GST, kthxbai
Why drag them into it, they just screw things up. Unless, of course, the 100 year starship will be used to shoot all the lawyers and politicians into space so they can't bother us anymore If that is Plan B or preferably Plan A then I would submit radiation shielding, life support, food etc is not really a major concern. Just make sure there is enough fuel to ensure the fuckers aren't dragged back into the solar system
I for one welcome this wish for exploration.
Olde-world ship explorations gave us the 'new world', and in the passage of time faster ships and aircraft made faster travel and migration possible.
So these initial space explorations are like sending a boat out for months (and years) at a time, returning with tales of Australian Platypuses and Kangaroos.
My only fear is that to get those faster ships and aircraft, war had to occur. Will it take WW3 to develop NLS / FTL engines?
As Arthur C Clarke once said, if Humankind survives for a fraction of time that the dinosaurs did, for but a fleeting moment in history 'ships' shall refer to 'spaceships'.
Otherwise getting out of the solar system will need a *lot* of shielding.
Closed cycle life support would be a *really* good idea, otherwise it's a hell of a lot of ready meals to the next star system
I've always quite liked the scheme in the Jerry Anderson movie Doppleganger / Journey to the far side of the Sun with the crew hooked up to heart / lung machines for the voyage. Sadly the record for this IRL (using hyperthermia) is about 45 minutes and the brainn activity really does seems to be completely flat, then starts up as the patient is warmed up.
. Bumping that up to say a month would be a real DARPA style challenge (IE apparently barking mad) but I can't think of a military application for doing so.
On the modern battlefield heart problems tend to be in the form of a large hole in the soldiers chest where their heart (and various other bits) used to be.