Human extinction.

[m7mcfc]

It's one thing to send a probe to mars or a manned mission to the moon, but quite another to build a spacecraft capable of taking a species to colonise another solar system.

This is quantum levels of engineering beyond anything we've ever done before.

Not really. It could be done now given enough willpower. A couple of Saturn V rockets attached to a very large ship containing a society. Using a combination of ion engines, solar sails and good old fashioned thrust, we could accelerate over hundreds of years. There wouldn't be enough friction to slow us down and we'd theoretically accelerate to a high percentage of lightspeed depending on the mass of the ship and propulsion method.

The Voyager craft that photographed the "Pale Blue Dot" is already outside of the range of the Sun if it were to go into a red giant. In fact, the Sun's diameter would be about 2 AU. Voyager is already at 121 AU. When the Sun does go into the red giant phase, it loses most of its mass which means that we (a colony ship) wouldn't be pulled into it. In fact, the supernova blast (which doesn't happen, but bear with me) could properly be used as a propulsion means no different to how surfers use the seas as propulsion.

We could generate power for the ship through solar energy and other techniques, and recycle air for many thousands of years. Water would have to come from recycled human waste but there's other methods such as capturing the ice in space to melt and purify as a quick example. Food would have to be grown onboard which they already do at the ISS in small quantities.

I've seen schematics for a ship that is a rotating cylinder which uses the centrifugal force to create it's own gravity for those inside of it. Well, the Coriolis force would also be acting on it so we'd have to get used to things dropping in curves rather than straight lines but we could adapt.

This technology is obviously in its infancy but if there's one thing that modern civilisation proves, it's that when pushed towards desperation, humans are incredibly inventive creatures. The Moon landing technology was invented, designed, built and tested over about a 12 year stretch. There's no reason to assume that given the level of cooperation and communication made possible by the internet, that the UN couldn't achieve a basic colony ship in 50 years or so.

Thats quite something. But with the 150 quadrillion miles to cover to the nearest star, I ask how long would this take? Also how many lifetimes? Children would be born on such a craft, live, produce more children who then like themselves die on this journey.

If the human race is to survive this is the only option and as already said we are inventive creatures. This is the only way forward in my view. It will be amazing in the future if they pull it off.

Since you're into big numbers, I shall tell you the distance to the centre of our galaxy

27,000 light years = approx 150 quadrillion miles

One thing is for certain. None of us alive today will see such a beast in our lifetime so its speculation.

It's speculation based on the idea that we've gone from flight to Moon landing in 70 years, so the next 4 billion years would quite probably turn up something interesting on the galactic travel front. And there's numerous ways of surpassing large distances without breaking lightspeed, we just don't currently have the energy to perform them. Are you suggesting that there will be no advances in energy in the next 4,000,000,000 years?

 

[Challenger1978]

Mincemeat? Cheeky so and so.

I concede that I used the wrong word in terms of evolution.

I appoint Damocles as Chief Engineer, SWP's back as Vehicle Systems Engineer and NF as Mission Systems Engineer.

If I told you I've been tinkering with a design for a nuclear powered electro magnetic inertia drive over the last decade can I have a job ;-) .

 

[pauldominic]

It's one thing to send a probe to mars or a manned mission to the moon, but quite another to build a spacecraft capable of taking a species to colonise another solar system.

This is quantum levels of engineering beyond anything we've ever done before.

Not really. It could be done now given enough willpower. A couple of Saturn V rockets attached to a very large ship containing a society. Using a combination of ion engines, solar sails and good old fashioned thrust, we could accelerate over hundreds of years. There wouldn't be enough friction to slow us down and we'd theoretically accelerate to a high percentage of lightspeed depending on the mass of the ship and propulsion method.

The Voyager craft that photographed the "Pale Blue Dot" is already outside of the range of the Sun if it were to go into a red giant. In fact, the Sun's diameter would be about 2 AU. Voyager is already at 121 AU. When the Sun does go into the red giant phase, it loses most of its mass which means that we (a colony ship) wouldn't be pulled into it. In fact, the supernova blast (which doesn't happen, but bear with me) could properly be used as a propulsion means no different to how surfers use the seas as propulsion.

We could generate power for the ship through solar energy and other techniques, and recycle air for many thousands of years. Water would have to come from recycled human waste but there's other methods such as capturing the ice in space to melt and purify as a quick example. Food would have to be grown onboard which they already do at the ISS in small quantities.

I've seen schematics for a ship that is a rotating cylinder which uses the centrifugal force to create it's own gravity for those inside of it. Well, the Coriolis force would also be acting on it so we'd have to get used to things dropping in curves rather than straight lines but we could adapt.

This technology is obviously in its infancy but if there's one thing that modern civilisation proves, it's that when pushed towards desperation, humans are incredibly inventive creatures. The Moon landing technology was invented, designed, built and tested over about a 12 year stretch. There's no reason to assume that given the level of cooperation and communication made possible by the internet, that the UN couldn't achieve a basic colony ship in 50 years or so.

Since you're into big numbers, I shall tell you the distance to the centre of our galaxy

27,000 light years = approx 150 quadrillion miles

One thing is for certain. None of us alive today will see such a beast in our lifetime so its speculation.

It's speculation based on the idea that we've gone from flight to Moon landing in 70 years, so the next 4 billion years would quite probably turn up something interesting on the galactic travel front. And there's numerous ways of surpassing large distances without breaking lightspeed, we just don't currently have the energy to perform them. Are you suggesting that there will be no advances in energy in the next 4,000,000,000 years?

Voyager 1 and every craft we've sent are reasonable demonstrators of some technologies, but many more are nowhere near mature enough.

For starters, how many people would such a craft need to carry in order to prevent in breeding?

Obviously it depends on what velocity could be generated but even 0.01c (7m m.p.h) seems incomprehensible.

I'm not suggesting there won't be improvements in energy but the requirements for such a craft are literally quantum levels of engineering above anything around today.

I use the term engineering btw because that is a different discipline to a technologist.

 

[MCFC-alan88]

It's one thing to send a probe to mars or a manned mission to the moon, but quite another to build a spacecraft capable of taking a species to colonise another solar system.

This is quantum levels of engineering beyond anything we've ever done before.

Not really. It could be done now given enough willpower. A couple of Saturn V rockets attached to a very large ship containing a society. Using a combination of ion engines, solar sails and good old fashioned thrust, we could accelerate over hundreds of years. There wouldn't be enough friction to slow us down and we'd theoretically accelerate to a high percentage of lightspeed depending on the mass of the ship and propulsion method.

The Voyager craft that photographed the "Pale Blue Dot" is already outside of the range of the Sun if it were to go into a red giant. In fact, the Sun's diameter would be about 2 AU. Voyager is already at 121 AU. When the Sun does go into the red giant phase, it loses most of its mass which means that we (a colony ship) wouldn't be pulled into it. In fact, the supernova blast (which doesn't happen, but bear with me) could properly be used as a propulsion means no different to how surfers use the seas as propulsion.

We could generate power for the ship through solar energy and other techniques, and recycle air for many thousands of years. Water would have to come from recycled human waste but there's other methods such as capturing the ice in space to melt and purify as a quick example. Food would have to be grown onboard which they already do at the ISS in small quantities.

I've seen schematics for a ship that is a rotating cylinder which uses the centrifugal force to create it's own gravity for those inside of it. Well, the Coriolis force would also be acting on it so we'd have to get used to things dropping in curves rather than straight lines but we could adapt.

This technology is obviously in its infancy but if there's one thing that modern civilisation proves, it's that when pushed towards desperation, humans are incredibly inventive creatures. The Moon landing technology was invented, designed, built and tested over about a 12 year stretch. There's no reason to assume that given the level of cooperation and communication made possible by the internet, that the UN couldn't achieve a basic colony ship in 50 years or so.

Since you're into big numbers, I shall tell you the distance to the centre of our galaxy

27,000 light years = approx 150 quadrillion miles

One thing is for certain. None of us alive today will see such a beast in our lifetime so its speculation.

It's speculation based on the idea that we've gone from flight to Moon landing in 70 years, so the next 4 billion years would quite probably turn up something interesting on the galactic travel front. And there's numerous ways of surpassing large distances without breaking lightspeed, we just don't currently have the energy to perform them. Are you suggesting that there will be no advances in energy in the next 4,000,000,000 years?

Voyager 1 and every craft we've sent are reasonable demonstrators of some technologies, but many more are nowhere near mature enough.

For starters, how many people would such a craft need to carry in order to prevent in breeding?

Obviously it depends on what velocity could be generated but even 0.01c (7m m.p.h) seems incomprehensible.

I'm not suggesting there won't be improvements in energy but the requirements for such a craft are literally quantum levels of engineering above anything around today.

I use the term engineering btw because that is a different discipline to a technologist.

You need 200 people and careful strategy to avoid inbreeding, IIRC.

 

[Damocles]

Thats quite something. But with the 150 quadrillion miles to cover to the nearest star, I ask how long would this take? Also how many lifetimes? Children would be born on such a craft, live, produce more children who then like themselves die on this journey.

Actually, PD said the centre of the galaxy rather than the nearest star. Proxima Centauri is about 1.3 parsecs or 24 trillion miles. At current speeds, it would take around 70,000 years to reach it. However, if we travelled at even 10% of the speed of light, it would take only 40 years. 99% of the speed of light would be around 4.5 years.

This is only talking about speed as we see it today. Technologies that create wormholes, or bend spacetime to shorten distances are theoretically possible with enough energy on board. If we combine a high lightspeed velocity and technologies that warp space, the possibilities are obviously greater but far too hard currently to speculate on.

This will pretty much all happen when somebody finds a way to create nuclear fusion in an energy efficient manner.

At the minute, we can create nuclear fission. This is the thing that powers the atom bomb. It's where we take a single Hydrogen atom and rip it apart which causes a huge release of energy hence the bomb.
We need to create nuclear fusion, which is where two Hydrogen atoms are sped up to an enormous speed that when they collide they actually merge into each other, and without boring you with the physics, releases a huge amount of energy. This is the thing that powers the Sun. That's the magnitude of difference in energy released

We can already produce nuclear fusion on Earth in labs but the technology is such that getting the atoms to speed up to the velocity needed to merge into each other is costing us more energy than the reaction is producing. However, we're getting better at it and the project is that within a decade or two we will have the first ever self-sustaining nuclear fusion reactor. It will barely produce any power surplus of course, but it will produce a tiny amount. Nuclear fusion is essentially the thing that will provide every person on the planet with pretty much free and unlimited energy for the rest of time. My personal opinion is that this is the thing that will forever kill the use of fossil fuels for energy, if we can develop it fast enough. It's literally harnessing the power of a Sun.

If we built this into an engine, 5% would be piss easy. Space warping technologies may become more scientific reality than science fiction. I don't envy the guy who has to pilot through space at close to lightspeed though!

This type of energy available would also make supercolliders like CERN about 5 billion quid cheaper. ITER is the major hope for this. They think they can start producing reactions in 2026.

 

[MCFC-alan88]

It's like reading about Stargate, I likes it.

 

[m7mcfc]

It's one thing to send a probe to mars or a manned mission to the moon, but quite another to build a spacecraft capable of taking a species to colonise another solar system.

This is quantum levels of engineering beyond anything we've ever done before.

Not really. It could be done now given enough willpower. A couple of Saturn V rockets attached to a very large ship containing a society. Using a combination of ion engines, solar sails and good old fashioned thrust, we could accelerate over hundreds of years. There wouldn't be enough friction to slow us down and we'd theoretically accelerate to a high percentage of lightspeed depending on the mass of the ship and propulsion method.

The Voyager craft that photographed the "Pale Blue Dot" is already outside of the range of the Sun if it were to go into a red giant. In fact, the Sun's diameter would be about 2 AU. Voyager is already at 121 AU. When the Sun does go into the red giant phase, it loses most of its mass which means that we (a colony ship) wouldn't be pulled into it. In fact, the supernova blast (which doesn't happen, but bear with me) could properly be used as a propulsion means no different to how surfers use the seas as propulsion.

We could generate power for the ship through solar energy and other techniques, and recycle air for many thousands of years. Water would have to come from recycled human waste but there's other methods such as capturing the ice in space to melt and purify as a quick example. Food would have to be grown onboard which they already do at the ISS in small quantities.

I've seen schematics for a ship that is a rotating cylinder which uses the centrifugal force to create it's own gravity for those inside of it. Well, the Coriolis force would also be acting on it so we'd have to get used to things dropping in curves rather than straight lines but we could adapt.

This technology is obviously in its infancy but if there's one thing that modern civilisation proves, it's that when pushed towards desperation, humans are incredibly inventive creatures. The Moon landing technology was invented, designed, built and tested over about a 12 year stretch. There's no reason to assume that given the level of cooperation and communication made possible by the internet, that the UN couldn't achieve a basic colony ship in 50 years or so.

Since you're into big numbers, I shall tell you the distance to the centre of our galaxy

27,000 light years = approx 150 quadrillion miles

One thing is for certain. None of us alive today will see such a beast in our lifetime so its speculation.

It's speculation based on the idea that we've gone from flight to Moon landing in 70 years, so the next 4 billion years would quite probably turn up something interesting on the galactic travel front. And there's numerous ways of surpassing large distances without breaking lightspeed, we just don't currently have the energy to perform them. Are you suggesting that there will be no advances in energy in the next 4,000,000,000 years?

Voyager 1 and every craft we've sent are reasonable demonstrators of some technologies, but many more are nowhere near mature enough.

For starters, how many people would such a craft need to carry in order to prevent in breeding?

Obviously it depends on what velocity could be generated but even 0.01c (7m m.p.h) seems incomprehensible.

I'm not suggesting there won't be improvements in energy but the requirements for such a craft are literally quantum levels of engineering above anything around today.

I use the term engineering btw because that is a different discipline to a technologist.

That's my question, how many lifetimes would it take to get to the nearest star? Generation after generation would live and die on one of these voyages.

 

[pauldominic]

Not really. It could be done now given enough willpower. A couple of Saturn V rockets attached to a very large ship containing a society. Using a combination of ion engines, solar sails and good old fashioned thrust, we could accelerate over hundreds of years. There wouldn't be enough friction to slow us down and we'd theoretically accelerate to a high percentage of lightspeed depending on the mass of the ship and propulsion method.

The Voyager craft that photographed the "Pale Blue Dot" is already outside of the range of the Sun if it were to go into a red giant. In fact, the Sun's diameter would be about 2 AU. Voyager is already at 121 AU. When the Sun does go into the red giant phase, it loses most of its mass which means that we (a colony ship) wouldn't be pulled into it. In fact, the supernova blast (which doesn't happen, but bear with me) could properly be used as a propulsion means no different to how surfers use the seas as propulsion.

We could generate power for the ship through solar energy and other techniques, and recycle air for many thousands of years. Water would have to come from recycled human waste but there's other methods such as capturing the ice in space to melt and purify as a quick example. Food would have to be grown onboard which they already do at the ISS in small quantities.

I've seen schematics for a ship that is a rotating cylinder which uses the centrifugal force to create it's own gravity for those inside of it. Well, the Coriolis force would also be acting on it so we'd have to get used to things dropping in curves rather than straight lines but we could adapt.

This technology is obviously in its infancy but if there's one thing that modern civilisation proves, it's that when pushed towards desperation, humans are incredibly inventive creatures. The Moon landing technology was invented, designed, built and tested over about a 12 year stretch. There's no reason to assume that given the level of cooperation and communication made possible by the internet, that the UN couldn't achieve a basic colony ship in 50 years or so.



It's speculation based on the idea that we've gone from flight to Moon landing in 70 years, so the next 4 billion years would quite probably turn up something interesting on the galactic travel front. And there's numerous ways of surpassing large distances without breaking lightspeed, we just don't currently have the energy to perform them. Are you suggesting that there will be no advances in energy in the next 4,000,000,000 years?

Voyager 1 and every craft we've sent are reasonable demonstrators of some technologies, but many more are nowhere near mature enough.

For starters, how many people would such a craft need to carry in order to prevent in breeding?

Obviously it depends on what velocity could be generated but even 0.01c (7m m.p.h) seems incomprehensible.

I'm not suggesting there won't be improvements in energy but the requirements for such a craft are literally quantum levels of engineering above anything around today.

I use the term engineering btw because that is a different discipline to a technologist.

You need 200 people and careful strategy to avoid inbreeding, IIRC.

200 doesn't sound like anywhere near enough people and social control is another can of worms to add to all the engineering challenges.

 

[Damocles]

I've just edited the dates in. Fusion power will happen in our lifetime. This bit isn't science fiction. We're really building these things, right now. Go look at it:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.iter.org/mach" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.iter.org/mach</a>

 

[Challenger1978]

I've just edited the dates in. Fusion power will happen in our lifetime. This bit isn't science fiction. We're really building these things, right now. Go look at it:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.iter.org/mach" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.iter.org/mach</a>

I was actually thinking about ITER as I was reading your original post (1 or 2 post above). As it is without a doubt the most important scientific undertaking mankind has ever tried in my lifetime.

In no way am I an expert about nuclear fusion but personally I still think we're 40 to 50 years away from commercially producing an energy source of this type. Unless we finally pull out our fingers and spend big on research and development.

If I remember correctly ITER is going to cost around £10 to £15 billion and we're struggling to find the money for that which involves countries from around the world contributing to it. Yet this country on its own can piss away that kind of money on a sporting event. Its absolute madness if you ask me, us wasting huge amounts of money on all sorts of shit when have something as important as ITER struggling at times for funding.