Interstellar travel impossible, therefore...

crazyewok

Cuervo
reply to post by eezveeneetee

 

If I threw a bag of dog crap out of the ISS, unless it hit something, it would travel interstellarly.

No as it would likely end up captured in earth gravity and end up in a stable orbit or more likely a decaying orbit.

You have to get to a escape velocity to escape earths orbit and even then you will end up stuck in solar orbit and after that galactic orbit.

Wow dude. Way to ruin a fun analogy for me. In any case, interstellar travel is achieved by big brainless rocks floating around so that was my point.

you don't have to get to galactic escape velocity even though that too is well below relativistic speed. i think new horizons is travelling pretty near galactic escape velocity. regardless; here in this arm of the galaxy there are millions of stars to visit.

reply to post by eezveeneetee


Wow... now thats a bold statement.

All it would take is a single paradigm breaking discovery and we might find interstellar travel as easy as traveling down the road to the dairy to go to other star systems. Whos to say someone else didnt stumble onto such a rule breaker sooner, hell they might have found it at an earlier stage of development than we did to boot.

We just gotta wait, and hope such discoveries arent deliberately ignored or covered up.

Interstellar Travel is impossible... oh please.

Cuervo


Wow dude. Way to ruin a fun analogy for me. In any case, interstellar travel is achieved by big brainless rocks floating around so that was my point.

Sorry

But your right rocks do it.

BigfootNZ
reply to post by eezveeneetee

 

Wow... now thats a bold statement.

All it would take is a single paradigm breaking discovery and we might find interstellar travel as easy as traveling down the road to the dairy to go to other star systems. Whos to say someone else didnt stumble onto such a rule breaker sooner, hell they might have found it at an earlier stage of development than we did to boot.

We just gotta wait, and hope such discoveries arent deliberately ignored or covered up.

Interstellar Travel is impossible... oh please.

three off the shelf technologies we have now could enable interstellar probe flights to the nearest stars right now.

NTRs were proven in the 1960s. the only thing preventing this is the old space treaty that forbids nukes in space. it would not be too difficult to ammend the treaty to allow propulsion reactors in space for peaceful purposes.

VASIMR magnetoplasma rockets are ready. one will be tested on ISS later this year unless it gets delayed again.

M2P2 magnetic plasma sails are ready. the only thing left is designing an articulation system for maneuvering under sail. that and it needs a power source that is allowed by treaty.

these systems particularly if they use a series of gravity assists can achieve viable interstellar speeds for slow trips to nearby stars. not for manned missions but feasible for a probe given the longevity of the voyager program. these missions would take 100 years or less.

on the horizon are several pulsed fusion designs including one that can do a 40 year interstellar mission speed. one of these is in early prototype stage scheduled for completion in 2018.

I think its stupid to imagine a race millions of years ahead of us even botherin to travel in a straight line anywhere, they would know how to manipulate gravity and then all bets are off.

Anyway this is such obvious troll baiting..lel

eezveeneetee
The subject line states my premise. SINCE interstellar travel is impossible, the so-called ET theory is invalid. And your promotion of the ET theory has been central to the UFO "phenomenon" for decades now. You have been foundational in promulgating an entire culture of UFO hysterics. Therefore, you are either sincerely misled, delusional, or an operative in the largest, and most successful PSY-OP in history. You don't strike me as deluding yourself, or mentally imbalanced. So I'll ask, or rather suggest a possible explanation of who Stanton Friedman is, in part. Are you, or have you been, an employee or a contractor of a U.S. government intelligence agency?
It makes a whole lot of sense that you are very possibly a big player in perpetuating a very useful hoax that the government can benefit from: a sensational idea that the wishful would follow like lemmings, and serve to distract the public from various programs they prefer to be hidden. Assuming my theory is correct, the UFO disinformation program has been enormously successful. ET's arriving to our solar locale is an impossible feat. So, Dr. Friedman...are your checks from the government direct-deposited?

It is not impossible WE just don't know how to yet. Do you think a caveman thought it was possible to fly? Do you think they ever thought there would be something like TV or computers? Not sure why you would think this way but I guess its your choice.

What is impossible today becomes improbable in 50 years and mundane to the generation after that.
This will be the final barrier for planet bound humanity to break. After the breakthrough humanity can expand into forever. Does it matter if we travel by exceeding light speed or using a cyro freeze method to make a slow trip to the stars possible? Remember the time of travel is only long as measured against our present life speed and life expectancy. Once a way is found to adjust that many things become possible.
The worst problem could be the traveler might become the only survivor from the human race. By the time they reach a habitable planet there might be no one back here to get the news. Or by the time they get there the next crafts speed has passed them in flight and they find a fully populated world awaiting their arrival.
If we don't break the travel barrier what is the use of our intellgence? The final barrier will be broken it a matter of time, effort and expense.

BigfootNZAll it would take is a single paradigm breaking discovery and we might find interstellar travel as easy as traveling down the road to the dairy to go to other star systems.

Several "discoveries", not unlike what you are referring to, HAVE been made n the past 20 years. They all sit on a shelf awaiting engineers to develop them into something "working".

Destinyone
reply to post by eezveeneetee

 

Just because ET didn't zip over your head, nor take you for a quick galactic jaunt. Doesn't mean you can try to spoil it for the rest of us.

Don't be a sore looser. Cheer up, you still have an opportunity for the ET experience...

I really hope it happens to you. Your eating crow thread will be phenomenal....

Des

edit on 11-3-2014 by Destinyone because: (no reason given)

Very Well said…there are no black swans until they are discovered.

If the people were meant to fly they would have been given wings!
The Earth is flat!

The sun revolves around the Earth!

And so on…

Interstellar travel is not impossible.
Human interstellar travel is almost impossible.

There is difference.

We can´t travel to far-off stars. So interstellar travelling aliens must be a lie.

We can´t deal with universe or its size. So the universe is infinite.

stormbringer1701

BigfootNZ
reply to post by eezveeneetee

 

Wow... now thats a bold statement.

All it would take is a single paradigm breaking discovery and we might find interstellar travel as easy as traveling down the road to the dairy to go to other star systems. Whos to say someone else didnt stumble onto such a rule breaker sooner, hell they might have found it at an earlier stage of development than we did to boot.

We just gotta wait, and hope such discoveries arent deliberately ignored or covered up.

Interstellar Travel is impossible... oh please.

three off the shelf technologies we have now could enable interstellar probe flights to the nearest stars right now.

NTRs were proven in the 1960s. the only thing preventing this is the old space treaty that forbids nukes in space. it would not be too difficult to ammend the treaty to allow propulsion reactors in space for peaceful purposes.

VASIMR magnetoplasma rockets are ready. one will be tested on ISS later this year unless it gets delayed again.

M2P2 magnetic plasma sails are ready. the only thing left is designing an articulation system for maneuvering under sail. that and it needs a power source that is allowed by treaty.

these systems particularly if they use a series of gravity assists can achieve viable interstellar speeds for slow trips to nearby stars. not for manned missions but feasible for a probe given the longevity of the voyager program. these missions would take 100 years or less.

on the horizon are several pulsed fusion designs including one that can do a 40 year interstellar mission speed. one of these is in early prototype stage scheduled for completion in 2018.

Nuclear reactors are common in space flight not sure where you think there is a ban. The ban i think your refering to is there is a ban on using nuclear rocket technology on earth and for good reason however there are exception even here such as nuclear electric rockets could be made safe but again accidents can occur. So id be uncomfortable using them on earth but in space no problem with it.As far as being able to reach velocities for interstellar travel of course they can just keep in mind it doesnt take massive velocities to travel into interstellar space just alot of patience and time voyager is proving that albeit real slowly.At voyagers current velocity it will take it about 50000 years to reach the distance of are closest interstellar neighbor.Needless to say its just barely out the gate so to speak.

datasdream
What is impossible today becomes improbable in 50 years and mundane to the generation after that.
This will be the final barrier for planet bound humanity to break. After the breakthrough humanity can expand into forever. Does it matter if we travel by exceeding light speed or using a cyro freeze method to make a slow trip to the stars possible? Remember the time of travel is only long as measured against our present life speed and life expectancy. Once a way is found to adjust that many things become possible.
The worst problem could be the traveler might become the only survivor from the human race. By the time they reach a habitable planet there might be no one back here to get the news. Or by the time they get there the next crafts speed has passed them in flight and they find a fully populated world awaiting their arrival.
If we don't break the travel barrier what is the use of our intellgence? The final barrier will be broken it a matter of time, effort and expense.

That would really suck a generational ship gets to there destination only to find humans were there for hundreds of years already talk about sucks. Make a good science fiction story though if you think about it because imagine the technology gap they would have to overcome.

tanka418

Several "discoveries", not unlike what you are referring to, HAVE been made n the past 20 years. They all sit on a shelf awaiting engineers to develop them into something "working".

In my own personal opinion your right, thing is the idea that such discoveries have happened and are simple shelved for our own good is still just a conspiracy theory itself, that hasnt got any genuine proof to it. As such when talking about the OP's statement you have to not include the conspiracy as a direct answer since its just as iffy as the OP's original argument.

My own comment was simply that for all we know there might be some little trick of physics no ones thought of yet that suddenly makes us capable of gaining faster than light travel with realistic energy levels or some other similar thing that suddenly rewrites large swaths of our understanding.

I mean we thought human flight was impossible because we couldn't understand how it worked, then we finally understood the mechanics behind the wing and boom, off we go with a rapid development of aircraft in all directions, not to mention material development to support it.

Well, there are several misconceptions about interstellar travel. For instance, travelling with the speed of light is not the solution since you would still have to travel decades to the nearest solar system outside our own.

There are problems with folding space and skipping the time-lines as well. Time really is a human interpretation for the changes of matter. Realistically it is a man-made explanation for the constant changing of matter rather then a factual explanation. Folding space is a different problem it takes mass to fold space and it takes a lot of mass. So much mass in fact that you would most likely not travel on or in its source.

But there is another way; One could combine quantum mechanics with multi-dimensional space in order to travel in an almost instant way; theoretically at least. Say we have a spaceship [S] and it is located in three dimensional space. Its coordinates would be [A] - [B] and [C]. If we shift [S] from three dimensional space into six dimensional space we get three new extra construct-lines; [X] - [Y] and [Z]. Here comes the funny thing. [A] - [B] and [C] are known and always fixed. These construct-lines exist in both spaces. However; Construct-lines [X] - [Y] and [Z] only exists in six dimensional space. In other words, we can't know [X] - [Y] and [Z]'s location as long as we are in three dimensional space.

Basically quantum mechanics teaches us that as long as we don't know those values they can have any value and will in fact have all values. (Think Schroedinger's cat)
So when we vector in on six dimensional space there is no telling where we might land up. We know [A] - [B] and [C] will remain the same but [X] - [Y] and [Z] will be something that would seem random to us.

Okay, so we are in six dimensional space now; how do we travel back. Here comes the really nasty part. We could travel back in 'our' three dimensional space but we would find out we would simply still be at the same coordinates. So we must first make our coordinates 'lost' and to do this we must perform a little trick. Instead of travelling to 'our' three dimensional space we need to breach the inter-dimensional wall first and instead travel to a place of three dimensions that intersect with [X] - [Y] and [Z]. We would not end up in our three dimensional space but rather in that of a coexisting three-dimensional universe that over lapses our three-dimensional universe but does not interfere with it at the same time due to the restraints of the three dimensions.

So at this moment our world would be [X] - [Y] and [Z] and it will be a three dimensional universe but it won' t be ours. We then shift back into six-dimensional space. Quantum Mechanics does its job and [A] - [B] and [C] would be completely random to us. Then we shift back to our three dimensional universe and we would arrive at a different [A] - [B] and [C] from where we would have left.

There are of course some problems with this theory. What you have to understand is that the dimension of [A] - [B] and [C] does in no way interact with the dimension of [X] - [Y] and [Z] they can't because they don't 'know' each other physically. But when we go to six dimensional space then those two universes overlap and interact with each other causing a spacial universe that is neither [A] - [B] and [C] or [X] - [Y] and [Z] and is in the same time both. This means that a lot of stuff is happening in the six dimensional space. It is most likely a very dynamic and interacting spacial universe with lots of laws of physics interacting with each other in violent ways.

The second issue is one of control. While the above mentioned way of travel is a possibility it is also rather random. If one were to rule out quantum physics one would need to know at least two out of the three involved universes and then even need to calculate the third one to actually make controlled jumps. One would need a Type III civilization on the Kardeshev scale to perform the trick. Considering that would mean having multiple suns and/or black holes harnessed for energy the only actual way of achieving this is by performing uncontrolled inter-dimensional travel thousands of times hoping that a few dozen of ships end up in the right place instead of slinging in rocks or suns during the transition.

Anyways; that the theory I came up with while pondering about it.

BigfootNZ
In my own personal opinion your right, thing is the idea that such discoveries have happened and are simple shelved for our own good is still just a conspiracy theory itself, that hasnt got any genuine proof to it.

What conspiracy theory? What's happening here has not "conspiracy" to it; simply Human Nature.

Dude over there discovers a way to do something...but, it's not his job to develop, only to discover, thus he announces his discovery, a few other science type look at it, and think its cool.

Now that new knowledge gets to sit around until some short-sighted business "dink" begins to understand, and it is he that hires the Engineers to develop the technology.

Nothing has been kept from the public for any reason...other than interest.

My own comment was simply that for all we know there might be some little trick of physics no ones thought of yet that suddenly makes us capable of gaining faster than light travel with realistic energy levels or some other similar thing that suddenly rewrites large swaths of our understanding.

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. A "cute" little trick that makes it all work. But, again, others have to understand what the discovery IS before any development starts.

reply to post by dragonridr

I think the premise of travelers getting overtaken by more advanced craft has been done before. it was a good yarn. I lost the name of the author though.
Good sci-fi authors make you think outside our present boundaries.

dragonridr

Nuclear reactors are common in space flight not sure where you think there is a ban. The ban i think your refering to is there is a ban on using nuclear rocket technology on earth and for good reason however there are exception even here such as nuclear electric rockets could be made safe but again accidents can occur. So id be uncomfortable using them on earth but in space no problem with it.As far as being able to reach velocities for interstellar travel of course they can just keep in mind it doesnt take massive velocities to travel into interstellar space just alot of patience and time voyager is proving that albeit real slowly.At voyagers current velocity it will take it about 50000 years to reach the distance of are closest interstellar neighbor.Needless to say its just barely out the gate so to speak.

Reactors are not allowed in space. but RTGs are. it is RTGs that are often used in deep space probes that cannot use solar. but those are not reactors. they are nuclear power sources though.

dragonridr

datasdream
What is impossible today becomes improbable in 50 years and mundane to the generation after that.
This will be the final barrier for planet bound humanity to break. After the breakthrough humanity can expand into forever. Does it matter if we travel by exceeding light speed or using a cyro freeze method to make a slow trip to the stars possible? Remember the time of travel is only long as measured against our present life speed and life expectancy. Once a way is found to adjust that many things become possible.
The worst problem could be the traveler might become the only survivor from the human race. By the time they reach a habitable planet there might be no one back here to get the news. Or by the time they get there the next crafts speed has passed them in flight and they find a fully populated world awaiting their arrival.
If we don't break the travel barrier what is the use of our intelligence? The final barrier will be broken it a matter of time, effort and expense.

That would really suck a generational ship gets to there destination only to find humans were there for hundreds of years already talk about sucks. Make a good science fiction story though if you think about it because imagine the technology gap they would have to overcome.

I think a generational ship would be harder to build than a sleek star ship with "woo woo" physics powered engines. the mass of a generational ship with all the propulsion system mass. fuel mass. goats pigs and chickens. a closed cycle biosphere. cargo to start a new civilization. excavators, bulldozers, factory tooling and dies. everything would be large and massive and require tones of in situ construction.