Deep Space Exploration

What are everyone's thoughts on travelling deep into the solar system and even our galaxy. Is it possible? By what means do you all think this is possible?

I'm all for the exploration of the solar system and eventually beyond. Is it possible? Yes it surely is, we've been doing it for a while now, but it's very very slow with present day technology. Manned exploration is a bit further off. Although if money wasn't a concern. I'm sure we could build something, but it would still be slow and take a lot of time to get anywhere. You'd need a big ship with a small crew and lots of room for supplies.

Space is huge. incredibly huge when we get caught up in these astronomcal distances its everry easy to pass it by as simple and not consider whats actually going on. Before i explain what i feel about Deep Space Exploration let me try to give you an idea of how vast the just our solar system is
if you want to just pass my little explanitation drop down to past the line.

Astronomical Distances

WE are often unloaded with facts and information from science meida and news about astronomical distances. You often hear something like " And thats about 98,000,000 miles or the distance from earth to the sun," Generrally numbers and staticts like this are hard to take in mbut recently i found a small "Experiment" to help people grasp the imense amout of space the first part i read in a book but the second part i through in myself ( so that peoples heads would explode )
so here it goes! GET A RULLER! this is kinda cool if you get some chalk and a tape measurer and go in the street ( or freeway during rush hour! j/k)

Picture a map of the heavens in which the distance between the Earth and the Sun - 93,000,000 miles- is drawn as one inch. this is called an AU. Astronomers often ues the AU( Astronomical Unit) to measure distances. Earth is 1 AU from the sun Mars is 1.52 AU, Jupiter is 5.20 AU. Venus is 0.72 AU, and Pluto is on average 39.44 Au from teh sun.
On our map where 1 AU = 1inch the earth would be one inch from the sun, mars would be 1.5 inches from the sun and pluto would be 39.44 in from the sun. Where is alpha centauri, the nearst star to our solarsystem on this map? Four and a Third MILES away. and that is the nearest star!

hahaha if you have never grasped astronomical distances before your probally saying to yourself something must be wrong but it isnt now lets move on.
With your new found knowldge of how far the nearest star is take this into account.....

Look at this picture. This is a real picture not some dreamed up place. www.spacetelescope.org...
that is one of the deepest immages of space we have. the thousands of galixies in that picture are jsut a grain of sand in the universe. We live in a galaxy which is made up of BILLIONS of stars most larger than our sun. each of theoes galixies contain BILLIONS of stars. and thinking about thoes BILLIONS of stars rember our infromation from the first experiment then consider again that there are billions of galixies containg billions of stars and how great the distances are. its quite amazing.
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as my above example shows we have alot of space to cover ( no pun intended) i believe that if we are to reach the center of our galaxy and een travel to other galaxys we would have to take trillions of years to do it. this could only be accomplished by world ships which have been discussed in other threads on this site. As for near by stars i believe we could send ships back and forth between them in reletavily short times like 30 years or so but still yet thats alot of time. However if we could develop interdemensional travel to go outside of our demension and come back but reappear in another positon in literaly no time ( why would time stay constant in another demension?) then we could have endless transport and oprions. I beleive that at least colonies will be placed on planets orbiting stars that are within 5-6 light years of us withing the next 4000 years I feel the solarsystem will be colonized fully within the nest 1000 years. But then again im being optimistic we have to star twith the moon or mars now if we really want to have the seed of humanity go forever.

mizar- swelling has stoped

Im excited for the day when technology will be good enough to send humans into deep space.

But part of me doesnt want to see mankind spoil it like we do to our own planet.

Originally posted by JustAnIllusion
But part of me doesnt want to see mankind spoil it like we do to our own planet.

Spoil it how? Links? Explaination?


As for the topic:
We do deep space mission today, a number that shall only go up. In the near future there will be J.I.M.O. and that will be a HUGE improvment in space tech, because its nuclear powered and will have several ion engines, which are very efficient engines, yet powerful enough to get out of a planets or moons orbit, it will study Jupiter and 3 of its moon by getting into their orbit and taking pics and radar images and scans and readings and what not and its engines will turned up and it will escape it gravity pull and then go to the next moon. It will be the first time that a single spacecraft was built the purpose of studing in detail more then one planet.

and also in I believe 2006 Nasa will launch Horizons II, a pluto probe, cant get much deeper then that.

Future deep space missions could use Solar sails, which possibly have the ability to go up to 1/10 the speed of light! But they take a long time to build up speed, but they would be the most efficient for some longer and deeper missions.

Expect to find out more on our solar system in the comming decades but dont expect to have a spacecraft land or orbit a nother planet in our Milkyway.

but with constentaly better telescopes expects to see TONS of planets outside of our solar system, currently we have found over 135 plantets (not including our own of course).

We will probably find life on another planet (maybe intelligent) within 20 years.

With telescopes like the VLT (Very Large Telescope) that will be finshed in 2005 will be so sensitive that it could see astronauts on the moon! And of course we still have Hubble, with will continue with amazing pictures for years to come, and in 2007 Nasa will launch Kepler which is space-based, its sole mission is Planet finding, they predict that they will find 2 planets a week, and will bew able to find planets the size of earth, which in planet terms is pretty tinny. In 2005 there Nasa's VBL (Large Binocular Telescope) which is just as it sounds, its basically 2 big telescopes networked together to see deeper clearer and more. Then in 2012 Nasa will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be to study early galaxies in more detail. Brfore 2020 Nasa will launch its biggest and most impressive of them all the Terrestrial Planet Finder which is several telescopes connected to one-in-other to see much more, it will be able to see planets up to 50 light years away! And of course I havn't mentioned all the Future telescopes because i dont have that much spare time, but i hope this is enough to make to excited about space, like me.

But as for your last question: The only way humans will be able to go to another galaxy is if we can figure out how to go light speed and figure out how to cryogenically freeze people with out them dying, and then we would basically set a timer on there "bed pods" for lack of better words, and have them awaken when they get there. and dont be optimistic about us being able to go faster then the speed of light, because Einstein said that it is impossible, and for a guy who lived when space travel didn't he has never being wrond yet, so i tend to believe him.
and as for our own galaxy, same thing, unless we can find a planet close enough actaully worth sending people to (which wont be in our lifetime). But for deep space missions solar sails is the only way to go (for now).

Here is how I see it. If we can harness the energy of a antimatter engine, I see us traveling at least to the Centauri system in the next couple hundred years. But with the lack of antimatter exisiting around us we would have to develop some way of "creating" antimatter. I do agree though, that as of right now solar sails would be the way to go.

BTW, excellent posts Mizar and Murcielago, definately had me up late doing more research. Anything else you guys would like to add, Murc...future telescopes?

I would like to add a comment on Voyager.

Voyager was launched 28 years ago an it is now 90 Au from the sun or
8,370,000,000 miles away
and if you did my little experiment up above you would also plot voyager 90 inches from your sun.

Now lets continue to use my model....
Voyager has been traveling for 28 years, it is 90 au from the sun, on my model it is 90 inches from the sun. Now rember on my map to get to alpha centuri we need to go 4 1/3 miles. do the math on that one........

space is a little bit too big if you ask me

[edit on 26-11-2004 by Mizar]

With solar sails we could get a probe to alpha centuri within 50 years! But that wont happen unless we either find a planet there that has 1.Inteligent life / 2.Oxygen / 3.water - Which we will know that answer with in 15 years, so although slim, its possible that within our lifetime we could send an unmanned probe to another star system.

[edit on 26-11-2004 by Murcielago]