The most important issue that must be solved in space exploration area

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Which is why long distance, interstellar, space travel for humans is a one way ticket (IF it were even possible, which it isn't and never will be). It is only of value to the traveler, not the planet he leaves behind. The costs to develop such a technology would never be invested because of the value to so few.

**shrug** Since when did that ever matter to a government?

Its possible just not probable you would need to take enough people with you to recreate an entire civilization assuming the planets turns out to be suitable. and just be prepared to live entire generations on that ship. I figure with current technology we could go 10 light years in about 50 years. Unless Earth was being destroyed and we knew about it 20 years in advance we could make the ship. Anything short of that I doubt people would be willing to make the trip.

a reply to: network dude

Let them!

I'm here. Ready to debate them...until I'm not here.

The reality is, very few if any of us will be here (except for me) when the time comes to debate these things. Silly humans! Tricks are for kids.

a reply to: dragonridr

15 light years in 20 calendar years is 66.67% the speed of light. It would take 67% of the energy available in the Universe to accelerate an object of mass to this velocity, and at that velocity it would have a mass of 67% of the Universe's mass.

Man is going no where. Mars, maybe, for a 2 year Uber trip. Beyond that, we're stuck here on this rock.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: dragonridr

15 light years in 20 calendar years is 66.67% the speed of light. It would take 67% of the energy available in the Universe to accelerate an object of mass to this velocity, and at that velocity it would have a mass of 67% of the Universe's mass.

Man is going no where. Mars, maybe, for a 2 year Uber trip. Beyond that, we're stuck here on this rock.

That's nowhere near reality don't know where you got that from. we accelerate particles now to near the speed of light. This is what we do at cern for example. The protons in the LHC have a speed of 99.9999991% of the speed of light. We can use magnetic fields to get these objects moving very quickly. It doesnt take 99 percent of the energy of the universe to do it.

Another method happens when magnetic fields run into each other, they can become tangled. When the tension between the crossed lines becomes too great, the lines explosively snap (explode) and realign in a process known as magnetic reconnection. The rapid change in a region’s magnetic field creates electric fields, which causes all the attendant charged particles to be flung away at high speeds. This is how ion drives work for example.

You cant reach the speed of light but getting to say 80 or 90 percent we could do now. The only problem is the time involved it would take almost 2 years to reach 80 percent.

Suitable place to live

a reply to: dragonridr

Dragonridr we could not achieve 10% of light speed never mind 80/90% using current technology.

Where are you going to store all the journey fuel that will accelerate you to 80/90% lightspeed for a start?

And that's a lot by the way as Flyingclaydisk suggests.

Then there is the very pertinent fact that you cannot accelerate above 1G for any length of time without damaging and possibly killing any occupants of the ship.

We do indeed accelerate particles to almost the speed of light, but in accelerators, and particles are not spaceships with human occupants.

What technology do we currently posses that could take us anywhere near lightspeed?

For instance Project Orion could get us up to around 10-12% lightspeed and you may be able to power a craft via laser beamed from Earth and solar sail to around 20% the speed of light, but none of these technologies is actually viable with the material science we currently posses.

a reply to: dragonridr

No, but you're not traveling at the speed of light either. And, the mass of that proton has increased to 7,460 times its resting mass in the acceleration process. And, we're talking about the mass of a single proton (1.67^-27 g) here. How many people are you going to fit inside a spaceship with the mass of a single proton? And...it takes about 20MW of electrical power to accelerate the 0.2mW beam to an energy value of 7TeV. At 600TeV you could power a single 10W lightbulb for one second, so roughly 1/87th the amount of energy for a single 10W light bulb. Do you realize how small of a mass we're talking about here???? And it takes 20MW to do it! You can power a small city with 20MW, and yet all we're doing is accelerating a single proton to near the speed of light.

ETA - Trust me, if your point was to suggest that Einstein's special theory of relativity somehow doesn't apply / hold up at LHC, well, you would be sorely mistaken. In fact, it is one of the underpinning principles used at LHC.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: network dude

Let them!

I'm here. Ready to debate them...until I'm not here.

The reality is, very few if any of us will be here (except for me) when the time comes to debate these things. Silly humans! Tricks are for kids.

that's just it, it's never going to happen, until it does.

My son was 14, stayed inside all summer playing Xbox. I smiled and said "son, nobody is ever going to pay you to play video games", and now he joined the USAF, Covid happened, and they didn't know what to do with his shop, so them sent them home. Know what he did? Got paid to play #ing xbox. For months. Went to Afghanistan, work was slow, know what he did? Yep, got paid to play xbox.

Now my grandson watches fat nerds playing Mindcraft and making idiotic money to do it. I also told my brother in law, who was living in the woods in a trailer complaining about not having a girlfriend, that nobody was going to come up to his door out in the woods and want to be his girlfriend. Well, an ugly woman did just that. He married her. She screwed him over and took his Truck, but he got 'the girlfriend experience'. And I was proven wrong, again.

Hydrogen will never ever be a viable fuel due to how much energy it takes to make it. (I hope that one turns out just like my others) Empirical statements (can) bite you in the ass.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

and to your theory, I have no proof, but I witnessed a "UFO" that did things that aren't possible. My only way to come to terms with what I saw was the "craft" had it's own gravity and wasn't impacted by Earth's gravity. Movement like I saw would turn the crew to a pile of goo after turn 1.

I find it hard to believe we terminated our "only way to space" with the retirement of the Shuttle program and had nothing to use in the future. We don't know everything, but someone does.

a reply to: network dude

So, two comments:

1. Okay, but I think you kind of misrepresented the context of what I was saying. Playing X-box and getting a girlfriend in the woods, or even creating viable hydrogen fuel, is a far cry from defying the laws of physics!

2. I hope I'm proven wrong. I don't think I will be, not in our or even our children's lifetimes, but I hope I am.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

first point was strictly about empirical statements. It could have included cat litter. You don't want me to talk about cat litter. Trust me.

Hydrogen production issues are all physics.

a reply to: andy06shake

What we need it to produce electricity such as a nuclear reactor. Here you can watch this

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

We dont accelerate just one but instead billions of them it is currently beyond our technology to acelerate just one. So im not sure what your getting at here.

a reply to: dragonridr

I believe spacecraft powered by ion thrusters are theorised be able to reach speeds upwards of or about 200,000mph.

Light speed is 671000000mph mate.

Ion thrusters will be great for crushing around our own star system dragonridr but not for interstellar flight.

And again you are suggesting we could achieve 80/90% lightspeed over a period of 2 years with such.

Tell me this, even if that were possible, and i cant see how, what happens when you bump in to something?

Any grain of particulate matter will do, and the vacuum of space is simply not empty, even out there in the vastness of deep space between the star systems.

My answer would have to be nothing good.

a reply to: dragonridr

My point is, the amount of energy required to accelerate protons to near the speed of light is astronomical in comparison to the mass being accelerated.

Yes, we don't accelerate a single proton at a time, but again, that wasn't the point. Let's say we accelerate a "billion" protons. This is still a total mass of only 1.67x10^-18g. This is just over one "quintillionth" of a single gram! And the energy required to accelerate this mass to near the speed of light is enough electrical power to light up 24,000 homes (20 MW).

So, the amount of energy required to accelerate any appreciable mass to high percentages of C is beyond comprehension. E=mC^2 prevails once again.

And, the energy required to accelerate something of any mass at all to 100% C would indeed be "infinite".

That was my point.

The biggest problem with space is....space.

There's just so damn much of it.

a reply to: andy06shake

A couple times in this thread people have mentioned colliding wit small objects when traveling at high velocities. And when I say high velocities I'm meaning percentages of the speed of light. I've never sat down and done any math on the subject, but my intuition tells me this subject may not be as straight forward as it seems at face value. We know that super fast collisions can result in atomic structural changes. We know this because of nuclear power, weapons and atomic research such as LHC. We've had our understanding of physics and the environment challenged by things like Chernobyl and the Castle-Bravo nuclear shot. But all of these things involve atomic sized particles colliding with much larger more massive things. To the best of my knowledge there is very little research out there on what happens when large massive objects are traveling at high velocities collide with much smaller less massive objects. Would the same rules apply, or would things change?

Might be an interesting area of study for someone who's got some time on their hands.

a reply to: andy06shake

Its upper limit is dependent on the amount of electricity that can be produced, Anuclear reactor is in megawats so far thrusters have been limited to what solar panels can produce. see the video on the x3 thruster I posted. its limit would be over 600000 mph. This is only the 3rd generaton it will get better with time.

Getting back to the space debris issue. There is one space technology that is involved in deorbiting space debris and dead satellites. It`s called micro tug and it has many purposes like correcting satellite or spacecraft orbit, refueling satellites, or spacecrafts, and other...

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Put it this way Flyingclaydisk, i dont imagine deep space is the best place to find out.

Nothing good would be my bet.

We are going to need some kind of shielding anyroad.