posted on Jun, 30 2013 @ 07:39 PM
I was looking at the catalog of near by exoplanets and this one caught my attention. It is one of 3 potential habitable planets within the Giliese 667
triple star system.
phl.upr.edu...
It is I think the closest possible habitable planets with our galaxy being about 22 light years from our solar system.
I started working on some ideas for a mission to the Giliese 667 star system. For obvious reasons a number no not yet existing technologies would be
required to make it a practical reality. Even with these limits to consider I think it is a good topic for discussion.
Can we finally
break the speed of light? Nasa breakthrough suggests Star Trek's 'warp drives' may not only be possible - but practical
Since NASA seems to think warp drive is possible I will start with this premise as a near future possible technology.
The other obvious limit to this being possible is the needed energy to generate the warp field. Antimatter has of course been discussed as well as
obtaining energy from the vacuum itself. I think for practical reasons I would want to explore extracting energy from the vacuum. For the moment of
course we do not possess even the technology to reach Mars in a practical time frame.
The best candidate so far is the
FDR fusion drive which promises
to make the trip to Mars in 30-90 days. This is a good start as it provides its energy while using very little mass conversion to achieve
acceleration. It is clearly not enough for a star drive but with some type of space warping technology added to it perhaps it will become such a
drive.
The next hurdle that comes to mind is the material making up the spacecraft and the ability of that material to heal itself. For this we will of
course need to perfect a type of nanotechnology. Perhaps something based on carbon nano-tubes.
Some sort of material that is low in density and high in strength as well as having self healing properties will be needed for the material of the
star craft. I know that NASA has put quite a bit of resources into this type of science so they see the benefit as well as I do.
I will post more of my thoughts on this in this thread. Perhaps with some thoughtful contribution from others this thread might evolve into something
of a hopeful plan for such a excursion to explore our nearest habitable neighbor in the galaxy.