Standby for Ludicrous Speed...
Posted on 04/14/2009 3:04:18 PM PDT by LibWhacker
IT’S a birthright proffered by science and prophesied by “Star Trek,” “Battlestar Galactica” and a thousand other space operas: We’re destined to go to the stars. Our descendants will spread beyond this nondescript solar system and seek adventure and bumpy-headed pals in the stellar realms.
Well, cool your warp jets, Mr. Scott, because we’re not about to breach the final frontier. Piling into a starship and barreling into deep space may long remain — like perfect children or effort-free bathroom cleaners — a pipe dream.
The fastest rocket ever launched, NASA’s New Horizons probe to Pluto, roared off its pad in 2006 at 10 miles per second. That pace would be impressive in the morning commute, and it’s passably adequate for traversing the solar system, something we’ve done and will continue to do. Combustion rockets, like New Horizons, can deliver you to the Moon in a matter of days, Mars in a matter of months, and the outer planets in a matter of years. But a trip to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the Sun and 100 million times farther from us than the Moon, would consume a tedious 800 centuries or so. You’ll want to upgrade.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Maybe we’ll never master interstellar travel, but it’s only been fifty years since we sent objects into orbit, for pete’s sake. It would have been a bit mean to say to Democritus, “Yeah, we all like your atom theory, but when are you gonna get down to business and split it?” These things take time.
Maybe if physicists put down they’re wacky string theories and refocused on the real world we’d have forward progress.
Exactly why reaserch into faster propulsion should be a priority.
liberals want us to go back into the caves and then back to the primordeal oooze
Yes! But we have Velcro and Tang now!
Who knows what other wonders await us... <\s>
“Artificial gravity for the sake of a space traveler’s health is relatively easy. Shielding against radiation is an issue but not one that’s outside the realm of possibility.”
VASIMR Rockets will do both, and are in development right now.
“Why? Because we are doing it merely because we want to know, we want to see.”
Oh, please. Everyone knows why the federal government poured money into the space program, and it wasn’t for love of knowledge.
A quick study of the VASIMR Rocket looks like a promising next step.
14 inventions! That is amazing. Plus, of course, velcro and Tang. Plus a bag of rocks.
The projected lifetime cost of the Shuttle program alone is $173 Billion. I don’t know the cost of the earlier programs.
That is roughly 10 billion per invention. I’d love to have my share back.
Noble? I hope you typed that in a hushed voice with Star Trek music in the background. Art is way cheaper.
I do favor missile technology, which should be the purpose of NASA.
I’ve seen the prototype in operation, in person. Beautiful magenta plume, and a great concept. Basically, how much thrust you produce depends on how much power you can bring to bear. The magnetic field generated deflects a great deal of interplanetary radiation, and the constant thrust generates a gravity frame of reference.
Great Stuff!
The Moon, although it appears so close, is 239,000 miles away. It is impossible for man to bridge this gap — the distance is just too far — our fastest steamships can barely do 20 miles an hour with an entire stoking company.
The idea than people will be able to telephone each other 24 hours a day and exchange messages, short and long, is just silly. There is no known technology here in the 1920’s that can allow so many messages.
The Babbage calculating machine, although a great novelty item, will never be more than a parlor novelty. The new 18th century will look back and laugh.
Well folks, these were the thought at the time.
At the very least, choose a flight that offers snacks.
What I couldn’t find was what kind of terminal velocity they could get out of it. Wiki only has “ultra fast deep space transport” as one of it’s attributes.
It does sound like it will be much faster than the engine driving the probe to Pluto at 10 miles per second.
The man developing the thing has a mission profile that will take you to Mars in about two weeks. Serious as a heart attack.
The spacecraft would accelerate halfway to it’s destination, go to a brief coast, turn the opposite direction, then kick in thrust again. Thrust is an acceleration, and it produces massive velocities. The spacecraft in this case would carry a great deal of fuel to do this, but not anything we couldn’t manage. Imagine a half-dozen liquid hydrogen tanks clustered around the ship, each about the size of a Shuttle external tank. You’d have to assemble the ship in orbit.
(Oh, BTW - that’s what we’ve done with ISS. Probably its greatest value, and not a small contribution to science and engineering.) :)
Standby for Ludicrous Speed...
Yep, it’s very exciting technology!
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