Posted on 01/27/2015 5:22:03 AM PST by WhiskeyX
Got thrown out of a HoJo’s a long time ago... drunk and disorderly (I was framed... completely innocent, I tell you).
“Unlike the article, we are not talking about interstellar space travel. We’re now talking about establishing habitats within the Solar System. Asteroidal habitats can house several times the current population of the Earth. Such communities and their habitats can potentially survive long after he Earth is made uninhabitable by the Sun or consumed by the Sun after the Sun has grown large as a Red Giant star.
Any space faring human societies which have mastered the ability to make asteroids into their homes may if they so wish ever so gradually propel their asteroid out of the Solar System on interstellar voyages lasting lifetimes. The technologies required to propel the asteroids on their interstellar voyages can use the ion rocket engines first patented by Robert Goddard before the Second World War. No “warp drives” or “stargates” are required to be invented. Only time is required in the form of multiple lifetimes and multiple generations. Of course, the less adventurous can simply “stay home” and watch the extinction of life on the Earth from nearby in he Solar System.
The manned mission to Mars was slated in about 1968-69 to take place in the mid-1980’s. The Democrats with not a few Republicans killed the already underway research and development in the early 1970’s along with the last of the Apollo Lunar missions. likewise with every Presidential announcement of the manned space missions since then.
If we had stayed on schedule, there would already be a permanent manned scientific station on the far side of the Moon (Luna) conducting radio astronomy projects, multiple privately financed commercial space stations in low Earth orbit, a manned government and/or commercial space station on a near-Earth asteroid, and at least one manned mission to Mars.
” The Democrats with not a few Republicans killed the already underway research and development in the early 1970’s”
No surprise here. They only fund what lines their pockets.
“We are so far away from human colonies in space”
Nonsense. Humans have inhabited space in low Earth orbit (LEO) for most of 44 years now. Humans have the technological capability of making a commercial expansion of that human habitat to the near Earth asteroids, the Moon, and beyond in the next to decades given the will to do so.
I could do without the disco influence. Some kind of mad max setting against foreign occupiers and home grown puppets with left over barely functioning.
“WhiskeyX, You lead; we’ll follow. Also... you put up the funds.”
Already been there and done that. I won’t be around that much longer, so it is time for the following generations to take on the task for their descendants. I and my colleagues lobbied Congress to build and operate the Space Shuttle that was used to build the International Space Station (ISS). My generation got us to the Moon and manned the first human habitats in space for the past 44 years. Bigelow has orbited the first prototypes for commercial space stations, Genesis I and Genesis II. The Chinese have launched their first in a series of Chinese space stations, the Tiangong 1 in 2014.
Shake a leg and get on with the job of corralling an iron rich asteroid before someone else not so pleasant gets the job done.
“does humanity need saving? no......”
People tend to fall into two groups: those who care whether or not humans survive the destruction of the Earth’s habitat for humanity and those who don’t care about the survival of humanity. Those who care will want to growup and leave the cradle to survive, while the others will choose to remain in the cradle, suck their thumbs, and await a catastrophe to strike them dead like a rabbit waiting to be clobbered dead by a hunter’s club.
Actually, you are wrong
Most of humanity that exists away from the extremes you describe, aren’t concerned. There is no valid reason to fear the end of human habit or of Humanity. It just isn’t going to happen
Chicken Little is well known to be a hoaxer
Robert Heinlein once said "If mankind is to survive as a species, for all but a very small portion of it's ultimate history, the word "ship" will mean "spaceship"."
The biggest problem with going anywhere in space is that space is freaking huge. It's much bigger than your average person thinks it is. Even distances faced within our own solar system are daunting to the extreme. To get a good feel for how big space really is, I recommend downloading a program called "Celestia". (available for free for Linux/Mac/Windows) This program is essentially a 'universe simulator'. It allows you to travel just about anywhere you want to go in the known universe at any desired speed.
However, if you just limit yourself to light speed, it takes forever to go much of anywhere. Want to travel to Jupiter, at the speed of light? Takes about half an hour. It's an hour to Saturn. Neptune is 4 hours away. If you travel at somewhat more reasonable speeds, like say, how fast the Voyager spacecraft is travelling (40,000 KPH) you're looking at distances measured in years just within the solar system.
Getting to any place outside our own planetary system is many orders of magnitude greater. At 40,000 KPH, a voyage to the nearest star is a 70,000 year trek.
Now, let's say you want to go there anyway. Well, in order for that to be possible at all, you'll need one of two things to be possible.
Faster than light travel - Science fiction writers talk about hyperspace and other methods to get FTL speeds, because it's the only way to make it feasable at all unless you want all starships to be multi-generational. If you can go faster than light, it make extra-solar voyages possible, if you can go much faster than light. (Betelgeuse is 500 LY distant, so even at light-speed, you're talking multi-generational vessels except to the closest of stars.
Zero Point Energy - If you can't go faster than light, then you're stuck with those multi-generational ships. So, if you're going to spend hundreds or thousands of years going somewhere you need to consider the fact that for the vast majority of your voyage, you're out in the middle of nowhere. Solar collectors won't help you out in the black.
Nuclear power might help, but you'd need a heck of a lot of it. If you're stuck with fission, you'll need a heck of a lot of radioactives for your trip. Fortunately, disposal of waste won't be much of an issue, as you can just jettison it. Fusion is better, but you'll still need reactor mass, (hydrogen most likely), which will be a consumable. Run out of reactor mass, and your ship doesn't have fuel. I'm not even talking about fuel for flight, as Newton's laws won't require you to continue to expend mass once you've reached your target speed, though you'll need it to slow down and maneuver at your destination. However, you're still going to need power to maintain those hardy individuals who are taking this leisurely trip. On a voyage of hundreds or thousands of years, that's kind of a big issue. That's not even considering the fact that your vessel is a closed loop, and that everything will have to be recycled endlessly. Any leakage at all will be cumulatively catastrophic.
The only way to have power for this kind of voyage is to be able to tap the zero point field for the ergs you need. With essentially limitless fuel, you might be able to make it if you're careful, and perhaps make use of cryogenics (though I suspect you'll always need someone to keep watch).
There are a lot of other considerations of course, but in order for us to get off this rock permanently, we're going to need one of these two things.
Yup. Still, energy will be the most critical problem with using that astroid ship to get anywhere. (see my previous post)
Except Jor-El was right. Maybe we should make him head of the EPA.
“It just isn’t going to happen”
We are overdue for the next periodic ELE (Extinction Level Event), most likely an asteroid strike. In any event, humans will become extinct sooner or later until and unless humans inhabit extraterrestrial homes beyond the reach of any single calamity.
“Yup. Still, energy will be the most critical problem with using that astroid ship to get anywhere. (see my previous post)”
Yes, I’m assuming nuclear fusion reactors, an ion engine, and a hyperbolic gravity assist at the launch of the expedition.
Prediction: interstellar travelers will discover rogue planets and asteroids in the space between the stellar systems.
Maintenance of a closed environment and a closed social system will be the most critical problems faced by such interstellar voyagers.
The flow of time is another way of expressing a three of space and one of time coordinate system (what I call the volume / future coordinate system) evolving from the big bang toward thermodynamic equilibrium. If a photon can cross the Universe remaining in the present of its creation, then there is Shirley a hugh possibility for we smartaleck humans to isolate a space craft from the volume / future coordinate system while zipping to another location within that system. Being convinced that we have visitors from other planets beyond our solar system, I believe we humans, if we survive long enough, will do it too.
BTW, the reality of the interference pattern in the two slit experiment hints greatly at a way to 'be outside the confines' of the volume / future Universe around us.
“....My generation got us to the Moon and manned the first human habitats in space for the past 44 years....”
Your generation was vastly different than what we have following-on now, brother.
And I was just busting your chops a little; no offense intended.
“And I was just busting your chops a little; no offense intended.”
Me too :)
“AHHH, the collectivize ‘we’, we selfish taxpayers.”
No, government isn’t competent to handle colonization efforts. That is ultimately a task for private enterprise and individuals as soon as they can gain access to the frontier.
You got that right. Our government has canceled program after program which could have created a whole new multi-trillion dollar economy larger than today’s present economy, and then they complain about not having enough money to fund government from the faltering economy. The U.S. launched the first prototype of the MOL (Manned Orbital Laboratory) in the 1960’s, but canceled the follow through with putting astronauts aboard a manned mission. This allowed the soviets to become the first to send up a manned space station. If the U.S. had followed through then, we likely would be producing enough products and services from manned space stations to fund routine commercial operations in space by now. Instead, now they are many days late and even many more dollars short while whining about the shortage of funds.
Years ago there was a college textbook on subliminal messages in advertising. Seems the authors of the HoJo clam p[lane ad put all sorts of sexual positions into their little imagery, as the lines between the lumps of clams. Of course the clams were artist derived, so slipping the many variations in to the imagery was easy. I used to travel lots back then and I stayed at HoJos a lot, so I lifted one of the ad cards from the table and gave it a good magnified inspection when I got home. Sure enough the seedy crap was there in the artist's rendering.
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