Close and tranquil solar system has astronomers excited
astrobiology.nasa.gov
astrobiology.nasa.gov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brow...
Here is a map: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html
Not sure if that is how it really works though :)
1. If those planets have water. 2. If their surface gravity is tolerable. 3. What kind of atmosphere they have, if any. 4. What's the mineral composition of those planets. 5. How violent the surface weather is, provided an atmosphere does exist.
So, there's only cause for cautious optimism.
Speed of light is a bastard of a limitation to have to beat...
Sending an unmanned probe to Alpha or Proxima Centauri might be just possible in the next century.
As per wikipedia: > a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel through the entire known Universe in one human lifetime
So it's really only a challenge of propulsion. You're not making a return trip to any recognizable civilization though.
From that article the best case scenario is a billionth the acceleration you are looking for. And you can’t take a billion stars because then you have more mass...
Edit: the interesting part of discussing the 1g is probably less a realistic proposal and more how about how the concept of acceleration quickly runs up against our mental constructs of what acceleration and distance means. I don’t know the source, but it’s probably an enlightening to discuss what it means in the context of relativity.
If it will survive Sun radiation at low orbit, then it may also survive interstellar travel at high % of C.
Jeremy Clarkson
No.
No, they don’t, as far as we know.
There are particles that are always slower than light, and particles that always go at exactly light speed, but no particles that accelerate to (or decelerate from) light speed.
Wow that is actually very fascinating, it never occurred to me that it works that way. I’m always thinking of 11 light years as too far away for someone to achieve in a lifetime, but I am of course thinking about that from the perspective of the person who is not traveling.
So don't turn, only decide to stop in the first half of your life (or you won't live to see the end of the journey), beat light and physics by the end of year one of your life, and enjoy the ride. I'm not sure what you'll "see" outside of your spaceship though, and I do hope for you that there's not a single speck of dust in your path and no wall at the end.
Sure it might take a hundred million years for your journey from an observer watching you on earth, but thanks to time dilation, it could still be less than a lifetime for the person on the ship
> only a challenge of propulsion
I like the Revelation Space universe, but its fictional Conjoiner drive and the near-light-speed Lighthugger spacecraft powered by it are no closer to realization than any of Star Trek's technobabble. The same goes for the forever-accelerating Bussard ramjet vessel of Tau Zero.
SpaceX's COO Gwynne Shotwell is, and has spoken publicly about it (and has allude to Musk's opinions on it [1]). That said the basic requirement is a significant propulsion breakthrough [2], current technology just isn't good enough.
You don't beat the speed of light, you just travel at an appreciable fraction of it an accept the fact that by the time you arrive everyone on earth will have aged n (>11?) years.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/gwynne_shotwell_spacex_s_plan_to_f...
[2] https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/11877454453611806...
I'd say machines will be cheaper.
How about sending a whole village for the voyage? Some will die, some will be born, culture will be thought and the next generation would colonise the new planet.
They could operate mining facilities on these planets and live to see the profits of a big mineral haul back to earth.
Have a few cuddly dogs aboard too so that the first generation doesn't grow up completely devoid of affection by only talking to machines
In this case you have to fully automate healthcare and education. Then you still have to steer these individuals towards some sort of economic goal because presumably you are not just sending kids to a foreign planet for fun.
It may take a very long time to get there though, but I don't see any reason why people would stop funding progress towards this goal.
Compared to that, what investment is going towards automating childcare, education and healthcare today?
It has no bering on making us live forever, and I am willing to bet that 'curing' aging for good is impossible unless we figure out brain uploading, which could be impossible and opens a new can of worms - is the new copy actually you?
By contrast we are making a massive investment to automate more or less everything, for instance advances in robotics and machine vision clearly help to automate both healthcare and car assembly.
There have been many isolated communities and if they die, thats because they succumb to diseasse or disaster.
Also, all these historical examples occur in the context of having millions of acres to roam, probably access to a lake or ocean, sunshine, fruits, seeing other animals, and so on (the natural habitat of humans). Even in prison they get yard time, and prisons are extremely violent.
The number of generations it would take to travel ### lightyears away is so high that _something_ is just bound to happen. What if one of the generations gets hooked on bath salts? What if they get irradiated and lose fertility? What if they start a cult? What if there's a lone wolf killer who takes them all out?
11 years at light speed would still be 100s, 1000s of years at speeds obtainable by humans. Building a ship capable of that kind of life support is just beyond capabilities. A ship of that size is not getting off the ground. Our current manufacturing capabilities outside of the gravity well is assembling modules together or maybe a 3D printer
It will take a concerted effort by our species. Just as you go on to say that solving aging would require multinational support, why would you limit interstellar travel to a single nation?
The fastest way for us to become space voyagers would be for us to receive that signal from somewhere near Vega that tells us how to build the machine to take us places.
Right now the voyager is traveling at 17 km/s which is 0.0056% of the speed of light. We don't have the propulsion technology and given the known laws of nature, it's unlikely we will ever have something feasible to travel at 10% of light speed. But even if we did manage that we'd be looking at 100 years of travel for a one-way trip.
Payloads would be measured in grams, though. That's what Breakthrough Starshot [1] is all about. Given suitable infrastructure (e.g. lasers stationed across the solar system), even 1/3 c is possible for machines.
Crewed missions would be seriously limited given near future technologies - the craft would simply be too heavy for using solar sails and even nuclear thermal propulsion only gets to a tiny fraction of c.
Also keep in mind that you need to slow down at the target, too, if your mission is crewed as fly-bys like Breakthrough Starshot aren't desiderable for crewed missions.
The cold hard truth is that your ΔV = 9.8 * ISP * ln(MR), where MR is the mass-ratio and MR = (Mass[Propellant] + Mass[Spacecraft]) / Mass[Spacecraft].
ISP and MR for known near-term propulsion systems are as follows:
• Chemical rockets: ISP <500s MR ~10 => ΔV < 11 km/s
• Ion engines: ISP <5000s MR ~2 => ΔV < 34km/s
• Nuclear Thermal rockets: ISP <15000s MR ~2 => ΔV < 102 km/s
• Multi-stage ion engines: ISP <25000s MR ~2 => ΔV < 170 km/s
So basically the fasted currently known option that doesn't straight up use nukes + pusher plate can get you to 0.5% c give or take.
My understanding is that acceleration gets exponentially more expensive at higher speeds making it practically unfeasible to build a ship like this
Asymptotically approaching infinity as you approach light speed, not merely exponential.
Of course... this was to avoid an extinction-level event, is assumed to have failed on 95/100 attempts, and was even in-universe acknowledged to just be the best of a number of catastrophically bad options.
But, a sorta-kinda solution.
Since when is this possible? Did I miss something?
Although at this point you (=the AI) would lose 11 years transmitting yourself, you won't actually be conscious of this process.
Suppose you have a real AI inhabiting a robot here on earth, it would only require to copy the AI, transmit it and boot up the AI on compatible robotics hardware on the new planet.
This would be the equivalent of transporting your brain into a cloned body.
Taking out of the map colonization, and trying a very long term (decades, or centuries) plan to send something like the Voyager or even the Mars Explorer just to learn what is there is more realistic. And once we know more decide what are the next realistic steps. But think in hundreds or thousands of years if everything gets right.
In our current stage it would be easier (not easy) to colonize Venus, the moon or the asteroid belt, and could have a more realistic time frame.
For example, the longest timeframe in pension fund investing is 25 years. Which is 1/3th of a lifetime.
If lifetimes increase by 10x then the timeframe would become 250 years and mineral explorations of other solar systems becomes a feasible financial endeavor.
You have to have a large space industry, mining and construction, to be able to build large ships and send autonomous drones, supllies, etc. You would do that ahead of any colonists actually arriving.