Interstellar travel: Starship troupers | Hacker News Reader

Interstellar travel: Starship troupers

economist.com

45 pointsdynofuz14 comments

If people are interested in this stuff (and I hope a lot are), the Planetary Society [1] do weekly podcasts and events and talk about this and other areas. The Benford's are always good to hear because they're articulate, clever and so enthusiastic (the Economist cartoon has a Benford present as well I think).

A recent event was recorded in Pasadena "Is this the Starship Century?", a 90 min video with some great discussion about spaceships [2]. A book is out as well. It's good to dream, isn't it?

[1] http://www.planetary.org [2] http://www.scpr.org/events/2013/09/25/1153/next-the-starship...

That article was way too conventional for my taste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive is my dark horse tech in this field.

Non-Newtonian locomotion is the only viable form of manned Interstellar travel.

On the contrary, we could get to about 30% of the speed of light with a Bussard Ramjet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Combine that with life extension and you can travel the stars within one lifetime. Lots of nearby planetary systems would be within only a few decades of travel.

Read Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" for a great sci-fi exploration of the culture that would arise around this form of travel.

Also, if you believe your "soul" / "mind" is represented by a pattern of matter rather than the particular matter itself, you could travel at 100% of the speed of light by 3D scanning yourself to cell-level resolution, destroying the original body, and beaming the data to a biological 3D printer on the destination planet.

May I inquire where did you get information on 30% c? Wikipedia states 70% but provides no reference. I'm honestly curious.

Hm, it was just a memory, probably either misremembered Wikipedia or maybe it's in "A Deepness in the Sky". Sorry

EDIT: Found it. It was indeed from "A Deepness in the Sky", which is fiction. There's a sentence in chapter 17 that says "The Reprise reached ramcruise, 0.3 lightspeed, and sailed endlessly across the depths."

I prefer the Tau Zero ramjet version where they almost reach lightspeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero

Only if you have a narrow view of "manned".

For almost all of human history, long treks were made without the expectation that those that started the journey would be the same ones to end it (think of the Israelites in the desert, early Americans heading west, or the proto-Native Americans who crossed the land bridge from Asia).

We should keep in mind that the Age Of Exploration, circa Columbus, was considered monumentally successful by their Eurpoean sponsors, but being a explorer was nearly a death sentence. (I exaggerate only slightly).

there is no need for Non-Newtonian locomotion. We just need to learn how to get reaction from vacuum/space. Space expansion is an existing phenomenon providing for FTL speeds. We just don't know how to control it, like ancients couldn't control say electricity.

Before FTL, we need to get control of fusion - emitting alphas [aneutronic reactions because directing/reflecting alphas is much easier than neutrons] at 0.05c would make for comfortable colonization of the Solar system and even for the first probes/missions to the closest stars. (and fusion is not a pipe dream if you look at the right development - ie. Sandia MagLIF (fusion target inside large coin shrinker :) instead of NIF (non-starter) or ITER (for Earth based energy production only, DT at best, no aneutronic even in the wildest dream)) Fusion is also about engineering of precise energy focusing - space expansion is the next level (or 2 :) of precision and energy levels after that.

> Non-Newtonian locomotion is the only viable form of manned Interstellar travel.

Well, sure, in that actual travel is non-newtonian, since relativity is a thing, and a thing that's likely to be significant in any attempt at interstellar travel.

(Though it seems like many responses took "Non-Newtonian" to mean "Non-Einsteinian".)

Are you talking about the impossible reactionless drive? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionless_drive

I think the reference is to faster-than-light, warp, etc.

Reminds me of one of my favourite reads, "Are Black Hole Starships Possible", http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803

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