Rocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars

[diankra]

How about building huge ring like slingshot/accelerator devices and plant them along the route to Proxima Centauri, you'd set off in a space craft as fast as you could by slingshotting yourself around Jupiter or whatever and you'd cruise at huge velocity towards the next star system and enroute you'd pass through these slingshot devices that accelerate your craft even faster until eventually you're travelling at super speed and you get to proxima centauri much more quickly.

a) How do you get the 'slingshots' out there in the first place?
b) The 'slingshot around planets' technique works because planets are very heavy compared with the probes looping round them, which steal a tiny tiny fraction of the planet's momentum in the pass. The slingshot devices would have to be of planetary mass to be of any use. Which leads back to a)...

 

[scotthm]

^ Not to mention the problem with slowing down when you get there.

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[Alpha_Geek]

And what do we do when we can, destroy Jupiter so we can visit another star? Do we destroy Saturn and Uranus for the next trip?

Cool your Greenpeace Hippyjets. That's just the amount of energy required. How that much energy can be generated is so beyond us now that there's no telling what kind of fantastic technology might do it.

Hell, maybe it'll run on the hot air of all my forum postings. That'd be cool.. or hot.. or... I dunno. LOL

 

[Captain Euphoria]

Faster than light travel IS possible within the framework of what we understand of physics at this point.

No, it isn't. It's within the framework of science fiction.

Relativity says you can't go the speed of light but not that you can't go faster than it. Think tachyons. Sure, they haven't been discovered yet, but the math is there.

 

[Lindley]

I was under the impression that anything going FTL could never go slower than light, because it would take an infinite amount of energy to slow down that much (same problem in reverse). So I'm not sure that helps us.

 

[Noname Given]

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/space_limits

Many believe that humanity's destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System.

At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused humanity's interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible.

"In those cases, you are talking about a scale of engineering that you can't even imagine," Paulo Lozano, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a conference attendee, said in a recent interview.

I'd love to know what other far-fetched theoretical technologies were considered. Anything we've never heard of?

Yes, and as late as the mid 1940ies, engineers were stating:

1) It was impossible to ever be able to reach orbital velocity to get an artificial sattelite into orbit.

2) If it WERE possible, a man could never survive the ride into orbit.

3) If a man WERE able to survive; he would be badly injured by the effects of Zero-G (his eyeballs would expand and burst; he would be constyantly disoriented and dizzy because of inner ear problems, etc).

4) Going to the Moon was an outright impossible dream.

It's a simple fact that scientists of any past era believed they had the best tools available; and those tools allowed them to state with certainty for all time that certain things are absolute; only to be proven wrong by later scientists with better tools.

So, yes, with everything we know right know, they're probably right; but who knows what will be discovered in the future; or how our view of the universe and spacetime will change in the next millenia?

 

[USS KG5]

Anyone mentioned cryogenics yet? I'm sure we could easily get someone to the next star sytem within someones lifetime, you just freeze them for the journey.

I have just had a funny idea for a sci-fi story based on cryogenics and this thread! Thanks all!

Edit: disclaimer, its still my idea so you can't have any money.

This thread and your post is all the evidence required to sue you for stealing ideas.

Damn my evil plan foiled for good!

 

[Romulan_spy]

I was under the impression that anything going FTL could never go slower than light, because it would take an infinite amount of energy to slow down that much (same problem in reverse). So I'm not sure that helps us.

That is correct for hypothetical particles called "tachyons" because they would have imaginary mass. I don't think it would be true for the proposed "warp drive" idea since it manipulates space-time but the ship would still have real mass.

 

[Samurai8472]

The Doctor: Never say never ever.

 

[Romulan_spy]

Hypothetically speaking, where do you propose to find 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of anti-matter?
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Certainly, that much anti-matter is well beyond our current level of scientific knowledge. We do need to keep in mind that FTL is speculation: we don't know for sure that it requires the mass of Jupiter to make work. Perhaps we are grossly overestimating how much energy is required for a FTL drive? Perhaps, there is an "easy" way to do FTL and we just don't have enough scientific knowledge yet to figure it out.

 

[scotthm]

Perhaps we are grossly overestimating how much energy is required for a FTL drive?

Perhaps. We may also be overestimating the possibilities.

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[Ronald Held]

I cannot see that as true. Sleeper ships and generations ship should be feasable in perhaps a hundred years. A fusion powered rocket could make the (one way) trip at maybe a few hundredth c. A massive laser driven solar sail could do it at a few tenths c.

 

[diankra]

I cannot see that as true. Sleeper ships and generations ship should be feasable in perhaps a hundred years. A fusion powered rocket could make the (one way) trip at maybe a few hundredth c. A massive laser driven solar sail could do it at a few tenths c.

They're do-able a lot sooner than that (at least, generation ships are), so long as you've got the volunteers for a one-way trip, and the political/financial momentum to launch them - an investment which won't pay off within the career of any of the politicians behind it (Kennedy was canny in saying 'before this decade is out' - if it went well, the Moonlanding might just have happened right at the end of his second term, if it didn't happen before 1970, he'd have been safely out-of-office and his successor would have to answer the awkward questions).
A long standing principle of spaceflight is that most things can be done within 10 years if the money/politics is there in support. But Apollo was the only time that happened.. and then only until the first landing had been achieved...

The station (Freedom/ISS, take your pick on the names it's had over the last 25 years) could have been finished five or 10 or 15 years ago if all the money spent on Congressial reassessments of the project had simply been spent on getting it built* and launched!

*Actually, the really stupid thing is that large bits of what's now the ISS were built in the late 1980s/early 1990s. And then had to be stored for years before being launched, as the entire project was sent back for a rethink. Storing a spacecraft while keeping it in useable condition is not cheap.

 

[Timewalker]

So, yes, with everything we know right know, they're probably right; but who knows what will be discovered in the future; or how our view of the universe and spacetime will change in the next millenia?

The next millennia is too far away! I wanna go NOW!

 

[anti-matter]

Even though they're the experts that opinion is based on what is known today. Science has breakthroughs all the time...who knows maybe that big circle thing in France/Switzerland will advance engine development.

 

[scotthm]

Sleeper ships and generations ship should be feasable in perhaps a hundred years. A fusion powered rocket could make the (one way) trip at maybe a few hundredth c. A massive laser driven solar sail could do it at a few tenths c.

Possibly feasible in a technical sense, but not in a practical sense. Robotic missions would be much more practical, and getting the political backing even for that would be almost impossible, seeing that any payoff would be at least a generation off.

Aside from that, I don't think there will be sufficient incentive for people to want to undertake such journeys themselves.

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[Trekker4747]

We'll they're right. Who'd ever fund such projects or technology?

All kidding aside, what kind of scientist says "never"?

Not any scientist I think is worth listening too, that's who.

We're an infantile species. We've only a fraction of understanding of our selves, or planet, our solar system and our universe.

As has been quoted in this thread scientists in the past thought mankind would never make it to the moon, into orbit, into the sky and that traveling faster than 35mph would be deadly.

We'll continue to grow and learn and eventually we may find away to travel between stars within a useful length of time and skirting time-dialaiton (probably by not "traveling faster than the speed of light" but by "crossing a distance that makes our traveled distance divided by the time faster than light.")

Don't think it'll happen our lifetime, don't think it'll happen in 2063, but I'm sure someday mankind will travel between the stars.

Aside from that, I don't think there will be sufficient incentive for people to want to undertake such journeys themselves.

You do know what message board this is, right?

 

[Alpha_Geek]

There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

See? We've heard similar "It's impossible!" in the past.
Still, we try, and with intellect, effort, & the right stuff, we succeed.

AG

 

[MarianLH]

Certainly, that much anti-matter is well beyond our current level of scientific knowledge.

If I understand correctly, antimatter has been produced under laboratory conditions. That much of it is beyond our capacity, but not beyond our knowledge.

I recall reading somewhere the idea of building a lot of solar powered cyclotrons on Mercury to produce antimatter in quantity.


Marian

 

[Captain Euphoria]

^ It's a shame no one has the true political will or the vision to even CARE about space exploration or its benefits. At least, no public official that I can think of.