Real Starships? Maybe...

[Sector 7]

http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/nasa-claims-starships-traveling-faster-than-light-maybe-possible-517482416

Amazingly, it looks like a "ring ship" from Star Trek.

 

[publiusr]

I like worldships myself

Starship charts
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/06/starship-varieties.html

Cool Fractal pyramids
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/06/nanoscale-etching-of-3d-fractal.html

 

[sojourner]

http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/nasa-claims-starships-traveling-faster-than-light-maybe-possible-517482416

Amazingly, it looks like a "ring ship" from Star Trek.

Tell Huffington Post "Welcome to last year".

Also, fixed your link.

 

[Sector 7]

http://videos.huffingtonpost.com/nasa-claims-starships-traveling-faster-than-light-maybe-possible-517482416

Amazingly, it looks like a "ring ship" from Star Trek.

Tell Huffington Post "Welcome to last year".

Also, fixed your link.

Sorry about the link. Thank you, sojourner, for fixing it. What went wrong?

 

[StarMan]

^colon, slash slash.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this new model still reliant on yet-to-be-proven negative energy?

 

[Sector 7]

^I'm no rocket scientist, so I'm not sure. I know they are talking about FTL capability, though.

I looked at it many times & could not figure it out. Thanks!

 

[publiusr]

Don't think we will ever see FTL. I'm pushing for Nuclear Salt Water Rockets myself.

 

[Sector 7]

Don't think we will ever see FTL. I'm pushing for Nuclear Salt Water Rockets myself.

Never say "never". When I was a kid, if you told me that a small box in my kitchen would cook food in minutes, I'd have called you crazy. Now almost every home and dorm room has a microwave!

 

[StarMan]

I hold out hope given there are still some sizable chunks (see dark matter and dark energy) of reality we haven't been able to place in a satisfactory framework. I am absolutely not an expert in this, so if someone more qualified can say otherwise I'll defer to their better judgement.

The idea that we would be absolutely restricted for all time to slower-than-light speeds is a dismal one; the answer to this question will undoubtedly have an enormous impact on the shape of our civilization.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Don't think we will ever see FTL. I'm pushing for Nuclear Salt Water Rockets myself.

Never say "never". When I was a kid, if you told me that a small box in my kitchen would cook food in minutes, I'd have called you crazy. Now almost every home and dorm room has a microwave!

You must be very old -- the first commercially available microwave oven was put on the market in 1947 and the first small, domestic version was produced in 1967.

Adapting radar technology to excite water molecules to cook food is probably many orders of magnitude more simple than manipulating the space-time metric by harnessing negative mass-energy. I'm not expecting the latter in my lifetime although I'd love to be proved wrong.

 

[sojourner]

^They didn't become popular until the mid to late 70's in my area of the country.

 

[Pavonis]

Never say "never". When I was a kid, if you told me that a small box in my kitchen would cook food in minutes, I'd have called you crazy. Now almost every home and dorm room has a microwave!

You raise an interesting question. You say that you wouldn't have believed microwave ovens would exist when you were younger. So now that microwaves are commonplace, you're prepared to believe anything is possible?

 

[Sector 7]

^They didn't become popular until the mid to late 70's in my area of the country.

Same here. My dad, brothers and I pooled the $500.00 to get my mom her first microwave in 1982, a Mother's Day present.

Never say "never". When I was a kid, if you told me that a small box in my kitchen would cook food in minutes, I'd have called you crazy. Now almost every home and dorm room has a microwave!

You raise an interesting question. You say that you wouldn't have believed microwave ovens would exist when you were younger. So now that microwaves are commonplace, you're prepared to believe anything is possible?

Such is the mindset of the Optimist, my friend. It is also the mindset of many of us who grew up watching TOS and science-fiction... that there is hope for the future.

Remember, Kirk's TOS communicator seemed like fantasy. Now, almost everyone has a cellphone.

 

[Pavonis]

Even optimism should be tempered by reality, otherwise it is too easily lost. Microwave ovens and starships are a long way apart, science- and engineering-wise.

 

[sojourner]

^Would be so funny if a news report came out tomorrow saying scientists had found a way to make an ftl drive using microwave radiation.

 

[Sector 7]

Even optimism should be tempered by reality, otherwise it is too easily lost. Microwave ovens and starships are a long way apart, science- and engineering-wise.

You assume way too much about someone you do not know. I am an optimist, yet I am a very realistic person. The two are not incompatible to most people.

I also know that human capability is unlimited. Time and resources are the only limitations... that and the restraints put upon them by other people.

While microwave ovens and starships are a long way apart, the ingenuity and process of discovery of new ideas are the same.

 

[Pavonis]

How can someone claim to be a "realist" if they're going to handwave away reality? More important than time and resources are the laws of physics that dictate the limitations on what humans can achieve. You can't ignore physics.

 

[sojourner]

^Because you can be a realist but still realize that we don't know everything when it comes to physics yet. The door hasn't shut on all the possibilities yet.

 

[Pavonis]

So we should ignore what we do know just because non-physicists think the laws of physics can be broken if someone believes hard enough?

 

[Sector 7]

^Because you can be a realist but still realize that we don't know everything when it comes to physics yet. The door hasn't shut on all the possibilities yet.

Thank you, sojourner. I am glad you understand it.

So we should ignore what we do know just because non-physicists think the laws of physics can be broken if someone believes hard enough?

Until Copernicus, everyone knew the universe revolved around the Earth.
Until Einstein, physicists did not know about e=mc squared.
Until the Hadron Collider was built, physicists did not know many of the things they now know atoms.
Who is to say that what physicists "know" today won't be challenged tomorrow?