Rocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars

[Timo]

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

Well, we fundamentally lack the knowledge to get the capacity.

Never mind antimatter. Producing a Jupiter's worth of anything is beyond imagination - are we to create it out of pure energy, in processes that would take millions of years if upscaled trillionfold from today's best, or are we to go to the stars to get it?

I don't really see the practical significance of the argument these scientists are making. Sure, getting people to stars is difficult, but that's always been known. Sure, getting people to stars within a single 21st century lifetime may well be impossible, but who cares? Single lifetimes aren't that significant, and a lifetime may be redefined after the 21st century anyway. The relevant question now would be whether we can design and build a stardrive, and it certainly seems that we could e.g. launch a starsail within a century if we truly wanted to.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Bond]

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?

It's always strange seeing the sheer arrogance of some scientists.

 

[Deckerd]

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

Well, we fundamentally lack the knowledge to get the capacity.

Never mind antimatter. Producing a Jupiter's worth of anything is beyond imagination - are we to create it out of pure energy, in processes that would take millions of years if upscaled trillionfold from today's best, or are we to go to the stars to get it?

I don't really see the practical significance of the argument these scientists are making. Sure, getting people to stars is difficult, but that's always been known. Sure, getting people to stars within a single 21st century lifetime may well be impossible, but who cares? Single lifetimes aren't that significant, and a lifetime may be redefined after the 21st century anyway. The relevant question now would be whether we can design and build a stardrive, and it certainly seems that we could e.g. launch a starsail within a century if we truly wanted to.

Timo Saloniemi

I think any 23rd century person would not be interested in sitting in a tin can to the nth generation. Or a 54th century person.

 

[Timo]

But that person may think differently. We have an endless supply of test pilots, monks and karaoke singers today; there's literally nothing man wouldn't reach or stoop to, once you get the right man (and perhaps the right price).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deckerd]

Humans aren't wired to do things like that. Robots perhaps yes. Either that or some form of coersion.

 

[scotthm]

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

There's "quantity", and then there's "QUANTITY."

I think any 23rd century person would not be interested in sitting in a tin can to the nth generation. Or a 54th century person.

Exactly. Multi-generational ships won't happen unless people think they are a better alternative to living on Earth. People won't willingly pack up their families for a journey that could possibly benefit only future generations.

Ask yourself this. If we could get to the nearest star in 50 years, would you and your wife and your children volunteer to make the trip? Assume the voyage would be the equivalent of living on a modern luxury liner, without the service or the stops off at port.

---------------

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Could we build a 23,462,784,000,000 mile long rail track in space and ride along it at high speed to proxima centauri?

 

[Meredith]

Hypothetically speaking, where do you propose to find 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of anti-matter?
---------------

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.

That is to create a seprate filled-up bubble of spacetime, to create a thin shell would take signifigantly less energy. It is like making a huge solid rubber ball Vs. a Balloon. if the rubber represents energy, a balloon takes far less "rubber" to make.







benefits of space:

Solar system colonies - Not one cataclysmic event on earth can kill off humanity, ie. Asteroid strike, ecology breakdown, supervolcano etc...

Colonies within 30 LY - not one single solar system cataclysmic event can wipe out humans, star going out, etc...

Colonies within an entire Galaxy - We can't be killed by supernova or hypernova, etc... Race is pretty much immortal at this point.

 

[Jadzia]

Picard: "Mr Data, things are only impossible until they're not."

Shatner: "Anything you can imagine is possible... and remember that I invented the warp drive. "

 

[Trekker4747]

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

Antimatter is fairly "common" in today's society. How "common" chances are quite good that every major hospital around you had antimatter in it.

Ever had a PET scan?

 

[Jadzia]

It's always the case that energy costs, especially if that energy is high value like antimatter is. Something to do with entropy. Think of the machinery employed to produce and contain molecules of anti-hydrogen, because that's what we're talking about.

I'm wondering how much energy is used to create this antimatter, as a multiple of how much energy that antimatter provides in use. Is it economical?

 

[Silvercrest]

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

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

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?

It's always strange seeing the sheer arrogance of some scientists.

These examples don't work in this case. Saying that you can't build tools good enough to realize a theoretical possibility is different from saying that something is theoretically impossible. Similarly, the "sound barrier" had nothing to do with whether Mach speeds were possible-- rockets and gunfire had already achieved such speeds. It only addressed whether controlled flight was sustainable and survivable at those speeds.

FTL is a whole different ballgame. It's not that we can't succeed, it's that current physics doesn't allow us to try.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

FTL is a whole different ballgame. It's not that we can't succeed, it's that current physics doesn't allow us to try.

Oh you mean like when the first Voyager pics were coming in from Saturn, revealing what appeared to be braided rings. At the press conference, a reporter asked something to the effect of "Doesn't that defy the laws of physics?" The reply was "No, it's obeying the laws of physics perfectly, but it does show that we don't understand those laws as well as we thought."

Lots of stuff that we take for granted are in violation of what we've previously believed to be the laws of physisc, nature, etc. We're learning as we go, and nobody knows what's around the next bend.

 

[scotthm]

nobody knows what's around the next bend.

True, and I think the best way to interpret statements that FTL travel is 'impossible' is to take that to mean that there's currently no reason to be optimistic about the possibility.

---------------

 

[Alpha_Geek]

an addendum to my last post, if you please:

...as long as we keep looking.

 

[Silvercrest]

Okay, I can go for that.

 

[137th Gebirg]

If NASA were involved, it would not surprise me in the least that we'll never leave the solar system.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/aug/HQ_08_213_Hybolt_failure.html

Seems like every month we're hearing about a failed launch. They're forgetting the technology and going backwards compared to where we were 40-50 years ago and the uber-exciting press releases that they reveal are generally nothing more than a new form of nebula or gaseous anomaly. It's really quite frustrating.

 

[RobertVA]

I think there will eventually be people living permanently in the asteroid belt using hydrogen from comets or gas giant moons to run fusion reactors and materials from asteroids to maintain and expand their habitats. Some of these will have an independent streak which will result in friction with whatever organization wants to bring "order and justice" to the wandering bands of asteroid miners. Since they have no interest in ever landing on a planet, some will accelerate their habitats out of the solar system just to put distance between them and the central authorities. Figuring that after several centuries their descendants will need more iron and other asteroid resources they will aim their habitats towards other nearby stars. A few generations after ariving in the new system their descendants will decide to check out and possibly even terraform the the surface of one of the rocky planets.

 

[Lindley]

"I'm sure in 2055, antimatter will be available in every corner drugstore, but in 2008 it's a little hard to come by! Humanity, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you're stuck here!"

 

[Luis]

I only know one real true thing. NEVER SAY NEVER.