Throw a clause? Is that a turn of phrase?
Would advanced alien tech surprise you?
- Thread starter Crewman47
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I think that given the planet we live on, any aliens coming here would have to be in an Alien Nation or District 9 situation: that is, completely desperate and needing somewhere to live. That said, if you can put everyone on your saviour ship in stasis, why not just hold out for an Earth-like planet that isn't full of a very hostile and highly dangerous indigenous population? Unless, of course, an Earth-like planet is much, much rarer than we suppose.
I think that given the planet we live on, any aliens coming here would have to be in an Alien Nation or District 9 situation: that is, completely desperate and needing somewhere to live. That said, if you can put everyone on your saviour ship in stasis, why not just hold out for an Earth-like planet that isn't full of a very hostile and highly dangerous indigenous population? Unless, of course, an Earth-like planet is much, much rarer than we suppose.
Sorry - that was LCARS 24 who used the term positron fueled ion thruster.
I'm not at all interested in talking about what's a "fair" comparison, I was merely trying to point out that modern and even modern+~50yr evolution in electrical propulsion technology is not a feasible propulsion option for an interstellar craft. For intra-solar missions, the combination of reasonable time scales and better affordability than chemical makes them attractive, but the point I was trying to make is that the distances and the time scales are too massive for electrical to be used interstellar - at least with current numbers. Everything would have to scale by a few order of magnitude for that to change.
I think these antimatter propulsion designs are awesome and promising, but I wouldn't infer from the existence of that 1st paper - that it's actually an engineering possibility in the next 20 years.
Even though that paper does some real work, it really just does the footwork to show that a hypothetical antimatter rocket producing X amount of Isp with X amount of mass flow could fly, and wouldn't produce a rocket exhaust so hot it would melt lead. It does the mechanics, it doesn't even approach the nuclear physics.
It omits the entire question of the energy production mechanism. It doesn't tackle the nuclear physics of harvesting 4 mg of positrons - which is going to be incredibly difficult, expensive and time-consuming.
Like I said, I'm fully of the opinion that this is the stuff of the future. But it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We're a loong way off.
Yes, I know I put human qualities in an object that doesn't possess it. But if you think about it, there is some truth to what I said as far as a civilization having to work together in peace in order to accomplish great things. Look at us we can't get along as a whole and we haven't been beyond our moon, and wont be for a few more decades, if that.
Well, I think resource (money) is the constraint here, right? It will be so incredible expensive to build and launch any space vehicles that could to the closest star system in one generation's life time, that it basically wouldn't be possible without the whole Earth behind the effort.
In 2006, Gerald Smith estimated $125 million could produce 5 mg of positions. According to that paper, 4mg of positron gets us a way trip to Mars. Alpha Centuri is approximately 1.2 million times as far away from Earth as Mars. So a ballpark figure for the cost of positrons required is $120 Trillion.
That is about twice the annual economic output of the entire world. So yeah, we would really need world peace in order to build and fuel anything that can reach JUST Alpha Centuri.
Actually I am a person who believes nothing is impossible until I explore it myself. I believe world peace is possible, but its up to my generation and the generation before and after mine as well. I have't seen many signs of that being a possiblity.
2 things.
1) KJbushway only mentioned getting beyond lunar orbit.
2) Money (i.e. resources) doesn't necessarily equate to world peace, though it would help alot.
Well actually KJBushway said getting beyond our moon to other places like mars and stuff we would love to explore. Lunar Orbit can be achieved by satelites.
Money is one thing, but the resources both man and material, would be helpful more than what we have today if we had world peace and peaceful working together.
I don't think the amount of positron fuel should be calculated that way. A spacecraft uses fuel to get up to a certain speed and then coasts for the long haul. But yes, on $1 billion worth of positron fuel it would take a very long time for a probe to travel three light-years. And I wouldn't recommend producing positron fuel on Earth, anyway, because of the damage it could do in an accident. For deep-space missions, I would rather see it produced in space, using solar energy in a scheme like that I described, where large balloons gather the needed energy and the positron fuel is produced slowly and stored to be picked up by spacecraft in placed in orbit by conventional means.
Deceleration at the destination is another issue, but I assume the gravity of the destination star could be used in a variation of the slingshot maneuver for that, which would still require quite a bit of fuel but less than ordinary braking.
The Voyager probes aren't headed for any particular nearby stars but will coast out three light-years in about 10,000 years, to eventually be found (maybe) by aliens who might be surprised to see such primative (1970s) tech reaching across intersteller space.
Yes, that would be beyond lunar orbit, as I said.
I was going to comment, but I am not really sure how what you just said differs from what I said.
Well, if an alien probe equivalent to Voyager 1 and 2 launched many centuries ago were to reach the Sol system and actually be detected and retrieved, there would be your example of our level of tech crossing interstellar space.
But it's also nice to think that some future ship from Earth might catch up with one of the Voyager probes and take some photos and readings.
But it's also nice to think that some future ship from Earth might catch up with one of the Voyager probes and take some photos and readings.
I have no doubt that if we continue to push into interstellar exploration that we will in fact, pass by the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft. Well, when I say "pass" I don't mean the new spacecraft will necessarily be on the same trajectory, but we'll definitely pass them in terms of displacement from the solar system - IF, we keep pushing outward.
I wonder if the aliens who find Pioneer will be surprised that we're all clothed, and ask what happened. They will also have an inaccurate idea of what a vulva looks like, and might be surprised by that.
Yes on the first and ok on the second.
In order for us to achieve the greats we are going to need more than the allies. It would be far more than just helpful if we had world peace. Because at that point you could have friendly competition(I probably mis-spelled that, but I am too lazy to check) and we could see a much needed boom in the technology and science area, along with getting a better grasp of what makes us a great civilization by only hosting the good qualities, instead of showing the bad. Right now we are a violent species, we can't even get along in our own countries. Gangs, over-filled prisons,. We are far away.
Really? What does it look like on Pioneer?
A featureless Barbie doll. Carl and Linda Sagan and some other dude were wondering whether they should actually put a line or something there, but they decided that NASA wouldn't have it (although in retrospect, Carl said he was probably wrong about that).
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