Space Travel How? Warp. Sub Space. Jump Gates. etc.

Discussion in 'Science' started by Moi621, Feb 22, 2020.

  1. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    Hollywood turns out a lot of happy fantasy associated with space exploration Sci-Fi, But the reality will more likely be like the historic analog of sea exploration and early attempts at colonization, success built on countless lost lives. Estimates of historic ship wrecks range into the millions and many many early attempts at colonizing distant lands have resulted in total failures. Translated into exploration of space, we’ve barely managed to build ‘space boats’ that get us out of sight of shore. How will people respond when the failures and bodies begin to stack up?
     
  2. tkolter

    tkolter Well-Known Member

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    There is only one reason to leave Earth regardless of the risks that's to improve the odds of the SPECIES surviving right now say a quasar, rogue planet, a black hole or gamma ray burst or a massive solar mega flare were going to hit use with us seeded across the solar system it offers odds we might have survivors if we were in five solar systems on planets and space cities the odds improve a great deal.
     
  3. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    We would have to bring our entire biosphere with us, or at least a large enough sample size to terraform worlds or create habitats with an Earth-like biosphere. We're not settling on any worlds that have life, assuming there are any.
     
  4. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Amen.

    And, what is the real reason for sending humans? It's not science. We can do all the science we want far more safely and cheaply without humans. What we learn by sending humans is how to send humans.
     
  5. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Maybe sometime.

    Biologists point out that a species needs at least 2,000 members to not go extinct. Plus, they would need to be entirely independent of Earth supply, obviously.

    For that objective, we have major major problems to solve before the astronaut part is what we need to work on.
     
  6. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And it probably will. But just look at our own Solar System for a start.

    9 planets (including Pluto). Of them, 4 of those 9 are gas giants and therefore immediately excluded.

    Of those remaining 5, 2 are clearly outside the habitable zone. Unable to host any kind of life we can consider. And of the 3 inside the habitable zone, one is on the inside fringe and has surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Then on the other side 1 so cold that carbon dioxide precipitates and falls from the sky like snow. Oh, and is seismically dead, with a core that has long solidified and no longer produces a magnetic field (Venus is the same). No magnetic field, no Van Allen Belts, little protection from solar and other cosmic radiation. Little chance for life to evolve or thrive.

    Only 1 out of 9 is really habitable. And that is in the Solar System we have studied the most. A single planet, in the middle of the habitable zone, with an active and oversized core which still produces magnetic shielding for life that may be on it.

    And then you can pretty much knock out of consideration binary systems, red giants, blue dwarfs, and pretty much every star that is not a "G Type main sequence star". Oh, and even then you have to eliminate all the Type G Super Giants. And Type G stars only make up around 7% of stars in the visible stars.

    So right off the bat, you can pretty much eliminate 93% of all stars from having habitable planets. And of those stars, then eliminate 7 out of 9 planets. Then factor in things like other galactic neighbors and ELE, and odds are that even if we find those few planets like needles in haystacks, odds are most never evolved much beyond say Trilobites.

    Just consider that our planet is in it's "second life" (Earth Mark I was destroyed in the Theia collision), and around 4.5 billion years old. And in all that time, only in the last 70 years have we been able to even leave our own atmosphere.
     
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  7. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And the movie really skipped over a lot of that book. Like his destroying Pathfinder, and a storm recusing his ability to regain power during his rest cycles during the journey.

    But yea, his suit was good enough. Mars does have an atmosphere, and it is not so far off that of Earth that a full pressure suit is needed. And while yes living on the surface of Mars is "highly radioactive", it is solar radiation, not radiation from the planet itself. And for that you do not need a lot of protection. A few layers of Mylar and a backing like ceramic or metal is sufficient to reduce the exposure to almost Earth levels. Not much different than say what those at the ISS need.

    Most concepts for exploring the planet have those that go there spending no more than 3 hours a day outside of the habitats.
     
  8. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    There's a lot of truth in that!

    One cool find by Casini is that the moon Enceladus has a good number of kilometers deep of water, starting well below the surface. In fact it had geysers of water shooting above the surface.

    Some of these objects appar to have internal heat sources from gravitational affects from their planet.
     
  9. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    On the other hand there are about 200 billion stars in our galaxy, and another 200 billion galaxies. That's a lot of stars. We know intelligent life can evolve because of our own planet, so it probably evolves elsewhere. It may become so intelligent that it can explore other galaxies. Maybe it's already found us....
     
  10. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Yes - and the book was better, as usual, though I did like the big screen 3D version.

    Anyway, I believe the space suits were on a list of cheats for radiation and maybe temp.
     
  11. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    But then there are other things that pop up. Like the creation of a biosphere, and the longevity of such a system.

    In this, we need to look at extremophiles. Those are bacteria and other creatures that evolved to live at the fringes of what we consider "habitable". Deep ocean vents, deep caves with atmospheres so corrosive that people need full body suits to visit them, and the like. However, each of these is believed to have evolved on the surface, then over generations migrated to their current location. They did not actually evolve there.

    And yes, gravity can cause heat in a planet. But is it stable for a long enough period of time for life to evolve? And can life even evolve with that as the "initial food source"? Here in Earth, it is believed to have started with bacteria, using the plentiful CO2 and sunlight to grow and evolve. Which then at a later date started to move to other food sources. And most believe it is not possible for life to start otherwise.

    And it is the extremophiles that is one of the reasons researchers want to explore Mars. Some believe that in deep caves and other such locations there might still be life there. Deep under the crust, bacteria still living converting one gas to another where they are deep enough that the radiation does not effect them.

    And here are 2 radical different statements combined. One almost certainly true, the other completely false.

    Is there other life out there? I would say almost certainly yes. But it is falling among the range of probobility of earching grains of sand one at a time on a beach and finding a flake of gold. And yes, there is most likely "intelligent life", but is it a form we recognize? Remember, there are other things that have to be in play also before any intelligent life breaks into space travel.

    An atmosphere without constant cloud cover, a large sattelite to be the goal of their first space exploration, and then other planet(s) that could at least allow them to visit without extreme steps needed. That eliminates planets like Venus, Mercury, and the Gas GIants. In simple terms, they need a Moon and Mars of their own, and the ability to see them from the surface. Otherwise, there would be no reason for them ever to go into space.

    And they have to have a long enough period of time to reach such a level of technological achievement. We know on our planet that has most times never happened because of ELE. An asteroid strike, global climate out of control, even the very gasses that cover our planet have changed many times, often eliminating most forms of life on it. So such an "intelligent life" would have to evolve in just the right period of geologic time.

    But exploring other galaxies? Nope, not gonna happen, never gonna happen. Even our closest neighbor is over 2 million light years away. To put it in perspective, if such a species was to leave the Andromeda Galaxy at about the time the first of the Homo tree broke away from Chimps and traveled here at .999 C, they would only now be reaching us. The distances are that vast. Not even good science fiction (outside of a few rare stories like the Genesis series by Donald Moffitt) has ever been able to find a reasonable way for this to ever happen.

    In fact, in that series he had an interesting idea. Humans arrived at another galaxy not by going there, but by sending radio transmissions including the genetic code needed for another species to "recreate" humans. Of course, by that time the human species had become so advanced they had created a Dyson Sphere large enough to cover the sun in order to provide the power for such a long reaching radio signal.

    One interesting segment of the SETI program is that this is the kind of thing they look for. Signals sent out on purpose, and in all this time we have never found one. And others are searching for Dyson Spheres for the same reason. And we have yet to find any.

    You see, I love SciFi, and have been reading it for over 40 years. But I also keep a good grounding in actual science, and can keep what I would like to believe separated from what is. I do not think traversing the Milky Way Galaxy would be like Star Trek, with green skinned girls at every other start for the crew to seduce. I think it will be more like the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Where the only planets the find life on of any sort were all former colonies by humans long before. In the entire run of that series, not a single "alien" life form was ever found.
     
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  12. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    It actually does not take much to shield somebody from solar radiation, either in space or on a planet like Mars. And in reality, somebody on Mars in a habitat will get less exposure than somebody in the ISS, and in a space suit they would get less exposure than somebody on a space walk. And during most of the story, he was inside the habitat or his vehicle during the day, he traveled and did most of his work at night.

    And for heat, that was something else largely skipped over in the movie. He used the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) in the book for his heat. Basically a plutonium pile, which created enough heat that he actually had to remove much of the thermal insulation inside of his vehicle so it would not cook him. Doing this eliminated the need to use his limited power during the trip for heating. I believe it was only lightly mentioned in the movie, but he went over it in great detail in the book.
     
  13. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    This subject has been debated many times. Nobody has arrived yet, as far as we know, but that doesn't mean that nobody will.Our science is only a few hundred years old but look where we are now.

    Let me turn it around and ask you what someone in 1600AD would have responded if you'd said that within a few hundred years we'd be flying around the earth, going to the moon and typing stuff on the internet?

    We only see what we want to see.....

    ETA reply to mushroom
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2020
  14. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And that is fine, that is simply technology.

    But one thing that has never changed, that is physics. Oh, we gain greater understanding of it, but it has never changed.

    When I talk about such things as exploring other galaxies and the like, I am talking straight physics here. Nothing (other than some theoretical particles) goes as fast or faster than C. There are no "worm holes", "warp drive", "transporters", or other magic like technologies to allow it to happen. And physicists have been trying to create even theoretical models of them for decades, and have never gone beyond at most moving a single particle by such means. And all of the theories say that such is impossible.

    As I said, in these discussions I talk about science, not SciFi. And in each of these cases, there was never any "science" behind the concept when it was originated. It was simply a writers and producers way to make a show cost effective to produce.

    Warp Drive meant they could zip from planet to planet every week, and not be dull. Transporters were to avoid the cost of producing film of a shuttle landing on a different planet each week. Worm Holes even have many causes and effects, depending on who was writing about them that week.

    Not even Stephen Hawking was able to produce a theory of a wormhole that would not collapse the moment the first particle of matter passed through it.
     
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  15. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    Physics changes all the time. Newton was not the same as Einstein, or Dirac. We will soon have quantum computers and AI. Can you predict where all this will take us?
     
  16. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Our studies of biospheres here on Earth have been a disaster. If we can't figuure out a biosphere on Earth, then the idea of trying it on the Moon or Mars hits me as a major mistake.

    We know how long our planets have existed. So, if rocky planets are creating heat today, it seems highly likely that has been going on for a very long time.

    I highly doubt that human travel is necessary or efficient if the objective is searching for life on other planets.
     
  17. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    I'd suggest that Einstein type advances don't happen "all the time".

    And, it's a pretty huge assumption that the next big advance is going to provide a way for a mass to travel between two points faster than light.
     
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  18. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Really?

    Kindly tell me a single time that "Physics changed".

    Nothing in what Newton or Einstein "changed" anything, all they did was to find a better way to explain what was happening. But absolutely nothing ever "changed" because of their discoveries.

    Gravity worked before Newton just as it did after him. All he did was explain it better. The same with Relativity. Nothing new, simply a much easier way to understand it. And nothing has changed since then either.

    Probably the most interesting thing "discovered" is that Einstein was wrong. He actually had "discovered" the theory of Black Holes, but dismissed them. Believing that not even the universe was so perverse as to allow such a thing to exist. But nobody before or after them "created" black holes.

    This is where you are making the same mistake over and over again. Kind of like the discovery of "0", or Base 10 Math. Nothing that is new, simply that we devised easier ways to express things with them than we did prior to their "discovery".

    Kinda like how many foolishly believe that 3.14159 is some kind of "magical universal constant". It is not, but for some reason people foolishly believe that it is. And I always laugh when people say we should preface any attempt to send a signal to aliens with this string of numbers.
     
  19. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Today those on ISS take overt action when there is unusual solar activity - and they are still progected by our magnetosphere. They stack supplies and hide behind the additional mass.

    There aren't any habitats on Mars. Also, the "Hab" in The Martian would not have been sufficient. We have a significant ways to go, especially considering the failures of our habitat experiments on Earth, and the difficulty of creating sufficiently protected structures on Mars.

    Such advances are possible, but I don't see evidence that we're prepared for that today.
    Yes. They also burried that device well away from the "Hab" due to its danger. Was that just an interesting plot element? Was that device actuall well enough shielded that it wasn't a serious radiation source?
     
  20. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    No physics never changes.
     
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  21. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    But here is the thing. In our Solar System, we only know of a single planet "creating heat", and that is our own. Every other one is a "dead planet".

    Now we do have some moons, like Io and Europa. But those are all heated by tidal forces, not by an internal core. No Van Allen belts, and during each circuit of their main planet they go through drastic changes because of their eccentric orbits. Temperatures rising and falling, the entire "planet" stretching and rebounding as it goes around the Gas Giant that holds it captive. Sure, life may evolve. But likely never anything beyond single celled microorganisms. Conditions are simply to extreme for more complex life to evolve.
     
  22. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Remember, most of "Solar Radiation" is Infrared, Ultraviolet, and Visible Light. This is easily blocked, it is even easier to block than a Beta particle (a few sheets of paper). This is the vast majority of "solar radiation", and it is easily eliminated even here on Earth. And for the rest (x-rays, gamma rays, etc), it is 50% farther away, and gets much less of those as background than our planet (or those that revolve around it) get.

    And yes, an RTG is very well shielded. We have been using them for almost 60 years now, and at one time they were even common in pacemakers. They were actually very common, but this application stopped in 1972 when it was realized that there was no way to ensure that such pacemakers were removed prior to cremation. And cremating an individual with one would cause them to loose their integrity.

    And as of 2007, there were still 9 people with "nuclear pacemakers" still alive.

    https://uk.reuters.com/article/heal...nergized-after-34-years-idUKN1960427320071219

    And they are still used in satellites to this day. And those that build them take no different precautions than anybody building a satellite without one. I have been near them myself, and it's kinda cool realizing the heat you feel through the case is caused by a nuclear pile.
     
  23. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    I have stated on this thread that the source is tidal.

    The point is that they have heat sources that are separate from our Sun.

    Life of ANY kind that is not directly connected to Earth is the point. Finding that would be huge.
     
  24. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    What we use in unmanned satellites is a different issue.
     
  25. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And I never said it would not be. Simply that the odds of finding anything beyond "pond scum" is infinitesimally small.

    I recognize blue-green algae as "life". But it is nowhere near even the scope of life as an echinoderm (starfish), which does not even have a heart or a brain, let alone a trilobite. But in almost all discussions like this, I point to life 99.9999% of the time being the former, and others point to space traveling dinosaurs as being the most common.

    But tidal heat is not stable, which makes it very hostile for evolution, even if life does start. Most of the history of evolution has been in the long stable periods, the erratic and unstable periods cause mass extinctions and stagnation in evolution as only select few life forms can handle the extremes. And other than the deep sea vents all extremophiles are among the most simple forms of life.

    And once again, those did not evolve in those environments, they moved to them. This is the key thing I keep pointing out. They support life, but are not conducive to the creation of and drastic evolution of life other than simply to adapt to the new environment.

    I always thought one of the most fascinating of these creatures was the "Dandelion". This puzzled scientists for years until they realized it was a relative of the jellyfish.

    [​IMG]
     
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