Space travel

Discussion in 'Science' started by Nonnie, May 2, 2018.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    There are several choices of fuel. And, there are a lot of problems in containment.

    Fusion reactors have been promised to be available within a short number of years for several DECADES now.
     
  2. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Figuring out gunpowder is not the same as figuring out faster than light speed travel. Gunpowder doesn't have any theories like Einstein's working against it.

    And, your calculation concerning Earth's population is NOT changed in any way by sending a few people to Mars or wherever.
     
  3. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    We have them now but you are correct, the fuel we use is very hard to contain and loses an extreme amount of energy in the process, they are ineffective. Helium 3 is a more stable fuel and would eliminate those problems allowing us to completely switch over to fusion, or pure clean energy.

    The effects of that on humanity and the environment are astronomical.
     
    primate likes this.
  4. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Einstein has already has some of his worked proven wrong, he isn't infallible.

    Plus, Einsteins theory only works if we are talking about inside a vacuum, it doesn't apply outside of it and even Einstein admitted the possibility of wormholes which would effectively go against his own theory.

    For instance, bending space would not require you to go faster than the speed of light.

    We just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

    And I never mentioned anything about population.
     
  5. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I don't see anyone coming up with a solution to containment that would work for a commercial production system for any of the fuel choices.
     
  6. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    OK, go bend some space.

    Then, let me know!
     
  7. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2008
    Messages:
    28,370
    Likes Received:
    9,297
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    A vacuum is not required for relativity and a wormhole is at best theoretical....more like untestable hypothesis. The Einstein-Rosen bridge would be completely unstable, almost invisible and deadly even if discovered....basically a useless if interesting oddity.
     
  8. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    It's fascinating to me that these people (including the person you responded to) are ready to believe Science Fiction while adamantly opposing actual real science.
     
    tecoyah likes this.
  9. wyly

    wyly Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 25, 2008
    Messages:
    13,857
    Likes Received:
    1,159
    Trophy Points:
    113
    astute observation...wormholes, warp drive and colonizing distant stars yeah all reality but climate change! bah! leftist fake science conspiracy propaganda!
     
    Derideo_Te and WillReadmore like this.
  10. primate

    primate Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Dec 8, 2014
    Messages:
    1,205
    Likes Received:
    370
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Just one example is rare earths. Hairball is interesting. I think huge freighters landing on water can work.
     
  11. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Everything is impossible until we actually do it.
     
  12. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2008
    Messages:
    28,370
    Likes Received:
    9,297
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Yet possibility can be eliminated by negative data.
     
  13. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Its already been proven that it possible to go faster than the speed of light.

    The Universe expansion will soon be going faster than light and this is measurable.

    There are galaxies being created now that are moving so fast their light will never reach us.

    Einstein's theory only applied to things contained within a vacuum.

    Eliminate that vacuum somehow and it would be possible.

    And lets not forget electrons, something Einstein struggled to fit into his theory. According to quantum theory, and once again tested, two electrons next to each other can vibrate in unison. When pulled apart they will continue to vibrate in unison, what happens to one instantly happens to the other, faster than the speed of light.

    While this is only information traveling between the two particles that information will always be instantaneous regardless of distance.

    As for us actually being able to break the light barrier the answer lies in string theory, which we are working on.

    As of right now it is too complex for us to solve but it won't always be that way as we learn more going forward, In theory, if you can reduce the amount of space in front of you and expand the amount of space behind you then that would propel a material object faster than light. We only need to be able to solve this theory and one day we will.

    Out of all the conspiracies out there today the most believable and the one with the most evidence is the belief in aliens visiting us. The amount of proof for this is all over the place and even though we haven't definitive proof yet, that we the public are aware of, it would be a safe bet its happening.

    They obviously got here by breaking the speed of light.
     
  14. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2008
    Messages:
    28,370
    Likes Received:
    9,297
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    It would seem you have access to data I do not....please share it and I will pass it on to others who would be very interested to know they have been incorrect all along. I think perhaps you might need to brush up a bit on quantum physics.
     
  15. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    https://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-universe/what-travels-faster-than-the-speed-of-light

    Its not this isn't common knowledge, all you have to do is search for it.

    That's why I always find it funny when people say its impossible.

    It isn't, the only hard part is trying to figure out how to put a human in a ship and recreate the events that make faster than light travel possible.

    The hard part is over, knowing that it is indeed possible.
     
  16. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 15, 2008
    Messages:
    28,370
    Likes Received:
    9,297
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Hypothesis and theoretical expansion are NOT proof...they are hypothesis and theory awaiting it. Quantum entanglement is not transferable even in concept into the macro realities of space travel. Thus my recommendation that you do a bit more study on Quanta and the implications of it.
     
  17. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I think huge freighters COULD land on water, but my bet is that huge freighters moving in and out of earth's gravity well would be an incredibly expensive option.
     
    primate likes this.
  18. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No, that is definitely NOT the hard part.

    I think we can agree that waving a flashlight around might be fun, but it doesn't actually apply to travel. And, we're not all that likely to find a way to control/use the expansion of the universe - given the size of the universe and why/how it expands at faster than light speed. And, I really like that idea of using as fuel some substance that is postulated, but has never been detected and that we can't make - but, to me that sounds like a very definite "hard part".

    Using Quantum entanglement depends on classical speed of light travel. Also, it's useful in moving information, not anything physical. So, moving an object would be a matter of sending the information and then reconstructing the object at the remote location using material that is already there. To me, that really doesn't sound very "passenger friendly"!

    And, the others are exotic beyond belief. Yes, your guy likes string theory. Of course, there are numerous such theories and NONE of them is an actual scientific theory since there is no possibility of testing them to see if they are false - let alone figuring out what it might mean if they aren't false.
     
  19. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    You are missing the point.

    Now that we have proven that things can go faster than the speed of light it means that there is a way for us to do it.

    We just haven't discovered it yet but its certainly within the realm of possibility and we will get there one day just as other species have who've been around much longer than us.

    Many of our inventions were considered impossible at one time you know, this is no different. If you think we have even tapped the limits of our understanding of the universe you would be sadly mistaken.

    We've hardly even begun and we've only discovered this possibility in what, the last few decades?

    Imagine what we will know in a couple more hundred years or a thousand.

    I doubt if we are still going to be struggling with the beginnings of string theory. We will have figured it out or moved on to something else.
     
  20. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I don't agree with that - for the reasons stated. For example, we know that waving a flashlight around and doing the quantum entanglement thing could include measurements faster than light, but aren't going to move objects through space.
    If you're referring to hundreds or thousands of years from now, the reasons against faster than light travel could get less emphatic, maybe.

    But, I would suggest constraining this to how we should be spending our science budget now and into the near future - not hundreds of years from now.

    I still do not agree that the issues are comparable in difficulty to progress we've made in the past. In fact, from what I hear it is getting seriously harder to make any significant breakthrough in physics.

    One measure of difficulty is cost. It cost more than $13 billion to verify the Higgs boson. And, the CERN collider is costing about $1B per year to operate - so expensive that the US refused to build it here, even with foreign money input.

    Today, string theory suggest there are between 10 and 26 dimensions - not just length, width, depth and time. One suggested way of considering what this means is that 9 dimensions could include the first 4, then "all possible worlds" starting with all possible start conditions with all possible laws of physics. Plus, the strings are proposed to be 10^-33 centimeters (a decimal with a lot of zeros before you get to a 1). If you blew up an atom to the size of our solar system, a string would be the size of a tree.

    Physicists managed to measure gravitational waves, which are 10^18 (~$600M machine). That was considered a gigantic accomplishment, but strings would be an unbelievably tiny fraction of that size, obviously. That is, a gravitational wave would be like 10^15 times as big as a string.

    There are many string theories. The have serious differences. There has been no method proposed to test ANY of them.

    I see this as things getting harder.

    Don't you?
     
  21. Spooky

    Spooky Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2013
    Messages:
    31,814
    Likes Received:
    13,377
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Yes we are approaching our limits of current technology until our next great discovery.

    This has happened multiple times throughout human history but the next breakthrough always comes and then we start out along the next stage of our technological evolution.

    Fire, the wheel, the printing press, the industrial revolution, flight, computers....they've all began significant other leaps in what humans can do.

    I don't think it will happen in our lifetimes and there is certainly no point if giving serious funding to it, when it happens it will probably be because of some other discovery where some guy who's never been told its impossible, figures it out. Maybe it will happen in the 2100's, maybe the 2200's.

    Just a drop in the bucket for humanity when you think about it. I don't think we are ready for it right now anyways.
     
  22. primate

    primate Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Dec 8, 2014
    Messages:
    1,205
    Likes Received:
    370
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Building them would be expensive but you bleed off the energy of reentry and allow them to land tangentially and shallow with the ocean. It would take a while to stop but you have most of the Pacific to do so. Putting them into orbit around the moon would be more difficult since you don't wish to alter the moon's orbit especially if speaking of multiple asteroids. Mining them is a whole other topic. These feats are within current technology once we build a ship that can get to the asteroid belt. You build more from towed asteroids into lunar or even a higher orbit. Complicated but doable. There's also plenty of titanium on the moon to build from.
     
  23. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    My problem with large spacecraft landing on earth or the moon has to do with the energy cost, not the engineering possibility.

    I suspect we will keep large spacecraft away from large gravity wells.
     
    Last edited: Jul 20, 2018
    Derideo_Te and primate like this.
  24. primate

    primate Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Dec 8, 2014
    Messages:
    1,205
    Likes Received:
    370
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Generally good idea but you're basically landing a large glider assuming it's a lifting body that floats. Then it becomes a barge.
     
  25. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2013
    Messages:
    59,473
    Likes Received:
    16,351
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Again, I agree that we could probably design and land a large craft. My bet is that the heat of reentry would be the hard part.

    The problem comes in what we would do with that craft after having landed and unloaded it.

    Normally speaking, once landed we would want it to move back to space in order to reuse it. That's where anything large requires huge amounts of energy. It cost $1.4 million in 2001 dollars just in fuel per space shuttle launch into low earth orbit. Sending it to an asteroid would be far more expensive. Plus, the space shuttle can't be considered a "large craft".

    SpaceX and others are bringing down the cost of launches, but they are launching Teslas and other small objects and most of the savings is in making parts reusable, not in fuel savings.
     
    primate likes this.

Share This Page