You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

[Seth]

We need faster than light travel.

If we don't have that, then we can't visit the stars. That would suck.

That was NEVER going to happen It's Science FICTION !!!

According to Einstein, no.

Actually, it is (in theory) quite possible to reach the stars without FTL travel! What is not possible is going there and coming back to tell anyone about it in a reasonable timeframe!

As your velocity, relative to the star you are travelling towards, approaches lightspeed, space contracts in the direction of travel - ie. the distance becomes shorter. Reach 87% of c and the distance is only half what it was. However, time dilates by an equal amount - so events on that star (and on Earth) happen twice as fast. Accelerate still further and the distance will shrink to a few month's journey time but events outside will be racing so fast that years are flying by in days.

So make that round trip in a year and thousands may have passed on Earth by the time you return.

More here.

So, don't plan to return. Go forth without that expectation. I'm ready. I've been ready since I was fifteen. Sign me up.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...This is where people like Burt Rutan have it over NASA. He decided to accept the risks and make private spaceflight a reality...

Call that "spaceflight"?

[Seth]

...This is where people like Burt Rutan have it over NASA. He decided to accept the risks and make private spaceflight a reality...

Call that "spaceflight"?

Better than anything you've done I'm guessing. Won him 10 million dollars. Now he and Richard Branson are commercializing sub-orbital spaceflight, which is again a good bit more than your efforts, which appear to be limited to lifting-off Cheetos from the bag to your mouth as you watch reruns of Star Trek.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...This is where people like Burt Rutan have it over NASA. He decided to accept the risks and make private spaceflight a reality...

Call that "spaceflight"?

Better than anything you've done I'm guessing...

But nowhere near as good as what government-funded efforts were doing way back when Burt Rutan was still in his twenties - and taking a government pay-check from the air force.

[mistermack]

They'd be more available with a change in priorities of current earthly spending. The amount that could be freed-up that way is massively in excess of the cost of a Mars mission.

That's good in theory. If it could be done, who could argue? But in practice, when money is short, it's always the poorest who are sqeezed. Because everyone else is too good at minimising their taxes.
And it's the poorest who can't be bothered to vote. So there's no political cost to hitting them.

Spend billions going to Mars, and it will come from the poorest, and projects that would have helped them.

I say, if you do free up billions in some way, spend it on giving kids a better start. Break the cycle of low expectations.

Mars isn't going anywhere.
I say wait till we've done all we can with the moon and space stations.

I mean adapt, as in deal with the problems as we encounter them, and put-up with the stuff we can't change.

It's obviously the way to deal with problems. But the truth might be that gravity problems just can't be got past.

We don't know how human fetuses develop in low gravity. Nor how the bones and brains of children develop without 1g.
We know that bone mass falls in adults in space, so it's not likely to develop properly in kids.

Actually, it would be ethically difficult or even impossible in todays climate to get any government to even try to conceive and bring up a child in gravity of less than 1g.

[Rum]

Gravity isn't a problem. Centrifugal force provides artificial gravity. The ship will spin and the inside of a disk pointing away from the hub would be 'down'. There's a great little site with some 'generational' ship pics here:-

http://www.art-head-start.com/spaceship-model-2.html

[mistermack]

Gravity isn't a problem. Centrifugal force provides artificial gravity. The ship will spin and the inside of a disk pointing away from the hub would be 'down'. There's a great little site with some 'generational' ship pics here:-

http://www.art-head-start.com/spaceship-model-2.html

Yes, that's what I would argue for, as the future of space colonisation. Giant spinning space stations, made from materials mined on the moon. The energy needed to lift off from the moon is tiny, compared to Mars or the Earth.

And Mars is hugely difficult to land on, because there is negligible drag from the atmosphere.

To go to Mars, you need to accelerate to very high speeds, because of the distance. That takes a lot of energy. Then, when you get there, you need the same amount of energy to decelerate. Then you need lots more energy to overcome the gravity of the planet, to land safely.

So as a source of materials it's going to be useless, compared to the moon. And the gravity problem would probably make it impossible to colonise.

But with spinning space stations, you have a practically infinite space to colonise, and a nearly infinite supply of energy from the Sun. All you need is a source of materials, that is cost effective. And the Moon is there, ready to be exploited.

I think that once you get to a space station where you can manufacture stuff, make your food, and recycle your waste, space stations will one day have more people living on them than the Earth. The potential is absolutely limitless.

[Seth]

...This is where people like Burt Rutan have it over NASA. He decided to accept the risks and make private spaceflight a reality...

Call that "spaceflight"?

Better than anything you've done I'm guessing...

But nowhere near as good as what government-funded efforts were doing way back when Burt Rutan was still in his twenties - and taking a government pay-check from the air force.

Actually, his sub-orbital spacecraft was far cheaper and far more comfortable and useful than all that Mercury hardware NASA spent so much on. And his new spacecraft will be the same. Better, cheaper, more efficient and hopefully commercially viable.

[JimC]

I believe in hyperspace...

All the SF books I have read over the years have made me a believer...

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...Actually, his sub-orbital spacecraft was far cheaper and far more comfortable and useful than all that Mercury hardware NASA spent so much on. And his new spacecraft will be the same. Better, cheaper, more efficient and hopefully commercially viable.

And it only exists because NASA paved the way all those years ago. The story of space exploration thus far - government leads (taking the costs/risks) private sector follows (decades later).

[Gawdzilla Sama]

...Actually, his sub-orbital spacecraft was far cheaper and far more comfortable and useful than all that Mercury hardware NASA spent so much on. And his new spacecraft will be the same. Better, cheaper, more efficient and hopefully commercially viable.

And it only exists because NASA paved the way all those years ago. The story of space exploration thus far - government leads (taking the costs/risks) private sector follows (decades later).

True, to some extent, but this is actually one of those rare instances where the private sector may actually step in and take up the challenge. The Ansari X Prize is more for bragging rights than for the money. Commercial spaceflight has to happen or we'll never get off this mudball in any reasonable way.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...this is actually one of those rare instances where the private sector may actually step in and take up the challenge...

What "challenge"? Low earth orbit ceased to be a challenge a long time ago. Of course it's possible to do it cheaper now - it would be surprising if it weren't. But I fail to see where any envelope is being pushed here.

Even most of the technology being used by those pushing towards commercial spaceflight can no-doubt ultimately trace it's 'ancestry' back to government-funded projects (either space programme projects or military).


In fact I wouldn't be surprised if one of the major factors behind the private sector being so slow of the mark is their 'research and development' departments having to wait for all the neat military stuff to get declassified.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

...this is actually one of those rare instances where the private sector may actually step in and take up the challenge...

What "challenge"? Low earth orbit ceased to be a challenge a long time ago. Of course it's possible to do it cheaper now - it would be surprising if it weren't. But I fail to see where any envelope is being pushed here.

Even most of the technology being used by those pushing towards commercial spaceflight can no-doubt ultimately trace it's 'ancestry' back to government-funded projects (either space programme projects or military).


In fact I wouldn't be surprised if one of the major factors behind the private sector being so slow of the mark is their 'research and development' departments having to wait for all the neat military stuff to get declassified.

LEO is just the first step. Industrialization of space would be in GEO.

[mistermack]

I can't see that the private ventures have any relevance for the colonisation of space. They might be relevant to the satellite business, and the technologies that rely on it, but other than that, I can't see it going anywhere.
Giving millionaires the experience of weightlessness is a bit of fun, but where can it go from there?

I would like to see a WASA, funded by the world, to go on with space research.
The huge problem is the cost of getting materials into space.
If the private sector can make an impact on that, then I would say that they have done something useful.

My own idea would be to mine the moon, as I said previously, or, build some kind of gigantic gun, that could fire raw materials into space in a capsule, into the same orbit as the space station. The space station would then capture the capsule, and uses the raw materials for assembling and manufacturing stuff in space.

The thinking behind that is that most of the cost of a space rocket lifting off from the Earth is the cost of lifting the weight of the fuel, and the weight of the huge rocket needed to contain the fuel.
If you only lift the materials you require, and nothing else, it would bring the costs down to a tiny fraction of a rocket launch. I've go no idea what kind of propulsion you could use for the gun though.
It would have to be able to fire a projectile at least three hundred km in altitude, and have a final velocity of about 8 km/s.

I'd like to see the private sector have a go at that.

[MiM]

Moon and March are good and well within our reach, but if we talk about reaching the stars and colonizing exoplanets, the strongest argument for me against any reasonable probability for it being possible is the Fermi paradox. If it was that easy, they would already be here.