Outer Space Thread

[go birds]

Yep that was the one.

[pioneer98]

You can't ignore the math that's for sure. No doubt there is other life out there. What excites me is that with some major advancements that are probably on the horizon we could be exploring some of these places in a few generations. I'm sad I won't be around to see it, but it's an awesome though. Think about it the nearest planet is 13 light years away. That means if we can develop a way to travel half the speed of light it could be reached in 26 years. That to me seems very doable with in say 200 years.

It wasn't much more then about 100 years ago the fastest anyone ever traveled was about 20mph. Now we are in the 1000s of MPH. It's exciting.

26 years for the observer. For the guy in the ship it would only be about 22 years.

edit ... nobody is ever going to build a ship to travel .5c.

And 35 years total wait time for us to get the radio signal back from the guy explaining what he's found!

[IMADreamer]

You can't ignore the math that's for sure. No doubt there is other life out there. What excites me is that with some major advancements that are probably on the horizon we could be exploring some of these places in a few generations. I'm sad I won't be around to see it, but it's an awesome though. Think about it the nearest planet is 13 light years away. That means if we can develop a way to travel half the speed of light it could be reached in 26 years. That to me seems very doable with in say 200 years.

It wasn't much more then about 100 years ago the fastest anyone ever traveled was about 20mph. Now we are in the 1000s of MPH. It's exciting.

26 years for the observer. For the guy in the ship it would only be about 22 years.

edit ... nobody is ever going to build a ship to travel .5c.

And 35 years total wait time for us to get the radio signal back from the guy explaining what he's found!

Thanks for crushing my butterfly.

[JackofDiamonds]

You can't ignore the math that's for sure. No doubt there is other life out there. What excites me is that with some major advancements that are probably on the horizon we could be exploring some of these places in a few generations. I'm sad I won't be around to see it, but it's an awesome though. Think about it the nearest planet is 13 light years away. That means if we can develop a way to travel half the speed of light it could be reached in 26 years. That to me seems very doable with in say 200 years.

It wasn't much more then about 100 years ago the fastest anyone ever traveled was about 20mph. Now we are in the 1000s of MPH. It's exciting.

26 years for the observer. For the guy in the ship it would only be about 22 years.

edit ... nobody is ever going to build a ship to travel .5c.

And 35 years total wait time for us to get the radio signal back from the guy explaining what he's found!

Thanks for crushing my butterfly.

By the time we're sending mass at .5c, we'll be able to transfer data faster than the speed of sound. Quantum entanglement messaging, practically already exists. Like, mostly. I read about it.

[jim]

You can't ignore the math that's for sure. No doubt there is other life out there. What excites me is that with some major advancements that are probably on the horizon we could be exploring some of these places in a few generations. I'm sad I won't be around to see it, but it's an awesome though. Think about it the nearest planet is 13 light years away. That means if we can develop a way to travel half the speed of light it could be reached in 26 years. That to me seems very doable with in say 200 years.

It wasn't much more then about 100 years ago the fastest anyone ever traveled was about 20mph. Now we are in the 1000s of MPH. It's exciting.

26 years for the observer. For the guy in the ship it would only be about 22 years.

edit ... nobody is ever going to build a ship to travel .5c.

And 35 years total wait time for us to get the radio signal back from the guy explaining what he's found!

35 years for who?

[jim]

And just to give an idea of the propulsion needed to get into relativistic speeds, .5c is 335308314.6922 mph. So we've gone from 20 to 1000 ... big deal, we've added 2 orders of magnitude to basically what could be done since the dawn of time. We need 5 more zeros to make that. Then there is that pesky exponent in Einstein's equation. That will do a number on a guy sitting in a spaceship going that fast.

[Arthur Dent]

And just to give an idea of the propulsion needed to get into relativistic speeds, .5c is 335308314.6922 mph. So we've gone from 20 to 1000 ... big deal, we've added 2 orders of magnitude to basically what could be done since the dawn of time. We need 5 more zeros to make that. Then there is that pesky exponent in Einstein's equation. That will do a number on a guy sitting in a spaceship going that fast.

Today's space probes leave Earth going a few tens of thousands of mph, or around 0.0001c, so only 4 orders of magnitude to go, but they also have to go from zero to maximum velocity in a matter of minutes. If there was a way to leave the engine on for months or years (meaning a way to lift a lot of fuel), we could go real fast.

[jim]

And just to give an idea of the propulsion needed to get into relativistic speeds, .5c is 335308314.6922 mph. So we've gone from 20 to 1000 ... big deal, we've added 2 orders of magnitude to basically what could be done since the dawn of time. We need 5 more zeros to make that. Then there is that pesky exponent in Einstein's equation. That will do a number on a guy sitting in a spaceship going that fast.

Today's space probes leave Earth going a few tens of thousands of mph, or around 0.0001c, so only 4 orders of magnitude to go, but they also have to go from zero to maximum velocity in a matter of minutes. If there was a way to leave the engine on for months or years (meaning a way to lift a lot of fuel), we could go real fast.

Even if you could achieve that speed, how are you going to protect the passenger? Going to get hot and heavy, no?

[jim]

Voyager leaves heliosphere?

http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archiv ... 3-11.shtml

[M1IRONMIKE]

Voyager leaves heliosphere?

http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archiv ... 3-11.shtml

I can't wait until it comes back from the other way