"A voyage of 100,000 years"

[Spiffor]

Aren't fusion power and superconductors assumes to provide gigantic amounts of energy unheard of until now ?

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Aren't fusion power and superconductors assumes to provide gigantic amounts of energy unheard of until now ?

Fusion power is simply a controlled H-Bomb. You wouldn't think it takes a lot of fuel, but for six years?? Yeah, it does. What we need is a Bussard ram jet (this uses a magnetic scoop to bring it hydrogen ions for the fusion reactor.)

I just remembered some details on my calculations of the trip to Alpha Centauri. I did it on my Radio Shack TRS-80. IIRC, that was the world's first home computer, with a CPU memory of 5k.

[Al B. Sure!]

Humans, especially capitalists, are notoriously cheap, and don't want to spend the time, money, or resources unless it's necessary.

You just love taking random, unfounded shots at Capitalism...

first of all, yeah I'm sure that a communist state would be just as eager to send people off into space as businessmen would be... probably non-practicable scientific advancement is what Communist countries are known for

And of course Capitalists would have no wanting to explore space if they're resources out there...

And no capitalist country ever got to the moon...

[ajbera]

The best bet is probably generation ships, where several generations of people are born, live, and die, before the ship arrives at its destination.

Other than that, it's cryochambers or we wait until we can extend the natural lifespan a huge amount.

[Sava]

Speer, it's a fact of life. Does the US have the resources and technology to put 100,000 people on the moon. Yes... will it do it? NO, because it's too expensive. It's a fact of life, a byproduct of Capitalism, or any other ideology. The Soviet Union (although not really Communism) wouldn't have been able to put 100,000 people on the moon either.

Jesus Christ you just like to nit pick everything...

It isn't a knock on Capitalism, it's a fact. Could someone build a robot to cut your grass, paint your house, and vaccuum your floors? Sure, but it won't sell because it would cost too much money.

[Lancer]

As regards traveling for 100,000 years and finding nothing there, so what? You have a self contained system, go for the next star...

Arriving at an earth type planet might be traumatic by then. The people might want to stay with what they know. It might take generations to get entirely off the ship.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Azazel
why not, lancer? it has been proven to exist in other species, esp. that frog.

Now all we have to do is to find out how exactly he does that, copy the needed genes into humans, and shove ourselves into a fridge.

People are much bigger than frogs, and therefore more difficult to freeze and unfreeze without forming ice crystals which damage cells. Current attyempts to cryo-perserve people use super-cold temperatures, down all the way to the point pf liquid nitrogen. The rationale behind this is that at very very cold temperatures, temperatures below that of "dry ice", ice crystal formation is greatly slowed down, and therefore it might be possible to keep a body for a period of time without having ice crystals rip it apart. The problem with that is that at such temperatures ice crystal formation is slowed down, not completely stopped, so over a period of years you'd still have crystals forming and damageing cells.
Even if it were not true that crystalization still occurs at super-cold temperatures you'd still have to contend with the problem that it takes too much time to freeze something as big as a person's body. While freezing a body from the outside there would be a gradient betweeen tissue super-frozen on the outside and tissue unfrozen on the inside. Within the transitional gradient there would be an advancing zone where the temperature was low enough to freeze, but not so low as to inhibit crystalization, and so ice crystals would form.
Sperm, ova and zygotes can be frozen because their intracellular water content is relatively low and intracellular osmols inhibit crystal formation. IIRC frogs have evolved a sort of systemic anti-freeze because they may become frozen over the winter. Could humans use the same sort of biologic anti-freeze? I don't know that much about it, but you have to remember that we're considering freezing something much longer than a few months.

[Sava]

It would be funny if the people got to this planet, and it's ruled by some super-powerful humanoid like species that wouldn't accomadate it's would-be colonizers.

[Dr Strangelove]

Fusion power? Ahhh yesss, I recall that when I was a lad we were supposed to have working commercial fusion reactors providing electrical power by the 1980s.

[Eli]

Originally posted by Sava
It would be funny if the people got to this planet, and it's ruled by some super-powerful humanoid like species that wouldn't accomadate it's would-be colonizers.

Or by humans that found a method for FTL travel...

Was it Heinlein who wrote a book about this?

[Lancer]

Or, inhabited by a race that were much funnier than humans. A sense of humor much advanced...

That would be a laugh.

A bunch of colonizers wandering around feeling like stiffs, perpetual straight men for an alien civilization.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Fusion power is simply a controlled H-Bomb. You wouldn't think it takes a lot of fuel, but for six years?? Yeah, it does. What we need is a Bussard ram jet (this uses a magnetic scoop to bring it hydrogen ions for the fusion reactor.)

I just remembered some details on my calculations of the trip to Alpha Centauri. I did it on my Radio Shack TRS-80. IIRC, that was the world's first home computer, with a CPU memory of 5k.

... and a tape recorder for data storage ! It was really exciting and fun !

BTW the energy problem of Earth should come soon on the agenda.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=0IWVSXRDXX2XICRBAELCFEY?type=reutersEd ge&storyID=2716487

[Sava]

Big Crunch: I saw a special on TLC about using Magnetic Fields... these guys levitated a spider in a machine about the size of a small stadium. In theory, the magnetization of matter within the field would lessen the effect inertia had on acceleration; I'm not sure about stopping it. I know the term "inertial dampers" is out of the sci-fi world, but I couldn't think of anything else.

You link didn't work DAVOUT

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Big Crunch


WTF? Are you getting that out of a bad sci-fi story or crackpot theorist?

"Magnets, the answer is always magnets".

Don't forget to reverse the polarity Commander Data!

[kittenOFchaos]

100,000 years....

That is for Vogager...I would hope they would be able to be built a ship with the technology available today or in the near future that could substantially reduce that time-period.


The real question is:

1. Why not Mars first? Great practise.

2. What chance is there in the next few thousand years of building a ship that could over-take the one we send out now.


It would very annoying to get there after 100,000 of travel and find a ship that left 99,990 years later than you got there before you and have substantially better technology.


Personnally I don't think without cryo-technology that is far advanced from the present we could have humans subsist on a spaceship for ANYTHING close to 100,000 years. The problems of recycling, resources, mechanical failure, living in space (low gravity), society on such a ship etc would be far too unpredictable.

Ain't going to happen. If it was 0-40 years of travel, then I would think we would have a chance