To the Stars!

[Colonâ„¢]

fairly straight forward and a dozen countries could build it today themselves

Yet nobody has actually built it yet?

[Dr Strangelove]

What's the difference in flight time travelling 0.8 c instead of 0.99 c? Not that much, but at 0.8 c relativistic changes in momentum are small.

There was a nifty sicence fiction short story a few years ago about some engineers who worked on a linear accelerator built on the moon. They accelerated nanites to 0.6 c aimed at a planet several light-years away. The nanites landed on the planet and assembled explorer robots and a transmitter. Forty years later the engineers volunteered to have their conciousnesses downloaded into nanites and fired at the planet, when they arrived robotic bodies were construted for them and their conciousnesses were downloaded into the robots. As they carried out their duties they looked up at the planet's moon and decided that they would use it to head out for the next solar system.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

The real question is why would anyone want to go to the "stars". It is a one way trip, with fairly uncertain ending, costing a lot to boot with existing tech, so there is no desire to go out there and "explore", with little hope of coming back like they did it in 15th century.

Similar with the Moon - you can go there, much easier than to the "stars", except - why? If Earth becomes mostly destroyed for one reason or anther, that should give us enough impetus to go to Moon/Mars or even out to the stars. Either that or a serious tech breaktrhough with would make such trips a lot more like holidays and a lot less like desert island isolation life sentence.

[Donegeal]

Because, as someone has already pointed out in the Good/Bad thread, NPP violates the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Not only that, but a lot more research needs to be done. Like the pusher plate. Sure it could be made with materials we knew about in the 60s, but it would have to be think and extremely massive. Materials from today would make it less massive. Theorized material from the next couple years or materials that are tested specifically for this purpose would be much better. What about radiation? Even if we were to build a NPP probe, would the nuclear radiation from the thrust screw with the sensitive instruments? Plus, you still need to get the thing into space and then put it together. Once again, we come around to how to get things into orbit cheaply: LinA

[Donegeal]

Hmm... nice activity level this morning...

There is almost no point in discussing the differences of relativity between .8c and .99c as the speeds that are currently even theorized about right now are .15c to .3c. Outside of magic/science like warp, this is all we're going to be capable of for a long long time.

And why go? Why even try? Cause it's human nature to explore. What's around the next corner? It might not be a very strong drive in you, but it is in me. I want to know what around the next corner. Or if there is no way for me to know, I want the next generation to know. I want to explore and the next step in exploring is out in space. The stars are our destination (good book, BTW), but I want to focus on how to get there. Right now, we are kinda limited because its so hard to get off planet; which is why I keep falling back to the LinA.

[N35t0r]

Yet nobody has actually built it yet?

It's illegal to send nuclear devices into space.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Hmm... nice activity level this morning...

There is almost no point in discussing the differences of relativity between .8c and .99c as the speeds that are currently even theorized about right now are .15c to .3c. Outside of magic/science like warp, this is all we're going to be capable of for a long long time.

And why go? Why even try? Cause it's human nature to explore. What's around the next corner? It might not be a very strong drive in you, but it is in me. I want to know what around the next corner. Or if there is no way for me to know, I want the next generation to know. I want to explore and the next step in exploring is out in space. The stars are our destination (good book, BTW), but I want to focus on how to get there. Right now, we are kinda limited because its so hard to get off planet; which is why I keep falling back to the LinA.

Time for activity boost... noone would care about NPP if we were to get annhilated in some way. I need to read up on it, but what is wrong with constant acceleration? Half g and you are up to speed of light in half year time or so... and another half year to decelerate... so really you are not travelling that long.

The main issues are potential drag (in interstellar space should be relatively ok? or ), and collisions - those would be deadly. The other main question is "how many nukes" are needed to keep you accelerating at half g for half a year? Whatever is the amount, I am sure we would be able to produce them today, and design in a way that the instruments/crew are protected. Isolation from cosmic rays/background raditation may be just as challenging, or even more so.

All in all, my take is - if we wanted to - we could do it today, but noone really wants to leave earth so badly right now to reorganize whole economic structure in pursuit of space exploration which means near certain death or at least inability to come back without any direct economic or social benefit in near term or possibly ever.