NASA's concept spaceship for interstellar travel WOW

[FingNewGuy]

http://www.nasa.gov/content/heliopause-electrostatic-rapid-transit-system-herts/

[Mansen]

http://www.gamersglobal.de/sites/gamers ... ruiser.jpg

Kerberos are not impressed [:D]

[pycco]

ORIGINAL: Mansen

http://www.gamersglobal.de/sites/gamers ... ruiser.jpg

Kerberos are not impressed [:D]

ya i mentioned this very coincidental heh

ORIGINAL: FingNewGuy



http://www.nasa.gov/content/heliopause-electrostatic-rapid-transit-system-herts/

that's neat from what i understand about spaceX this is how they plan to make the round the world trips in under 3 hours.

[Lucian]

NASA has a lot of gall. They cant even afford to send a single astronaut into space without thumbing a ride from Russia and yet they talk about building something like this. NASA used to be synonymous with practical science, now all you get from them are computer graphics and "concepts".

[pycco]

LOL, if you read the article its a concept of a possible design.most of there funding now is black[;)]

why waste the $$ when we can pay a fraction of the cost for the same results?
so no input on the OP other than NASA has galls?

[Lucian]

The drive requires "exotic matter" which nobody even knows if it even exists, let alone how to obtain or work with it. Whether money is being thrown at it or not, its a very, very long way off. I stand by what I said, NASA nowadays is all talk, computer graphics and concepts with absolutely nothing concrete to back it up.

[pycco]

they have to farthest not in solar system "probe" they lead to the USA reaching Hallie's comet first, successfully landed on mars. have made huge steps in countering the effects of solar radiation and the effects of extended zero gravity as well as developing shielding for windows. and track all meteors that are near earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor they gave enough warning for it to be destroyed before impact even.

i see no other company that has yet to come close, china just landed on moon....

germs and bacteria were not real until they were discovered.

as i have said you don't know what you don't know.

[Tcby]

ORIGINAL: Tcby

I guess it depends on how far away you stop. Of course you can't be sure that there isn't something else at your end point. Wouldn't want to casually obliterate some distant space station because you decided not to stop right at the planet [:'(]

I'll ask Brendan how big this concentrated beam is expected to be...

I asked about size of beam, direction, scale (how far away you'd want to arrive).
The response: "Indeed, these questions are relevant, unfortunately no one knows."
[:'(]

[ParagonExile]

Cool.

I don't think any of us are qualified to discuss its feasibility however. The math and concepts behind this require decades of study to partially grasp, so a bunch of nerds like us speculating won't help much

I do hope it comes to fruition however; this research could be the salvation of our species one day, and let us travel to the stars like we have always dreamed. Who wouldn't want that?

[FingNewGuy]

ORIGINAL: Tcby

ORIGINAL: Tcby

I guess it depends on how far away you stop. Of course you can't be sure that there isn't something else at your end point. Wouldn't want to casually obliterate some distant space station because you decided not to stop right at the planet [:'(]

I'll ask Brendan how big this concentrated beam is expected to be...

I asked about size of beam, direction, scale (how far away you'd want to arrive).
The response: "Indeed, these questions are relevant, unfortunately no one knows."
[:'(]

Right on! Thanks for getting back to us with that info. [:)]

[Tcby]

The stars deserve better than the human race imo.

[FingNewGuy]

ORIGINAL: Tcby

The stars deserve better than the human race imo.

Fear not and be of good cheer, kind sir! At the rate the human race is going, we will not be getting to the stars any time soon.

[ShadowB]

Unless the energy release has catastrophic effects in a spherical radius of hundreds of millions of kilometres, it doesn't really matter. Space is huge, and the chances of hitting anything without aiming for it is, pardon the pun, astronomical. Besides, you wouldn't warp straight onto some planet's orbit, but rather some prudent distance away and complete the journey with sublight engines.

[ParagonExile]

ORIGINAL: FingNewGuy

ORIGINAL: Tcby

The stars deserve better than the human race imo.

Fear not and be of good cheer, kind sir! At the rate the human race is going, we will not be getting to the stars any time soon.

You guys should be more optimistic.

We've made it this far, and I'm confident we will carry through and ultimately do the right thing. There's a few octillion planets and stars out there just waiting to be found!

[ShadowB]

It's hard to tell. Breakthroughs are unpredictable and can happen at any time, given the right conditions. Could be in 100 years or 500.

[pycco]

ORIGINAL: ShadowB

Unless the energy release has catastrophic effects in a spherical radius of hundreds of millions of kilometres, it doesn't really matter. Space is huge, and the chances of hitting anything without aiming for it is, pardon the pun, astronomical. Besides, you wouldn't warp straight onto some planet's orbit, but rather some prudent distance away and complete the journey with sublight engines.

the energy wave this would release would keep growing in every aspect until it hits something, what would that kind of energy do to a star?

we are a lot closer to space travel imo. we plan to make a colony on mars in 2017
http://www.mars-one.com/mission
so depending on how that goes we might even have a multi planet "empire" by 2020 that's only 6 years.

[ParagonExile]

ORIGINAL: pycco

ORIGINAL: ShadowB

Unless the energy release has catastrophic effects in a spherical radius of hundreds of millions of kilometres, it doesn't really matter. Space is huge, and the chances of hitting anything without aiming for it is, pardon the pun, astronomical. Besides, you wouldn't warp straight onto some planet's orbit, but rather some prudent distance away and complete the journey with sublight engines.

the energy wave this would release would keep growing in every aspect until it hits something, what would that kind of energy do to a star?

we are a lot closer to space travel imo. we plan to make a colony on mars in 2017
http://www.mars-one.com/mission
so depending on how that goes we might even have a multi planet "empire" by 2020 that's only 6 years.

Hold you horsies there.

We can barely manage a weak Casmir Effect of 1/20,000 of a Volt, let alone the amount needed to make an FTL spacecraft. We will eventually, but I seriously doubt the trillions of dollars required will be parted with in 6 years

[pycco]

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile

ORIGINAL: pycco

ORIGINAL: ShadowB

Unless the energy release has catastrophic effects in a spherical radius of hundreds of millions of kilometres, it doesn't really matter. Space is huge, and the chances of hitting anything without aiming for it is, pardon the pun, astronomical. Besides, you wouldn't warp straight onto some planet's orbit, but rather some prudent distance away and complete the journey with sublight engines.

the energy wave this would release would keep growing in every aspect until it hits something, what would that kind of energy do to a star?

we are a lot closer to space travel imo. we plan to make a colony on mars in 2017
http://www.mars-one.com/mission
so depending on how that goes we might even have a multi planet "empire" by 2020 that's only 6 years.

Hold you horsies there.

We can barely manage a weak Casmir Effect of 1/20,000 of a Volt, let alone the amount needed to make an FTL spacecraft. We will eventually, but I seriously doubt the trillions of dollars required will be parted with in 6 years

its not a FTL vehicle its a sub light speed using nuclear explosions as momentum[;)]
i was speaking of the colony on mars solely as making man kind have a multi planet "empire" and if the colony is successfully or all crew members lost, they are planning on sending family's so that the kids can be trained while there and in the trip to the planet.

[MikeSF]

ORIGINAL: pycco

the energy wave this would release would keep growing in every aspect until it hits something, what would that kind of energy do to a star?

And as the wave grows the total total energy density shrinks proportional to the square of the distance, meaning twice as far away 1/4th the energy that would hit any object.

I'm just curious how one can calculate how moving space interacts with "non-moving" space, the talk of particles destroy the ship? How? If a particle is not moving, when it enters the "moving space" it won't suddenly accelerate to FTL speeds, it should be all accounts remain non moving, or the moving space might push it out of the way. Eh, never taught us any of the stuff when I was in graduate school!

[Tcby]

Here's a link to the paper itself. http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/1202.5708v1.pdf