I'm getting a little tired of hearing NASA toadies chirp excitedly about the discovery of more planets that "could sustain life" out there around other stars. I think they are just keeping the alien question in every body's minds so congress doesn't cut their budget. Well, it's time they gave us more than probabilities. I want to see an alien retrieval mission. We should go to one of these planets, kill a few of the indigenous species or maybe capture a few of them and bring them back to be gawked at in booths at the state fair. I mean seriously, if there's life out there, why are we going and getting it?
7 comments:
If you will invent a FTL drive to get us there, I think your financial future will be bright!
A solar sail would achieve perhaps 70% of "c" and maybe get a crew to Proxima Centauri in about 7 years. Hell, I'd volunteer for that mission. Or a magnetoplasmadynamic drive might work, but that technology is still developmental.
Wouldn't said solar sail have to be powered via a super powerful laser as it moved beyond the effective range of the sunlight?
Nuclear Thermal seems to be the way to go in the "near term" but even with that you're nowhere near human lifetime interstellar travel.
I think ion-pulse engines that put out constant energy could, in the absence of friction, accelerate a ship to 60%-70% of "c" to the half way point, then the ship executes a 180 and decelerates the rest of the way. I'm no math whiz but a 10 light year trip might take 20 years or so. It would require suspended animation or for us to be frozen in carbonite like Han Solo.
If nothing else, send a frickin' probe so that our kids might learn that there is life....or not.
Of course, as with all space travel, and this is the thing that may well keep humans tethered no farther than Mars from Earth, and that's the question of how do you transport water for that kind of trip, plus the return if there's no water at the destination planet? Honestly, I don't believe humans will travel beyond Mars in the next 1000 years for that reason.
I don't know about beyond Mars, the outer solar system is practically make of water ice. Now, beyond the solar system, unless you have a suspended animation device or a "colony ship" where generations live and die on the ship, we need FTL. I know Einstein says "no can do" but I think nature and physics have all sorts of surprises for us as we learn - assuming we're not all taken over by some un-named 7th Century religious cult.
Heh heh...that is true. If that happens, space travel will be the least of our troubles.
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