Methods of Space Travel

[Dave25]

My throughts on this are that 60,000 years is too far in the future for me to even guess at what they would be doing but here goes... Some sort of huge sail almost like a parachute slowing a dragster but in pushing it instead and of course much much larger. The sail can take the energy emitted from stars and the solar rays/wind/flux which is the form in which the energy is emitted. Once out of any gravitational field in theory this could then just keep accelerating and acclerating, okay maybe not to the speed of light but at least to somewhere close.

I like the idea of an matter/antimatter drive too, purely because of the amount of energy that could be released in collisions and then used to propel the craft.

Possibly a combination of the two above methods, the matter/antimatter drive for relatively short flights and to get the craft up to speed faster with the solar sail used for large distance travel.

Alternatively assuming that in future man or woman can control or harness the ability to create wormholes and predict where you would emerge then you would not need the ability to travel too fast just "jump" through the wormholes and you could "jump" around space.

Well there you go thats my ideas for just now anyway...

[Eradius Lore]

Are you proposing just a sail, because as you should no there would be no propelling "wind" in space. Perhaps what you meant is that the sail collects energy or "fuel" for a propelling engine on the back of the craft, of course you would need a large part of the ship to convert solar energy into propelling fuel for the engines. Another method instead of a sail, i think maybe a fusion reactor would work well in its place. as for wormhole jumping, it is possible to detect them but is impossible to predict where they go to, or even for how long the will be open for, being caught in a wormhole when it destabilizes could, propel you into a part of a distant galaxy or complete erasing from existence or history itself. because of the theory that wormholes have the power for time travel as well as space travel, that means that all of time runs through wormholes, which would mean if you where to die there everything that was to ever do with you would seem like it had never existed.

The antimatter stream engine:-



this works by containing a black hole using gravatronic rings then using the matter stream fired out of the black hole centre to propel the ship, rocket, missile what ever. it also needs no fuel as a black hole is self perpetuating. it also 'if connected to a ship' could be used as a generator for the ship as the black hole would be giving out trillions of teraquads of energy.

[chrispenycate]

Originally Posted by Eradius Lore

Are you proposing just a sail, because as you should no there would be no propelling "wind" in space. Perhaps what you meant is that the sail collects energy or "fuel" for a propelling engine on the back of the craft, of course you would need a large part of the ship to convert solar energy into propelling fuel for the engines. Another method instead of a sail, i think maybe a fusion reactor would work well in its place. as for wormhole jumping, it is possible to detect them but is impossible to predict where they go to, or even for how long the will be open for, being caught in a wormhole when it destabilizes could, propel you into a part of a distant galaxy or complete erasing from existence or history itself. because of the theory that wormholes have the power for time travel as well as space travel, that means that all of time runs through wormholes, which would mean if you where to die there everything that was to ever do with you would seem like it had never existed.

The antimatter stream engine:-



this works by containing a black hole using gravatronic rings then using the matter stream fired out of the black hole centre to propel the ship, rocket, missile what ever. it also needs no fuel as a black hole is self perpetuating. it also 'if connected to a ship' could be used as a generator for the ship as the black hole would be giving out trillions of teraquads of energy.

Am I allowed- oh, anyway,
A micro back hole is not self perpetuating- I won't put the mathematics but the black hole drive used in Clarkes "Imperial Earth" wouldn't have been stable, though he couldn't have known so at the time. A black hole big enough to be stable would be of (at least) planetary mass, which would be extremely difficult to accelerate. But, at any rate this propulsion system (like several others offered) doesn't address the problem of conservation of momentum- energy is available, but for you to go forward, something's got to go backward, and the faster it does so the less you need. Black holes are for fixed instalations, too massive for mobile.
Still, if you've got some antimatter and some water and some good magnetic containment, you can build a very good drive system- a couple of microgrammes of antimatter and a few gallons of wter, project the two so they meet in a powerful electrostatic field, giving us lots of nice energetic plasma (not really steam, but sort of containing all the bits) nice and charged so the magnets can interreact with it and direct it backwards- the only problem (well, apart from minor details like handling antimatter and getting the requisite magnetic field strengths- technical matters) Is how much reaction mass (water) you have to carry, and how much this adds tu your start mass.

[Eradius Lore]

your quoting from fiction where i actually quote from visable thoeries. and i never said it was a micro black hole its a compact black hole.

as a black hole is a gateway to antimatter space the balck hole is self peptuating as the energy is created through the colision of matter and antimatter. and if you use the theory that matter can not be destroyed it can only be tranferred from one form to another, you come to the conclusion that there is an infinate amount of matter meaning an infinate amount of energy.

[bendoran]

who ever said a black hole was a a gateway to antimatter space?? hehe

and blackholes give off energy, they only grow in size if the mass coming in is greater than their outgoing energy. to maintain one would require a constant stream of matter injected into the blackhole at exactly the right point to maintain its mass and stability. to much and it would grow, too little it would die.

[dreamwalker]

your quoting from fiction where i actually quote from visable thoeries

Really? Then state your sources.

i never said it was a micro black hole its a compact black hole

There the same thing. The hole part of a black hole is infinitly small and within it contains dimentionless space.
The thing that might describe a black holes size is its Event Horizon, which is the area around it in which light cannot escape from. thats determined by its mass, so in essesnce, if its gunna have a small Event Horizon, then its going to be a relativly "light" black hole as all black holes are infinity dense - you just can't have a "compact black hole" in terms of density and radius.

as a black hole is a gateway to antimatter space

Who said so? It's more likely to be the gateway to Hell, as far as physics is conserned. antimatter is matter, just with a different set of quarks. Negative matter which has negative mass, negative momentum and could produce anti-gravity is an idea, but even that is total conjecture and if it existed, it probably wouldn't be in the dimentionless space of a black hole.

the balck hole is self peptuating as the energy is created through the colision of matter and antimatter.

Black holes contain only gravitational potencial energy, the same with all mass in the universe. And black holes can lose this energy through Hawking Radiation. The smaller the black hole, the more of this radiation they give off.

and if you use the theory that matter can not be destroyed it can only be tranferred from one form to another, you come to the conclusion that there is an infinate amount of matter meaning an infinate amount of energy

huh?

I pretty much agree with what bendoran and chris said I don't like the idea of carrying something hat weighs the mass of the earth with you and i don't see black holes as such a great energy source!

[Quokka]

What happens if you actually can get to say half the speed of light and you hit some form of matter? a planet, a meteorite, a spec of dust?

add the difficulties of navigating gravitational factors (there may be a chance that the universe looks nothing at all like what we currently concieve of it due to negative refraction, either way wouldnt such effects make navigation extremly difficult? add the constant movement of physical matter and that's a whole lot of changing circumstances to account for.) and is it really practical that space travel will take the form of planes with better engines?

It's strange but Stargate is starting to look a lot more likely than Star Trek, in that any real ability to explore the universe is likely to take, not necessarily wormholes, but a means of moving outside the physical parameters as opposed to just going faster?

Just a few rambling questions for my 2 cents

[Dave25]

Originally Posted by Eradius Lore

Are you proposing just a sail, because as you should no there would be no propelling "wind" in space. Perhaps what you meant is that the sail collects energy or "fuel" for a propelling engine on the back of the craft, of course you would need a large part of the ship to convert solar energy into propelling fuel for the engines.

Hmm, I was thinking that it could somewhat harness the energy emitted from stars, such as the radiation they emit. I'm sure that i had some sort of plan but it seems to be escaping me for the moment.

Oh and yea I was well aware there is no "wind" in space, i think Alien taught me that one

[chrispenycate]

As a matter of fact, there is a wind of charged particles emanating from every star, and a solar sail can run on pure radiation pressure. The problem is, that unless you've got someone at home shining a laser at you, the pressure drops off as the square of the distance, and that your 0-60 time is measured in months. Still, the lack of fuel requirements and speed limits means you can't write off the lightsail to fast, even if it doesn't quite meet the present specifications.

Any vehicle doing half c is going to need an ablative shield in front of it to absorb stray particles and dust motes- and well in front, as impact velocities on that scale will produce significant radiation. This needn't be solid- magnetic fields might well clean the vacuum. You'll need some kind of forward detector (probably active radar or scanning laser- it's dark out there) to spot stray planetoids, comets and suchlike, and either boil them off path with a laser beam, or take evasive action. 'course the amount of empty space compared with the amount of matter means that statistically the risk of a big bit is negligable, but when you don't take yor raincoat… On the other hand, at speeds like that, navigation should be no problem- any effective drive system (even a can of compressed air) can correct vectors over that sort of distance, and you're still slow enough for continuous feedback.

[bendoran]

proposed solar sail systems exist by which solar sails are combined with ion drives for propulsion in system. Not as fast acceleration compared to rockets but the top speed would be greater for little fuel as energy would come from a the solar radiation and b the ion drive. beyond the vanhailem belt(excuse spelling) the suns rays are very potent, and the radiation in solar rays is very high. A solar sail would be used not in terms of a conventional wind sail, but to store and transfer that radiation and light into energy for use within a drive system.

in terms of avoiding collisions, before every journey was taken a detailed trajectory would be set out, of course. Between systems would be relativily low in terms of matter, though all interstellar craft with velocities even a hundredth of the speed of light would have to be exceptionally well designed toward perfectly streamlined design. Spoace is massive, and the amount of matter small, but at exceptionally high speed the distance betweeen these small amounts of matter is realitivly speaking less. Therefore there would actually be a lot of resistance to think about.

With ideas like wormholes and stargates, they need to be placed in order to work, which i doubt they would anyway. Acting as anchors so to speak, or nodes of entry to some kind ofg underspace where the laws of physics can be nullified or negated. Therefore deep space travel will still be necessary if only to expand the network of these gates.

if the time period we are speaking of though is 60000 years, or even six thousand, i would say we would have capabilities hard to fathom even now. With the increase in computer power every year, true AI is surely only a few hundred years away, if properly controlled and implemented the advances possible in science would be phenomenal as the processing capabilites expanded exponentially.

[chrispenycate]

Originally Posted by bendoran

proposed solar sail systems exist by which solar sails are combined with ion drives for propulsion in system. Not as fast acceleration compared to rockets but the top speed would be greater for little fuel as energy would come from a the solar radiation and b the ion drive. beyond the vanhailem belt(excuse spelling) the suns rays are very potent, and the radiation in solar rays is very high. A solar sail would be used not in terms of a conventional wind sail, but to store and transfer that radiation and light into energy for use within a drive system.

in terms of avoiding collisions, before every journey was taken a detailed trajectory would be set out, of course. Between systems would be relativily low in terms of matter, though all interstellar craft with velocities even a hundredth of the speed of light would have to be exceptionally well designed toward perfectly streamlined design. Spoace is massive, and the amount of matter small, but at exceptionally high speed the distance betweeen these small amounts of matter is realitivly speaking less. Therefore there would actually be a lot of resistance to think about.

With ideas like wormholes and stargates, they need to be placed in order to work, which i doubt they would anyway. Acting as anchors so to speak, or nodes of entry to some kind ofg underspace where the laws of physics can be nullified or negated. Therefore deep space travel will still be necessary if only to expand the network of these gates.

if the time period we are speaking of though is 60000 years, or even six thousand, i would say we would have capabilities hard to fathom even now. With the increase in computer power every year, true AI is surely only a few hundred years away, if properly controlled and implemented the advances possible in science would be phenomenal as the processing capabilites expanded exponentially.

the combination of solar sails an ion jets seems to be a risky one. If a solar sail gives 9 newtons of thrust per square kilometer for a hundreth of a g of acceleration using a 90 kg spacecraft you'd need a square kilometer of sail, and it would be shaped as a parabola, focussing the suns energy onto your power plant (and you can use it for smelting metal when you're not going anywhere- a kilometer squared of solar energy is a lot. I was going to focus the energy from my couple of thousand square kilometers on Cleveland Ohio. Interesting political detail- any drive system giving enough thrust that the accelerations are acceptable to us is an absolutely devastating weapon) If the ion drive can't give more ?V than that, it's not worth adding it. So you're forever overtaking your sail which, without the tension in the shrouds to hold it in shape goes all floppy and ultimately folds itself round the ship (of course, you couldn't see where you were going anyway with this thumping great mirror blocking your view, but it gets in tha way of the ions, too. Spin it so it stays in shape? Your turning circle, never small, has become astronomical, and you still don't dare accelerate any faster than the sun can push the sail. Divert a part of the ion stream forwards, towards the sail, trusting the ions to stick and push it into shape (then, when there is enough charge on the sail excess ions are reflected back, pushing the sail, and ultimately the ship, forwards- I'd have to do the mathematics) This puts the ship bang in the middle of its exhaust stream, and likely to be charged to attract same- bears thinking on.

Collisions- you would of course know the positions and trajectories of all planets, comets and large junk on your projected route, but even something the size of a brick has a lot of em vee squared at half a cee. Which makes it worth keeping a good lookout (with a light sail, difficult. Still, for the amount of light pressure available out there, you'd probably furl the sail and freewheel) While there are doubtless inumerable brick size objects between here and alpha centauri the number per cubic lightyear's probably quite small, so you'd be very unlucky to hit one unitil the route gets over travelled, and it's century old jettisoned underwear you have to dodge. (oh. and {pedant mode} space is not "massive" It's enormous, but if it had mass it would simplify our task massively)

I just ignored the sixty thousand years, and translated as well into the future. I don't really have much expectation of the human race doing another sity thousand in a recognisable form unless they clean their act up in the next few centuries.

[dreamwalker]

Originally Posted by chrispenycate

I just ignored the sixty thousand years, and translated as well into the future. I don't really have much expectation of the human race doing another sity thousand in a recognisable form unless they clean their act up in the next few centuries.

The part about it being 60,000 years is relativly important, as im trying to get you to think about what is possible to accomplish in that time, and what is likely, and also to speculate the gulf in understanding that our ansectors had 60,000 years ago to what we have now.

I'll be posting a anothing thead soon on the whole 60,000 year time line and how things happened.

Just note that within the 60,000 year timeline i'd be proposing, most of the human development or positive advancement (eg, rebirth of civilisation, intersellar travel) happened within the end 10,000 years of it.

[bendoran]

i think i maybe didnt explain the last point so well. i did not implky a sail as a method for interstellar travel due to the problems of massive space between solar systems. The sail was in my theory more of an in system propuslion system which could be used more as a source of recharge for any engine the ship had(clearly then it would be retractable), similar to theoretical ram scoops as some scifi authors call them where ships extract gas from gas giants by skimming the atmosphere as a means of replenishing fuel. as you point out, moving at half a cee with a massive sail blocking your view aint exactly bright also any interstellar travel at speeds reaching half a cee will involve no change of course. to do so would cause unbelievable gee force on ship inhabitants plus send you way of course. any asteroids or debris would need to be dealt with by some form of defence system at the fore of the ship. evasive action would most likely be as deadly to the crew as a collison


best solution:- invent robots/androids etc to send into deepspace with equipment to build stargates and terraform planets. have them do all the dirty work and then just step through. one thing i would insure though with AI's would be that they never achieved full sentience, too dangerous.

[dreamwalker]

I see sails as a reversion back to previous ways of thinking, and past technologies.
When people mention sails, I have this image of a cave man saying the same thing... "we could sail too the moon". Our understanding's changed a little, but our thingings still the same. Safe, bound by conventions and favorible to what we know instead of what could be better...
I'm gunna stamp some authoriaty on this thread, well, be cause I created it and it's use is for a project im understaking.
Rule 1
No more solar, ionic or photonic sails. We've mainly covered them and so far, there there "thrust to issuses ratio" is way too low!

If your going to reinvent the universe, make it believible. Yes, make sure you know how things that already exist work, so that when you invent your own particles or new space time paradoxes and mechinisms, there not rejected straight away because they sound lifted from a star trek enclyclopidea.

Don't take your idea too seriously, and expect them to be disproved. That way we can have valid discussions without having arguments on 'why my idea is just so much better than the others'

If your ideas from somewhere or based on someone else's research, or from another topic entirly, add some links or referances.

Have fun with it, and try not to be too serious and logical... all you need to be is convincing! As it is science fiction after all, hard science fiction, but with a posivite goal of encouraging people to think about this stuff in a "what if?" way that removes some of that Star Trek/Star Wars hue -

[chrispenycate]

Sixty thousand years is hunter gatherers to moon rockets- and worse than that, not only does "progress" seem to be accelerating, the second derivitive (the rate of change of rate of change of rate of change- why don't they put mathematical symbols into these cymbal sets?) seems to be going up. Predictions over that length just butterfly out. Still, a couple of dark ages (dark for all humanity, or advancing in waves at dark speed?) with byzantine reservoirs of forbidden knowledge could just just slow it down enough that we still recognise human beings.
Most of the ideas put forward so far could be done in a couple of centuries (when the first colonists crawl out of their hybercrypts to look at their new world, a mighty civilisation greets their eyes. built by people who started travelling a century after them, and arrived fifty years before) At least 60,000 years gives us time to get some worthwhile terraforming done.

Perhaps information technology is the key- if information can travel faster than light (and despite Einstein's assertation there is some evidence that this is so, even if neither matter nor energy can) we could send the information about how to build our preferred body and send our minds from star to star, body to body (cheapskates can always use a standard rentabody), while freight ships take a reasonable couple of centuries. Or life extension technologies, virtual reality and the infoweb make a thousand year trip no more upsetting than a transatlantic flight (though I hope they give you lanky types more legroom) After all, any stellar system should have an adequate stock of elements- and if stocks are short, a little elementary transmutation should clear it up- it's only information about the organisation of it that's complicated. Oh, and analysing and imposing this information. And stopping people existing in too many places at the same time (interstellar copyright laws) And interference (fly, anyone?) Well, only minor details, anyway.