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The Perpetual MEGA Space Thread
- Thread starter OscarMyers
- Start date
They'll just film it at Area 51 again like they did last time.
It's also not too sci fi to conjecture that the only sustainable perpetual economic growth model would require expansion of economic activity to the rest of the solar system.
The Expanse series, while often times awful writing, did some awesome theory and world building of what that future society would look like. Just requires the buy-in of the concept of unlimited fusion energy.
The Expanse series, while often times awful writing, did some awesome theory and world building of what that future society would look like. Just requires the buy-in of the concept of unlimited fusion energy.
Would we need need fusion energy in order to industrialize the Solar System? I mean we could make major advancements in solar power and use advanced conventional nuclear power and even hydrocarbon fuels from moons/planets that have them occurring naturally (ex. Jupiter's moon Titan). We could mine the materials and then bring them back to Earth.
I don’t think fusion is necessary. You can be as dirty as you want with nuke reactors in space, and there is about infinite solar power to harvest. But fusion sure wouldn’t hurt.
Considering we haven't invented fusion yet on Earth, pondering whether we'll put it into space seems a bit premature.
Sure, but Sonog said the concept of economic expansion into the rest of the Solar System requires buy-in of the concept of unlimited fusion energy. My point was we could well still achieve this even without fusion power.
There’s already a Wikipedia page, which is half the battle, although it does say “some technical hurdles need to be surpassed before it would be feasible.” That’s for the anti-matter drive. But the big brains are on it!
Fusion rocket - Wikipedia
Meh. We’ve been told that fusion power is “just around the corner” since the 80s, and given that current experimental setups are physically very large, the idea that we’re going to miniaturize this technology and put it in space seems a bit far fetched right now. Maybe in 100 years. Antimatter, as a power source, remains in the realm of science fiction. I’m familiar with the physics, but nobody is actively working on that. Again, maybe in100 years.There’s already a Wikipedia page, which is half the battle, although it does say “some technical hurdles need to be surpassed before it would be feasible.” That’s for the anti-matter drive. But the big brains are on it!
Fusion rocket - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
The big question to me is will we ever figure out faster-than-light travel. Provided we could create a spaceship that could get up to 99.9999% the speed of light, you could travel anywhere in the universe in (to you) about seven years: about 3.5 for acceleration (any faster would kill the occupants) then another 3.5 for deceleration. The majority of the trip itself would be very short to near instant depending on how close to light speed you reach, but for everyone back on Earth, if you're headed out say ten million light years, ten million years will have passed by on Earth when you arrive.
Then there's also the problem that at such speeds, if you so much as hit a few grains of dust, it's going to be like a nuke hitting your spacecraft. One proposed method is to keep the spacecraft in a "bubble" of space and then move the bubble itself through spacetime at faster than light (so the craft itself doesn't technically move and thus doesn't violate relativity). But this obviously has a wee few technical hurdles if it is even feasible.
I sometimes wonder if the design of the universe is some kind of cruel cosmic joke in that we get to see zillions of light years out, but are prohibited by the laws of the universe from traversing such distances. And even what we see is the past
Then there's also the problem that at such speeds, if you so much as hit a few grains of dust, it's going to be like a nuke hitting your spacecraft. One proposed method is to keep the spacecraft in a "bubble" of space and then move the bubble itself through spacetime at faster than light (so the craft itself doesn't technically move and thus doesn't violate relativity). But this obviously has a wee few technical hurdles if it is even feasible.
I sometimes wonder if the design of the universe is some kind of cruel cosmic joke in that we get to see zillions of light years out, but are prohibited by the laws of the universe from traversing such distances. And even what we see is the past
No
This violates special relativity.
Please show your work on this claim. Not sure that time dilation means you get to travel tens of billions of light years in just seven apparent years.
Proposed by science fiction writers... not engineers. You really need to put down the crack pipe on this stuff.
No, I said the universe of The Expanse requires the buy-in of unlimited fusion.
It makes all the logistics way easier. Need water on Mars? Easy, just ship it from Europa!
Respectfully, but you have no way of knowing this. If however you mean we won't anytime soon, than I agree.
How so? You are not violating special relativity or general relativity unless you claim to exceed the speed of light. But you can get very close to the speed of light, although it would take an enormous amount of energy.
At the speed of light, any distance you travel in the universe will (to you) be instant. So at near the speed of light, any such distance would be very short. Space/the universe shrinks/contracts in the direction of travel the faster you go, and time slows down relative to the surrounding universe. That is why you cannot exceed the speed of light. The surface level argument is that it takes infinite energy to reach light speed, but the real reason is that if you actually reach the speed of light, the entire universe (again in your direction of travel) contracts to a two-dimensional line and time stops (so technically, you can't exceed light speed because there literally is no such thing as far as we can tell). This contraction is known as the Lorentz contraction.
It also happens both ways. Let's say you are traveling in a spaceship past the Earth and Moon (between them) at near the speed of light. From your vantage point, you are normal sized and time passes by normally. However, to you, the surrounding universe is contracted. The Earth and the Moon will both look shorter in length (though not height), like squished ovals. BUT, due to relativity, in which technically no object is at absolute rest or speed, while to YOU you're traveling at near the speed of light and the Earth and Moon are not, from the perspective of the Earth and Moon and surrounding universe, it could be said that THEY are all traveling at near the speed of light past YOU who is not. So from the vantage point of people on Earth or the Moon, your spaceship will look a lot shorter than it is to you. Maybe to you it is the size of a nuclear submarine but to them maybe it looks four feet long. This is because while you are traveling through the universe at near light speed, the universe is thus traveling past you, who also represents a small bubble of universe, at near light speed. So the effect happens both ways.
This is of course counterintuitive, common sense says if the Earth and Moon are squeezed to you, then if anything you should look elongated to them. But remember relativity and quantum mechanics both don't make logical sense. It happens because light moves at the same speed to all of the universe no matter what speed or direction.
Nope, by some physicists and engineers. Look up Miguel Alcubierre, Harold White, and Erik Lentz. None of these guys claim such a drive is technically feasible anytime soon, but have studied the physics on it. The (very basic) gist of it is that nothing stops spacetime itself from traveling faster than light. The universe is expanding faster than light. But you cannot travel faster than light within spacetime. If somehow you could create a bubble of spacetime around your spacecraft and move that through the surrounding spacetime, if might allow for FTL travel.
Such research doesn't receive much funding for obvious reasons, but the only way physics can really advance is by scratching at the limits of our understanding. If you want to see a really vicious war among physicists, look into the debate over whether string theory is real physics or just fancy math.
The problem is less with the long distances and more with our short lifespans.