When will we become Galactic?

[Lursa]

Yes, it just needed some machine that does not exist.

Might as well claim Star Trek did it with "Warp Drive".

It's called science fiction. He based his technology on current scientific principles possibly being implemented in the future.

 

[psikeyhackr]

You are wrong about "planned obsolescence". It doesn't need to planned. Technology is advancing so fast because of microcomputers that recycling is the only answer. Ford is partnering in a lithium battery recycle plant that claims it can reuse 95% of the rare earths and metals.

Everything about cars is not and has not been "high technology".

Enough was known about aerodynamics to make 400 mph fighter planes of WWII. We have not needed to redesign car bodies every year. Jeep moved the fuel gauge from the left side of the steering column to the right side in the Grand Cherokee for 2010 vs 2011. So the entire dashboard panel had to be a different part.

Why do we need all of the different shapes of lights?

Our nitwit economists do not report the annual depreciation of durable consumer trash regardless of whether or not there is PO. But when we replace the junk it gets added to GDP.
When do they mention NDP?

 

[Glitch]

And then there this:

DARPA researchers accidentally discovered Space-Time warp bubble for the very first time - SpaceNews

Dr. Harold

spacexmania.com

What they aren't telling you is the amount of energy required to form that Warp Bubble. Alcubierre's equations required the mass of Jupiter converted 100% into pure energy (as in E=mc^2) in order to make his warp bubble. Dr. White managed to reduce the amount of energy required that to the mass of Neptune. Both also require "exotic" energy which nobody has ever defined.

So unless you intend to consume gas giants and invent a whole new form of energy to get beyond the solar system, I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

 

[Slartibartfast]

I suspect its more likely that some form of AI that we come up with travels among the stars or perhaps some hybrid of human and technology. Its probably the only way to overcome the vast amounts of time required.

 

[Glitch]

I suspect its more likely that some form of AI that we come up with travels among the stars or perhaps some hybrid of human and technology. Its probably the only way to overcome the vast amounts of time required.

Some form of advanced robotics does seem to be the most likely way we will ever leave this solar system. Like Voyager, but more sophisticated.

Space is a very hostile place for biology. Our biggest hurdle for the last 48 years, and the reason we have never left low-Earth orbit since 1973, has been due to solar and cosmic radiation. If the goal is to return the astronauts back to Earth alive, a great deal more effort needs to be made in protecting them from radiation, or we are not going anywhere with manned-missions.

We might be able to get away with a quick 3 or 4 day trip to the moon, but even that is risky. It only takes 18 to 20 hours for a CME to reach Earth and the moon. If the astronauts were on the moon at the time of a CME directed toward Earth, they would never make it home alive. If we ever want to put a man on Mars we will need to figure out how to solve this radiation problem.

 

[eohrnberger]

Some form of advanced robotics does seem to be the most likely way we will ever leave this solar system. Like Voyager, but more sophisticated.

Space is a very hostile place for biology. Our biggest hurdle for the last 48 years, and the reason we have never left low-Earth orbit since 1973, has been due to solar and cosmic radiation. If the goal is to return the astronauts back to Earth alive, a great deal more effort needs to be made in protecting them from radiation, or we are not going anywhere with manned-missions.

We might be able to get away with a quick 3 or 4 day trip to the moon, but even that is risky. It only takes 18 to 20 hours for a CME to reach Earth and the moon. If the astronauts were on the moon at the time of a CME directed toward Earth, they would never make it home alive. If we ever want to put a man on Mars we will need to figure out how to solve this radiation problem.

Don't disagree with any of your post here.

If it takes 100's or years for the AI bot to get there, and 100's years for any of the communications to get back, what's the point?

 

[gboisjo]

What were our limitations 1,000 years ago?
10,000 years ago?
But what will they be 100, 1000 & 10,000 years from now?

Trust me, we won't make it that long, mother nature has about had it with us. Cat 5 storms, tornadoes in Kentucky and covid are just the first salvo.

 

[gboisjo]

Some form of advanced robotics does seem to be the most likely way we will ever leave this solar system. Like Voyager, but more sophisticated.

Space is a very hostile place for biology. Our biggest hurdle for the last 48 years, and the reason we have never left low-Earth orbit since 1973, has been due to solar and cosmic radiation. If the goal is to return the astronauts back to Earth alive, a great deal more effort needs to be made in protecting them from radiation, or we are not going anywhere with manned-missions.

We might be able to get away with a quick 3 or 4 day trip to the moon, but even that is risky. It only takes 18 to 20 hours for a CME to reach Earth and the moon. If the astronauts were on the moon at the time of a CME directed toward Earth, they would never make it home alive. If we ever want to put a man on Mars we will need to figure out how to solve this radiation problem.

The perils of cosmic radiation will make any manned mission to Mars extremely challenging. Yet I don't seem to hear much discussion about the radiation problem from NASA. What I do hear is a manned spacecraft is scheduled to leave Earth as early as 2033.

Why send people to Mars anyways, its a dead planet, a rock. What I hear is this ..its a gateway to Jupiter's and Saturn's moons.

 

[Glitch]

Don't disagree with any of your post here.

If it takes 100's or years for the AI bot to get there, and 100's years for any of the communications to get back, what's the point?

Unless we are 100's of light-years away, it will not take 100's of years for communications to get back to us. It may take awhile to get to someplace like Proxima Centauri, but once we arrive it will only take 4.2 years to transmit the information back to Earth. Radio waves move at the speed of light. We just need a big enough transmitter and the ability to receive communications from light-years away.

 

[Glitch]

The perils of cosmic radiation will make any manned mission to Mars extremely challenging. Yet I don't seem to hear much discussion about the radiation problem from NASA. What I do hear is a manned spacecraft is scheduled to leave Earth as early as 2033.

Why send people to Mars anyways, its a dead planet, a rock. What I hear is this ..its a gateway to Jupiter's and Saturn's moons.

Both MIT and Purdue University are both working on the problem. MIT is already testing an EM shield to artificially create a field similar to Earth's Van Allen Belt. They currently have tests running on the ISS. They said they should have something by 2025. Purdue University is working on something completely difference, but has not mentioned whether they will have anything available in the near future.

It isn't just the travel time to and from Mars we need to be concerned about, but also while the astronauts are on Mars. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a magnetosphere to protect the astronauts. They will need some kind of radiation shield, or they can move a few meters under Mars' surface.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Trust me, we won't make it that long, mother nature has about had it with us. Cat 5 storms, tornadoes in Kentucky and covid are just the first salvo.

The population could go down to 500 million without risk of extinction.

 

[eohrnberger]

Unless we are 100's of light-years away, it will not take 100's of years for communications to get back to us. It may take awhile to get to someplace like Proxima Centauri, but once we arrive it will only take 4.2 years to transmit the information back to Earth. Radio waves move at the speed of light. We just need a big enough transmitter and the ability to receive communications from light-years away.

Fair enough, but wasn't 10's or 100's of light years away what was under discussion? Maybe not. Oh well.

Good point about a powerful enough and focused enough transmitter to 'phone home' in order to be reliable enough to receive the data. Makes me wonder how NASA has maintained contact, or at least still receiving date from, with the Voyager probes.

 

[gboisjo]

The population could go down to 500 million without risk of extinction.

And if it does maybe we'll wake up and make some different choices going forward.

 

[gboisjo]

As it stands now a six-month stay on the International Space Station exposes an astronaut to between 50 and 120 mSv of radiation. The risk of cancer caused by ionizing radiation is well documented at radiation doses beginning at 100 mSv and above. For some perspective a chest x-ray exposes the patient to about 0.1 mSv.

 

[Deuce]

Carl Sagan managed to come up with something fairly "possible" that didnt break basic physics.

The Alcubierre "Warp Drive" doesn't "break physics" either, but it's in the same boat as wormholes. You can do math in a weird way and come up with these results, but there's no actual indication they correspond to a real phenomenon. In the case of the "warp drive," it's the existence of matter with a negative mass. Plugging negative numbers into math satisfies relativity, but there's absolutely no reason to believe at this point that "negative mass" is a real concept.

 

[Deuce]

I suspect its more likely that some form of AI that we come up with travels among the stars or perhaps some hybrid of human and technology. Its probably the only way to overcome the vast amounts of time required.

The other problem is that it's hard to imagine a complex piece of machinery that functions properly for literally thousands of years entirely without external support.

 

[Cordelier]

The Alcubierre "Warp Drive" doesn't "break physics" either, but it's in the same boat as wormholes. You can do math in a weird way and come up with these results, but there's no actual indication they correspond to a real phenomenon. In the case of the "warp drive," it's the existence of matter with a negative mass. Plugging negative numbers into math satisfies relativity, but there's absolutely no reason to believe at this point that "negative mass" is a real concept.

Do you acknowledge that time dilation is a real concept?

 

[Deuce]

As it stands now a six-month stay on the International Space Station exposes an astronaut to between 50 and 120 mSv of radiation. The risk of cancer caused by ionizing radiation is well documented at radiation doses beginning at 100 mSv and above. For some perspective a chest x-ray exposes the patient to about 0.1 mSv.

Elevated radiation exposure is a concern but that's a problem that engineering can solve.

 

[Deuce]

Do you acknowledge that time dilation is a real concept?

Of course. But the dilation we observe is a result of positive mass. (or high velocity)

Negative mass could hypothetically result in FTL travel due to the way the relativity equations work out... but, again, we have no actual reason to believe "negative mass" is a meaningful concept.

 

[Cordelier]

Of course. But the dilation we observe is a result of positive mass. (or high velocity)

Negative mass could hypothetically result in FTL travel due to the way the relativity equations work out... but, again, we have no actual reason to believe "negative mass" is a meaningful concept.

It is no more or less a meaningful concept than "negative time". For argument's sake, if faster than light travel were possible, time would slow down as we approached the speed of light. It would stop completely at light speed. But above that? Hypothetically, it would be negative.

Why would it be difficult to assume that's where your negative mass is?

If we were two-dimensional beings, how do you think we'd perceive rain? The same way a three-dimensional being perceives time. We just go along minding our own business... and *bam* all of a sudden stuff happens.

 

[gboisjo]

Elevated radiation exposure is a concern but that's a problem that engineering can solve.

At present it hasn't been solved, astronauts spending time at the International Space Station are at risk of radiation side effects.

 

[Deuce]

It is no more or less a meaningful concept than "negative time".

Correct. You can write down the numbers on a chalkboard, that doesn't mean they actually correspond to a real phenomenon.

For argument's sake, if faster than light travel were possible, time would slow down as we approached the speed of light. It would stop completely at light speed. But above that? Hypothetically, it would be negative.

Correct, that's what the chalkboard says. However, there is no "above" the speed of light for an object of positive mass. You cannot accelerate an object with positive, non-zero mass to the speed of light because that would require infinite thrust.

Why would it be difficult to assume that's where your negative mass is?

Where? This is a velocity, not a location.

If we were two-dimensional beings, how do you think we'd perceive rain? The same way a three-dimensional being perceives time. We just go along minding our own business... and *bam* all of a sudden stuff happens.

Again, this is chalkboard talk. We aren't two-dimensional beings and two-dimensional objects, as far as we can tell, do not actually exist. You're wildly misunderstanding what I am saying:

The physics equations work out to FTL if you use negative mass and energy. (and immense amounts of it, to boot) However, we have no actual observation that suggests negative mass actually exists, or that it can exist. Even calling this "theoretical" is too generous, it's purely speculative. Gather some negative mass into a bucket and we'll be on to something.

 

[Noodlegawd]

Question: How long until Homo Sapiens develop the technology to launch us out of our solar system and into the Milky Way?

Providing we don't become victims of some worldwide apocalypse or we just wipe ourselves out with our own brazen stupidity.

Or go to bed on Earth and awake on Planet Dystopia to a government more concerned with advancing itself than technology.

Authoritarians have no use for technology that has no application to government growth, power and control over the masses.

Probably when "we" are no longer "homo sapiens."

 

[Cordelier]

Correct. You can write down the numbers on a chalkboard, that doesn't mean they actually correspond to a real phenomenon.


Correct, that's what the chalkboard says. However, there is no "above" the speed of light for an object of positive mass. You cannot accelerate an object with positive, non-zero mass to the speed of light because that would require infinite thrust.


Where? This is a velocity, not a location.



Again, this is chalkboard talk. We aren't two-dimensional beings and two-dimensional objects, as far as we can tell, do not actually exist. You're wildly misunderstanding what I am saying:

The physics equations work out to FTL if you use negative mass and energy. (and immense amounts of it, to boot) However, we have no actual observation that suggests negative mass actually exists, or that it can exist. Even calling this "theoretical" is too generous, it's purely speculative. Gather some negative mass into a bucket and we'll be on to something.

I think you need to get away from the whole "thrust" idea. Whatever engineering goes into any prospective interstellar craft, it isn't going to involve specific impulse. It's going to have use some form of manipulation of spacetime. Warping, Wormholes or whatever else.... the only thing we can know for sure is that it isn't going to involve thrust. Where we are now is akin to Henry the Navigator talking about a voyage to the Moon. There's obviously going to be a lot of "chalkboard talk".

Don't forget that a necessary component of velocity is a frame of reference to space and time. as you point out, we're all aware of three dimensional Euclidean space.... all I'm pointing out is that time itself is a fourth dimension of which we are only dimly aware... as my hypothetical 2-D beings are only dimly aware of the vertical dimension. If you can achieve a velocity where negative mass comes into play, it seems pretty obvious to me that you've left the bounds of Euclidean space and have entered the "time" side of spacetime.

 

[Deuce]

If you can achieve a velocity where negative mass comes into play, it seems pretty obvious to me that you've left the bounds of Euclidean space and have entered the "time" side of spacetime.

This entire sentence, from a physics perspective, is just gibberish. Translated, it's "if you can do magic, magic will happen." Yes I suppose that's true. I was pointing out problems with the hypothetical Alcubierre "warp drive" for achieving faster than light travel. It depends on the existence and utilization of matter with a negative mass. We have never observed matter with a negative mass and do not have even a hypothetical framework for creating, finding, or manipulating it. And your response seems to be... "if you've achieved faster than light travel.." Yeah, if you handwave and say the problem has already been solved, then the problem is solved.

"Time" side of spacetime. What a wild ass sentence fragment.