.. just love these folks.
www.space.com/17617-interstellar-spaceflight-100-year-starship.html
Hope it doesn't take a century.
www.space.com/17617-interstellar-spaceflight-100-year-starship.html
Hope it doesn't take a century.
the 100 year starship mission...
- Thread starter Botcho
- Start date
Open the link, first thing I see is an ad window atop the main window, offering "the Starship Enterprise Pizza Cutter" - which is as silly as you'd think. Don't you just love commercials?
Other than that, it's an interesting link.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Given present levels of funding, the persistence of uncertain economic conditions and the general level of World instability, I would say that 100 years is being extremely optimistic.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
FTA said:
I know some people about which I could say "the mere idea of them going might transform life on Earth."
As for hoping it doesn't take 100 years, I think that's the length of the mission, not the project timeline.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It's pie in the sky fantasy.
They aim to make a ship capable of travelling to Alpha Centauri in 100 years mission time.
Just a few of the problems that they think need to be solved first.
Working fusion power plant, anti-matter drive, some sort of warp drive - they are a bunch of Star Trek watching nutters
They aim to make a ship capable of travelling to Alpha Centauri in 100 years mission time.
Just a few of the problems that they think need to be solved first.
Working fusion power plant, anti-matter drive, some sort of warp drive - they are a bunch of Star Trek watching nutters
saundby
SOC-14 1K
Reminds me of a student AIAA branch I was in. We were trying to pick a project to work on as a group. Our university had an air-breather test cell and a rig for testing ramjets. I and several of the older students wanted to work on a ramjet that would operate in the low end of the hypersonic velocity range. We were also looking at the possibility of getting in with another university on a "Get-Away Special" on the Shuttle (which had flown twice at that point.)
A small but vocal and vociferous group of Star Trek fools (who made me embarrassed to ever having enjoyed the show) kept calling those ideas "trivial" and wanted to do something "really important" like build a warp drive. When I asked them exactly what they were going to be doing in the shop, they seemed to have the idea that if we started cutting metal somehow we'd walk into some sort of device that would bend space and time. To them, somehow it was just a matter of wanting to bad enough. They couldn't provide physics or design rules, but they were not going to let us work on something else.
It was totally crazy, as in insane crazy.
I resigned my position and went to the SAE group, where a much more mature group of students were working on real, interesting projects. The only time someone mentioned a warp drive was when they were trying to wind me up.
A small but vocal and vociferous group of Star Trek fools (who made me embarrassed to ever having enjoyed the show) kept calling those ideas "trivial" and wanted to do something "really important" like build a warp drive. When I asked them exactly what they were going to be doing in the shop, they seemed to have the idea that if we started cutting metal somehow we'd walk into some sort of device that would bend space and time. To them, somehow it was just a matter of wanting to bad enough. They couldn't provide physics or design rules, but they were not going to let us work on something else.
It was totally crazy, as in insane crazy.
I resigned my position and went to the SAE group, where a much more mature group of students were working on real, interesting projects. The only time someone mentioned a warp drive was when they were trying to wind me up.
madmike
SOC-12
It's pie in the sky fantasy.....they are a bunch of Star Trek watching nutters
Aviation went from the Kittyhawk Flyer to the space shuttle in 70 years.
By the 1930's aviation pioneers were testing viable jet engines for aircraft.
Who knows where it might all be in 100 years.
madmike
SOC-12
VonPickles
SOC-12
So what is our most practical and achievable option? To a non engineer type I would think an asteroid type ship the best, with our polymers and compounds today I'm sure we could seal one up and maintain pressure? And why don't rockets work? Isn't excelleration multiplied constantly?
In part because, in the real world, most asteroids small enough to be accelerated effectively and yet large enough to be a useful generation ship appear to be effectively piles of rubble.
In other words, they'd be more epoxy than rock.
