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Interstellar Travel; Your thoughts on starships
Topic Started: Apr 26 2009, 09:32 PM (3,301 Views)
Xenophile
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Formerly known as alienboy.
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Many science fiction stories and movies have starships, but is interstellar travel really possible? The travel between the stars would be a great asset for humanity and would bring about a new chapter in human life although many problems block us from building a star ship.

Main Problems:

Distances: The distances between stars are so incredibly vast. A starship traveling at a speed of 10% of the speed of light to a star 4 lightyears away would take 40 years to get to the star and 40 years to come home. Any redneck knows that 80 years is a long amount of time.

The Effects on Human Health: Humans did not evolve in a zero gravity environment. The effects of being weightless for extended periods of time are everything from muscle degeneration to heart faliure. A method of creating artificial gravity such as centripical force or a way to genectically enginear a human to combat these effects is required for extended periods of time in space. We also do not know of what the effects of long travel will have on mental health.

Radiation and Micrometeorites: Radiation has a negitive effect on most living organisms ( exept for extreamophiles) and machinary. Micrometeorites can critically damage a space craft. Some form of advanced sheiding will be needed in order to protect its spacecraft and crew.

Cost: This is a no-brainer.

Methods of travel:

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion:
Pro: We currently have the technology.
Cons: Nuclear pulse propulsion can only propel a spacecraft at 10-20% of light.
No known material can withstand a nuclear blast.

Interstellar Ramjets:
Pro: A Ramjet with a magnetic scoop would theroretically never run ou of fuel.
Con: Again, this design is not very fast.

A Solar or Laser Sail:
Pro: Fast travel
Con: The technology used for this is theroretical.

Matter/Antimater Travel:
Pro: This can accelarate a craft at up to 90% of the speed of light.
Con: We can only make very small amounts of antimater.

Types of Ships:

Generation Ships: A generation ship holds a small population of people who live their entire lives on the ship. Although the original crew may not reach the destination, their descendants will.

Sleeper Ships: Sleeper Ships hold a crew in suspended animation similar to the ship in Alien.

What do you think about Interstellar Travel?
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lamna
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All but impossible for the foreseeable future. I doubt we will get to another star worth visiting in 2000 years.
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Giant Blue Anteater
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Don't forget, there are also embryonic spaceships, which carry zygotes of what will become human colonists, which are to be raised by robots. This will be less costly than maintaining sleeping humans, and even less than living, walking humans in a generation ship. It will be the best method of colonizing worlds

Interstellar travel is certainly possible, but will take a very long time. Traveling from Mars to a planet in Alpha Centauri in the same way one would travel from America to Australia is too time-costly to be practical.

The problem with generation ships would be the possibility of on-board anarchy. There could be a serious rebellion that would wreck entire things in the ship, thus destroying the whole population in the ship.
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ATEK Azul
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i am not sure if this will ever be possible.

i am pretty sure this will require many techniques in combination maybe some sort of anitmatter and matter based nuclear fusion with magnetic containment that would continualy force most of the energy back onto itself too continue the process with the heat and radiation as the exoast that propels the ship.
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lamna
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Well to prevent anarchy you would need some kind of symbol for the people to unite behind outside of politics, something people to cling to, and not music, or cloth or a document. A personification of the people of that ship.

I have no idea what that would be of course.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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Xenophile
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Is it really ethical to raise embryos into humans by robots? Serrious mental health problems could develop.
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You are just using a a frozen zygote, or using frozen sperm and ova stored on the ship to create zygotes with, or use a biosequencer to convert digitally-stored DNA into actual DNA, and create zygotes, and then growing them in artificial uteri that perfectly imitate their biological counterparts.

Now, social problems could develop in a society raised by machines, but I'm sure they will be overcome once human leaders take over.
Edited by Giant Blue Anteater, Apr 27 2009, 08:56 PM.
Ichthyostega

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cdk007
 
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Xenophile
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Well the idea of having an embryotic spacecraft is that the only humans on board would be the zygotes. There would be no human leaders until they develop.
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lamna
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The only way we could do this with our current technology is with something like project Orion.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi

We as a species have rapidly come to be able to manipulate more matter with less energy over the past fifty years than at any other time in history. At this rate it will only be a matter of a few millennium before we can manipulate the fabric of reality itself with almost no energy. But who knows what the future holds? We may someday even leave our world to find that we are the only star system left; that all the other stars are just light remnants of what once existed but no longer does.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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Viridian
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Something to remember about interstellar travel is that as you near lightspeed you get closer to tau zero, which means that time dilation effects become more relevant. The closer you can get to c, the slower time aboard your spacecraft will flow, so the shorter the apparent travel time for anyone onboard.

So, from an earthdweller's perspective a ship might take a little over 50 years to travel to a star 50 light-years away, but for the people on board, this trip would only take a few months, perhaps weeks.

Of course, our current level of technology isn't quite at this stage, but there may be methods discovered within the next 100 years that could be used to accelerate ships to relativistic speeds. These methods are likely to me fairly rudimentary to begin with... and we'll probably end up with a few catastrophic accidents and such before we manage to iron out the wrinkles...
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lamna
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Quote:
 
Is it really ethical to raise embryos into humans by robots? Serrious mental health problems could develop.


Is it really insanity if everyone is like that?

Besides think of the improvements you could make to people and societies with a complete blank slate.

That is a interesting idea for a novel, humans return from the stars to earth with a working government that fails with "contaminated" humans. If it's communism you could call it Redshift.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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Well the idea of having an embryotic spacecraft is that the only humans on board would be the zygotes. There would be no human leaders until they develop.


Well the society will have to mature for a few generations and then completely wean off robotic leadership and graduate to human leadership.
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cdk007
 
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lamna
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Why wean off it?
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Humans could get attached to their machine leaders more than humans, theoretically of course.
Ichthyostega

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cdk007
 
Intelligence is awareness of ignorance. Stupidity is ignorance of ignorance. Think about it.
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