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Have the aliens landed?; Have the little green men made contact, or is it a figment of our imagination?
Topic Started: Mar 12 2010, 02:42 PM (5,487 Views)
Kamidio
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Kamidio
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Why is this topic dead?
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lamna
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Interstellar travel soon? We've been "15 years away" from going to Mars since the 80's.
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Those fifteen years is just for construction, once the actual rocket starts getting built we're good, humanity just loves procrastinating and putting it off.
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lamna
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But we still can't fly to the stars any time soon. Unless you were talking on a geological time scale for some reason.
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Holben
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Geology, perhaps? :lol:

I don't think we'll reach the nearest star by the turn of the century, so that's a long way off.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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seascorpion
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you never know, there could be a major technological boom, in fact there is going to be one its called the Information revolution- lots of new technology will be invented and improved that will dramaticly change everything from how we think to how you get to school in the morning. intersteller travel won't come about during it , but it will be a hell of a lot closer
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We could of gone to Mars in 40 years - if it wasn't for Obama.

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T.Neo
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We're not "15 years away" from landing people on Mars. We could have people on Mars right now, even a presence there for several years.

Interstellar travel is a whole different problem. Yes we have probes on escape trajectories from Sol, but they're not going to get anywhere in thousands of years (and they also haven't been targetted at a particular star). The energies you need to produce are just phenomenal, and the technologies you need to do that... antimatter... fusion even, are ones for the far future.

And the faster you want to go, the more energy you have to expend. So my slowpoke 1% lightspeed ship that takes 440 years to reach Alpha Centauri but uses nuclear fusion pulse propulsion is going to be far easier to build and require fewer technological advances than a Valkyrie antimatter-beam core ship that can go at 92% lightspeed and make the journey just under 2 years (as percieved by the crew).

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Information revolution- lots of new technology will be invented and improved that will dramaticly change everything from how we think to how you get to school in the morning. intersteller travel won't come about during it , but it will be a hell of a lot closer


Yeah... it's funny, technological revolutions don't work that way. Like how we have computers many times more powerful than the global computing power in 1945, whereas the average car of today doesn't really do all that much more than a car from the 40s.

What people often misunderstand is the information revolution is happening right now- and has been doing so ever since the 80s, or 70s perhaps, and will continue several decades into the future. The ability to store, compute and transmit information within a global network. Just as the agricultural and industrial revolutions before it.

EDIT:

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We could of gone to Mars in 40 years - if it wasn't for Obama.


Actually the new space plan opens up new avenues for Mars. Constellation was just about mulling around on the Moon, really. AFAIK there was no concrete Mars plan for Constellation and the Mars mission date was always "after 2030".
Edited by T.Neo, Aug 30 2010, 07:34 AM.
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Holben
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Aug 30 2010, 07:22 AM
We're not "15 years away" from landing people on Mars. We could have people on Mars right now, even a presence there for several years.

Interstellar travel is a whole different problem. Yes we have probes on escape trajectories from Sol, but they're not going to get anywhere in thousands of years (and they also haven't been targetted at a particular star). The energies you need to produce are just phenomenal, and the technologies you need to do that... antimatter... fusion even, are ones for the far future.

And the faster you want to go, the more energy you have to expend. So my slowpoke 1% lightspeed ship that takes 440 years to reach Alpha Centauri but uses nuclear fusion pulse propulsion is going to be far easier to build and require fewer technological advances than a Valkyrie antimatter-beam core ship that can go at 92% lightspeed and make the journey just under 2 years (as percieved by the crew).

Although the people we sent would most likely be irrepairably damaged, unfortunately. We're not ready yet, according to NASA.

With a fusion drive, like the Intersteallar Ramjet, theroetically about 6% of lightspeed could be achieved using theoretical bits 'n pieces but we can't really get them yet. Buissard collectors, for example.



Quote:
 
Quote:
 
Information revolution- lots of new technology will be invented and improved that will dramaticly change everything from how we think to how you get to school in the morning. intersteller travel won't come about during it , but it will be a hell of a lot closer


Yeah... it's funny, technological revolutions don't work that way. Like how we have computers many times more powerful than the global computing power in 1945, whereas the average car of today doesn't really do all that much more than a car from the 40s.

What people often misunderstand is the information revolution is happening right now- and has been doing so ever since the 80s, or 70s perhaps, and will continue several decades into the future. The ability to store, compute and transmit information within a global network. Just as the agricultural and industrial revolutions before it.


I'm afraid i have to agree with T. Neo. Regardless of what Kurzweil says, the information revolution will not reach a public-recognised new level for decades.
And technological change is a gradual process, although components may go forward in leaps and bounds. The science has to keep up.

Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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lamna
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I said 15 years away because that's the number a chap at NASA has given for years. If we really, really wanted to to go, we probably could in 3 years (or be ready to go next time Mars is close).

The fact is it's not economical to go to Mars, it's not cheap and their is no reason to other than pure science. Same with going to the stars, even after we get the technical ability to do it, we probably won't until there is some reason to.
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lamna
Aug 30 2010, 01:06 PM
I said 15 years away because that's the number a chap at NASA has given for years. If we really, really wanted to to go, we probably could in 3 years (or be ready to go next time Mars is close).

The fact is it's not economical to go to Mars, it's not cheap and their is no reason to other than pure science. Same with going to the stars, even after we get the technical ability to do it, we probably won't until there is some reason to.
There's also health issues yet to solve, and the issue of getting back.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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T.Neo
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Although the people we sent would most likely be irrepairably damaged, unfortunately. We're not ready yet, according to NASA.


I don't think so... radiation should not be a problem if you give your astronauts an emergency "storm shelter" to take shelter in during a solar flare.

The bigger problem is muscoskeletal and cardiovascular degeneration. It can be recovered from, but people need quite a while to recover- after months in space, people would run into problems doing strenuous work, even in the reduced Martian gravity. But concepts exist, like a VASIMR propelled spacecraft, that could make it to Mars in a month...

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With a fusion drive, like the Intersteallar Ramjet, theroetically about 6% of lightspeed could be achieved using theoretical bits 'n pieces but we can't really get them yet. Buissard collectors, for example.


Yeah, it might be possible to get to whatever speed using theoretical technologies, but we don't have them yet either. Even a fusion engine, much fabled in sci-fi, is not forseeable for a while. We haven't even achieved breakeven with a fusion reactor, let alone built an operational fusion rocket.

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Regardless of what Kurzweil says, the information revolution will not reach a public-recognised new level for decades.
And technological change is a gradual process, although components may go forward in leaps and bounds. The science has to keep up.


Yeah, and a good deal of what he "predicts" is fantasy, rather than being grounded in any real-world technological or scientific trend or law.

Quote:
 
The fact is it's not economical to go to Mars, it's not cheap and their is no reason to other than pure science. Same with going to the stars, even after we get the technical ability to do it, we probably won't until there is some reason to.


Yeah... unless you want to do something like colonise, but there are problems with that as well.

Or if spaceflight became cheaper, but even if it did so in any forseeable way, I find it hard to believe that it'd open up interplanetary exploration to the extent that some people would want it to.

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There's also health issues yet to solve, and the issue of getting back.


Getting back isn't so much of an issue as a set of challenges that are placed upon the mission architecture.

Of course, those challenges are more politically correct than leaving your crew on Mars with no return...
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seascorpion
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Well they don't need to get back. haven't you heard of the proposals of a one-way mission to Mars?
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Pando
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