The Limitations of Intergalactic Travel

[Lsos]

On the subject of colonising off Earth we have the collection of troubles I outlined that are nothing to do with propulsion (i.e establishing a biosphere, industry, society) etc. There is a perception I regularly come across that all we need to live in space is better rocketry, but there's so much more left to do!

Yes this is a problem that I didn't even want to touch. We can't seem get along on the whole planet, and have been (are?) not far from destroying the entire thing. A colony spaceship? No...I don't see any solution except figuring out how to kill everyone on board and reviving them at the destination.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I think you should be taking into account just how much water you would need in order to get hold of enough Deuterium / Tritium for all this Fusion Fuel. It may be fun to talk of 'concentrated' fuel for a starship but is it actually available? Have you considered the practicalities?

 

[qraal]

I think you should be taking into account just how much water you would need in order to get hold of enough Deuterium / Tritium for all this Fusion Fuel. It may be fun to talk of 'concentrated' fuel for a starship but is it actually available? Have you considered the practicalities?

Deuterium is being separated in bulk from bottled water in China because of the supposed health benefits of depleted water. Off-world there are several sources with higher H/D ratios than Earth - comets, Mars, probably the Moon too. Tritium is next to useless as a starship fuel but small amounts might be worthwhile to act as a trigger, but it's difficult to make and store. Helium-3 would be a good fuel if it were more available, but mining the Gas Giants is about the only way to access it, unless a clever way of capturing it from the Solar Wind can be figured out. The Moon is often touted as a source, but a lot of regolith would need to be baked to get small amounts.

So, yes, the practicalities are being considered by at least some starship designers.

 

[sophiecentaur]

What has the drinks industry in China got to do with the availability of deuterium? Deuterium constitutes about 0.03% of naturally occurring Hydrogen (afaik).
The overheads for producing enough fuel by extraction would be a bit high,no? And the other sources are a bit speculative too.

I haven't yet heard of a proposal for serious inter-stellar propulsion that would not cost an awful lot of money. I seem to the only one who is questioning who will be prepared to spend / waste their hard earned Earthbound income (in the form of a tax or a 'charity donation') to pay for some enthusiastic group to set off on one of these one-way expeditions. I haven't heard of a fund to send holidaymakers up on the Virgin ship because, not surprisingly, people want to spend their own money on themselves unless given a pretty damned good reason.
What would be the reason that you could give them? Survival of the species, general interest, a rosy glow? I should have thought that a technology capable of sending starships all over the place would be be capable of improving many more lives on projects that would get more votes. Or are we suggesting that this could be achieved under a totalitarian regime?

This is, of course, a fascinating discussion topic but, really chaps, we can't be serious about it can we?

 

[qraal]

SophieCentaur
I understand your skepticism, but I am quite serious about it. One direct benefit is the simple fact that what can power starships can equally power cities on Earth. That would pay for starships many times over if they could be propelled by relatively abundant fuels.

Deuterium is one option which isn't excessively rare. Consider a probe needing ~1,000 tons of it. By mass deuterium is about 1/27,000th of water, thus processing ~27,000,000,000 litres is enough to tank up the probe. That might sound like a lot, but how many billions of litres of water are drunk in China per year? We're talking 0.027 cubic kilometres. That sounds like a lot less doesn't it? There's 1.35 billion cubic kilometres of ocean on Earth alone.

The Moon is estimated to have at least ~600 million tons of water in a few small polar craters, probably enriched in deuterium like it is in comets and any environment that light hydrogen can be preferentially lost from. I'd hazard there's at least ~1 million tons of deuterium available on the Moon.

 

[Wonderbread]

the Limitations of Intergalactic Travel

This is a new design for Gyroscopic Inductance circuit for DC current
production using the gyroscope itself as the induction circuit for
long term space flight. It will produce Direct current from a
gyroscope functioning in a zero gravitational field as an inductance
circuit. The two non-permeable gimbals armatures rotate around a
permanent inner magnet 180 degrees out of phase from one another
giving 360 degrees of a full rotation that allow a 100% duty cycle
when precession occurs. A north and south alignment on the spherical
inner permanent magnet rotates around the central centrifugal spin
axis witch doubles as a rotor flywheel. I have been working on the
proto type for 15 years now utilizing nano carbon fiber as the coils
in the inductor circuit; they are imbedded into the gyros non-
permeable gimbals in a zigzag pattern un-like the coils in an
induction circuit. Magnetic couplers between the gyroscopes parts
reduce further fatigue on the motor parts and reduce friction. There
are strategically placed permeable alloys in the gimbal armatures when
pulsed with DC current create magnetic field areas that interact with
the rotor for start, stop and homing of the gimbals. if gravitational
interference occurs in space flight a dc pulsed circuit 90 degrees
adjacent from the rotor flywheel controlled with small pulses of
current to control initial spin and braking on the central rotor while
motor functions are restored as needed, This design has several viable
applications for aro space industry. If solar panel deployment fails
or damages to solar panels this is a solid backup for running the
system operations of satellites and communication and instrumentation,
imaging instrumentation devices for space flight

 

[sophiecentaur]

SophieCentaur

. .
Deuterium is one option which isn't excessively rare. Consider a probe needing ~1,000 tons of it. By mass deuterium is about 1/27,000th of water, thus processing ~27,000,000,000 litres is enough to tank up the probe. That might sound like a lot, but how many billions of litres of water are drunk in China per year? We're talking 0.027 cubic kilometres. That sounds like a lot less doesn't it? There's 1.35 billion cubic kilometres of ocean on Earth alone.

. . . ..

How many of the billions of litres consumed in China are, at present, being treated for deuterium removal and how much does the process cost? My point is that the numbers involved in these proposals are all massive and the associated cost is proportionally high. I, personally, can't envisage a society or technology in which the costs will not be outrageous. Hence I say that people will just not be prepared to pay for someone else's space flight. Where is the possible advantage in it?
I have quite a pessimistic view of the future, in fact. The basics of society revolve around small, 'tribal' grouping and an inverse power law of concern for one's fellow creatures applies.
Humans are quite incapable of getting this planet sorted out, even, so I can't think how anyone could think that they have any chance or even inclination to undertake any such project with its inevitable timescale of hundreds of years and the need for unbelievable levels of cooperation.
Perhaps, in a nightmare future society, run by advanced computers, which could conceivably not have the short-termism that humans exhibit, such projects could be 'inflicted' on their human charges. But why would they need humans any more."I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" would be the outcome. . . . . . .

 

[Ryan_m_b]

How many of the billions of litres consumed in China are, at present, being treated for deuterium removal and how much does the process cost? My point is that the numbers involved in these proposals are all massive and the associated cost is proportionally high. I, personally, can't envisage a society or technology in which the costs will not be outrageous. Hence I say that people will just not be prepared to pay for someone else's space flight. Where is the possible advantage in it?
I have quite a pessimistic view of the future, in fact. The basics of society revolve around small, 'tribal' grouping and an inverse power law of concern for one's fellow creatures applies.
Humans are quite incapable of getting this planet sorted out, even, so I can't think how anyone could think that they have any chance or even inclination to undertake any such project with its inevitable timescale of hundreds of years and the need for unbelievable levels of cooperation.
Perhaps, in a nightmare future society, run by advanced computers, which could conceivably not have the short-termism that humans exhibit, such projects could be 'inflicted' on their human charges. But why would they need humans any more."I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" would be the outcome. . . . . . .

I agree. The expense of such a project is massively prohibitive and doesn't bring anything back. The only argument for why such a thing is an investment that I can see is if we crack the problems of building and maintaining a biosphere we will be able to maintain the one we have on Earth a lot better.

As for the rest any technology needed for interplanetary space travel or space colonisation would be a huge investment but even if we did spend that much money it would have far better applications at the bottom of the gravity well.

 

[Lsos]

I'm not sure about deuterium production, but it sure doesn't sound any more difficult than mining and then enriching Uranium. I never did the cost analysis but sending rockets into space is not all that cheap either, and it's very possible that using deuterium as a fuel would make economic sense, if nothing else.

You're probably right though in thinking that people won't go for spending a large portion of the GDP on a spaceship just for the hell of it. There usually needs to be some kind of spark, such as WWII for making the atom bomb, or the Cold War for going to the moon. The trigger might be societal or it might be something extraterrestrial, such as huge asteroid which eventually WILL come, if we can wait long enough. For something like that, building a risky, costly, radiation-spewing spacehip might be the only option.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The trigger might be societal or it might be something extraterrestrial, such as huge asteroid which eventually WILL come, if we can wait long enough. For something like that, building a risky, costly, radiation-spewing spacehip might be the only option.

This is one of the biggest fallacies that the subject of space colonisation receives (no offense intended Lsos! I've stated this before too ). If we ever need to leave Earth because it is about to become uninhabitable then we are going to need some sort of space based colony (perhaps in orbit or somewhere else in the system) and this colony is going to require us to;

Create a sustainable biosphere for the ship
--We have very little idea how complex ecologies work here on Earth let alone how to recreate one that is immune from ecological disaster.

Create an environment capable of growing food
--Same problem as above yet with the added problem of a ship biosphere being a small closed system. In addition a wide diversity of foods combined with the appropriate bacteria to fill up our guts (which contain 1kg of vital gut flora).

Pack a fully capable industrial system into a colony ship
--Many industrial complexes run over tens of km, add up all the wide variety of industries across the world plus the infrastructure and put it all in one place. In addition you need to redesign all of it to have near 100% recyclable capability.

Pack a fully capable work force
--In today's high-tech and diverse society there are literally 10s-100s of thousands of different specialities. Provide enough people in the profession to staff each job plus enough to train the next generation and the total number of people in the workforce? You're looking at a figure measured in the 10s-100s of millions of people.

Now assuming that a freakish world wide effort pours most of the world's GDP into the project and comes up with a complete toolkit of these technologies (never mind the industrial needs). Why would we use it for a space rocket? Why would we not just fix the biosphere?

If the disaster is an asteroid or something would it not be easier to deflect it? If not (for some reason) why not just put backup habitats in orbit that can come down and terraform the Earth using these technologies? Rather than build fleets of rockets to boost a space habitat bit by bit to orbit why not build domed cities here or under ground? No bottleneck of a gravity well there.

I know it sounds pedantic but I cannot think of any solution to a disaster that would require us to star trek across the universe.

 

[sophiecentaur]

If we want (or are forced to find) somewhere else to live then the most economical alternative to Earth would surely be another structure in orbit around the Sun.
@ryan m b
I totally agree that the problem of dealing with a possible collision would be far better solved (cheaper and shorter timescale) by deflecting the threat than by launching a lifeboat.

I think the main problem that the 'enthusiasts' have is the naive picture that they have of a Star Wars / Star Trek Universe in which we can all hop from place to place (and back again) within some sort of galactic community and in the same sort of timescale that Earthly travel takes place. What they are really proposing is something far more radical than the early colonisation of the New World from Europe. There is no chance of return to Earth. There is no community. There would be no knowledge of how the experiment had fared, except to later generations. There would be no benefit for the people remaining on Earth. S why propose it?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

If we want (or are forced to find) somewhere else to live then the most economical alternative to Earth would surely be another structure in orbit around the Sun.
@ryan m b
I totally agree that the problem of dealing with a possible collision would be far better solved (cheaper and shorter timescale) by deflecting the threat than by launching a lifeboat.

I think the main problem that the 'enthusiasts' have is the naive picture that they have of a Star Wars / Star Trek Universe in which we can all hop from place to place (and back again) within some sort of galactic community and in the same sort of timescale that Earthly travel takes place. What they are really proposing is something far more radical than the early colonisation of the New World from Europe. There is no chance of return to Earth. There is no community. There would be no knowledge of how the experiment had fared, except to later generations. There would be no benefit for the people remaining on Earth. S why propose it?

Absolutely. People like to apply analogies to these things compared to the colonial times. The reality is colonial travel was orders of magnitude easier; a wooden boat cost nothing to a nation, society's labour force wasn't as specialised and when they got where they were going there was local resources to easily exploit and a habitable ecosystem.

Star trek et al have confused the issue with this whole concept of a space "ship". For manned interplanetary travel one day we may build a vehicle that can take a small group of astronauts for a few months but anything taking colonists (or going interstellar) would be the equivalent of rolling up a New York into a cylinder and lobbing it through space.

And as I've said, any technology developed that allows us to build space colonies could be better used on Earth, for nearly any reason normally given to space.

 

[Lsos]

If the disaster is an asteroid or something would it not be easier to deflect it? If not (for some reason) why not just put backup habitats in orbit that can come down and terraform the Earth using these technologies? Rather than build fleets of rockets to boost a space habitat bit by bit to orbit why not build domed cities here or under ground? No bottleneck of a gravity well there.

I should have been more clear...this is exactly what I had in mind, deflecting the asteroid :). For a reasonably sized space-mountain, nuclear propulsion would probably be the best, if not only shot at deflecting it.

This would mobilize us to build the thing. Once (if) we succeeded at deflecting the rock, the technology would already have been tested and proven, at which point pursuing it further for exploration or to show up the Chinese or the Americans or whatever would make more sense.

But yeah, I’m pretty sure if we all of sudden were faced with having to build a space-ark and leaving the earth….we’d be fu*ed.

 

[Kenneth w]

Seems to me that in the case of travel to andromeda, to travel there in 3 years would entail traveling at millions of times c. Andromeda is over 2,000,000lys away.

 

[Lsos]

Seems to me that in the case of travel to andromeda, to travel there in 3 years would entail traveling at millions of times c. Andromeda is over 2,000,000lys away.

Doesn't seem any more impossible than traveling at 1x c :)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Seems to me that in the case of travel to andromeda, to travel there in 3 years would entail traveling at millions of times c. Andromeda is over 2,000,000lys away.

If you were traveling at (roughly) .9999999999999999c then you would cross the distance in 2-4 years. Of course to someone back on Earth 2,000,000 years would have passed.

And Kenneth, it is impossible for objects with mass to travel faster than light.

 

[qraal]

If you were traveling at (roughly) .9999999999999999c then you would cross the distance in 2-4 years. Of course to someone back on Earth 2,000,000 years would have passed.

And Kenneth, it is impossible for objects with mass to travel faster than light.

More like 0.999999999998875 c, but what's a few 999s between friends. The only problem is that high gamma-factors need high accelerations to be reached in a short amount of tau-time (ship time), so flying to Andromeda (2.55 million ly at last count) in 3 years of tau-time means an acceleration of at least ~11 gees and a peak speed of 0.99999999999999766c. That means flying just 0.7 microns per second slower than light, which is probably not healthy because the CMB is blue-shifted to gamma-ray frequencies and an intensity of 666 MW/sq.metre.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

More like 0.999999999998875 c, but what's a few 999s between friends.

Blame excel, apparently getting beyond too many .9s makes a number 100

The only problem is that high gamma-factors need high accelerations to be reached in a short amount of tau-time (ship time), so flying to Andromeda (2.55 million ly at last count) in 3 years of tau-time means an acceleration of at least ~11 gees and a peak speed of 0.99999999999999766c. That means flying just 0.7 microns per second slower than light, which is probably not healthy because the CMB is blue-shifted to gamma-ray frequencies and an intensity of 666 MW/sq.metre.

I've always known that blue shift would be a problem but I've never seen any figures behind it. Thanks!

 

[shashankac655]

When I see people talking about intergalactic travel i feel that more than it being an impossible thing(with current technologies or those that may occur in the near future) to do, i feel it is actually unnecessary ,if humans are indeed capable of becoming a multi-planet species or a space faring species we don't need to travel to other galaxies. If we avoid extinction when we are limited to Earth and then if want to find other alternatives to the sun and Earth there are plenty of stars in our own galaxy and may be plenty of rocky habitable planets too in the habitable zone around it's star,they may be not as habitable as Earth but at least close to what Mars can offer. Currently we may know about a few hundred to a 1000 exo-planets of which most of them are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn but astronomers are coming across rocky planets more and more, by looking at the number of stars in our galaxy, the planets may be several times this number but still our galaxy is also a big thing stretching across hundreds of millions of light years but we may not have to travel from one end to the other.

Developing radically new and powerful propulsion technologies may be the most important factor and we will definitely require huge leaps in developing artificial intelligence too and others.How fast or slowly these technologies are going to be developed depends on it’s level of necessity (if it is not at all necessary it may not happen at all). Ultimately everything comes down to what is necessary(or how much necessary) and what is not.

I think the real limitation of intergalactic travel or space travel in general is the lack of necessity for it right now( not because of the limitations of our intelligence or as a species or anything else) , adventurism and curiosity are two ways to unleash human potential but the ‘will to survive’ is the greatest of them all and only it will allow us unleash our true potentials (our biology may limit us from doing so unless our survival itself is in question) i.e we are not going to go extinct if don’t build human settlements outside Earth starting from today or tomorrow or if we don’t try to travel to other galaxies, just like evolution cannot progress if a particular mutation does not produce more off springs i.e nature doesn’t care for our ambitions or curiosity it is only concerned about our survival.
(this is purely my opinion and it may be wrong but I have tried to be as realistic as possible with my extremely limited knowledge about these things.)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

When I see people talking about intergalactic travel i feel that more than it being an impossible thing(with current technologies or those that may occur in the near future) to do, i feel it is actually unnecessary ,if humans are indeed capable of becoming a multi-planet species or a space faring species we don't need to travel to other galaxies. If we avoid extinction when we are limited to Earth and then if want to find other alternatives to the sun and Earth there are plenty of stars in our own galaxy and may be plenty of rocky habitable planets too in the habitable zone around it's star,they may be not as habitable as Earth but at least close to what Mars can offer.

Remember we are going to need a comprehensive understanding of ecology far beyond that of today so that we can terraform (either partially or wholly) these planets to make them suitable. We can't live on worlds that have already evolved life (because the ecosystems would not mesh and we may have superantigenic problems) and lifeless worlds cannot support us.

Currently we may know about a few hundred to a 1000 exo-planets of which most of them are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn but astronomers are coming across rocky planets more and more, by looking at the number of stars in our galaxy, the planets may be several times this number but still our galaxy is also a big thing stretching across hundreds of millions of light years but we may not have to travel from one end to the other.

Of course it begs the question as to why you need a planet at all. To build an interstellar colony ship you need fantastic knowledge of:

• Ecogenesis to maintain both a stable ecology on the ship and build one when you get to where you are going.
• Manufacturing because your ship needs to build a new civilisation so it needs on it factories capable of building everything. No small feat as on Earth I suspect such factories would be gargantuan (in addition everything has to be 100% recyclable because the ship is a closed system.
• Cogsci knowledge so that issues of social/economical management can be so sophisticated that you are able to build long lived institutions (for a colony mission you're looking at a time scale measured in centuries-millennia and human institutions don't have a good track record of reliably embarking on projects that last longer than themselves)
• Propulsion technologies to get there in a reasonable time i.e. centuries-millennia

This confuses the issue because if you've got all of this there is no need to wander into space and colonise other planets at all. An interstellar colony ship is less of a vehicle and more of an island in space. Rather than fly off for millennia you might as well build these colossal ships and put them in orbit around the Sun. Ignoring what specific elements you need if we posit an O'Neill style colony ship 100km long, 20km wide, 1km thick with a mass of ~6e15kg then with the mass of an object such as Ceres (9e20kg) you could make 150,000 ships with a total of 9e8km2 of living space, 6x more than the land surface of Earth.

Developing radically new and powerful propulsion technologies may be the most important factor and we will definitely require huge leaps in developing artificial intelligence too and others.How fast or slowly these technologies are going to be developed depends on it’s level of necessity (if it is not at all necessary it may not happen at all). Ultimately everything comes down to what is necessary(or how much necessary) and what is not.

I would argue the need for the three things listed above is more important than propulsion but I agree it is still important. Note that there are still huge complications with propulsion; even if we posit the creation of something as hypothetically good as an antimatter rocket (1,000,000isp, the best currently speculated with reasonable thrust) you still need an outrageous amount of energy to get anywhere. To boost one of our colony ships described above to .01c would require ~1.8e15kg of fuel (itself a 1:1 mix of matter and antimatter). Double that to slow down at the other end. That amount of Am/M fuel is equivalent to 3.2e32j of energy or 7.2e16 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba" (I'd hate to be the enemy of that ship).

I'm confused as to why you think artificial intelligence would help? Sure more intelligent software would help with everything but why do you think it is necessary?

I think the real limitation of intergalactic travel or space travel in general is the lack of necessity for it right now( not because of the limitations of our intelligence or as a species or anything else) , adventurism and curiosity are two ways to unleash human potential but the ‘will to survive’ is the greatest of them all and only it will allow us unleash our true potentials (our biology may limit us from doing so unless our survival itself is in question) i.e we are not going to go extinct if don’t build human settlements outside Earth starting from today or tomorrow or if we don’t try to travel to other galaxies, just like evolution cannot progress if a particular mutation does not produce more off springs i.e nature doesn’t care for our ambitions or curiosity it is only concerned about our survival.
(this is purely my opinion and it may be wrong but I have tried to be as realistic as possible with my extremely limited knowledge about these things.)

If you read through the rest of the thread you will see that the "we will survive" idea doesn't really hold for space travel on this magnitude. Firstly the technologies you need to do it are orders of magnitude harder than those needed to keep Earth perfect (i.e. long before you have terraforming technology you have the ability to keep the worlds ecosystem perfect, long before you have propulsion technology you can deflect any asteroids, long before you have the ability to construct the societal models needed for generation ships you have a model for harmonious living on Earth).

The only time I see mankind achieving any of this is when the technologies are developed as a by-product of other scientific research and when the Earth is so much more prosperous than it is today that people are willing to commit resources to this endeavour.

 

[shashankac655]

Remember we are going to need a comprehensive understanding of ecology far beyond that of today so that we can terraform (either partially or wholly) these planets to make them suitable. We can't live on worlds that have already evolved life (because the ecosystems would not mesh and we may have superantigenic problems) and lifeless worlds cannot support us.
.

I agree

Of course it begs the question as to why you need a planet at all. To build an interstellar colony ship you need fantastic knowledge of…..
This confuses the issue because if you've got all of this there is no need to wander into space and colonise other planets at all. An interstellar colony ship is less of a vehicle and more of an island in space. Rather than fly off for millennia you might as well build these colossal ships and put them in orbit around the Sun. Ignoring what specific elements you need if we posit an O'Neill style colony ship 100km long, 20km wide, 1km thick with a mass of ~6e15kg then with the mass of an object such as Ceres (9e20kg) you could make 150,000 ships with a total of 9e8km2 of living space, 6x more than the land surface of Earth.
…...

I agree with all the points you have stated
Actually I was thinking about the possibility of humans outliving the Sun ,this might be ridiculously far away in the future and may even be impossible that’s why I talked about the need to travel to other solar systems.( i may be wrong)
I fully understand why we don’t have to abandon our solar system just because Earth becomes inhabitable and so your suggestion is better than what I thought of but I am not sure how we are going to create gravity in spaceship ,I have read about rotating spaceship inside which the centrifugal force can act like gravity and there are other ways like rotating electromagnets and stuff like that but can it really create gravity to the same magnitude as we experience on earth? How fast should the spaceship rotate ?
Is it easy to maintain the speed of rotation?

I'm confused as to why you think artificial intelligence would help? Sure more intelligent software would help with everything but why do you think it is necessary?

Considering such large interstellar ships we will be facing huge problems in maintenance, in such a large ship minute damages can prove to be disastrous.
Such a large ship will be constantly bombarded by tiny space rocks or asteroids traveling at very high speeds but may be the ship’s outer layers will be designed to withstand these collisions but it can’t withstand that forever(after repeated collisions on the same part) and solar winds or flares may overtime cause some kind of damages and even inside the ship somethings may go a little wrong and we may need a super computer to detect minute unintended changes in the ship. keeping an eye on every single miniscule corners of a ship (inside and outside)will be very difficult ,even if we have advanced surveillance systems (like we use in monitoring modern day traffic and security systems etc.) we will still have to depend on the ‘human element’ which may not be safe enough for example: in the Columbia disaster the hole in the shuttle was clearly seen by some people yet the crew were not informed about it and the consequence was fatal ,this kind of human error is something we cannot afford in our interstellar ship.
I don’t know of the possibility of this kind of AI but here it goes:-
We will need some kind of a super software which will make the ship behave like a huge artificial organism (not really an organism but only to a certain extent) which can detect and repair (or at least inform the inhabitants) when somethings go wrong in any corner of the ship or any point on the ship (inside and outside) this will considerably reduce the burden on the ship’s inhabitants and will improve safety.
Surely we can’t think of the interstellar ship to be just a hard and inpenetrable shell, inside which we can have an ecosystem can we? It has to be a lot more complicated than that.

Firstly the technologies you need to do it are orders of magnitude harder than those needed to keep Earth perfect (i.e. long before you have terraforming technology you have the ability to keep the worlds ecosystem perfect, long before you have propulsion technology you can deflect any asteroids, long before you have the ability to construct the societal models needed for generation ships you have a model for harmonious living on Earth).

The only time I see mankind achieving any of this is when the technologies are developed as a by-product of other scientific research and when the Earth is so much more prosperous than it is today that people are willing to commit resources to this endeavour.

I don’t disagree with any of these but the colliding asteroid problem was not what made me to think about why some day space travel or space colonization will become a necessity for humanity.
Harmonious living on Earth is possible and appears to be a better thing to do instead of dreaming of space colonization right now, I agree.

I also agree with 2nd paragraph, there are so many things to be done on Earth before humans can afford to live in space ,wealth distribution should become uniform and sufficient throughout the world ,scientific temperament and rationality has to cultivated among the masses especially in the developing world where religious superstitions, blind beliefs and discrimination on the basis of caste ,color or gender still dictates the lifes of millions of people.
The developed world should not only find more powerful energy sources (or renewable sources)but also try to put a limit on their consumption of energy and natural resources, for example if the countries in the developing world (with their huge populations)start to consume energy and natural resources in the way countries like the USA is doing right now we will need several Earth's to sustain humanity and human population has to greatly come down too.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

If the spin of the ship is big enough it will be barely detectable. I can't find a good calculator at the moment (feel free to google centrifugal calculator and find out how fast things have to spin for yourself) but there has been lots of speculative work done on the subject. The most famous of which comes to mind is Island Three.

EDIT: Here's a few more useful links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_wheel_space_station
http://regentsprep.org/regents/physics/phys06/bartgrav/default.htm

 

[Chronos]

Blue shift would definitely be a problem traveling at .999 c. Not to mention random space debris. At that speed even a speck of dust would hit like a mountain.

 

[tkav1980]

I absolutely love these kind of topics. Being a huge Sci-fi nerd it's right up my alley.

I do have a question for all of the more knowledgeable people on this board. IF you were going to design a propulsion system for a future interstellar spacecraft how would you do it? Would you start with known technology or try to develop new technology? Is the idea of a "Warp Drive" purely science fiction and the Alcubierre metric no more than an exercise in mathmatics, or a viable basis for where to start from? Finally, What would your estimated timescale be for the development of efficient technology to travel to other solar systems be?

 

[Cosmo Novice]

I absolutely love these kind of topics. Being a huge Sci-fi nerd it's right up my alley.

I do have a question for all of the more knowledgeable people on this board. IF you were going to design a propulsion system for a future interstellar spacecraft how would you do it? Would you start with known technology or try to develop new technology? Is the idea of a "Warp Drive" purely science fiction and the Alcubierre metric no more than an exercise in mathmatics, or a viable basis for where to start from? Finally, What would your estimated timescale be for the development of efficient technology to travel to other solar systems be?

You should re-read this thread and pay specific atttention to the earlier posts on propulsion - namely that "warp" drive is purely speculative. Realistic propulsion methods are discussed in this thread.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I absolutely love these kind of topics. Being a huge Sci-fi nerd it's right up my alley.

I do have a question for all of the more knowledgeable people on this board. IF you were going to design a propulsion system for a future interstellar spacecraft how would you do it? Would you start with known technology or try to develop new technology? Is the idea of a "Warp Drive" purely science fiction and the Alcubierre metric no more than an exercise in mathmatics, or a viable basis for where to start from? Finally, What would your estimated timescale be for the development of efficient technology to travel to other solar systems be?

I refer you to post 80, propulsion is the least of your issues. On this subject I strongly agree with SF author http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth_of_the_starship.html" that the term "space ship" confuses the whole issue because it conjurs up the notion of a dedicated crew traveling between hospitable environments. In reality any kind of manned interstellar travel is going to be analogous to rolling up a small country inside a cylinder and giving it a slight shove in one direction. This is going to require some particuarly huge leaps in science, technology and especially social sciences because you have to;

• Build and maintain a viable ecosystem
• Design an ultra-versitile and ultra-diverse industrial complex capable of recycling and manufacturing almost anything
• Construct a socioeconomic and political system capable of maintaining a stable society over extremely long time periods with no failure

Technologies such as warp drives are almost totally speculative as they require negative mass and other such possibly non-existant unobtainium. Other technologies such as AI and Von Neumann probes may be possible but are essentially magic right now and can't meaningfully be discussed in this context.

 

[snackbardan]

Remember we are going to need a comprehensive understanding of ecology far beyond that of today so that we can terraform (either partially or wholly) these planets to make them suitable. We can't live on worlds that have already evolved life (because the ecosystems would not mesh and we may have superantigenic problems) and lifeless worlds cannot support us.
Of course it begs the question as to why you need a planet at all. To build an interstellar colony ship you need fantastic knowledge of:

• Ecogenesis to maintain both a stable ecology on the ship and build one when you get to where you are going.
• Manufacturing because your ship needs to build a new civilisation so it needs on it factories capable of building everything. No small feat as on Earth I suspect such factories would be gargantuan (in addition everything has to be 100% recyclable because the ship is a closed system.
• Cogsci knowledge so that issues of social/economical management can be so sophisticated that you are able to build long lived institutions (for a colony mission you're looking at a time scale measured in centuries-millennia and human institutions don't have a good track record of reliably embarking on projects that last longer than themselves)
• Propulsion technologies to get there in a reasonable time i.e. centuries-millennia

This confuses the issue because if you've got all of this there is no need to wander into space and colonise other planets at all. An interstellar colony ship is less of a vehicle and more of an island in space. Rather than fly off for millennia you might as well build these colossal ships and put them in orbit around the Sun. Ignoring what specific elements you need if we posit an O'Neill style colony ship 100km long, 20km wide, 1km thick with a mass of ~6e15kg then with the mass of an object such as Ceres (9e20kg) you could make 150,000 ships with a total of 9e8km2 of living space, 6x more than the land surface of Earth. I would argue the need for the three things listed above is more important than propulsion but I agree it is still important. Note that there are still huge complications with propulsion; even if we posit the creation of something as hypothetically good as an antimatter rocket (1,000,000isp, the best currently speculated with reasonable thrust) you still need an outrageous amount of energy to get anywhere. To boost one of our colony ships described above to .01c would require ~1.8e15kg of fuel (itself a 1:1 mix of matter and antimatter). Double that to slow down at the other end. That amount of Am/M fuel is equivalent to 3.2e32j of energy or 7.2e16 Tsa bomba's (I'd hate to be the enemy of that ship).

I'm confused as to why you think artificial intelligence would help? Sure more intelligent software would help with everything but why do you think it is necessary?If you read through the rest of the thread you will see that the "we will survive" idea doesn't really hold for space travel on this magnitude. Firstly the technologies you need to do it are orders of magnitude harder than those needed to keep Earth perfect (i.e. long before you have terraforming technology you have the ability to keep the worlds ecosystem perfect, long before you have propulsion technology you can deflect any asteroids, long before you have the ability to construct the societal models needed for generation ships you have a model for harmonious living on Earth).

The only time I see mankind achieving any of this is when the technologies are developed as a by-product of other scientific research and when the Earth is so much more prosperous than it is today that people are willing to commit resources to this endeavour.

We would first have to find a way to build that in space without it being affected by gravitational energy and such. We would also most likely need to colonize a planet before creating these ships because we would have to find a way to actually keep these in space without holding the risk of 150000 massive ships crashing into our home planet. The thing we should look for is a new propulsion source rather than building ships like "The Empire" in Star Wars. The near future should be full of rockets that can travel to near planets in a few weeks to months rather than trying to jump immediately to c speeds in space travel

 

[Constantin]

I previously posted a reply that was deemed over-speculative and deleted.
So I'll rephrase it, leaving some details aside:

---
There's no limitation that says an intergalactic ship has to be large.
It can be a very small fully automated ship. And by very small I mean it can even be tiny. Artificial intelligence is enough, we don't need to bring humans, factories or any other stuff with us.

That circumvents any problems related to huge amounts of fuel needed as well as those that say the trip should be made in a lifetime.
---

The original poster was talking about "limitation of human space travel".
That probably meant he intended such a ship to transport humans.

However there's no requirement that fully developed humans have to be transported.
Genetic codes and the information on how to develop life is all that's necessary.
---

So the problems discussed in this thread steam from the likely unfounded hypothesis that such a ship would need to transport a lot of stuff and thus be large.
I'm not saying such a ship can't be large, just that it doesn't have to be, and it might not be practical to be large.

 

[Cosmo Novice]

I previously posted a reply that was deemed over-speculative and deleted.
So I'll rephrase it, leaving some details aside:

---
There's no limitation that says an intergalactic ship has to be large.
It can be a very small fully automated ship. And by very small I mean it can even be tiny. Artificial intelligence is enough, we don't need to bring humans, factories or any other stuff with us.

That circumvents any problems related to huge amounts of fuel needed as well as those that say the trip should be made in a lifetime.
---

The original poster was talking about "limitation of human space travel".
That probably meant he intended such a ship to transport humans.

However there's no requirement that fully developed humans have to be transported.
Genetic codes and the information on how to develop life is all that's necessary.
---

So the problems discussed in this thread steam from the likely unfounded hypothesis that such a ship would need to transport a lot of stuff and thus be large.
I'm not saying such a ship can't be large, just that it doesn't have to be, and it might not be practical to be large.

A small ship will still need sufficient fuel - proportional to the mass of the ship. A small ship will still need adequate sheilding, adequate storage and adequete computational power - assuming light year distances it would need to be of sufficint sophistication to make decisions. The relevant AI systems are nowhere near that level of autonomy at the moment.

The information on how to develop life may be difficult - and where would this go?

If we are still talking intergalactic then bigger would be better - redundancy is a key concept especially when talking about intergalactic travel.

 

[Constantin]

A small ship will still need sufficient fuel - proportional to the mass of the ship. A small ship will still need adequate sheilding, adequate storage and adequete computational power - assuming light year distances it would need to be of sufficint sophistication to make decisions. The relevant AI systems are nowhere near that level of autonomy at the moment.

The information on how to develop life may be difficult - and where would this go?

If we are still talking intergalactic then bigger would be better - redundancy is a key concept especially when talking about intergalactic travel.

I'll take your arguments one at a time:

1: The amount of fuel will be "proportional to the mass of the ship", exactly as in your post, so rather small. Furthermore it is also proportional with the max speed of the ship, and we no longer have the requirement of a trip made within a human lifetime.

2: "adequate sheilding, adequate storage and adequete computational power"
The strength of shielding would be proportional with the leading surface of the ship and with the speed. The smaller this surface and speed, the smaller the shield needed.
As about "adequate storage and adequete computational power", even with our current technology level we're making very small computers and we have a tendency to miniaturize all the technological parts as our technology progresses.

3: "The relevant AI systems are nowhere near that level of autonomy at the moment."
That part is obvious. This thread doesn't refer to the present moment. But we are making very fast progress.

4: "The information on how to develop life may be difficult - and where would this go?"
It isn't difficult. Even with our limited technology level we can clone and genetically alter life forms.
This will easiliy improve.
I won't go into details of how I imagine it to be done, as that would be over-speculative and would likely get me a warning from the moderators. But feel free to use your own imagination.

5: "If we are still talking intergalactic then bigger would be better - redundancy is a key concept especially when talking about intergalactic travel."
Redundancy is very much different than big size. Redundant actually would mean a very large number of small ships.
What would provide better redundancy? One ship weighing 1000 tons or 1 billion ships weighing 1 gram ? This part is obvious.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The obvious problem with a small ship is how you plan to actually do anything with it without megatonnes of factory tools, even if we did wave a magic wand and grant you practical artificial intelligence that doesn't have any ethical issues.

Also note that a genome is not enough, you're also going to need the epigenetics of a fertilised ovum as well as the complement of metabolites, proteins, sugars, etc as well as a way of actually gestating the organism. Lastly you're going to need a sophisticated way of raising organisms with healthy psychology and social interaction and a way of doing that billions of times as a part of or after creating a habitable environment.

 

[Constantin]

The obvious problem with a small ship is how you plan to actually do anything with it without megatonnes of factory tools, even if we did wave a magic wand and grant you practical artificial intelligence that doesn't have any ethical issues.

Also note that a genome is not enough, you're also going to need the epigenetics of a fertilised ovum as well as the complement of metabolites, proteins, sugars, etc as well as a way of actually gestating the organism. Lastly you're going to need a sophisticated way of raising organisms with healthy psychology and social interaction and a way of doing that billions of times as a part of or after creating a habitable environment.

Any tools, factories or life forms don't need to be transported physically. It is far easier to transport them as information on how to build them. The entire knowledge of a civilization, or just the necessary parts of it, can easily be transported.
There's absolutely no way an advanced civilization would transport bulky factories, and spend almost infinite amounts of energy in doing so, while building those at the destination is so much cheaper in every way.

The questions arises of course how can a small ship build big things.
If that small ship however has sufficient artificial intelligence to overcome any obstacles, it is doable.

I'll give a very simple way of imagining this. Imagine a simple ant, or a bee, a small insect, working tirelessly building something. That small insect will build structures far larger than itself.
And if that small insect has the ability to replicate, or if more of them are available in the first place, you can imagine your problem solved.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Any tools, factories or life forms don't need to be transported physically. It is far easier to transport them as information on how to build them. The entire knowledge of a civilization, or just the necessary parts of it, can easily be transported.
There's absolutely no way an advanced civilization would transport bulky factories, and spend almost infinite amounts of energy in doing so, while building those at the destination is so much cheaper in every way.

The questions arises of course how can a small ship build big things.
If that small ship however has sufficient artificial intelligence to overcome any obstacles, it is doable.

I'll give a very simple way of imagining this. Imagine a simple ant, or a bee, a small insect, working tirelessly building something. That small insect will build structures far larger than itself.
And if that small insect has the ability to replicate, or if more of them are available in the first place, you can imagine your problem solved.

And how is that one ant going to use the bigger tools it is building, or apply the necessary force on objects when necessary, or build things like forges, smelters, chemical factories etc. If it takes a million man hours to get a job done that doesn't mean that one man will do it in a million hours, for many jobs the productivity of a group scales more than linearly when you add more workers.

This topic is going far too speculative. Let's try to bring it back or the thread will be locked.

 

[Constantin]

And how is that one ant going to use the bigger tools it is building, or apply the necessary force on objects when necessary, or build things like forges, smelters, chemical factories etc. If it takes a million man hours to get a job done that doesn't mean that one man will do it in a million hours, for many jobs the productivity of a group scales more than linearly when you add more workers.

This topic is going far too speculative. Let's try to bring it back or the thread will be locked.

As I posted previously:
"And if that small insect has the ability to replicate, or if more of them are available in the first place, you can imagine your problem solved."

If we get into details, it can only get speculative.

Back on track: there's absolutely no reason the ship needs to be large. Being small is much more practical, being cheaper and having redundancy by being able to send large numbers of ships.

But there's the added and not necessarily related fact that the ship can be fully automated and doesn't need humans inside.
And this by itself partially solves the fuel problem, as the trip can take far longer and thus be cheaper.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

As I posted previously:
"And if that small insect has the ability to replicate, or if more of them are available in the first place, you can imagine your problem solved."

If we get into details, it can only get speculative.

Yes if we had a fully autonomous and self replicating, intelligent workforce that can grow from a small seed and give rise to a society we could use a smaller ship. And yes, that is overly-speculative.