Posted on 03/24/2016 2:41:15 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The travel time from Earth to Mars using current space flight technologies is estimated to be 9 months.
Last week, an innovative concept was proposed which claims to reduce the time that will be spent for Mars travel to merely three days through so-called photonic propulsion technology. But a new proposal threatens to radically shorten this period to an astounding 30 minutes.
The idea was revealed by Phillip Lubin, who is a physics professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Lubin was also responsible for the photonic propulsion technology proposal. This time, however, he identified the use of high-powered lasers to propel wafer-thin spacecrafts to the Red Planet faster than the speed of light. Lubin wrote in an email to Headlines and Global News that using a "directed energy propulsion," which involved firing laser at a spacecraft, can revolutionize space travel because it will lead to the achievement of frictionless acceleration.
"As an example, on the eventual upper end, a full-scale (50-70 GW) DE-STAR 4 - Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and Exploration - will propel a wafer scale spacecraft with a one meter sail to about 26 percent the speed of light in about 10 minutes," Lubin was quoted as saying in a Daily Mail report. "[It would] reach Mars (1 AU) in 30 minutes, pass Voyager 1 in less than 3 days, pass 1,000 AU in 12 days and reach Alpha Centauri in about 15 years."
As a proposed precursor to interstellar travel, Lubin's concept has been met with a bit of skepticism due to some perceived flaws. For example, there is the question about deceleration once the low-mass probe approaches Mars, according to an email from Lubin. There is also a concern about space junk, which could hinder the spacecraft's progress or even pose serious harm to the vessel itself. Finally, some experts cite the issue of time dilation, a concept demonstrated in the film "Interstellar." Here, time slows down for the spacecraft as it passes a wormhole, according to Digital Trends. This means that while space travel takes 30 minutes, it could equal a decade here on Earth.
Lubin states that his proposal is still a concept and will be refined further in the future. For more information, the physicist has published his laser propulsion proposal in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
Sometimes you could see the wire...and I think the smoke trail was a piece of Chesterfield or Pall Mall...
Only going to take about a year to get that laser installed on Mars. No biggie.
Now, the guys traveling to install one at Alpha Centauri, taking hundreds/thousands of years to get there, will not only be annoyed that subsequent travelers will need about 5 years to travel as planned (and perceive only days in the process), but will be quite annoyed to find their generations-later offspring have already gotten there and long settled using relatively futuristic technology.
Not to mention ozone holes...
Intercept trajectory will provide the stop just fine. Added bonus of a light show no extra charge.
~12,000?
DJT like the others has no manned deep space plan - not even a LEO one, nada, nichevo, zip.
We were all fans back then until Nixon killed the whole thing to shore up his imperial presidency.
Actually, it was “Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970.” But in a major failure of political will Project Orion was killed by the above would-be-king.
Deep space now belongs to the Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Indians. Navel gazing belongs to the US.
Any projectile at .25 lights is an up-rated version of a rail gun round.
Ignoring the starting and ending speeds of the planets, it would take between 33.8 and 91.7 hours depending on where Earth and Mars are in their orbits.
time = 2 * sqrt(distance / acceleration) derived from the formula for constant acceleration in one direction d= 0.5*a*t^2
You got 12,000 g’s, I get 40,000. Puree either way!
I used at^2/2 = 40 billion meters, and t = 100 sec (a bit over 15 minutes). You might be more careful about the Earth to Mars distance. And, this is a great place to say, “YMMV”.
Wafer thin spaceships are so useful, too.
The time of flight is estimated from our viewpoint. The time in the spaceship would be shorter.
“I don’t see how he expects to go faster than light.”
You jump on a lightwave and start running forward.
As soon as I read “faster than the speed of light,” I thought of the B-52s...and with the link you provided, I heard the Planet Clair song. Thanks guy. That helped to make my day. Back in the mid 70s I worked in a college avenue Restaurant. Athens, Ga. Keith and Ricky (future B-52s guys) and their friends would arrive at 2:00 pm and get 15 cent iced tea with free refills and sit at the long table near the south facing window. And then 45 minutes later they would all get up and go forth with their days activities. If you lived in Athens back then you would get the humor of the B-52s and of course lots of non-Athens Ga. People liked the humor as well. Thanks
If my Relativity calculations are correct, at 26% the speed of light
If it takes 30 minutes from the POV of the space craft than 31 Minutes 4 seconds passed on Earth.
If it takes 30 minutes from the POV of the Earth than only 28 Minutes 53 seconds passed on space craft.
So I have no idea what this guy is talking about decades going by
Minor detail.
If my math is correct, reaching 26 percent of the speed of light in 10 minutes equals about 13,247 “g’s”. Good luck with that. The numbers here are so ridiculous, how did anyone even print this — and that is not even counting “faster than the speed of light”.
Now there you go, doing the math! How crude! ;-D
Yeah, just how much can you improve upon a three month trip by extending it by a few decades? He also didn't mention the suction lasers needed to slow that communion wafer down at the other end.
He makes my head hurt ... because nobody will whack him for me.
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