Miguel Alcubierrie has already worked out the math, and others have expanded on his work.
Posted on 06/21/2018 10:43:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The term “moonshot” is sometimes invoked to denote a project so outrageously ambitious that it can only be described by comparing it to the Apollo 11 mission to land the first human on the Moon. The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative transcends the moonshot descriptor because its purpose goes far beyond the Moon. The aptly-named project seeks to travel to the nearest stars.
The brainchild of Russian-born tech entrepreneur billionaire Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Starshot was announced in April 2016 at a press conference joined by renowned physicists including Stephen Hawking and Freeman Dyson. While still early, the current vision is that thousands of wafer-sized chips attached to large, silver lightsails will be placed into Earth orbit and accelerated by the pressure of an intense Earth-based laser hitting the lightsail.
After just two minutes of being driven by the laser, the spacecraft will be traveling at one-fifth the speed of light—a thousand times faster than any macroscopic object has ever achieved.
Each craft will coast for 20 years and collect scientific data about interstellar space. Upon reaching the planets near the Alpha Centauri star system, an the onboard digital camera will take high-resolution pictures and send these back to Earth, providing the first glimpse of our closest planetary neighbors. In addition to scientific knowledge, we may learn whether these planets are suitable for human colonization.
The team behind Breakthrough Starshot is as impressive as the technology. The board of directors includes Milner, Hawking, and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The executive director is S. Pete Worden, former director of NASA Ames Research Center. A number of prominent scientists, including Nobel and Breakthrough Laureates, are serving as advisors to the project, and Milner has promised $100 million of his own funds to begin work....
(Excerpt) Read more at singularityhub.com ...
Bump for later
Not unless they can come up with some breakthrough physics.
Miguel Alcubierrie has already worked out the math, and others have expanded on his work.
I haven't tried to work out the math on this. Is your 8G acceleration to get close to light speed?
Yes, I consider that whole methodology to be a non-starter in practical terms. Unless there is a breakthrough, "Star Trek" style interstellar travel is not going to happen.
That's an unsupportable assumption. I've read various articles which assert that the conditions that made life on planet earth possible are quite unique, and the chances of them being replicated elsewhere are pretty low.
If I recall correctly, they have identified about 20 factors that are somewhat unique to our solar system that made it possible for the Earth to develop advanced life, not the least of which are the presence of our Moon, and the presence of Jupiter.
They say without the moon, our planet would remain frozen over in a perpetual ice age. They say without Jupiter sweeping up the solar garbage, the planet would have been bombarded to death.
We may be alone or mostly alone in the Universe. While it may be possible that there is life out there somewhere else, it may in fact be well behind us in development.
Of course there are enough plausible UFO stories out there to make me suspect that there may be advanced life that has cracked the distance transportation problem.
My first thought as well.
I was thinking never.
I find your nitpicking on my nomenclature to be cantankerous.
"Code of the lifemaker."
If you could find some means to turn it around. Hard to do with gram like objects.
Space X is making profit. I think it will pay dividends to the taxpayers in the long run. About his other ventures, there is more doubt.
On a side note, would it be appropriate to say Congress has gone Crazy Eddie ?
I've read a lot of Asimov, but i've never read the Foundation series, so I can't compare them, but the Mote in God's eye was one of Pournelle and Niven's better stories. I also liked "Lucifer's Hammer", "Footfall", "Inferno", "Oath of Fealty" and so forth. Pretty much any of their collaborations are good entertainment.
The Mote in God's eye had a larger message that I consider very relevant to modern times, especially regarding the mass of "immigrants" fleeing the sh*tholes of their own countries and bringing their foolish/sh*thole ideas with them to other countries such as here and in Europe.
The world is full of unsustainable peoples breeding themselves into famine, and the whole world may eventually be caught up in this foolishness.
That is giving them too much credit. At least "Crazy Eddie" was trying to achieve some progress for his people.
Given the title, I think we may need a study on organic life surviving high speeds for sustained periods of time... I would think reaching 1/5 the speed of light in 2 minutes would be fatal.
Yet, this sounds like an unmanned vehicle. So maybe that will work out. It will be pretty cool if it does.
I agree. We’re all waiting for Mr. Fusion.
Interstellar travel will not be a mundane solution such as an earth-based laser push. It will be something not thought possible at the present time.
Ha...I read that book
“We’re all waiting for Mr. Fusion”
You and me both. It must be really tough.
That reminds of a “scientific” paper written in the 1800s explaining how people would die at any speed over 60mph. I’m not going to bet against human engenuity, it’s our greatest gift.
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