100-Year Starship Symposium is Underway

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Scientists from NASA, DARPA and private institutions are meeting in Orlando this weekend to discuss theories on future projects which sound a whole lot like science fiction. Topics on faster than light drives, interstellar travel, planet terraforming and other futuristic ideas are being discussed for future consideration.
 
Funny/sad thing is NASA actually had a small department (Breakthrough Propulusion Physics) program, that was canned. But hey at least we can all spend 3 days talking about how cool it would be if...
 
MajorDomo said:
.... faster than light drives, interstellar travel, planet terraforming and other futuristic ideas ....
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All of these exist now! They are just probably looking for the right opportunity to break it out to the public.
 
Mugenx said:
All of these exist now! They are just probably looking for the right opportunity to break it out to the public.
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For the low , low price of hundreds of trillions of dollars. For the Anti-Matter of course and the thousands of years it will take to get it using current methods.
 
Better pack it to the brim with Americans!! Never know if everyone will get cancer on the way and die before reaching point X. Sorry, feeling cynical again today.

Plus I'm sorry to say that planet terraforming is already going on as we speak. It's called Earth and not in a beneficial way. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't really think there are any planets that could be terraformed for colonization purposes. Too many toxic gasses and vapors to be suitable for such a project.

Oh well, "lol" as sfsuphysics said.
 
Betaboy1983 said:
Maybe I'm wrong but I don't really think there are any planets that could be terraformed for colonization purposes. Too many toxic gasses and vapors to be suitable for such a project.
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Well certainly not in the foreseeable future. We are still in the "embryo" stage of space exploration basically. No human has even left Earth's part of space yet.

Maybe this is all the further we'll get, but I wouldn't bet on it. We do a lot of things in our daily lives which would have been unimaginable to people hundreds/thousands of years ago. You yourself admitted we are terraforming earth, so it's not impossible that we could gain better understand/control of this process in the distant future (if we don't all die in 2012 ;))
 
Betaboy1983 said:
Better pack it to the brim with Americans!! Never know if everyone will get cancer on the way and die before reaching point X. Sorry, feeling cynical again today.

Plus I'm sorry to say that planet terraforming is already going on as we speak. It's called Earth and not in a beneficial way. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't really think there are any planets that could be terraformed for colonization purposes. Too many toxic gasses and vapors to be suitable for such a project.

Oh well, "lol" as sfsuphysics said.
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How do you figure. Earth had the most living things on it when it was a bit hotter than now. :) May not be great for humans, but some plants will love it.
 
I've always pondered how you'd launch a huge star ship...or would they have to construct a space elevator or something and assemble it in zero gravity?
 
You would assemble it in orbit.

If you have a working space elevator you would want to build a large enclosed facility that you could fill with air.
Without the spacesuit workers could actually build things in zero-g, instead of assembling modules.
 
Of all those things in the OP, planet terraforming intrigues me the most. Terraforming Mars would be so incredibly badass. To think... all we would need to do is create a green house effect much like we're doing on Earth to start the process. Incredible.
 
jadams said:
Of all those things in the OP, planet terraforming intrigues me the most. Terraforming Mars would be so incredibly badass. To think... all we would need to do is create a green house effect much like we're doing on Earth to start the process. Incredible.
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extra edit

Catch some comets and harvest the h20 too.
 
RailGunRiz said:
I've always pondered how you'd launch a huge star ship...or would they have to construct a space elevator or something and assemble it in zero gravity?
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It could be done without a space elevator, processing asteroids in orbit to produce the structural components while small specialty items such as microchips and the like would come from Earth based fabs.

I think one aspect many people are glossing over when they speak of a space elevator is the danger. Yes, with carbon nanotubes, genetically engineered spider silk and other advances in materials science we're making great strides towards having the ability to construct a space elevator. But if the thing ever came down it would be a global catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen. You're going to have a super-strong cable longer than the circumference of the Earth tethering an asteroid in geosynchronous orbit. Best case scenario, the balance asteroid detaches and flies off while the cable falls down around the equator in a cosmic game of crack the whip. Worst case, something hits and slows the asteroid and it comes down with the cable still attached. Either way we're guaranteed tsunamis for the final 2/3 of the cable impact zone (or significant impact cratering where it hits land). If the asteroid comes down as well...hope we sent a lot of colonists to other planets because life here on Earth is over.
 
I wonder if this event is going to be streamed. Would love to watch some of it.
 
Kueller said:
Either way we're guaranteed tsunamis for the final 2/3 of the cable impact zone (or significant impact cratering where it hits land). If the asteroid comes down as well...hope we sent a lot of colonists to other planets because life here on Earth is over.
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What if the cable is wound up from a massive winch in space and disconnected from its connection point....which is located at the highest level of the atmosphere...which then connected to two other points perpendicular to the main winch...3 connections, one breaks free so asteroid can pass, the other two maintain connection. You can't haul anything but you can at least keep it from falling?

I live in Orlando. They are going to need laypeople to act as...umm...normal people.
 
Betaboy1983 said:
I don't really think there are any planets that could be terraformed for colonization purposes. Too many toxic gasses and vapors to be suitable for such a project.
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thats the point of teraforming... some planets would be easier than others though...

Europa while small is mostly water, and has an atmosphere of mostly oxygen...

Mars may have water (or did we find water there? cant remember) and is pretty close to earth as far as size, so teraforming it would be ideal and not impossible at all
 
FLECOM said:
thats the point of teraforming... some planets would be easier than others though...

Europa while small is mostly water, and has an atmosphere of mostly oxygen...
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ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE
 
Chemical rockets are way to slow. We shouldn't be screwing around with that stuff..

Just use a coil gun to launch a bunch of stuff into space - then go up there and build a space station. After that we can use nuclear powered pulse systems to buzz around the solar system and beyond. Even 1/4 the speed of light would be far faster then we are used too..

Then we need a 1/2 speed of light nuclear powered probe to check out some other stars.. Would obviously be like a 20 year trip..
 
If you used a coil gun to launch stuff into space to then build a space station from it, good luck doing that.

Remember that with no friction in space, those objects won't stop and will zoom the hell out of there.
 
LC155 said:
If you used a coil gun to launch stuff into space to then build a space station from it, good luck doing that.

Remember that with no friction in space, those objects won't stop and will zoom the hell out of there.
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You do realize that everything that gets launched into space does so a particular trajectory to put it into orbit. Not to mention the minute you launch from a coil gun (or rail gun, or whatever other method of one shot propulsion) that they instantly start to slow down due to gravity.

That said, not exactly a useful thing to do to put people into space... but then again, I think for now we need to find a way to mechanize outer space, robots, the whole ball of wax.
 
RailGunRiz said:
I've always pondered how you'd launch a huge star ship...or would they have to construct a space elevator or something and assemble it in zero gravity?
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Assuming we are using chemical combustion for propulsion, yes it would have to be done in orbit as chemical combustion just can't keep up with gravity on a long term basis. However in most science fiction pieces they get around this by using something that can displace gravity thus navigating or floating ginormous crafts within atmosphere.

I feel saddened when I realize that currently (as far as we know) the furthest that humans are from the Earth is only about 150 miles. A truly pretty pathetic number for 30+ years.
 
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