The thread for space cadets!

[SouthernKing]

@space elevator: A nice, un-(or barely-)inhabited Pacific island would work too, but logistics headaches. Most proposals/concept art I've seen would put it on an artificial platform out at sea somewhere.
I wouldn't mind seeing an elevator out my window either, would look kind of cool actually.

 

[r16]

How do I embed a link inside of other words that are not the actual link?

Like if I wrote 'this' and clicking on this took you to the webpage.

actually a subscription post , ı use insert link button , copy paste the link in the screen and then edit to write whatever ı want

 

[Winner]

ad 'warp drives'

For some reason I get slightly annoyed when people bring this up in discussions about space and spaceflight. The reason is that I find it silly to talk about this as if it was around the corner while in reality we haven't even left the Earth-Moon system yet. Or in other words, it is as if Columbus was talking about an expedition to Mars while trying to persuade the Spanish royals to fund his insane voyage to India.

I feel it damages the credibility of the space-fan community (as if it wasn't low already). FTL is totally out of question for centuries to come. People may try making it work on whiteboards by conjuring up exotic forms of matter with negative mass in the same way I may write a fantasy short story, and that's fine. Just don't bring it up while trying to sell space to the people

 

[warpus]

Man, we're not going to have a space elevator for quite a while... Sure would be nice though.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

ad 'warp drives'

For some reason I get slightly annoyed when people bring this up in discussions about space and spaceflight. The reason is that I find it silly to talk about this as if it was around the corner while in reality we haven't even left the Earth-Moon system yet. Or in other words, it is as if Columbus was talking about an expedition to Mars while trying to persuade the Spanish royals to fund his insane voyage to India.

I feel it damages the credibility of the space-fan community (as if it wasn't low already). FTL is totally out of question for centuries to come. People may try making it work on whiteboards by conjuring up exotic forms of matter with negative mass in the same way I may write a fantasy short story, and that's fine. Just don't bring it up while trying to sell space to the people

That was the reason I brought it up. It was an article that was labeled as 'Warp Drives now possible" when clearly they aren't. It ticked me off.

 

[Crezth]

Surely if they are theoretically possible now then they would always have been.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Surely if they are theoretically possible now then they would always have been.

Only theoretically possible if you assume the existence of ' exotic matter' that has all the properties it needs to have for it all to work.

Kind of like dilithium crystals.

 

[Winner]

Only theoretically possible if you assume the existence of ' exotic matter' that has all the properties it needs to have for it all to work.

Kind of like dilithium crystals.

Exactly. "Oh shoot, my equation isn't working. Let's add X to get the results we wish for."

Plus, there is the inevitable question - if warp drives were so easy, why aren't we already visited/occupied by dozens of intelligent species from the rest of the Galaxy? If any race which have just barely crawled out of its home planet's gravity well could build warp ships, the Galaxy would be a very, very crowded place. Yet we see no indication of that.

This leads me to believe that FTL is either impossible, or *very* difficult to develop, and even then it's probably severely limited (expensive, impractical, dangerous, requiring pre-placed installations on both ends of an FTL 'jump', etc. etc. etc.).

 

[Crezth]

Only theoretically possible if you assume the existence of ' exotic matter' that has all the properties it needs to have for it all to work.

Kind of like dilithium crystals.

It's a little more involved than that. Such presumptions are based in what is physically possible or probable, and I wouldn't call that a stretch so far as good judgement goes.

Plus, there is the inevitable question - if warp drives were so easy, why aren't we already visited/occupied by dozens of intelligent species from the rest of the Galaxy? If any race which have just barely crawled out of its home planet's gravity well could build warp ships, the Galaxy would be a very, very crowded place. Yet we see no indication of that.

There are a lot of assumptions, not least of all that there is other intelligent life (not so outlandish) or that warp drives are easy.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@Winner To be fair, we missed entire extrasolar solar systems and planets until recently, so I don't put much on the 'why don't we see ET civs everywhere' line of reasoning.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's a little more involved than that. Such presumptions are based in what is physically possible or probable, and I wouldn't call that a stretch so far as good judgement goes.

You have to admit that a lot of what Winner says goes on. They create a theory and fill in the gaps with things that don't exist but theoretically could. I mean, flying ponies could exist too, and that satisfies my theory of how Polynesians got to Hawaii.

I don't mean to be flippant, but there is a lot of wishful thinking on the part of theorists in this area. I have no problem with this. I just wish the media would stop reporting the research like it's around the corner.

I also wouldn't go so far as to call exotic matter probable, but will cede this point to an expert.

 

[Winner]

There are a lot of assumptions, not least of all that there is other intelligent life (not so outlandish) or that warp drives are easy.

Unless we're a freak of Nature, the Galaxy must have at least dozens of other intelligent species existing in parallel to us. Depending on which variables you fill in the equation, the number will range between dozens and millions of civilizations. If each developed a warp drive relatively quickly after first achieving spaceflight (let's say 200 years), they'd spread across the galaxy in a matter of a few thousand years.

Supposing they are better at using their telescopes to find habitable planets and they are interested in colonizing them, we'd have been visited hundreds of times during Earth's evolutionary history. Yet there is no record of that. To our best knowledge, aliens have never set foot (limb, tentacle, ...) on any planetary body we've observed.

Now I realize that these assumption may be completely false, but since we don't have anything better, I prefer to go with them.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There are plenty of things wrong with those assumptions though. One counterexample:

Even if life is common, does that necessarily mean we aren't in an otherwise barren galaxy?

Plus, we could be picking up signs of advance civiliztions all the time and not even realize it. I like to pretend some of the unexplained galactic phenomenon are really the wake of massive starships going to warp.

 

[warpus]

Warp drive, eh?

NASA working on faster-than-light space travel, says warp drives are ‘plausible’

Trekkies rejoice: while real breakthroughs in warp drive design haven’t happened yet, we’re moving closer to making faster-than-light travel truly feasible.

Researchers found that making adjustments to the design of a real-life warp drive first proposed by physicist Michael Alcubierre in 1994 significantly reduces the amount of energy required to power it.

Alcubierre’s design called for an American football-shaped spacecraft with a flat ring attached to the ship. Space time would warp around it, accelerating the ship to as fast as 10 times the speed of light without the ship itself ever breaking the speed of light. This would make trips to local stars a relatively quick jaunt: a trip to Alpha Centauri — some four light years away from Earth — would take just shy of five months.

No idea how plausible this is, but the design calls for 500 kg of anti-matter. In all of human history we've only created 20 nanograms..

So even if the design was feasible, there's still the question of the fuel..

edit: I see that this is what started the discussion on warp drives anyway You can ignore the first part of this post, then.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Antimatter AND 'exotic' matter. If it just required anitmatter, we wouldn't be having the same discussion

 

[Winner]

There are plenty of things wrong with those assumptions though. One counterexample:

Even if life is common, does that necessarily mean we aren't in an otherwise barren galaxy?

Plus, we could be picking up signs of advance civiliztions all the time and not even realize it. I like to pretend some of the unexplained galactic phenomenon are really the wake of massive starships going to warp.

I am not talking about observing something thousands of light-years away, I am talking about aliens contacting us directly and in person (or its equivalent ).

I can see why aliens millions of years older could be so far beyond us that we wouldn't be able to even notice them. But if war drives were easy and even losers like us could build them relatively quickly, then it's likely we'd already be a part of some interstellar empire.

So, either warp drives are not easy (likely impossible), or the Galaxy is devoid of intelligent life. Which is more probable? That's anybody's guess, you know my opinion

Antimatter AND 'exotic' matter. If it just required anitmatter, we wouldn't be having the same discussion

Well, antimatter might as well be exotic matter given our utter inability to produce more than nanoscopic amounts of it

 

[hobbsyoyo]

True, but antimatter is proven to exist

 

[warpus]

What sort of exotic matter are we talking about?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The kind you make up to satisfy an equation with dark energy and antigravity properties.
e.g. dilithium crystals

 

[Winner]

What sort of exotic matter are we talking about?

Matter with negative energy density. I.e. a sort of matter than has negative mass.

If that's not exotic, I don't know what is. Too hardcore even for Star Trek.