Near-Light-Speed Starships May Not Fly

Originally posted by jimbo78
i think travelling at the speed of light i am pretty sure you would not be able to spot the smallest little piece of space rock. even the size of a golf ball. which would be my biggest worry. they cant even spot an asteroid the size of a school bus flying towards us at 170000mph. so fling through space at a billion mph you would never see what lies ahead. so it would be stupid to even try.

they did detect the asteroid.

Of course if we were advanced enough to have this tech for interstellar travel we would handle that situation with some type of radar or energy shield to dissolve any debris detected ahead.

I think solar sail is a great idea, or even a spacecraft covered completely with solar panels, Have huge storage rooms for the solar energy and have the space craft orbit the earth for a year or so just charging up non stop on solar energy, and then send it off when its full. Maybe even if we are traveling in the direction of a desired star, by traveling in the path of the star as we burn the solar energy we stored, we could be recharging from the star sending its radiation towards us and all other radiation in this space. the problem of dodging debris at high speeds would still come up, but I think there are solutions to that.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by Astyanax

My research supports the contention that at speeds very close to the speed of light, the temperature of this heat bath is high enough to melt all known materials.

Depressing if true. Anyone care to discuss this? And let's try not to derail the thread into discussions about faster-than-light travel, please...

Let's see, we're still using mostly chemical propellants which also have this problem:

www.nasa.gov...

Here are four examples [large graphic] of what it would take to send a canister about the size of a Shuttle payload (or a school bus) past our nearest neighboring star...and allowing 900 years for it to make this journey.

Well....If you use chemical engines like those that are on the Shuttle, well..., sorry, there isn’t enough mass in the universe to supply the rocket propellant you’d need.

So, in addition to not having enough mass in the universe for chemical propulsion to travel to just the nearest star, according to NASA, oh by the way it would also get hot?

Of course there are alternate propulsion technologies but to be honest none look that promising for interstellar travel...see this graphic:



I think if technology advances to the point we can overcome these propulsion problems, then it might also be advanced enough to solve the heat problem. As others have suggested, a shield of some sort made of fields might be able to divert the heat, and since a field isn't made of matter, we don't have to worry about the melting temperature of the field.

Thrust without the limitations of propellent mass might not be as far off as we might think.

The Chinese are working on a propellent-less microwave drive, based on the earlier research conducted by Roger Sawyer.

www.wired.co.uk...

They say they have a device producing measurable thrust. They may be telling fibs, they may be incompetent, or it might actually work. Time will tell.

They'll find a way around this. Loopholes.

Superconducting materials, shields, or wormhole tech which is being worked on.

By 2100, we'll be bending the fabric of time and space for travel, making heat a moot issue

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by abeverage
Um...Deflector shield hello...

What, exactly, is this deflector shield supposed to be made of? Some kind of manipulated magnetic field? It's still going to be essentially "attached" to the ship, and will accumulate the same amount of drag, or possibly even more because it's going to be so much larger than the ship itself.

My problem with near lightspeed travel is the potential for a virtual particle shockwave pushing ahead of the bow.

The faster you go, to the point where you're compressing spacetime ahead of you as you travel, the more you're going to get an extra load of virtual particles being pushed into reality in the shockwave.

Wormhole travel? Sure. All we'd need is to generate the gravitational force of a black hole in the center of the galaxy, and then a counter-force to keep us from becoming a thin film of information on the surface of that black hole. Piece of cake!

Bottom line is that we'll likely never be able to physically travel any great distance in space, so we'll have to rely on our video games to satisfy that desire while we sent our immortal artificial intelligence machines out to do the real exploring for us. If we still care about it. We'll probably eventually lose interest in the whole idea.

We will use something called a Tachyon Drive.
It allows your starship to fold space.
We will use it to travel to other star systems in less than 1 day.

Captain Janeway could have used one a few years ago.
Star Trek: Voyager

Well, this is interesting. To me, it seems that this excess heat could be sunk into a power source used to enhance the drive capacity of the star-ship. It actually seems like if the scientists figure this out, faster travel speed would be easier to accomplish than before.

reply to post by Astyanax


Well, some suggested that gravitation and magnetism is one of the same. So if we can build a ship that can produce it own artificial gravitating magnetic field we could circumvent pretty much anything. Like cosmic radiation, other magnetic fields like those of planets. Some would say atmospheres would mean nothing. We would just fly right through with out any excess heat. And since the ship has it's own magnetic/gravitational field we would not feel G-forces. We could stop and go as fast as the field could handle.

reply to post by Diablos

A very pertinent contribution. Thanks very much.

So there's a question about the theory. I'm afraid the concept of Doppler temperature inflation is a bit beyond me. What kind of experiments might yield results that would settle the theoretical argument?

I believe the fastest object ever observed was the so-called Oh-My-God Particle, which was detected by a University of Utah cosmic-ray experiment in 1991. Particle accelerators like the LHC can get protons moving at a few metres per second less than the speed of light. Is there any way such experiments might be able to help us understand the issue, I wonder?

The author of the article linked above seems to believe that blue-shifted CMB radiation would pose yet another obstacle to relativistic space travel:

Unfortunately, even assuming you found a source for the energy it would take and invented a means to accelerate yourself and Intergalactic Vessel Omega Point to this velocity, you wouldn't get far before being disrupted into subatomic goo due to interactions with photons in the ubiquitous cosmic microwave background radiation. Sokolsky has calculated that at 3×1020 eV, even a single proton could travel no farther than 10 megaparsecs, about the distance of the Virgo galaxy cluster, before losing energy in this manner.

The writer on Icarus Interstellar doesn't seem to think CMB photons are a problem.

most ideas of warp drive now focus on 'space' doing the moving, i don't think this would affect such new warp drives

Originally posted by Monkeygod333
What if one was able to pass THROUGH the particles, with a magnetic barrier that separates the craft from all other matter outside the barrier?

Yup, that's the way to do it, however there is a hell of a difference between doing that c- and trying to do it c+.

As to what the bubble could be made of (magnetic doesn't spring to mind), well that'll be announced in a few weeks by a bunch of scientists (The dark matter announcement), but "space bubbles" seem to be a property of nature, for example galaxies must be surrounded by them otherwise their shape would be a lot less symmetrical.

C+ travel would appear to be out the window completely, however you could do some portal thing, but the level of interaction with the other end of the portal would be quite limited. Think giant space condom,

cOOL.

A number of you have suggested the use of magnetic shielding (one poster even proposed a Meissner 'field') as a solution. Won't fly, because you will probably need as much energy to power that kind of shield as you would to shove a physical shield through space against the effects of photon drag, ablation, etc. Some of the other proposed 'solutions' involve the expenditure of more energy. None of them will work.

reply to post by Astyanax


Well whatever the shield is, would it be possible to make it so that energy can be harnessed from the photons impacting the shield, and that would take care of the problem of needing lots of energy for the shield. Also can superconductors be used in anyway to generate a magnetic field, I think super conductors can be created more easily in the vacuum of space, and maybe with strong magnets around the ship and these superconductors could continuously repel and attract each other around the ship at high speeds creating a 'force field'.. kinda like what electrons do to appear and feel solid.

Tapping the zero-point would yield unlimited output. It is an inexhaustable sea of energy. There are particles all around us. Outerspace would serve as the perfect reaction chamber. The amount of zero-point energy in the area of a tea cup, could boil all of the Earth's oceans. This is a simple, yet awesome power source. And yes, this technology has been suppressed. Look up Henry T. Moray. He was shot at on the street for discovering this secret.

i suggest energy conservation engine

A negative magnet on the front of the ship (the nose) and a positive magnet generator at the opposite side of the shield

By attracting the magnetic fields on the front, and pushing thems on the opposite, we create a linear movement, with only transfering energy from one side to the other, while conserving it, thus, creating a movement around the ship.

w're just "contracting" the space around the ship, so when we want to change the course of the ship, we just have to reverse the polarity on the magnets

reply to post by ImaFungi

Whatever the shield is, would it be possible to make it so that energy can be harnessed from the photons impacting the shield, and that would take care of the problem of needing lots of energy for the shield.

Well, it's the energy of the impacting photons that is precisely the problem. 'Using them for the shield' means transferring energy to the shield from the photons. But on impact, that is exactly what happens anyway. And Newton's Third Law is physics enough to tell us what happens next.

Also can superconductors be used in anyway to generate a magnetic field.

That's what the 'Meissner field' poster meant. But whatever you do, you're going to have to deal with the energy of photon collision somehow, and the only way you can do it is by opposing its effects with an equal amount of energy (or mass equivalent). Otherwise you wouldn't just have a starship, you'd have an over-unity generator. And the Second Law of Thermodynamics is physics enough to tell us that can't happen.

True Starships dont fly....they warp.

reply to post by Astyanax


This issue can be rendered a Non-Issue if you use a Gravitic Drive.

Using such a method of Folding Space/Time....you are not traveling through normal space as you are in effect creating an Expression of One Dimensionality or Singularity to fold one point in Space/Time to the same point your ship is at.

Split Infinity

reply to post by SplitInfinity


The problem is what happens to mass (i.e. the crew and ship) at a singularity (rather gruesome)... I don't think we'll ever reach another star unless we find a way to warp space/time and do so while creating a bubble around the ship so that the ship and its contents are not affected by the external forces. Our current equations show that while in theory it could work, it would take an infinite amount of energy for the math to work, putting us back to square one.

reply to post by Gazrok


Bring the reactor to full strength before making the jump.
Warp shell should appear bright white.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

Whatever the shield is, would it be possible to make it so that energy can be harnessed from the photons impacting the shield, and that would take care of the problem of needing lots of energy for the shield.

Well, it's the energy of the impacting photons that is precisely the problem. 'Using them for the shield' means transferring energy to the shield from the photons. But on impact, that is exactly what happens anyway. And Newton's Third Law is physics enough to tell us what happens next.

Also can superconductors be used in anyway to generate a magnetic field.

That's what the 'Meissner field' poster meant. But whatever you do, you're going to have to deal with the energy of photon collision somehow, and the only way you can do it is by opposing its effects with an equal amount of energy (or mass equivalent). Otherwise you wouldn't just have a starship, you'd have an over-unity generator. And the Second Law of Thermodynamics is physics enough to tell us that can't happen.

Well the only solutions of escaping destruction from traveling quickly into incoming radiation is either deflecting the radiation; making it not hit the ship. Or utilizing that radiation in someway. You dont think either are possible? So is it known now the minimum velocity at which this radiation becomes a problem while traveling through interstellar space?