Proceed to Warp 8 number one

[LoneMateria]

oh so you are a frequent visitor of http://www.thinkgeek.com right?  The coolest geek gadgets are there.

[templeboy]

Almost everything is easier said then done.  Fighter pilots have to wear G-suits to stop them from blacking out during combat.  How many 'G's do you think we will pull getting close to the speed of light?  They don't have to operate at supersonic speeds to pull a few 'G's.  I'm sure once we gain an even better understanding of gravity (like how to artificially create it) then we should theoretically be able to cancel out its effects.  Who knows how far off in the future that is though.

You wouldn't pull any G's from travelling at the speed of light. You don't pull G's by travelling at any speed. You pull G's by accelerating. So lets say that you accelerate at 1G from earth. To accelerate from stationary to the speed of light at 1G- about 10metres per second per second- would take 30 million seconds (since the speed of light is 300 million m/s) Now, according to my calculations, accelerating at 1G to the speed of light would take 9.51 years. Halfway to the destination, we would have to start decelerating at 1G.

(We could not survive a persistant force of much greater than 1G for such a long period, and the 1G force would have the nice bonus effect of simulating gravity in our spaceship.)

So, on a trip to one of our nearest interstellar neighbours, the speed of light would not be a barrier (although we would get up to a significant fraction of it, so relativistic effects would become important in the calculations.)

If anybody has less of an aversion to the calculus than me, I'd love to know how long it would take to reach the nearest star if we accelerated a 1G to the halfway point, then decelerated at 1G the rest of the way...I'm picking, 30 years??

[SSY]

No integration needed, just use triangles.  

Also, insane speed is not that hard to get as this little beauty shows (in theory). While it may seem fanciful, I think it could really work, and 7% of c is unimaginably fast. I imagine that if we put the same amount of money into this, as the USA put into the moon landings, then it could be done in the next 100 odd years, which is not too bad for this kind of thing, and considering the scale of it.

[Renegnicat]

What's interesting is that with the artifician gravity, and the new discovery of humans going into suspended animation with poison gas, we could simply put ourselves in suspended animation for the duration of the trip, and construct machines to massage our muscles and joints while we head to the star. The whole trip would pass in a flash.

The best part? We wouldn't age for the trip, so we would still have our youthful bodies as when we started! No need to reproduce on the ship!

[theTwiz]

I find this thread's lack of BS:G references disturbing.
[attachment=0:timn1y18]bsgjump.jpg[/attachment:timn1y18]

[LoneMateria]

I find this thread's lack of BS:G references disturbing.
[attachment=0:28c856nm]bsgjump.jpg[/attachment:28c856nm]

I don't recognize that ship ... did you pull it from the original or the New One?  I say new pfft its over and it was awesome.  They are making a prequel series that will lead up to the first Cylon war ... New series will start soon I think its called Caprica.

[karadan]

Almost everything is easier said then done.  Fighter pilots have to wear G-suits to stop them from blacking out during combat.  How many 'G's do you think we will pull getting close to the speed of light?  They don't have to operate at supersonic speeds to pull a few 'G's.  I'm sure once we gain an even better understanding of gravity (like how to artificially create it) then we should theoretically be able to cancel out its effects.  Who knows how far off in the future that is though.

It depends how fast they are accelerating. You would feel no G's if travelling at a constant speed close to the speed of light.

The simple act of immersing yourself in a body of water enables the human body to take a few extra G's comfortably. Future grav couches will just be human-sized tubes filled with brine

The problem defence contractors have always faced is the limitations of the human body when fast-paced war is taken into account. Simple solution? Take the human out of the equation. It wil go the same way for space travel and exploration. It will be entirely automated. Maybe by then we'll be able to incorporate actual human consciousness into a synthetic device enabling ships to be piloted by a human mind but without the limitations of a squidgy human body limiting the G's which can be maintained. You never know, by then we'll be able to cyborgify ourselves so G's no longer matter.

[karadan]

I say we fix the problems home on earth before we take them to space.  I feel like we would end up like the old game StarLancer where we are essentially fighting the Russians for control of the Solar System.  Either that or the majority of the atheist community and anyone else who is science related can move underground or to one specific region where we can focus on advancing science, building new technologies and bringing peace to the world.

I say first thing we do is figure out how to protect ourselves from attacks and radiation from nuclear weapons, maybe create a way to neutralize a weapon while its still in the air.  Then intergalactic travel is number 2 ^_^

I've never liked that rationale. It's akin to chopping down an entire forest just because it is prone to forest fires. Just because humanity has issues, doesn't mean we should halt the space program. Besides, something like 25% of the federal budget goes into the US war machine. Something like 0.5% of the federal budget goes to NASA (and is cut substantially on a yearly basis) which is why NASA are going to sell off their remaining shuttles for 28million a-piece.

The space programme has given so much to humanity it is ridiculous. I mean, so many things you will never have thought about have made their way into other facets of society. NASA, JAXA and ESA actually have thinktanks which try to come up with civilian solutions using the tech created for the space programme. One such example would be:

Paul Vernon, who works as a broker for ESA at the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council in Daresbury, hit pay dirt five years ago when he was visiting a laboratory at Queen Mary University of London. He had a brainwave when engineer Ejaz Huq showed him some unusual space gadgets through a microscope. Given modest heating from an electric current, the tiny cantilevers of double-layered plastic could bend enough to control the exact position of mirrors on satellites.

Thinking of potential spin-offs, Vernon suggested to Huq that he put one of the cantilevers in a liquid to see what happened. To their surprise, they discovered that its rate of bending depended on the liquid's viscosity, and moreover that this rate could be determined from the cantilever's electronic readout. "My thinking was 'where could you make cash with disposable viscosity meters?'" Vernon recalls. "And then I thought of the medical market."

It was a prudent idea. Patients at risk of heart attacks or strokes need to have their blood viscosity checked regularly so that they know when to take blood-thinning drugs: if the blood is too thick it could clot, yet if the blood is too thin they could bleed uncontrollably. Spurred on by the $1 billion-plus world market for blood viscometers, Vernon set up a company called Microvisk to turn the space cantilevers into easy handheld devices. The Microvisk devices are still in development, yet clinical tests already indicate that they will be the most accurate on offer.
(taken from newscientist.com)

I'll always defend the space programme with all my heart. The people who work for it do so purely because they love the science of space exploration and the accumulation of knowledge it brings. The meeting of minds for the causes of peaceful scientific discovery is one of the most beautiful facets humanity has to offer. It engenders hope and progress during times of great uncertainty and has helped us as a species more than any other collective of people i can currently think of.

Quite literally, the science of space exploration is our ONLY hope for the future. Nothing else even comes close to helping us solve all the biggest problems facing humanity.

[LoneMateria]

Okay I was going to quote line for line with you but its pointless.  You missed what I was saying and you should probably re-read the posts.  We were talking about living long term in space.  I have the highest regards for our space program and it's understanding of our universe.  That being said we shouldn't be attempting long term space living until we fix our problems at home.  (I find your analogy flawed and I will get to that in a second)  The problem is if we go out and make colonies in space as divided as we are now (if not more so) then we will still be a bickering race of barbarians only we will have cooler things.  We will still be fighting only it will be on a wider playing field.   Now yes we have a great benefit with the space program now and I would be glad to see our gov funnel more money into it.  But they won't.

Now onto the analogy you made. Cutting down a forest to stop a potential fire ... first off as opposed to what?  Letting it sit there?  Your analogy doesn't make sense.  Fixing the problems here at home before moving away is more like fixing a car before you get it detailed.  Lets focus on making sure the car which is the human race will move forward instead of ignoring the major problems and focusing on the leather seats.  I'd rather make sure we have a solid structure and no major problems before putting the ass warmer in the seat ... you know what I mean?

[karadan]

My apologies, I was doing lots of things at once when I read your post. I missed the point about it being purely about the colonisation of space. This, I'd agree with, to a certain point. It just isn't practical to aim for permanent colonies staffed by humans unless we're able to change ourselves enough physically so that the inherent dangers of space become a lot less hazardous. It will mostly be automated. The cost/benefit of colonising space with near future technologies just doesn't make it worth it. I'm sorry, I've had lots of discussions recently with people who think the entire space programme is a waste of time and money. It's an argument which makes me face palm a lot. I was surprised to hear you air such views to be honest. I'm glad I was wrong

[LoneMateria]

It's no problem.  We've all confused the point of others posts here and there ... I know i'm guilty of doing that on a few occasions.  Heres my take on space travel.  We know one day our star will run out of Hydrogen and expand to the point where it will engulf the earth.  If we do not leave our planet and venture into the stars on that day the human race (or really whatever we evolve into) will cease to be.  Any remnant of our great civilization will be gone.  In order to avoid it we must go into space and look for other homes.  Be it terraformed worlds/moons or whatever.  

However if we cannot get along without killing one another when we live here on the same planet then why do we think things will be different when we go to the stars?  We kill each other over what goat herders in a desert 2000 years ago claimed was true about the universe.  And we expect to be a great space fairing race and survive?  I just don't see it happening.

[karadan]

Well, i'm optimistic. The time frame involved with the sun going nova is in the billions of years. Please correct me if i'm wrong but i remember it being another 4 billion years before that happens. That kind of time frame is, well, unimaginable. It is such an enormous amount of time that the human race would have the chance to die out, re-evolve, die out, re-evolve.... several times over. With the rate we've advanced in the last 100 years alone, i'd be completely shocked if we hadn't learnt the ability to migrate to the stars within the next 2000 years, assuming there hasn't been some sort of cataclysm by then.

No one predicted the internet. It has changed the world in which we live quite dramatically in just two decades. Who's to say some other form of technology/mode of thought/obelisk will not be conceived within the next few dacades which gives us the scope and ability to achieve everything science fiction only recently dreamed about? If Moore's law carries on as i'm sure it will, we'll have true AI within this century. The ramifications it will have on humanity doesn't really need to be explained. This quantum leap in technology will either be our saving grace or complete downfall. I'm hoping for the former.

Anyways, i think  many of the large issues facing us today are born from restrictions of limited space and resources. As we become ever-more cramped, hostilities will rise. There's a reason a corellation exists between the rate of crime and density of population in a given area (Japan not included, although ironically, that might actually be the reason it could work in the future) but as a general rule, it stands. We aren't very good at living on top of one another peacefully. If we were given a get-out clause, i'm sure many would jump at the chance. Right now we have finite resources. If we had the technology to colonise other planets or artificial habitats then it stands to reason we'd be able to mine/harvest resources from space just as easily. There is so much for the taking that it may as well be considered infinite. So, taking away the need to fight over resources simply leaves the need to fight over ideas...Like religion... That is something i have no answer for though. I've always wondered what would become of religion in a space-faring society.

Don't forget, the amount of bad shit currently happening in the world is magnified somewhat through the media. In the face of this we still continue to be a stable, peace-loving species - statistically speaking. I see no reason for this to change for the negative. I only see it changing for the positive as we discover newer, more beneficial scientific discoveries. I think humanity will evolve as our technology does, so as we near the readiness to travel to the stars, our collective social, ethical, political and intellectual outlook will evolve accordingly.

Sure, there might still be wars over gosh-knows-what, but i'm optimistic that the basic survival instinct we all share will outweigh our perverse 'right' to beat the crap out of one another. There's a lot of very cool people doing very cool things on this planet. I'd hate to think the animalistic side of us will win over the plethora of humans who currently strive toward discovery for the betterment of humanity.

I dunno. Maybe i read too much utopian sci-fi  

[LoneMateria]

The hope you are looking for is fine and dandy however i'm more cynical and pessimistic in that perspective.  When I think of us trying to look past our differences I remind myself of what Neil Degrasse Tyson said about progress.  In what we'd consider the middle/dark ages the center of learning happened to be Pakistan and in the middle east area of the world.  They were developing different kinds of Math and were learning and discovering new things ... basically advancing scientific progress (which by itself is an interesting discussion) but about 600 years ago a 'prophet' (I don't remember his name off hand) showed up and declared that Math was from the devil.  And all of a sudden scientific progress collapsed and they sunk into a hole (so to speak) to which they have not recovered to this day.  

Oh and yes the sun will do its thing in (I thought it was) 2 billion years.  That seems like a unimaginable number.  But our environment has been unusually stable the past few thousand years or so.  It's only a matter of time until the environment changes so drastically that we may not survive.  Or we may be hit by a rogue asteroid or comet and that will be the end of things ... or we nuke ourselves into oblivion.  There are a lot of ways to die in this unforgiving universe we live in.  It may not seem like we are on a time table but we are and we really don't know when shit will hit the fan.  I vote we quickly work our shit out with eachother (hopefully within the next century or so) then move on to the universe and whatever it offers.

[theTwiz]

I don't recognize that ship ... did you pull it from the original or the New One?  I say new pfft its over and it was awesome.  They are making a prequel series that will lead up to the first Cylon war ... New series will start soon I think its called Caprica.[/quote]

That is the Battlestar Galactica in mid-jump from the reimagined (new) series.

I know your post is over a month old but yeah the prequel series is Capria and IMO it sucks so far.

[theTwiz]

I don't recognize that ship ... did you pull it from the original or the New One?  I say new pfft its over and it was awesome.  They are making a prequel series that will lead up to the first Cylon war ... New series will start soon I think its called Caprica.

That is the Battlestar Galactica in mid-jump from the reimagined (new) series.

I know your post is over a month old but yeah the prequel series is Capria and IMO it sucks so far.

edit: i broke the spoiler tag