space travel

[tehsolace]

ok so i watch shows like stargate and star trek... i dunno if thats considered geeky or whatever but its an old passion of mine and i love it

anyways, I've always wondered whether or not its truely possible to travel to other places in the galaxy in a normal lifetime. Of course currently according to known science its not possible since you cant travel faster than light and it even takes light 50 years (or something) to travel to even the nearest star.

but still, i cant help but believe that someday we will think up something that will allow us to do it. anybody else believe that?

 

[Jangle]

I donn't think so in the forseeable future, but you never know what could happen.

 

[HunterSeeker]

Actually its (Only) a bit more then 4 years. Its definatly possible, you see there is this little thing called time dilution that starts to get noticible as you get closer to the speed of light. It makes time go slower for you which would make long distance one way journeys viable.

 

[Jangle]

Actually its (Only) a bit more then 4 years. Its definatly possible, you see there is this little thing called time dilution that starts to get noticible as you get closer to the speed of light. It makes time go slower for you which would make long distance one way journeys viable.

Yeah, but it's still not possible with today's technology. You'd need a lot of fuel to keep going that fast for that long.

 

[Ennui]

yes its not possible because of technology at this point, but it will be. and hunterseeker, 'dilation' not 'dilution', very different terms there

it's possible, though, in the future. we have to master higher-dimensional mathematics and be able to actually access/affect these dimensions, which would take approximately the amount of power output by our sun, which is astronomically greater than any type of power we can generate right now.

i'd recommend reading the book 'hyperspace' by michio kaku if this stuff interests you, it's accessible and informative about theoretical physics like this.

 

[PvtRyan]

Yeah, but it's still not possible with today's technology. You'd need a lot of fuel to keep going that fast for that long.

Well, no. You don't need much fuel because only acceleration costs fuel, there isn't much friction in space so you don't slow down (much) once you've reached the right speed. Acceleration just costs a lot of energy, as once you gain speed, you gain mass which costs more energy and once you near lightspeed, the energy cost approaches infinity as your relative mass approaches infinity. Hence the reason why it's not possible to reach lightspeed or above.

Conventional traveling won't be an option for really long travels. At least not unless you wanna span it across multiple generations with people living on ships and breeding another generation to take over. Or by sending robots. But even then, what's the point? No one one Earth will know how you're doing or what you're seeing when you finally get there, because all radio signals will take a long time to get there too.

So the only option is to find ways to bypass distance, bending space and stuff.

 

[Remus]

Yeah, but it's still not possible with today's technology. You'd need a lot of fuel to keep going that fast for that long.

Not if those dudes manage to make a working hyperspace engine:E . If it's for real we'll have light speed travel within 50 years or something like that.

 

[tehsolace]

Actually its (Only) a bit more then 4 years. Its definatly possible, you see there is this little thing called time dilution that starts to get noticible as you get closer to the speed of light. It makes time go slower for you which would make long distance one way journeys viable.

i thought that was only slower compared to the rest of the world, but to you it would still take 50 years at the speed of light to travel 50 light years...

 

[Que-Ever]

I'd prefer stasis pods or something than having to trust that time will seem to get slower.

 

[Ennui]

i thought that was only slower compared to the rest of the world, but to you it would still take 50 years at the speed of light to travel 50 light years...

no, you experience much shorter, but they experience normal time. time is relative.

 

[DeusExMachina]

I figure we'll create "space folds," wormholes if you will, like the gates in Cowboy Bebop where people will be able to reach destinations by going through these. Of course, I'm still trying to figure out what kind of fuel and energy will be used to keep life sustainable inside a spaceship. Perhaps we'll finally...find anti-matter and it'll power our ships.

 

[tehsolace]

no, you experience much shorter, but they experience normal time. time is relative.

ohhh so if an astronaut went close to the speed of light and traveled a distance that would take 20 years to travel at his speed, then to everyone on Earth it would take him 20 years but to him it may only take a day or something like that?

 

[Remus]

The thing is that unless we find a way to get to the nearest stars and back in a reasonable amount of time, let's say 20 years, there's no point to do it in the first place. I personally wouldn't like space travel to be at a snails pace with ships taking millions of years to go across the galaxy.

One interesting thing I've thought about is this: what if the first ship built to go to our nearest stars is indeed a snail and will take a few hundred years to get there. Here comes the thing, what if a hundred years after the ship has left there is a breakthrough and suddenly faster than light travel is possible. Another ship is constructed with this technology and goes to the same destination as the first ship. They get there in 16 years and start to build a colony. The first ship's inhabitants oblivious to what's going on continue slowly. When they finally arrive 200 years later, the descendants of the first crew are shocked to discover that the planet is inhabited by people, not only that but it has many massive cities.

 

[tehsolace]

The thing is that unless we find a way to get to the nearest stars and back in a reasonable amount of time, let's say 20 years, there's no point to do it in the first place. I personally wouldn't like space travel to be at a snails pace with ships taking millions of years to go across the galaxy.

One interesting thing I've thought about is this: what if the first ship built to go to our nearest stars is indeed a snail and will take a few hundred years to get there. Here comes the thing, what if a hundred years after the ship has left there is a breakthrough and suddenly faster than light travel is possible. Another ship is constructed with this technology and goes to the same destination as the first ship. They get there in 16 years and start to build a colony. The first ship's inhabitants oblivious to what's going on continue slowly. When they finally arrive 200 years later, the descendants of the first crew are shocked to discover that the planet is inhabited by people, not only that but it has many massive cities.

yea but its kinda unlikely that we would send people to a distance that would take hundreds of years to get to, considering the rate at which we're advancing. we would predict that probably in just a few more years we could shorten that travel time so it would be best to launch later.

plus, even if for some reason we did send people like that... i doubt we would forget about them and not contact them in some way while we're passing their asses up :]

 

[Ennui]

ohhh so if an astronaut went close to the speed of light and traveled a distance that would take 20 years to travel at his speed, then to everyone on Earth it would take him 20 years but to him it may only take a day or something like that?

well, time is relative, and you're speaking from a frame of reference that it's absolute, which makes it more confusing than it is, though still correct. it's more, the distance takes 20 years to travel at lightspeed in our time from our point of reference, but since time is relative to how fast you're moving, it would only be two years to go that distance for the astronaut.

time passes faster the closer you're moving to the speed of light, that's the theory of relativity. i believe it's some sort of asmyptotical relationship, which is why people say that traveling at lightspeed is not possible, since you can only get closer to lightspeed. this makes my brain do backflips. theoretically speaking when you're traveling exactly the speed of light, time slows to a stop.

 

[TheDan]

It's easy, all you have to do is fold the 4th dimension to be able to travel to another galaxy.

(Page 2)

 

[tehsolace]

It's easy, all you have to do is fold the 4th dimension to be able to travel to another galaxy.

(Page 2)

isnt that the time dimension?

i wonder what the 5th dimension is like...

 

[Ennui]

go watch that 10 dimensions flash thing

It's easy, all you have to do is fold the 4th dimension to be able to travel to another galaxy.

(Page 2)

disregarding the fact that we do not know how to do that. it also would take ten times the amount of energy the human race has generated thus far in our existence to do it once.

 

[theotherguy]

well since time is relative, the problem wouldn't be the astronaut's life span, but communication with earth. If you went at lightspeed to another planet it might seem to take about a year for you, but it would take twenty years to send back any information to high command on earth, and it would take another twenty years to get a response, and if you wanted goods shipped to you, it would take twenty years for them to get there.

but the big elephant is essentially comsic radiation. Extreme exposure to cosmic radiation occurs in space, and the only real viable sheilding is incredibly massive amounts of water, which would make the spaceship huge, slow, heavy and incredibly expensive. You could also use magnets to deflect the radiation, but that would cause harmful magnetic fields which would kill you, or you could shoot out a positively charged electric field, but that takes extreme amounts of energy and would result in an influx of electrons (which would probably kill you as well)

even when you got to the place you were going, if it didn't have an atmosphere you would have to bury yourself deep underground to overcome radiation, which would require digging equipment, which makes your spaceship even heavier.

 

[Cole]

The fastest way between two points is not a straight line. It involves bending space-time. One point bent right onto another point.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

The fastest way between two points is not a straight line. It involves bending space-time. One point bent right onto another point.

Yeah good luck with that.

 

[bbson john]

Wormhole seems to be impossible. How can we tear the space? :/

 

[DeusExMachina]

Wormhole seems to be impossible. How can we tear the space? :/

It's all hypothetical at the moment. We'd need to find breakthroughs in physics, mathematics, and technology to even attempt it.

 

[Cole]

Wormhole seems to be impossible. How can we tear the space? :/

With a knife of course.

 

[theotherguy]

Wormhole seems to be impossible. How can we tear the space? :/

it might be possible that wormholes exist already. Back just microseconds after the big bang, the universe was extremely small, so tiny wormholes that fluctuate in quantum space might have grown to enourmous size just after the big bang.

However, if they exist they are probably only a handful in number, and are probably at the very edges of the universe.

Theoretcally, if you could create a wormhole, you could also travel back in time. You could do this by placing a wormhole opening very near to a neutron star, and the gravity would slow time at that end of the wormhole by nearly a factor of two. Then, after waiting for several years, you could enter the wormhole on one side and then come out in the past on the other side. However, you could never travel back farther than before the wormhole was built, and you couldn't do anything that would prevent yourself from entering the wormhole in the first place.

 

[DietSoap]

With a knife of course.

I concur.

 

[bbson john]

Finding an already-exist wormhole seems to be too passive. :/

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

There is no reason for them to even exist. Don't wrack your brain over it. It's pointless to even ponder wormholes at present.

 

[DeusExMachina]

I'm sure Stephen Hawking agrees with you :|

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

When physical manipulation of the world around you is impossible, pondering the mysteries of the universe is great for keeping sane. When you are some guy from Hong Kong on a HL2 forum, it's pointless.

Unless you have some practical way to establish whether they can even exist, there's no point in thinking about it. This is my belief, because I do not believe "wormholes" in the sense of space-bending passages, can exist. I do not believe time travel is possible. I do not believe "time" distorts on approach of light speed.
Light speed isn't even a constant.

 

[Raziaar]

 

[pvtbones]

I dunno about you guys by I'm not going anywhere near wormholes, hyperspace drives after seeing event horizon a couple minutes ago. :x

 

[Jerry_111]

dude, forget about interstellar travel in the near future. I'd happily settle for interPLANETARY travel within 200-300 centuries. A human-colonized solar system, with mining operations and colonies on the many asteroids, planets, and moons -- with lots of economic activity and human expansion -- would be more than enough already. We're living in the early age of space travel, living in the times when the foundations are to be set.