Plan an Interstellar Mission!

[benjee10]

Love or hate Interstellar, you can't deny how interesting the concept of a manned mission to another star is. Imagine the situation: something is going to happen to the solar system which will leave it uninhabitable within a century. Perhaps a strangelet is converting the sun into a Quark Star, or some other doomsday scenario is gonna wipe us out. But something means the human race has got to get up and go or die trying (since an end-of-the-solar-system scenario is the only possible reason I can see for attempting a manned interstellar mission any time in the near future given the vast difficulty of the task).

How would you design such a mission?

Where would you go?

How big would the crew be?

How do you solve the problem of ridiculous journey times (without using Interstellar's wormhole macguffin)?

Would it even be possible?

Would the world get behind such a mission or ignore it?

Let's try and stay within the realms of possibility here guys, so no Alcubierre drives since we don't have any confirmation that they could work yet.

[Rakaydos]

Antimatter and laser sails are pretty much our only options, and it'll take both, not just one.

[SargeRho]

Assuming we have some sort of cryonics/hypersleep/suspended animation technology?

Magnetic sails and fusion or antimatter engines, liquid droplet radiators to be used during engine operation, and normal radiators afterwards, big whipple shield, and perhaps a "simple" nuclear reactor to maintain power. If the cryonics systems only need cooling, then use americium RTGs instead.

The crew would be all female, and would carry thousands of embryos along. Several ships would be sent out, each capable of building a colony on its own.

[Bill Phil]

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion and a cluster of O'Neill Cylinders. The cylinders can operate without a planet. This means they can float around in a star system near high volatile bodies... And the star chosen needs that...

[FishInferno]

I don't know much about the physics and complications of interstellar travel other than that it is REELY HARD, but I would try to develop nuclear fusion to power the spacecraft, use cylinders for artificial gravity, and make the ship big enough to be self-sustaining.

Also, I think that we could go interstellar in the next century if we went into oh-crap-we're-screwed mode.

[kStrout]

I would just build space colonies, there aren't really any doomsday scenarios that can be solved by an interstellar mission and not by making space colonies. That is really what they should have done in Interstellar and I'm glad they finally figured it out in the end.

[cantab]

I would design it based on current proven technology. Nuclear pulse propulsion for an initial boost to get us out of the danger area, then nuclear electric as a "sustainer". Fusion other than nuclear pulse propulsion is right out, it doesn't work now and there's no guarantee it will.

I'd have to think about where it would go. Keep in mind that the closest star now isn't necessarily the one we can get to soonest because the stars are moving too! In the long term we need an external source of radiation, nuclear reactors won't run the ship forever.

Actually I wonder if Jupiter orbit might not work. It does give off a fair bit of infrared radiation, and while that low-grade radiation would be difficult to exploit I wouldn't count it out. Of course this assumes that whatever killed the Sun won't kill Jupiter too.

It would take generations, we're talking generation ship stuff.

Now as for how many people would go and whether the world would be behind it, I'm afraid this is where it turns ugly. The politicians, generals, and plutocrats will go, and the rest of the world will be screwed.

[Nicholander]

Hmm... This is a tricky problem. Since you say that Earth is going to become inhabitable within a century, that really limits our options. This is my idea:

Since you just can't make a spacecraft capable of bringing 7 billion people to another star, I say send about, say 10,000 or 20,000 highly skilled people. (Engineers, scientists, etc. )

Go to Proxima Centauri, since it's the closest star to Earth, about 4.2 light years away, but since it has no planets (That we know of), the spacecraft must be self sufficient if they find out there isn't a planets at Proxima Centauri.

The spacecraft itself should be made with technology that is cheap to make (Since you'll need A LOT of it), and powerful enough. The propulsion should be Nuclear Pulse Propulsion (Orion), since us Humans have an awful lot of Nuclear bombs lying around, so why not use them for good? For power, that's a tricky question. Since (I forgot to mention this earlier) it'll get to Proxima Centauri in about 100 years, RTGs could be a good choice. Plutonium RTGs have a half life of about 87 years, but Americium RTGs have a half life of about 400 years, more than enough for our 100 year journey. But a lot of power will be needed, so you'll need a lot of RTGs. Also, it will have equipment for colonizing a planet (Well, maybe "Colonize" isn't the best word, since it'll be mostly just for mining it's resources) if there turns out to be one there. (If there isn't use that equipment for scrap)

Also, sorry I forgot to mention this, but the crew will be in a cryonic sleep for the 100 year Solar System-Proxima Centauri trip.

[Ralathon]

I would just build space colonies, there aren't really any doomsday scenarios that can be solved by an interstellar mission and not by making space colonies. That is really what they should have done in Interstellar and I'm glad they finally figured it out in the end.

That was always the plan in interstellar. The wormhole mission with cryogenically frozen embryo's was the backup plan incase they did not figure out how to manipulate gravity (they needed that to get their space colonies off the ground).

Anyway, we have 100 years and by far the biggest problem is energy. How are you going to power yourself without a nearby star?

So the logical thing to do is toss insane amounts of money towards fusion research to get it running ASAP. That way you can get energy from water.

Another big problem is getting raw materials into orbit. So loads of money should go into asteroid mining to build the structural elements of your ships.

As KStrout pointed out there's not much of a point in interstellar travel. Just build a bunch of space stations and sit it out in the Kuiper Belt. Plenty of resources to keep you going for millions of years. From there we'd have to rebuild our civilization. There's no way we'd get more than 0.1% of the current population into the space stations, so we are dangerously close to extinction. Over the next few decades we would slowly recover and spread out in the Oort cloud. And maybe, eventually, make the jump to the Oort cloud of a nearby other star.

[PB666]

Antimatter and laser sails are pretty much our only options, and it'll take both, not just one.

Antimatter? Like star-trek? "Captain the anti-matter containment unit it about to fail"........

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Hmm... This is a tricky problem. Since you say that Earth is going to become inhabitable within a century, that really limits our options. This is my idea:

Since you just can't make a spacecraft capable of bringing 7 billion people to another star, I say send about, say 10,000 or 20,000 highly skilled people. (Engineers, scientists, etc. )

Go to Proxima Centauri, since it's the closest star to Earth, about 4.2 light years away, but since it has no planets (That we know of), the spacecraft must be self sufficient if they find out there isn't a planets at Proxima Centauri.

The spacecraft itself should be made with technology that is cheap to make (Since you'll need A LOT of it), and powerful enough. The propulsion should be Nuclear Pulse Propulsion (Orion), since us Humans have an awful lot of Nuclear bombs lying around, so why not use them for good? For power, that's a tricky question. Since (I forgot to mention this earlier) it'll get to Proxima Centauri in about 100 years, RTGs could be a good choice. Plutonium RTGs have a half life of about 87 years, but Americium RTGs have a half life of about 400 years, more than enough for our 100 year journey. But a lot of power will be needed, so you'll need a lot of RTGs. Also, it will have equipment for colonizing a planet (Well, maybe "Colonize" isn't the best word, since it'll be mostly just for mining it's resources) if there turns out to be one there. (If there isn't use that equipment for scrap)

Also, sorry I forgot to mention this, but the crew will be in a cryonic sleep for the 100 year Solar System-Proxima Centauri trip.

Inhabitable? Is that special, like Hawaii or the Grand Caymen?

[WestAir]

If the Solar System was going to be made uninhabitable n 100 years, that leaves us with 99 years to debate and 1 year to panic.

[PB666]

That was always the plan in interstellar. The wormhole mission with cryogenically frozen embryo's was the backup plan incase they did not figure out how to manipulate gravity (they needed that to get their space colonies off the ground).

Anyway, we have 100 years and by far the biggest problem is energy. How are you going to power yourself without a nearby star?

So the logical thing to do is toss insane amounts of money towards fusion research to get it running ASAP. That way you can get energy from water.

Fail, mass to energy conversion in fusion is too low. Wont work, will take 100,000s of years to reach a star with a terraformable planet.

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1. Have an interstellar breaking (some lightweight fabric capable of using gases to slow down)

2. A Nuclear powered Earth ship capable for traveling for 100,000s of years. Made from a near earth asteroid.

Choosen because:

- Able to shield its inhabitants from cosmic radiation and high velocity collisions.

- Can provide the ingredients needed for terraforming without have to rely on cryo or venetian crews.

- Stellar targets approach and retreat, you have one shot and would not be able to make multiple trips.

- harvest hydrogen from space for fuel.

- Somewhere in there should be something called Soilant green, hmmmm.

[Ralathon]

Fail, mass to energy conversion in fusion is too low. Wont work, will take 100,000s of years to reach a star with a terraformable planet.

Did you actually read my post? I never said we should use fusion to travel to other stars.

Also, what's your source on that? D-T fusion has a mass defect of 17.5MeV. If you use that in a fusion drive you'd get a theoretical exhaust velocity of 0.087c. Say you wanted to go 10 ly within 200 years. You'd need 0.1c of dV. Plugging the numbers into the tsiolkovsky rocket equation gives you m(frac) = e^(dV/v(e)) = 3.15. So your fusion fuel only needs to be about 3 times as heavy as your payload. Our currentday rockets do worse than that.

Unless your terraformable planet (Why the heck would you need a terraformable planet :S) is on the other side of the galaxy fusion is plenty to get around the stellar neighbourhood.

[cicatrix]

Provided I have a propulsion method that will take me, say, to Proxima Centauri in a matter of 20-30 years, I wouldl still have to think carefully about these things:

1. Building a large enough craft to accomodate about 10 people without them being too tightly packed. I will need space... Yes, at least 10 people because they're going to spend 40-60 years together. It, by itself, is going to be a challenge.

2. I would have to add heavy protection from radiation.

3. Life support - without closed cycle I don't think it would be possible to sustain them.

4. Emergency life support - in case something goes wrong.

5. All vital systems should be tripled - even this might not be enough.

6. Some far scanning instruments that would detect any asteroids or any obstacles (like drifting alien vessels) and some systems for evasion.

7. I need to give these people something to do for the whole flight (I really do not know what can I offer them)

So, in the light of all of the above, I will need a really large vessel. And this is also a problem, because I will have to design it strong to all types of loads, I will need materials.

Anyway, this is probably a one-way ticket so I would better send a probe.

[Technical Ben]

The plan is easy.

Travel in your own custom built eternally (*life time warranty provided) lasting space ship. It's large enough for any colony requirements...

It's called "Earth"!

That is, our own earth will travel with it's companion star across our galaxy, and in time Andromida will meet the Milky Way. At the timescales for most interstellar travel, we'd be better off sitting in our nice armchairs and watching the world(s) go by our window.

[benjee10]

The plan is easy.

Travel in your own custom built eternally (*life time warranty provided) lasting space ship. It's large enough for any colony requirements...

It's called "Earth"!

That is, our own earth will travel with it's companion star across our galaxy, and in time Andromida will meet the Milky Way. At the timescales for most interstellar travel, we'd be better off sitting in our nice armchairs and watching the world(s) go by our window.

That's not the point of this thread - the premise is that the Earth and solar system as a whole are no longer viable and have to be abandoned. What do you do then?

[Skyler4856]

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Antimatter and laser sails are pretty much our only options, and it'll take both, not just one.

Have you ever heard of a little thing called, an Orion Drive?

Potentially could go 10% of the speed of light.

[Nicholander]

Inhabitable? Is that special, like Hawaii or the Grand Caymen?

Sorry, I meant "Uninhabitable". But couldn't you infer that's what I meant?

[Rakaydos]

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Have you ever heard of a little thing called, an Orion Drive?

Potentially could go 10% of the speed of light.

Orion is the best thiing we have, but it isnt enough. Not if we're going beyond Proxima Centauri or Barnard Star. The fuel fraction (of shape charge nuclear warheads) will stretch the limit of nuclear material on earth.

Antimatter, we'd have to manufacture it ourselves, but it's energy density puts even atomic power to shame. And we STILL woud need a solar sail booster-break.

[Technical Ben]

That's not the point of this thread - the premise is that the Earth and solar system as a whole are no longer viable and have to be abandoned. What do you do then?

Whole solar system? Even the Ooort cloud?

[Rakaydos]

Whole solar system? Even the Ooort cloud?

One of the hypothetical scenerios was "The sun is being turned into Strange Matter"

How would you survive without a sun?

[Ralathon]

One of the hypothetical scenerios was "The sun is being turned into Strange Matter"

How would you survive without a sun?

If all you have to do is survive without a sun you shouldn't even bother leaving the earth. Plenty of nuclear material and geothermal energy to keep us going for millenia.

[Robotengineer]

How large of a population would we be trying to transport? Would it be small as seen in Interstellar, or larger?

[PB666]

Sorry, I meant "Uninhabitable". But couldn't you infer that's what I meant?

I did, but I thought it might be Freudian, like you really believe reaching habitables around other stars is impossible.

[PB666]

One of the hypothetical scenerios was "The sun is being turned into Strange Matter"

How would you survive without a sun?

I would put my Cannae drive on it and use the stange matter to propel the entire system to Andromeda by finding a labyrinth of worm holes, only to findout that it is a dying galaxy on a collision course with the Milky-way. With nothing else to lose I would convert all of earth in to parasitic species that searched the entire milky-way proliferating living things and sucking the life out of stars until there was nothing left and self-distruct in Andromeda's black hole (of course naming my ship after it). Wait, no, I think that has already been done, nevermind.