Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical questions

[Gargamel]

9 hours ago, KG3 said:

while the exterior is made of pine;

Which is really unsuitable for a ship of this design.  Yes, you can use it, it will work, but it won't last that long.  I'm a woodworker, not a wooden ship builder (I do build CF and plastic hulled boats though), so there may be processes that make pine usable, but there are many other hard woods available (pine is a soft wood) that are far more suitable for ship building.   But they cost more, and will drive up the price. 

[Cheif Operations Director]

Using earths magnetic field (in the van Allen belts) to help levitate a ship

[KG3]

10 hours ago, Green Baron said:

 And prices for modern day yachts in all sizes including the ones from the rich and super rich are freely available. Without "special equipment" and crew, i you know what i mean ...

Got to love yacht racing.  Just owning a racing yacht gets you ranked in the worlds top 50! 

[Arugela]

On 11/3/2017 at 4:21 PM, DAL59 said:

Based on xkcd's What If(apparently inactive).  Ask a absurd hypothetical question, and someone can come and give you a serious scientific answer.  

Technically this is not true. The only absolutely correct scientific answer is always, "I don't know." Anyone saying anything else is full of you know what.

[Cheif Operations Director]

9 hours ago, Arugela said:

Technically this is not true. The only absolutely correct scientific answer is always, "I don't know." Anyone saying anything else is full of you know what.

Not nessicary Gravity is real What if someone asked why things fall

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

5 hours ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Not nessicary Gravity is real What if someone asked why things fall

https://xkcd.com/1489/

Alt-text: "Of these four forces, there's one we don't really understand." "Is it the weak force or the strong--" "It's gravity."

Although we can say, with 100% accuracy, that we describe the phenomenon that makes things fall down as gravity. So gravity does exist, as much as anything does, but there aren't any guarantees about our models for it being accurate, or describing some kind of deeper truth.

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

Although we can say, with 100% accuracy, that we describe the phenomenon that makes things fall down as gravity.

If take the observer as the reference point, that's the Earth gets attracted to him, jumps up, and hits from below every time he tries to push it away, lol.

Also, the observer's car rotates the Earth with its wheels.

Edited September 26, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Vanamonde]

The thread went off topic a while back and veered into epistemology and religion. We've removed those posts so please get back to asking silly questions and giving serious answers. 

[Spaceception]

Does it really make sense for wormholes to be automatically "connected" (is the area between wormholes a different kind of "space"?), and could there instances where you end up in a totally different system than where you intended to go? I know this can't really be 'known' so what are your thoughts/opinions?

[Diche Bach]

Would it be possible to create a technology that allowed a space craft to "surf" on a coronal mass ejection?

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, Diche Bach said:

Would it be possible to create a technology that allowed a space craft to "surf" on a coronal mass ejection?

Yes.

 

[Diche Bach]

Hmmm . . .

Quote

Coronal mass ejections reach velocities from 20 to 3,200 km/s (12 to 1,988 mi/s) with an average speed of 489 km/s (304 mi/s), based on SOHO/LASCO measurements between 1996 and 2003. These speeds correspond to transit times from the Sun out to the mean radius of Earth's orbit of about 13 hours to 86 days (extremes), with about 3.5 days as the average. The average mass ejected is 1.6×10¹² kg (3.5×10¹² lb). However, the estimated mass values for CMEs are only lower limits, because coronagraph measurements provide only two-dimensional data.

Seems a lot better than what we have managed so far.

I've got our best controlled speed achieved so far as being the Juno probe which achieved 76 km/sec, so 3200 km/sec ~42 times faster. Seems that would still put a one way trip time to Alpha Centauri around the 4,000 years ballpark. Lots better than the 168,000 years it would take a "Juno speed" spacecraft, but still not very practical.

Once again: nuclear pulse propulsion seems to be the only real hope . . .

Edited October 13, 2018 by Diche Bach
nuka pulse

[Spaceception]

31 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

Once again: nuclear pulse propulsion seems to be the only real hope . . .

 

Only way I can see us doing that is if someone like Musk or Bezo's figures out how to get around the outer space treaty/nuclear test ban treaty, and builds it in space, far from Earth. But by the time we're capable of that, I'd hazard a guess to say we'd have access to something better. That 2013 design for a fusion engine seemed promising, and would lead to more powerful drives, whatever happened to that?

[KG3]

44 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Only way I can see us doing that is if someone like Musk or Bezo's figures out how to get around the outer space treaty/nuclear test ban treaty,...

Does the intended use of the device get taken into consideration?  After all, if you put a pint of petrol in a bottle with rag stuffed into it you have a bomb.  If instead you put the same petrol in the fuel tank of your car you have fuel.

[DAL59]

12 hours ago, Diche Bach said:

Would it be possible to create a technology that allowed a space craft to "surf" on a coronal mass ejection?

Wasn't that in one of the HGTTG books?

[Diche Bach]

Well even with the question of propulsion set aside, I'd say we are decades if not a century from any serious prospects of interstellar. Any vessel of any size will have be assembled in space and clearly we need something a lot more substantial than the ISS for something like that.

[Spaceception]

9 hours ago, KG3 said:

Does the intended use of the device get taken into consideration?  After all, if you put a pint of petrol in a bottle with rag stuffed into it you have a bomb.  If instead you put the same petrol in the fuel tank of your car you have fuel.

 

Yeah, but this is nuclear pulse propulsion you're talking about. A spacecraft that uses at least thousands of nukes onboard for propulsion. Some early designs were for the military for massive battleships. There would be worries about military contracts for that technology. No matter your intentions, people would be wary, and I wouldn't be surprised if it quickly became an international matter. Getting permission to build even one ship would be a tremendous undertaking.

36 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

Well even with the question of propulsion set aside, I'd say we are decades if not a century from any serious prospects of interstellar. Any vessel of any size will have be assembled in space and clearly we need something a lot more substantial than the ISS for something like that.

True. Plus, we would need a lot of research on autonomous spacecraft, that can make smart decisions, and work properly for decades, or centuries. And spacecraft that can last a very long time without breaking down, or at least, can repair themselves.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Spaceception

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, KG3 said:

 Does the intended use of the device get taken into consideration?  After all, if you put a pint of petrol in a bottle with rag stuffed into it you have a bomb.  If instead you put the same petrol in the fuel tank of your car you have fuel.

You could probably name it an propellant unit and claim its not an bomb because some design, like you could design like it has no power source but it passes trough an magnetic field who gives it power, if it don't fire it would be inert. 
Now letting someone holding tons of weapon grade plutonium on the other hand is way more sensitive. 

And yes orion would be perfect for moving asteroids around, its pretty much the only realistic design for this. 

[Bill Phil]

19 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

You could probably name it an propellant unit and claim its not an bomb because some design, like you could design like it has no power source but it passes trough an magnetic field who gives it power, if it don't fire it would be inert. 
Now letting someone holding tons of weapon grade plutonium on the other hand is way more sensitive. 

And yes orion would be perfect for moving asteroids around, its pretty much the only realistic design for this. 

Well, mass drivers could move some big stuff around too, though on a smaller time scale.

[kerbiloid]

On 10/13/2018 at 6:23 AM, Spaceception said:

Only way I can see us doing that is if someone like Musk or Bezo's figures out how to get around the outer space treaty/nuclear test ban treaty, and builds it in space, far from Earth.

.

Spoiler

 

[Spaceception]

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

 

  Hide contents



 

 

Er, context please? (I only got up recently )

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Er, context please? (I only got up recently )

Nuke propulsion and its limitations.

Edited October 14, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Spaceception]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Nuke propulsion and its limitations.

Like, how hard it'd be to use in the first place?

[DerekL1963]

On 10/12/2018 at 8:53 AM, Diche Bach said:

Would it be possible to create a technology that allowed a space craft to "surf" on a coronal mass ejection?

Maybe...  a CME isn't actually much more dense than the interplanetary vacuum.

[Diche Bach]

5 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Maybe...  a CME isn't actually much more dense than the interplanetary vacuum.

Well, it is "energy dense," so the idea I had in mind with my layman's physic was: project an energy field "behind" one's space craft that would have a "repulsive" response to the polarity of the CME. Buckle up and let Repulsion serve as your Propulsion! 

Edited October 14, 2018 by Diche Bach