Extremely long duration spaceflight - what happens to spacecraft?

[Ultimate Steve]

So say we launch a spaceship using slightly futuristic technology, like nuclear rockets, part metal part carbon fiber, modern computers, a crew compartment with stuff you'd find there, solar panels or nuclear reactors, etc.

Now say we launch this on an escape trajectory from the solar system. While there is a crew compartment there is no crew onboard. So now this spacecraft is floating in deep space, far away from any star, for the next several million years.

What will happen to it? Will it be preserved almost perfectly? Will stuff break down for some reason?

[KerbolExplorer]

Space is filled with nanomitiorites those would break the space craft in a couple of years....

With no crew manteining the craft any mulfunction could be catastrophical because there's no one to repair it....

 

[Green Baron]

It will wear off. Surfaces of old asteroids are altered by radiation and particles. Particles as well as radiation change molecular structure over time. How long it takes until something breaks or specifications can't be fulfilled ... idk.

Corrosion in LEO:

http://esmat.esa.int/Publications/Published_papers/Corrosion_in_Space.pdf

I found this on radiation effects, but i have not read it:

http://www.barringer1.com/mil_files/NASA-SP-8053.pdf

Surface alteration:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015aste.book..597B

... and others found whe searching "space weathering".

In conjunction with 'oumuamua surface alteration of asteroids was described. Maybe there could be found more.

I have no idea of the effects on plastic, but i would expect them to be slightly more concerning than those on metal.

Edit: more https://amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2017/NROC/Hoffmann.pdf

 

Interesting point, though ...

Edited August 29, 2018 by Green Baron

[Ultimate Steve]

Okay. Thank you for your responses. Radiation and particle erosion should be much weaker if you're not near a star, though, right?

Radiation in LEO isn't bad, but tiny space debris is probably pretty bad, and we've managed to keep the ISS up for 20 years without it becoming a problem. And we've had the Voyagers working for 40 years, some of that outside the influence of the sun.

[Green Baron]

2 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Okay. Thank you for your responses. Radiation and particle erosion should be much weaker if you're not near a star, though, right?

I'd say yes. In case of asteroid surfaces like Oumumua the papers were talking of billions of years, probably older than the solar system.

Quote

Radiation in LEO isn't bad, but tiny space debris is probably pretty bad, and we've managed to keep the ISS up for 20 years without it becoming a problem. And we've had the Voyagers working for 40 years, some of that outside the influence of the sun.

Main "problem" would probably be debris and corrosion in LEO ...

Edited August 29, 2018 by Green Baron

[K^2]

If we're talking really long timeframes, even sublimation and diffusions are factors. You'll be loosing matter from surface due to random vibrations in the lattice. Likewise, various critical impurities will be traveling through any circuitry rendering it inert. If you let the ship cool to temperature of the background, which is a few Kelvin, these processes might actually be too slow to cause problems even across billions of years. But then you're not bringing that ship back to life without outside help.

[linuxgurugamer]

2 hours ago, KerbolExplorer said:

Space is filled with nanomitiorites those would break the space craft in a couple of years....

With no crew manteining the craft any mulfunction could be catastrophical because there's no one to repair it....

 

Hmmm.  How long has voyager been up there?  40 years?  More?

[KG3]

I remember when I was a kid that they said the Voyagers were good for around a billion years.  I have no idea how they came up with this number, it might have just been hyperbole.  I've wondered what it must be like to build something that will most likely out last civilization.   

[Ultimate Steve]

Hmm. Interesting. So based on this, assuming all the spacecraft has to do is remain in one piece and not maintain anything, large timespans are doable, I think. Thank you all.

[Bill Phil]

Well...

You might get the occasional ball of water containing microbes... like on Mir. If the AC is running and the design isn't that good.

[Nibb31]

If there is a crew compartment, the atmosphere will not be breathable. Unless it was packed and sterile, bacteria and fungi will have developed.

There were concerns that returning to Skylab with Shuttle as planned would not be possible due to degradation, mould, contamination, and other nasty stuff.

[Hannu2]

I also read from somewhere that Voyagers stay recognizable as artificial objects on the order of billion years. Wearing in interstellar space is extremely slow process, but radiation and particles kick atoms off from surface during astronomical times.

[Green Baron]

6 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Hmm. Interesting. So based on this, assuming all the spacecraft has to do is remain in one piece and not maintain anything, large timespans are doable, I think. Thank you all.

How long will electronics last ? If they experience many on/off cycles and have a lot of work to do, they'd probably fail in a matter of decades/hundreds of years, even if high grade and sealed and everything ... ?

I would expect them to be the limiting link (after energy of course).

[Dafni]

8 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Hmmm.  How long has voyager been up there?  40 years?  More?

Hey Linux my man!

Voyager 1 is in space since September 1977, and Voyager 2 since August 1977.

41 years in space and still "functional"!

[linuxgurugamer]

I don't think we have any technology at this time which will last for millions of years, which is what (I believe) the OP was asking.

Going into deep space, I think there will be several factors which will  contribute to the eventual demise:

• Electronics eventually fail.  They can be made more robust, but eventually they will wear out.
• Mechanical failure.  No matter how automated and electrified, there will still need to be some mechanical parts
• Loss of power.  Solar energy will not be available, and nuclear will eventually decay enough to be dead

[Ultimate Steve]

5 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

I don't think we have any technology at this time which will last for millions of years, which is what (I believe) the OP was asking.

Going into deep space, I think there will be several factors which will  contribute to the eventual demise:

• Electronics eventually fail.  They can be made more robust, but eventually they will wear out.
• Mechanical failure.  No matter how automated and electrified, there will still need to be some mechanical parts
• Loss of power.  Solar energy will not be available, and nuclear will eventually decay enough to be dead

 

7 hours ago, Green Baron said:

How long will electronics last ? If they experience many on/off cycles and have a lot of work to do, they'd probably fail in a matter of decades/hundreds of years, even if high grade and sealed and everything ... ?

I would expect them to be the limiting link (after energy of course).

 

13 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Well...

You might get the occasional ball of water containing microbes... like on Mir. If the AC is running and the design isn't that good.

 

 

 

All valid concerns. For this specific ship, everything would be shut down and the computers would not be on, nor would the life support. Maybe there would be cryogenically frozen beings on board, but that's it (ignoring whether or not cryogenic freezing is possible). The only active function the spacecraft would need to perform would be to thaw the beings once the spacecraft got close enough to a star, which requires the computers to be intact but not running.

[Laie]

4 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

...which requires the computers to be intact but not running.

But what's to power on the computers? Do you want to set a kitchen timer? Though for the purposes of weathering, I guess it hardly matters if the electronics are powered on.

AFAIK you can't rely on integrated circuits to still work after a few decades, even if kept in a controlled environment. Supposedly there won't be any driving oldtimers of today's cars, fifty years from now, because there's no way to keep or recreate the electronics.

[Ultimate Steve]

Just now, Laie said:

But what's to power on the computers? Do you want to set a kitchen timer? Though for the purposes of weathering, I guess it hardly matters if the electronics are powered on.

AFAIK you can't rely on integrated circuits to still work after a few decades, even if kept in a controlled environment. Supposedly there won't be any driving oldtimers of today's cars, fifty years from now, because there's no way to keep or recreate the electronics.

I'm thinking if it gets close enough to a star the solar panels might start working again and by some passive means if the current is enough it will allow it through to the computers and stuff.

And these would be space grade electronics in sheltered areas with basically no outside influence, presumably built large enough (not too compact or anything) that it will be more reliable than a dense electronic.

Or better, find a way to make the whole thing electrical instead of electronic. All it really needs to do is melt stuff when it has enough power to do so.

Although keeping oxygen for the crew when they wake up is probably the problem now, storing it for hundreds of thousands of years.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

19 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I'm thinking if it gets close enough to a star the solar panels might start working again and by some passive means if the current is enough it will allow it through to the computers and stuff.

And these would be space grade electronics in sheltered areas with basically no outside influence, presumably built large enough (not too compact or anything) that it will be more reliable than a dense electronic.

Or better, find a way to make the whole thing electrical instead of electronic. All it really needs to do is melt stuff when it has enough power to do so.

Although keeping oxygen for the crew when they wake up is probably the problem now, storing it for hundreds of thousands of years.

On the subject of keeping oxygen from leaking away over large time scales, perhaps one way to get around the issue would be to bind it with hydrogen, turning it into water. That water could be easily kept frozen hard as a rock considering the lack of heat an interstellar vessel would be exposed to.  Many bodies in our own solar system such has comets have have ice as one of their main constituents; ice which has presumably been there since before the sun was even created.

It would of course take a decent amount of power to melt and then split the ice into oxygen and hydrogen when the oxygen is needed, but it might be worth it for the simplification it brings to storing the oxygen.

Something to note on journeys of millions of years is that you now have to worry about more than just external radiation. You have to worry about mildly radioactive things on your own ship. I'd have to check the calculations myself, but I recall from watching a Isaac Arthur video on interstellar travel, that assuming no dna/cell repair happens when in cryogenic sleep (if that is a thing), and that current radiation dosage models are correct, over 500 years or so someone would accumulate a lethal dose of radiation from just the small amounts of mildly radioactive isotopes such as Potassium-40 which are normally in the body.

Presumably one might have to worry about something similar with regard to electronics, but it would likely be easier with processing to weed out the radioactive isotopes in electronics production than to get rid of all those isotopes in a person.

Edited August 31, 2018 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

3 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Presumably one might have to worry about something similar with regard to electronics, but it would likely be easier with processing to weed out the radioactive isotopes in electronics production than to get rid of all those isotopes in a person.

This in turn makes to imagine a frozen pilot's body killing the electronics with the radiation from its bones.

 

[mrfox]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now

Its a clock designed to run for "only" 10,000 years. But it shows the thought process of actually thinking through, accounting for, and designing around the issues of a device designed to work beyond the span of our civilization.