Interstellar Flight, slowboat mode.

[AngelLestat]

Nice sargeRho, you really have some 3d skills. I imagine that the daedalus part was import it, and the rest is yours.

About a magsail producing electricity when is braking, I can not find the source where I read it. Is like a magnetic field with a movement conductor. Electrons start to move generating a current, in this case over the loop, particles act like the conductor.

I read some time the case of a generational ship using this magnetic loop as braking, and they calculated how much Tw of energy would be generated to be used in the ship

[SargeRho]

I think a Magnetic Sail would basically be a humongous spool of superconducting wire. You run a current through it to generate a magnetic field, and as a result, the fast-moving magsail ionises the hydrogen and pushes against it.

Thanks, I actually modeled the entire thing, but only the front section is of my own design. I work as game designer and artist between my main job

[Dispatcher]

I think we'll learn much from actually venturing out into the solar system, which we then can apply to any interstellar effort.

[DJEN]

The very idea of interstellar travel is highly absurd, for materials are too weak, fuels are not efficient enough, and energy sources have short lives. Heck, asteroid mining and other interplanetary activities would be a waste of time, too. The myth regarding asteroids being chunks of usable metal is not true, mainly because of most asteroids being made of normal silicates, and the moon is also lacking of resources due to its low metal content.

[SargeRho]

And you are wrong on every single account. Project Daedalus has conclusively shown that Intersterllar Travel is plausible, possible even, in the forseeable future. Fusion propulsion can accelerate a ship up to a significant portion of the speed of light, a magnetic sail can brake it back down from that speed, a beryllium erosion shield and an artificially generated gas cloud in front of the ship is enough to protect it from damage for the voyage to a nearby star. Fusion is enough to keep the ship powered for a century without making it too heavy.

Metallic asteroids are rich in just that, Metals. Notably platinum-group metals, and things like Titanium, Silicon, Iron and Aluminium, things you build Spaceships from. They also contain lots of Hydrogen and Oxygen, which is useful as rocket fuel.

The moon's surface has high ammounts of oxygen, aluminium, silicon, aluminium, and magnesium. Also spaceship stuff.

Edited March 15, 2014 by SargeRho

[Aghanim]

But where do we want to go if we have STL interstellar travel?

[Accelerando]

Gliese 667 Cc is a good target to the Earth Similarity Index.

[78stonewobble]

I'd say that we could atleast get "started" on the generation ships, by building one or more o'neill cylinders or something similar. I would think that alot of the technologies developed for that would be transferable.

[Nuke]

there is another possibility for colonization, and that is work our way out into the oort cloud. there are supposidly a lot of pluto sized objects out there stretching out a lightyear or more. colonize objects one at a time in sequence and spread out towards other stars. its an idea for the post fusion world anyway. we could reach another star in as little as 30000 years.

[Aghanim]

I'd say that we could atleast get "started" on the generation ships, by building one or more o'neill cylinders or something similar. I would think that alot of the technologies developed for that would be transferable.

Without cheap launch or space mining, we couldn't create those artificial gravity cylinder because there's isn't much material in orbit

[78stonewobble]

Without cheap launch or space mining, we couldn't create those artificial gravity cylinder because there's isn't much material in orbit

Well I never claimed it would be cheap and space mining is probably a requirement for any serious usage of spaceborne habitability on this level. Developing space mining and production would be another highly practical development.

However, the alternative to spending time, energy, money and lives on this is... in the long run... extinction.

[DJEN]

And you are wrong on every single account. Project Daedalus has conclusively shown that Intersterllar Travel is plausible, possible even, in the forseeable future. Fusion propulsion can accelerate a ship up to a significant portion of the speed of light, a magnetic sail can brake it back down from that speed, a beryllium erosion shield and an artificially generated gas cloud in front of the ship is enough to protect it from damage for the voyage to a nearby star. Fusion is enough to keep the ship powered for a century without making it too heavy.

Metallic asteroids are rich in just that, Metals. Notably platinum-group metals, and things like Titanium, Silicon, Iron and Aluminium, things you build Spaceships from. They also contain lots of Hydrogen and Oxygen, which is useful as rocket fuel.

The moon's surface has high ammounts of oxygen, aluminium, silicon, aluminium, and magnesium. Also spaceship stuff.

Let time tell us the results then.

Edited March 16, 2014 by DJEN

[Lukaszenko]

I think we'll send some robotic super-advanced 3D printers, and/or something that can clone/ incubate/ grow/ whatever human beings, to another star system, and we're most of the way there. Might be hard to keep a full-blown human or a colony alive for long enough, but it shouldn't be too difficult to keep a zygote or eggs and sperm in suspended animation. No need for lumbering interstellar arcs and people living like sardines for generations. Let the robots sit and wait for however long it takes them to travel the interstellar distances.

This technology pretty much already exists or is at least very feasible. Maybe far into the future, but I don't see why not. Anyway, this is a viable way to only colonize another star system and spread our sphere of influence, but not to actually travel there ourselves.

If, however, we allow ourselves to imagine that one day we'll be able to read and digitize human minds (assuming we are not made of magic, it should at least be theoretically possible), then if YOU wanted to go to another star system, it will just be a matter of e-mailing your mind into your clone who is waiting for you light years away. Your identical clone, a younger version perhaps with no imperfections, or maybe even whoever or whatever technology will allow us to "copy paste" our minds into. Yeah the infrastructure would have to be set up the long, traditional way, and even then we'd still be limited by the speed of light. But, as far as you're concerned, it will be instantaneous...and assuming we ever live in a world like this, a few years here and there will be a moot point.