Mars In Three Days?!
The tech that could make it happen is in the link.
I find the possibility that Alpha Centauri could be reached in four years as awesome!
An earth-sized planet has been discovered there.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
I find the possibility that Alpha Centauri could be reached in four years as awesome!
An earth-sized planet has been discovered there.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
(How does it brake?)
Heinlein's ships swung about so that the drive unit could counter the direction of motion. How do you do that with a solar sail?
I have been doing some consulting for some companies that are pursing asteroid mining and "exotic" propulsion systems. These and many more issues are receiving their close attention.
I am curious to know , is there a technique to harvest or obtain antimatter?
Good question.
The usual method is to aim for something soft.
This could be the atmosphere of the target. But there is an enormous amount of energy to get rid of.
If the target is the atmosphere of that earth sized planet, I wonder how a spacecraft can even stay in a controlled orbit coming down from such a speed.
Whatever velocity you have when you arbitrarily enter the "gravitational field" of a ponderous body determines the shape of your orbit.
If you are going really faster, you get a hyperbola and off you go.
A little less fast and you get a parabola and off you go.
More manageable and you have an ellipse, the axes of which are determined again by the initial velocity.
Get that v just right and you have a circle.
oh... one more... the one in this problem: straight line... impact.
A pilot or better a computer would have to fly the thing. That's what I meant by a "controlled orbit" or flown loops around a world.
Can't see this happening due to the speed of light entry speed into an atmosphere.
Ship may just blow up. I once saw a meteor do that before it could become a full-fledged meteorite.
That's what happens when an airplane dives straight into water at high speed. As a former water skier, I have bounced off water that felt like concrete at rare times I've skied that fast and fell.
It never occurred to me until now that must be a lot harder to do than all the times I've seen entire fleets go into "warp drive."
Overall, I think your article reminded me most of a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode where Cisco and his son travel from Bajor to Cardassia in a solar sailer similar to this design. Now to see if we hit any tachyon bursts which warp us out into the galaxy! ;)
Science fiction: Contemporary fairy tales weaved from both speculative and silly science
Then again, the original Star Trek communicator led to the cell phone. See also (http://entertainment.howstuffworks.co...) I would also note that most good sci-fi has some basis in reality - see Star Trek V as a pointed example of the absurdity of some sci-fi, where The Martian was rigorously researched.
As science fiction.:)
And others where I've wished for that energy gun...
I'm under the impression that if something accelerates in space, it would keep accelerating so long as it had thrust since there would be few forces to slow it down. How about launching a small rocket, albeit with a long term power source- nuclear or whatever. Point it in a safe direction and let it fly. With a consistent thrust, I would think it would continue to accelerate, perhaps faster than any space craft has gone before. Have equipment on it to send back data to Earth as it heads out of our solar system. It might be interesting to see how fast continuous acceleration would take it.
Some hazards for the craft involved: We likely couldn't control it well so it may run into a planet, asteroid or whatever. Plus, at those speeds, it could be a collision with a pea sized piece of space debris could prove catastrophic. But, hey, you have to start somewhere.
My own concept was a series of orbiting rings that would sequentially boost an object's speed as it passes through them similar to a rail gun. Each ring would dramatically boost the speed of the object and after three or four boosts it would be projected toward its target. Then the "ship" would only have to worry about slowing down on the other end. Oh, and not liquefying any kind of compressible/organic material like say... the pilot... ;)
Again, current technology will not support an interstellar mission with anything other than a high velocity fly by.
The speed of light is incredibly fast.
Sigh.
Would NASA be holding back something?
They did this in Arthur C Clarke's 2061. They spent half the trip slowing down.
Suppose the trip to Mars is 100 million km = 10^11 m. You start slowing down 5 * 10^10 meters into the trip.
We know x = 1/2 a*t^2. t = 1.5 days * 60 * 60 * 25 = 129600 sec. We solve for a and get a= 6 m/s^2. At peak v, we're at 0.13% of c.
This post I have created has caused me to realize that, in my zeal for mankind to find a way to reach the stars, I never really considered how the heck do you stop when you get there.
That's easy for even me dino to look up. Thanks!
Just changed my mind about switching my DirectTV back to Charter, though.
Someone I know with total Charter, who had her gall bladder removed yesterday, could not watch TV until about 8:45 PM today.
Nevertheless, there is a percentage of dreamers who invent what they dream of. Never say never.
I've met some who live and breathe "never" to the point of denying that man ever went to the moon.
Seriously, I agree.
(http://interstellar.jpl.nasa.gov/inte... )
(https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...)
The two greatest challenges were propulsion and spacecraft autonomy. We considered light sales and lasers but the technology at the time was not up to the task. More recent advances in materials science and laser systems make the concept not only feasible but doable.
The options for Mars mission propulsion can be classified as "self contained" and "external source". Self contained would be any type of rocket where the reaction mass was contained within the vehicle and expelled to produce thrust. Chemical as well as nuclear powered ion drives would come under this category. External would include solar, laser and microwave powered systems where the photonic pressure directly provided thrust. Nuclear or solar powered ion rockets such as the VASIMR could reduce Mars mission times from months to weeks and a laser powered sail could reduce the mission time to a few days. Very impressive.