19 replies to this topic

[SiDheBRX]

I just came across this gem of space-exploration history, and I reckon that among the MW/BT community, some folks might be interested:


http://blog.makezine...ted-space-plan/

I came across it through: http://io9.com/59458...ource=pulsenews

It's essentially a massive flowchart put together by a team assembled by Rockwell International (former big shot company in aerospace systems) in the 80's, showing their view of the logical steps required to take humanity all the way to interstellar travel.

Enjoy!


(edit: embed img)

Edited by SiDheBRX, 26 September 2012 - 03:45 AM.

[plaguebreath]

Actually there is already a program about that I read not much time ago, it's called the project 100 years and it's a plan to build a spaceship with inside a small colony of human that's objective will be just to reach the farthest distance from earth and build a colony there after 2 or more generations on the flight, offcurse no coming back travel at all.

[Adridos]

plaguebreath, on 26 September 2012 - 03:33 AM, said:

Actually there is already a program about that I read not much time ago, it's called the project 100 years and it's a plan to build a spaceship with inside a small colony of human that's objective will be just to reach the farthest distance from earth and build a colony there after 2 or more generations on the flight, offcurse no coming back travel at all.

That's too optimistic. So many things can malfunction and generally, people on board would have no idea how to colonise Alpha Centaury, for example. We know next to nothing about planets beyond solar system and without that knowledge, it's like digging straight down in Minecraft.

[Khobai]

The real question is "where would we go?" Even if we could build a spacecraft capable of going 99.9% the speed of light, theres no feasible destinations. At 99.9% the speed of light it would take 22 years to reach the closest potentially earth-like planet and theres no guarantee it could even support humans. Who wants to live on a spacecraft for 20+ years? I mean really. Thats the reason interstellar space travel will always be science-fiction, because you cant travel faster than the speed of light, and the speed of light is simply too slow for crossing such vast distances.

Edited by Khobai, 26 September 2012 - 03:59 AM.

[pursang]

Adridos, on 26 September 2012 - 03:41 AM, said:

That's too optimistic. So many things can malfunction and generally, people on board would have no idea how to colonise Alpha Centaury, for example. We know next to nothing about planets beyond solar system and without that knowledge, it's like digging straight down in Minecraft.

I think that one of the first things that would need to happen is the acquisition of highly-detailed information of the planet by long-range probes and surface rovers. Much like what is being done with Mars. A lot more cost-efficient and safe then sending some people to a relatively unknown planet. Of course, this may take quite a long time: If you factor in engineering, construction, flight, and communication as well as any possible delays. It would obviously also have to well rather well funded.

Edited by pursang, 26 September 2012 - 03:55 AM.

[SiDheBRX]

Khobai, on 26 September 2012 - 03:49 AM, said:

The real question is "where would we go?" Even if we could build a spacecraft capable of going 99.9% the speed of light, theres no feasible destinations. At 99.9% the speed of light it would take 22 years to reach the closest potentially earth-like planet and theres no guarantee it could even support humans. Who wants to live on a spacecraft for 20+ years? I mean really. Thats the reason interstellar space travel will always be science-fiction, because you cant travel faster than the speed of light, and the speed of light is simply too slow for crossing such vast distances.

Good point, but it's not necessarily a show-stopper. For a sci-fi scenario of how a interstellar human civilization based on sub-light travel could look like that is not quite as unrealistic as most of this stuff, check the awesome "Revelation Space" trilogy by Alastair Reynolds (http://en.wikipedia...._Space_universe)

[Adridos]

pursang, on 26 September 2012 - 03:53 AM, said:

I think that one of the first things that would need to happen is the acquisition of highly-detailed information of the planet by long-range probes and surface rovers. Much like what is being done with Mars. A lot more cost-efficient and safe then sending some people to a relatively unknown planet. Of course, this may take quite a long time: If you factor in engineering, construction, flight, and communication as well as any possible delays. It would obviously also have to well rather well funded.

Surface rovers and probes.... we'e looking at ~1000 years for the first information to come home.

[Catamount]

Adridos, on 26 September 2012 - 04:18 AM, said:

Surface rovers and probes.... we'e looking at ~1000 years for the first information to come home.

I'm afraid your math isn't adding up there. Assuming a habitable planet within such reach that a 100 year trip for an interstellar vessel is possible (more probable than we once thought, given the newfound prevalence of candidate planets around red dwarfs, in potentially massive numbers), it would only take a probe that same 100 years, or less (a lot less energy is needed to accelerate a small probe), and since the signal would return at c, it would take only a few years to a few decades to return.

Presumably, this would occur after observation from Earth advanced enough that spectroscopy would allow us to examine planets for the present of an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere (or, if we were going the terraforming route, whatever atmosphere would correspond to our target environment), so that we could narrow down the list of probe missions to only those with a reasonable probability of success (and we could launch all those missions simultaneously).


That doesn't add up to 1,000 years from a probe launch to reception of information, unless you're including a lot of steps that you're not mentioning.

Edited by Catamount, 26 September 2012 - 05:59 AM.

[MNC SkullCrusher]

Assuming we found an Earth-like planet and some conceivable way to travel to it how would we cope with it's native biology? Our immune systems would be useless to defend against any bacterial pathogens found there. Sorta like War of the Worlds where the common cold kills the unstoppable Alien invaders. It is a real possibility and likely insurmountable.

[Catamount]

MNC SkullCrusher, on 26 September 2012 - 05:58 AM, said:

Assuming we found an Earth-like planet and some conceivable way to travel to it how would we cope with it's native biology? Our immune systems would be useless to defend against any bacterial pathogens found there. Sorta like War of the Worlds where the common cold kills the unstoppable Alien invaders. It is a real possibility and likely insurmountable.

WotW is a bad example, because in that story, the aliens had no defense against any microbes.

In our case, it would merely be a case of having a technology, either biological or synthetic, that could either train our immune systems to resist otherwise unencountered biological agents (which our aforementioned probe could relay information on), or confer immunity by complimenting our immune systems, say, with anti-pathogen nanites.

[XphR]

SiDheBRX,
Great find! And your source links have a touched up high res png version, something tells me more than one gems is buried in that flowchart.

Khobai,
Very few things "will always be" even things that appear to be motionless next to our quick little lives flow like fluids in deep time. Its not a matter of living on a space ship for twenty plus years, thats easy compared to the truth of the plan. When you leave you would take the step with a living city whos intentions matched your own, furthering the reach of humanity. This journey you would not witness the end of, unless the end came due to early failure. On the journey you would be making preparations for the future by way of maintaining the ship and its systems. Manufacturing everything along the way: industrial, textile, medical, academia and the very populations that will continue to do the same until eventually a generation makes planet-fall.

SiDheBRX,
I dont have much reading time these days but did they go with a city ship/world ship much like the example above, or perhaps warm stasis like whats currently being explored or even a both?

MNC SkullCrusher,
We would cope as we do now, with trial and error. To say our immune system would be useless is a bit much, it would be inexperienced. Once you start colonization division of the population would be important. You would want many smaller groups doing the same things working on the same goals and of course you would have to monitor each person constantly. People will die and some of those deaths will be due to new invasions into the body. Some will survive and bring new anti-bodys into the fight and even those who do not survive will leave information as well as important biological keys to further survival of the new world.

Like Catamount mount said, intrabody nanites at that point will have had some medical advances and at this time we are already working on gold lance wielding microbe slaying nano-knights. Microscopic robots in your body, once doomed to forever be science fiction/horror. Seems forever is a bit shorter than assumed as nano-tech is now science fact.

[SiDheBRX]

I spent about 1 hr yesterday evening in front of an A3 printout, it's fascinating stuff. It's obviously outdated as it was compiled pre90's: the team didn't anticipate the kind of progress made on e.g. computing technology, nanotech and robotics. But it's still amazing.

In fact, "good" sci-fi literature touches on many of the issues raised here, and gives multiple interesting scenarious as to how such things could play out: between Peter F. Hamilton, Stephen Baxter, Reynolds, Iain Banks, Arthur C. Clarke, or Ian McDonald, you get loads of ideas, some of which are well based on hard science (at least in my laymen understanding, I'm no physicist or anything like that)..

XphR, in Revelation space, scacecraft of several km size travel decades between human outposts. The crew and passengers are frozen, pretty much the usual cryo-coffin stuff. Some crew opt to stay awake, manning ship systems, some with, some without artificial augmentation.

In terms of generation travel, a tech-only centred perspective risks to overlook social developments: after decades of travel, how will the in-ship society evolve? How can it be ensured that the crew maintains an understanding of mission objectives and procedures that doesn't diverge or actual put at risk the original plan?

Going a step further, S. Baxter goes as far as describing a development of a totally secluded human society which evolves away from our individualist society, into a more swarm-like type where roles and function actually translate into strong biological / physical differences (like queens, drones, solders etc.).

On one of the websites where I found the material, someone said that the plan is good and alright, but the implementation is the issue. Obviuosly we're a couple of decades behind. The US have drastically scaled back the space program, they don't even have proper orbital lift capacity at the moment (although that's temporary), The Russians have been set back by accidents lately. Europe has other issues for the time being. The only ones scaling up their space programme are the Chinese at the moment as it seems..

In any case, I don't see this changing any time soon. I'm afraid that the revival of a substantial move towards space will not come on a voluntary basis, but rather when we're forced to look beyond Earth either in search of resources, or when we've pushed our ecosystem too hard.

If only a fraction of the resources going into R&D of consumer products (or military, for that matter) would go into propulsion systems, we might be much farther with even creating a presence in Earth orbit, or on the moon nearby. But again, financing depends on whether there's a business case or not, and that again comes down to whether there's pressure or not...

[Exilyth]

Nice find, OP.

Unfortunably, we need to send humans to Mars before further manned exploration will happen.
If we could produce oxygen, clean water and food on another planet, we could start colonizing our own system planet by planet.
Who knows... maybe asterioid mining after that.

[Zakatak]

I think it would be more feasible to terraform Mars/Titan/Venus and get what we can out of this solar system (which would last us quite awhile, with room for 24 billion people or so), then to jump into deep space and cross our fingers for something habitable. Living aboard a spaceship isn't viable for a species, regardless of how self sufficient it is.

And I wouldn't give up on FTL travel just because we currently don't have a decent hypothesis on how to do it (I wouldn't call the Alcubierre drive "decent", considering the power requirements).

Edited by Zakatak, 26 September 2012 - 02:22 PM.

[Catamount]

Zakatak, on 26 September 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

And I wouldn't give up on FTL travel just because we currently don't have a decent hypothesis on how to do it (I wouldn't call the Alcubierre drive "decent", considering the power requirements).

Don't count it out yet; revisions to the model have dropped the power requirements into the range of realism. Far from requiring the previously estimated mass of Jupiter converted into energy,

Quote

the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.


Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more

http://www.space.com...paceflight.html

Considering we're already beginning to generate microscopic space-time warps in the lab, I don't think it's beyond reason.

I looked at the mass of Voyager 1; it's 721.9kg, which seems to equate to about 65 exajoules of energy. If that could be reduced substantially further, say, by a hundred times, then it would be just the equivalent of 72kg, which, given 50% effective M/AM power, (144kg or reactants), would be very possible.

[Shredhead]

Zakatak, on 26 September 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

I think it would be more feasible to terraform Mars/Titan/Venus and get what we can out of this solar system (which would last us quite awhile, with room for 24 billion people or so), then to jump into deep space and cross our fingers for something habitable. Living aboard a spaceship isn't viable for a species, regardless of how self sufficient it is.

And I wouldn't give up on FTL travel just because we currently don't have a decent hypothesis on how to do it (I wouldn't call the Alcubierre drive "decent", considering the power requirements).

Actually there are new theories stated by one Harold White from Johnson Space Center on the 100 Year Ship Symposium assuming way less energy to be needed for an Alcubierre drive. I'm sorry I can't provide you with a viable link in your language, only have a german source.

[Khobai]

Quote

think it would be more feasible to terraform Mars/Titan/Venus

Mars maybe. Venus and Titan would be next to impossible to terraform.

[Aurelios Salcedo]

Khobai, on 26 September 2012 - 03:49 AM, said:

The real question is "where would we go?" Even if we could build a spacecraft capable of going 99.9% the speed of light, theres no feasible destinations. At 99.9% the speed of light it would take 22 years to reach the closest potentially earth-like planet and theres no guarantee it could even support humans. Who wants to live on a spacecraft for 20+ years? I mean really. Thats the reason interstellar space travel will always be science-fiction, because you cant travel faster than the speed of light, and the speed of light is simply too slow for crossing such vast distances.

Cryogenic freezing.

[plaguebreath]

At that point we are speculating on if possible or not to actually do a mission like the 100 years mission but as said it's already a project do be and no one waste money on stuff useless nowaday. Personally I not think that will be a stasis flight with semi hibernation process. I stick on the flight day by day coz it's obvious that everythink can go wrong but men on board will provide solutions for almost any kind of problems and in the worst hipotesis anyway it's a mission where is not planned a coming back and people there that accept it know what they will be facing. Offcurse living for long time in a non gravity ambient have troubles but it's still on study all possible solutions. So in the hipotesis of that this space colony ship arrive into vicinity of a possible abitable planet the first things to do will be collect all data possible with probes launch like we did for the Mars mission. Not long ago I watched this documentary and teorize the use of 3 probe with very simple AI but with complementary behavior and always reprogrammable and autoadaptive. One programmed for safety exploration, one another with the much more aggressive character that will take risk if encessary, the last one it's a melting of the two char. It's interesting how they talking about it and even how they just express opinion on first contact with non human race. That will be the most intriguing challenge humans ever had, and still I not understand why country in all the world never understand it and focus on it more and understand that will be the solutions to not only one problem in our Earth.

[XphR]

Stephen Baxter <3

Plaguebreath,
The idea is create gravity for the awake crew(who may not even be fully human), that allows them to stay healthy and maintain the ship and hibernating crew daily. And the "sleeping" crew would be stored away cryogenically (I have my doubts even with prior dehydration)/ in warm stasis (not likely for the long term "landing crew", used for secondary and tertiary awake crews)/ and the fully human "landing crew" cargo may not even be fully assembled people so much as bio material waiting to be assembled educated and readied for landfall.