When will we reach the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, another star and another galaxy...

Unless we find some very useful material on Mars that can be mined, we won't be going there anytime soon.
 
Fusion said:
The effects of special relativity are certainly worth a mention- time does indeed pass slower for you as you approach the speed of light. You've got to be really shifting for it to have an appreciable effect though- for perceived time duration to half, you'd have to be doing over 80% the speed of light.
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Its worth calculating how long it takes to get upto 0.8c accelarating at 1g (say) . The fuel needed would be enormous.

sid
 
NeilFawcett said:
Keep in mind, the fastest speed any probe has travelled so far is 157,000mph. That's about 1/50th of 1% the speed of light. So to get to our closest neighbour would take approaching 20,000 years to get to!
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That makes me sad hearing stuff like this, how will we ever be able to traverse the stars when are neighbouring galaxies are so far away?, there must be some way surely :(
 
sid said:
Theres not much to be gained by sending a probe to a star, You want to explore extra solar planets.

All stars are pretty much the same bar the size, specifics like magnetic field can be useful to know for the sun but not really worth it for a far away star.

It will also take a very long time to get there as well.
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what do you think surrounds satrs?

Not that long we should be able to produce crafts that could cover it in 50 years or less. No reason why nuclear or ion propulsion couldn't reach significant percents of lightspeed.
 
lowrider007 said:
That makes me sad hearing stuff like this, how will we ever be able to traverse the stars when are neighbouring galaxies are so far away?, there must be some way surely :(
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You can defo go anywhere in decent time as long as you dont want to come back.

the problem is the fuel needed to get upto speed.

sid
 
AcidHell2 said:
what do you think surrounds satrs?

Not that long we should be able to produce crafts that could cover it in 50 years or less. No reason why nuclear or ion propulsion couldn't reach significant percents of lightspeed.
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Certainly hope so.

I'm not an expert on either of those technologies so don't know how viable they are.
 
We'll likely reach another star and another galaxy in the same "trip". If we have the technology to reach another star and still be living chances are we can go to another galaxy as well.
 
sid said:
Its worth calculating how long it takes to get upto 0.8c accelarating at 1g (say) . The fuel needed would be enormous.

sid
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It wouldn't actually take all that long - if you could maintain a constant acceleration of 1g you could reach 0.99c in under a year.

The problem is maintaining that constant rate of acceleration, as you say the fuel needed would be enormous, because as you approach the speed of light your mass increases asymptotically so you would need more and more fuel to increase your acceleration by a set amount.

If we chucked enough money at it then I don't think there's anything beyond our current technical knowledge to get a probe going at significant fractions of the speed of light.
It would cost a hell of a lot though and therefore is unlikely to get funded in the foreseeable future.

EDIT:
Phyre said:
We'll likely reach another star and another galaxy in the same "trip". If we have the technology to reach another star and still be living chances are we can go to another galaxy as well.
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There's a big jump between the nearest stars and the nearest galaxy though. The nearest galaxy to Earth is around 6,000 times further away than the nearest star. Very unlikely that it would be done in the same timeframe.
 
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sid said:
Its worth calculating how long it takes to get upto 0.8c accelarating at 1g (say)
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About 9 and a half months. Ideally you'd use Inertial Confinement Fusion where small Deuterium/Tritium pellets would be blasted by lasers and the gas accelerated out of the craft by magnets. An even more advanced design would use matter/antimatter annihilation.

You could never use chemical rockets, the energy density is far too low.
 
Phyre said:
We'll likely reach another star and another galaxy in the same "trip". If we have the technology to reach another star and still be living chances are we can go to another galaxy as well.
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Huh? Nearest star a couple light years... Nearest galaxy a hundred thousand light years...

So put into perspective... I can walk four miles in a hour or two (without needing to stop)... How long would it (& how difficult would it be?) take me to walk 100,000 miles?
 
izzy eckerslike said:
Until they develop capsules with artificial mavity then travel to these far off planets won't be very enjoyable for astronauts floating round as they have to endure at present.
It seems zero mavity damages skeletal cells & without artificial mavity space colonisation would be a non starter

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/830193.stm
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Spin them... Haven't you seen 2001 :)
 
izzy eckerslike said:
Until they develop capsules with artificial mavity then travel to these far off planets won't be very enjoyable for astronauts floating round as they have to endure at present.
It seems zero mavity damages skeletal cells & without artificial mavity space colonisation would be a non starter

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/830193.stm
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Just build a ship roughly cylindrical shaped and give it a spin, and you've got yourself some artificial mavity :)

Edit: damn, beaten to it. And I was gonna mention 2001 aswell! Reckon you might get a bit sea sick on them unless they're well balanced....
 
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Yeah, I'm well aware of all that as I just did a Physics degree.

We are a long way away though from all that.

sid
 
Haircut said:
Umm, that's what he said.
At 99% the speed of light it would take you just over 7 years to reach a start 7 light years away from the point of view of someone on Earth, but you would perceive it having only taken one year.

If you could go fast enough a 25,000 light year journey would seem like taking a few seconds from the point of view of the person on board, yet the full 25,000 years would pass on Earth.
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No he didn't. He got it the wrong way around by saying that the journey would only take a few seconds for the person on board (there's no way it could be reduced this much anyway).
 
sid said:
the problem is the fuel needed to get upto speed
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Anyone ever wondered how you'll stop once you get there? :p
Surely if a probe was going at even half the speed of light you'd need to put it into some ridiculously low orbit around a MAHOOSIVE star to get it to stay in that star system.

Please feel free to ridicule my uninformed idea. :(
 
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