UFO / UAP

[Brigadier]

you mean it achieved the mission it was set out to do but if you want to google a bit further you will find out how quick it got to top speed from the lower speed the rest of the mission was carried out at .

Within the extremely limited parameter of bowling (almost) headfirst into a star.

But, like the old adage about how easy it is to make a rabbit pie.................first, you have to get to your star............

But the point is the progress in the blink of an eye time wise

At the rate we're going, we will have wiped ourselves out in a similar timescale.

 

[Brigadier]

Imagine telling people in the 1970s, that sailing boats could travel at 50mph+ in winds of less than 15mph or that we’d have round the world video conversations without delays for almost free.

When are you setting sail for even the nearest star then?

Doubters cling to 1970s technology as the limit of mankind’s potential.

Nope: doubters are guided by the known laws of physics.
If anyone comes up with peer-reviewed alternatives they, I would wager, will take those as they have currently taken the existing laws.

 

[Odds]

Nope: doubters are guided by the known laws of physics.
If anyone comes up with peer-reviewed alternatives they, I would wager, will take those as they have currently taken the existing laws.

 

[noseall]

Doubters cling to 1970s technology as the limit of mankind’s potential.

Imagine telling people in the 1970s, that sailing boats could travel at 50mph+ in winds of less than 15mph or that we’d have round the world video conversations without delays for almost free.

If you look at space travel as a line chart, it would look pretty flat up to the 1960s. Then you'd see a small bumps of a few mm from there after, risng to say a cm or so. The next steps in space travel would mean that line chart would rise vertically, thousands of miles out of sight, when it comes to anything on the edges of even our solar system.
The time and distances involved are mind boggling and beyond human capabilities.

 

[motorbiking]

When are you setting sail for even the nearest star then?




Nope: doubters are guided by the known laws of physics.
If anyone comes up with peer-reviewed alternatives they, I would wager, will take those as they have currently taken the existing laws.

Nobody is breaking the known laws of physics as they currently stand, when discussing the potential for intelligent species to create vessels capable of sub-light speed.

 

[IT Minion]

Plenty of natural phenomena to guide scientists.

Yes, once we can gather some data. We have two probes that have managed to leave the solar system. Both 1970s technology.

We'd need to wait for another gravity assist to be available to match that speed, let's not forget that most of Voyagers speed was not thanks to engines but was thanks to Jupiter and Saturn.

It's great to crow about modern technology but we don't have significantly more efficient engines than Voyager used to boost onto it's course. (Centaur, RL10A Hydrogen/Oxygen engines with an ISP of around 400). With some sort of Frankenrocket launching a Centaur inside a Starship then maybe we could double the speed. Making it only 37,000 years or so to make it to our nearest neighbour. Unless you go for Hall effect thrusters of course but that means a nice big beefy nuclear battery, which will still only last a thousand years or so.

 

[motorbiking]

If you look at space travel as a line chart, it would look pretty flat up to the 1960s. Then you'd see a small bumps of a few mm from there after, risng to say a cm or so. The next steps in space travel would mean that line chart would rise vertically, thousands of miles out of sight, when it comes to anything on the edges of even our solar system.
The time and distances involved are mind boggling and beyond human capabilities.

Prior to the existence of satellites, it was "impossible" to have calls across the globe without noticeable lag, due to the mechanical switching and speed of light,

 

[IT Minion]

Prior to the existence of satellites, it was "impossible" to have calls across the globe without noticeable lag, due to the mechanical switching and speed of light,

Yeah, that's not correct. Satellite Comms is famous for it's latency, the radio waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, but they have to travel an insanely long way. Each leg of the journey is roughly the same as looping all the way around the earth. And that's assuming you're only bouncing off one satellite, if you want to go around the earth you are not talking about a single hop.

For latency you want fibre optics, the speed of light is something like 2/3 C but the distances are so much shorter. That's why we don't get satellite lag anymore.

 

[motorbiking]

Yeah, that's not correct. Satellite Comms is famous for it's latency, the radio waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, but they have to travel an insanely long way. Each leg of the journey is roughly the same as looping all the way around the earth.

For latency you want fibre optics, the speed of light is something like 2/3 C but the distances are so much shorter. That's why we don't get satellite lag anymore.

which is why I said due to mechanical switching.

 

[IT Minion]

which is why I said due to mechanical switching.

And you were wrong there. It is impossible to have a lag free conversation with (old school) satellites. Once you managed to make a connection using copper wire then your conversation was less laggy than via satellites, let alone via fibre.

Even with the lower orbit of Starlink they're still slower than fibre.

 

[Brigadier]

Nobody is breaking the known laws of physics as they currently stand, when discussing the potential for intelligent species to create vessels capable of sub-light speed.

Mr Flip Flop, my post was in response to your pooh-poohing attempts VVVVVVVVVVV

Doubters cling to 1970s technology as the limit of mankind’s potential.

And nobody is saying that any intelligent species cannot already create sub-light speed vessels. We have already done it, to a trifling degree.

What some of us are saying is that the combination of - literally - astronomical distances, and the exponentially-increasing challenge of approaching any noteworthy percentage of light speed, make your fantasies just that: fantasies.

If credible, peer-reviewed advancement in science shows up, I'll embrace it.
Until then, it is merely an enjoyable facet of fiction.

 

[motorbiking]

Yes, once we can gather some data. We have two probes that have managed to leave the solar system. Both 1970s technology.

We'd need to wait for another gravity assist to be available to match that speed, let's not forget that most of Voyagers speed was not thanks to engines but was thanks to Jupiter and Saturn.

It's great to crow about modern technology but we don't have significantly more efficient engines than Voyager used to boost onto it's course. (Centaur, RL10A Hydrogen/Oxygen engines with an ISP of around 400). With some sort of Frankenrocket launching a Centaur inside a Starship then maybe we could double the speed. Making it only 37,000 years or so to make it to our nearest neighbour. Unless you go for Hall effect thrusters of course but that means a nice big beefy nuclear battery.

NEVER is a very long time and plenty of renowned experts are discussing 10% of light speed as possibility for Fusion "Rockets". That places interstellar travel within the reach of humans.

As I said earlier in this thread, I found the concepts in the film Passengers to be reasonable.
Fusion Rocket propulsion gets you to 10% of light speed. ✔
Human's held in stasis/hibernation. ✔
Some sort of extremely high temperature shield capable of deflecting/destroying objects ✔
Self Learning Computer navigation ✔
Self Repair ✔

 

[motorbiking]

Mr Flip Flop, my post was in response to your pooh-poohing attempts VVVVVVVVVVV



And nobody is saying that any intelligent species cannot already create sub-light speed vessels. We have already done it, to a trifling degree.

What some of us are saying is that the combination of - literally - astronomical distances, and the exponentially-increasing challenge of approaching any noteworthy percentage of light speed, make your fantasies just that: fantasies.

If credible, peer-reviewed advancement in science shows up, I'll embrace it.
Until then, it is merely an enjoyable facet of fiction.

No need to get upset. There are clearly two posters, the known trolls poo poohing man's ability to send a vessel the known distances required to achieve interstellar travel.

as I said above - Never is a really long time.

 

[motorbiking]

And you were wrong there. It is impossible to have a lag free conversation with (old school) satellites. Once you managed to make a connection using copper wire then your conversation was less laggy than via satellites, let alone via fibre.

Even with the lower orbit of Starlink they're still slower than fibre.

Again, I said it was due to the speed of mechanical switches. Nothing to do with the carrier. More hops = more latency. Starlink achieves 20-50ms latency. 1970s copper telephone submerged cables added around 1/2 a second. Given you work in IT, I am sure you are familiar with the idea of reducing network hops to improve latency.

 

[IT Minion]

In theory possible, in practice so far beyond our capabilities at the moment it is definitely science fiction rather than fact.

For a start you're talking about a ratio of 1:1 Billion payload to fuel mass. So if you used Phobos as your fuel source, yes the Martian moon Phobos, you could launch something weighing 10,000 tons and slow it down at the other end. Congratulations, you can fling most of a vanguard submarine to Alpha Centuri in a mere 50 years.