Thursday, August 12, 2004
propulsion for interstellar travel ? by nasa ? nahh... (shootin' off my mouth again. *mrmmphh...)
[y'know, i think i used that title before - yep... ah, well, what the hell, leave it...]
Sowa, Gary wrote on 8/12/2004, 12:26:
Re: Antimatter powered spaceship to launch next Friday
Engines studied to cruise solar system
By Tariq Malik
SPACE.com
Thursday, August 12, 2004 Posted: 1326 GMT (2126 HKT)
(SPACE.com) -- While the exploration of the moon and other planets in our solar system is exciting, the first task for astronauts and robots alike is to actually get to those destinations.
To facilitate inter-solar system travel, NASA has committed itself to the study of a number of far-out propulsion methods. Researchers are hoping the space agency's new Propulsion Research Center will help scientists move at least some of those new methods from the theoretical to reality.
"We need a real jumpstart in propulsion and research," said Steve Rodgers, manager of the new center based at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "I think we have to go beyond chemical propulsion."
<SNIP/>
Handling antimatter
On the more extreme end of NASA's propulsion research are studies to wield antimatter in future space engines.
The collision between particles of normal matter and antimatter - such as protons and their oppositely charged antiproton counterparts - produces the most energetic reaction known in physics, but handing the explosive stuff is the hard part. Researchers at the MSFC propulsion center are working with tiny amounts of antimatter to find effective ways of storing and transporting the stuff for space voyages.
"The antimatter research is certainly far term," LaPointe said. "You need to start somewhere...to make baby steps."
next friday ? beam me up ! ;-)
other links:
the first one contains the way-out stuff, but was apparently put on hold by nasa a couple years back. my question has been “what happened to marc millis ?” seems nasa has disenfranchised him for some reason. i'm not impressed by this latest nasa “initiative”, in light of their cancellation of the other propulsion programs. they can't seem to get organized, and their goals are pretty mundane. but yeah, “baby steps”, i guess.
i was always a fan of the idea of somehow making use of the vacuum zero-point energy, perhaps through something related to the casimir effect (look 'em up). and then there's the dark energy / dark matter issues, related to the accelerating expansion of the universe, which may indicate other forces to play with. yet nothing beats the ol' rotating black hole ring idea, held open by negative energy pressure. and you get time travel to boot !
the antimatter idea lacks finesse. just another variant on the “let's explosively release chaotic energy then channel it”. i doubt this will achieve much, and i doubt we'll ever be able to manipulate / warp spacetime, so my bet is on using nano tech to leverage quantum field effects, a la casimir effect.
but there are issues more fundamental to the human condition (as opposed to theoretical, technical or engineering ones) that are the real obstacles. economics, politics. communications and cultural continuity. when we get into the spacetime distances involved with interstellar travel, it's a whole new ballgame. and then we likely don't have the proper technical foundations anyway (qm, gr, etc.), and the string theorists, who are basically staying with the same game, will likely not contribute much in the way of revolutionary ideas. there may be other limits to human participation in undertakings approaching the limits of physics. have we studied complex / biological systems in such environments ? not yet.
eventually, what gets launched into interstellar space from this planet will necessarily likely have little to do with our current concept of “humanity”. “we” may well have fallen by the evolutionary wayside by that time, perhaps still extant, but dead-ended in our infinite spirals into our own navels. instead of vinge's technological singularity, it's looking more like we're headed for a flatline. the drop ends when we arrive at such a microscopic level of detail that further "progress" is halted by a wash of white noise.