2022 a space obscurity

[APOLLO]

I like beans and I ain't going !!!!

 

 

Brit15

[The Johnster]

7 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

Leaving aside your incorrect statement about gravity, there is still inertia to deal with - good old F=ma.  To accelerate a space craft to useful speeds you need to make sure that all of the structure travels along with whatever you are using for motive power.  You will still get stresses arising between the point(s) on the structure where motive force is applied and the rest of the structure that's being accelerated along with it, and the overall structure will need to be able to sustain those forces.  You can't just build the thing out of plastic straws and sellotape.  And even space stations need to be able to manoeuvre and adjust position, so the same applies to them.  These considerations will necessarily need to be taken in to account when designing and building such objects, and are very likely to impose practical constraints on the size of what can be built using any given technology, even one we don't yet have.

 

Not to mention the fact that a sufficiently large object in space will be affected by the gravitational attraction of nearby astronomical objects, with the load of the gravitational forces being unevenly distributed across a massive structure and so, once again, stresses arising from differential loading that the structure would need to be able to sustain.

 

In Star Trek they weasel their way around such issues by having a "structural integrity field" powered from the warp engines.  If only someone would get on and develop a warp engine...

 

Then you have the question of raw materials.  Where does the stuff to make these supposedly unlimited in size craft come from, and how do you get it to the assembly point?  There aren't any mines in empty space.  If only there was some kind of technology by means of which you could just transport useful stuff around by dematerialising it from one place and rematerialising it in another.  Not forgetting the Heisenberg Compensator, of course.  Or, if someone could invent a device that could, you know replicate stuff out of pure energy, that might do the trick.  But given how much energy even a small mass of physical matter represents (E=mc², and c is a biiiiig number) you'd need something like, oh, I don't know, maybe a warp engine...hang on, haven't we been here before?

 

I'm not saying that such problems cannot ever be solved, but dismissing them with a hand-wavy (and inaccurate) excuse doesn't make them go away.

Well, I'm not a physicist and I get things wrong.  But not being a physicist means I don't have to solve such problems (just as well, as I'd be carp at it), but it doesn't mean I can't see what the problems are from a holistic rather than simply technical or theoretical scientific viewpoint.  I work to the principle that, until it is possible, affordable, and easy for an overweight untrained idiot like me to be able to access space without being subjected to unhealthy G forces, radiation, bodily deterioration from weightlessnes, and at an acceptable risk level comparable to current air travel, space is not going to be of any practical use to the majority of humanity, even the mega rich, and will not be able to fulfil what I believe to be it's future role in saving the planet and most of it's residents.

 

My understanding of physics, limited though it undoubtedly is, is sufficient for me to know that there are no such things as warp engines, beam me up Scotty, replicators, structural integrity fields, interstellar travel with living humans, or a free lunch.  I wasn't suggesting that a vast structure built in space doesn't need to be reinforced and constructed using engineering principles to cope with the stresses involved in moving it, but that, as it can be assembled from parts no larger than those which can be transported up from the surface economically, it can built in zero grav orbit and thus much lighter than anything built on the ground. or even the moon, therefore very large objects can be built.  It needs to move, sure, but rates of acceleration and deceleration, not to mention changes of direction while under way, need to be gentle and consistent; you can still achieve very high. in fact theoretically almost light, speeds but it might take a while to get to them or back from them.  This is why I suggested spheroid objects as the most structurally strong and capable of withstanding such stresses; in a sphere, there is no point where stresses are more, or less, than anywhere else in the sphere, and the areas of it away from it's equator can be used for agriculture, recycling, water purification, atmosphere manufacture; all the life support systems needed for a large human population.  The technicians operating all this will need to be trained in working in lower and (at the central point) zero gravity positions, and unless the interior has atmosphere, space suits, but much can be automated and few techies are needed.  

 

Ultimately, life will still be better on the (Earth) ground so that's where the rich folks'll live.  Us peasants will be shunted off-planet to these orbiting cities, where life will be not dissimilar to living in current large cities on the ground, with the exception that days in the country or by the seaside will be less practical.  The citystations will be able to have entertainment venues, parks and sports facilities, and if there are no pubs, I'm not going...

 

Let's suggest that the habitable zone is about 20 miles wide around the equator on a 50 mile diameter sphere, and perhaps a mile 'high', the datum being the outer skin of the sphere.  The view will be of a cityscape curving upwards from your position, and a mile above your head will be a false sky, possibly lit to simulate a day/night cycle over a 24 hour period.   The parks and recreational facilities will be to the sides of the zone, and it may be that 'adventure activities' are available further out where the gravity is beginning to diminish.  Gymnasia and similar 'keep fit' establishments will be better sited on the actual equator line or close to it, as gravity is maximised here by the rotation of the sphere.  Visible to the sides of the zone, up to 30 miles out, will be 'scenery'; hills, forests, rivers and so on, with real trees and grass.  Agriculture and animal husbandry takes place in the interior, though, using GM factory methods to control the carbon emissions, no farting cows allowed!

 

Beneath your feet will be the 'ground', and under that a thick protective outer shell layer well insulated from the cold and radiation of space.  The exterior will be covered in solar panels, your primary power source.  If you are standing on the equatorial line, you will be surrounded by buildings in the same way that you would be in the ground cities you've learned about in history lessons (and that you might re-create in model form; RMWeb will still be going and people will still be asking the same questions about liveries and couplings, scales and gauges), but some of them will be high enough to touch the sky, a mile above you.  These are constructed around the structural members that hold the outer shell in place, and are needed to provide access to the interior for the techies.  There will be no powered vehicles or aircraft except for delivery drones, moving walkways will run around the circumference and outward movement from them will be by bicycle or scooter.  Weather will be scheduled and predictable, of course, and temperature maintained at pre-set levels, cooler at 'night'.

 

Work and careers will be based on maintaining the life support systems and generating wealth for imports, which means providing goods or services for export.  Each citystation sphere will have it's own specialities and skills that are promoted, and these may be in manufactured goods, services, or specialised food products; maybe a sphere has large areas of grassland with real cows, sheep, and pigs to provide 'organic' meat at a premium price, another may have acres of vineyards, another may grow real genuine organic crops.  There will, for the benefit of science fiction fans, be prison spheres, and possibly specialist hospital spheres or casino spheres (one of these has to be called 'Lost Vagueness'); travel to the surface for commercial and recreational reasons as well as freight carriage will be possible, and affordable for all but the poorest, much as things are now.  Many aspects of life will be familiar to current city dwellers; light, airy 'burbs out towards the edges, less desirable inner city areas, 'estates' of social accommodation, factories, workshops, markets, tall buildings, museums, galleries, clinics, pubs, restaurants, schools, universities, even rush hours as the day/night cycle must be kept for general wellbeing.  Musk's tubes may yet have a use for shortening the journeys across the interior to other parts of the city up to 50 miles away, straight up...

 

There are depressing and cheering aspects to this future.  A Big Mac will still taste the same, but there will still be art and theatre, music, and comedy.  Teenagers will still be complete *rseholes, but you will still be able to go up the pub and moan about them to your chums.  There will still be sex, some of it with other people and just as problematic.  There will still be crime, if some folks have more than others and don't lock it up, but there will be less crime if all drugs are legal.  There will still be bigotries, and there will still be those who resist and overcome them.  It is up to us if there will still be religion; personally I hope not as it never brings anything constructive to the party that isn't outweighed by sectarianism, crusade/jihad, or unrealistic and restrictive moral codes, though I have no intention of disrespecting the views those of faith or faiths, so long as they keep them to themselves and don't try to rope me in.

 

In other words, humanity = business as usual.

[Flying Pig]

19 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

I love the idea of an airship getting up to speed for an orbital transfer, but the speeds are way too low - only a few hundred mph. Plus, balloons expand hugely at high altitude and so have to be largely empty at ground level, making them fragile and a low carrying capacity.

 

Try http://www.jpaerospace.com/

 

Also, people might find the Upward Bound playlist on Isaac Arthur's Youtube channel of interest.  There are an awful lot of ways of getting to orbit.

[ejstubbs]

1 hour ago, tomparryharry said:

people are probably right about space flight; it'll largely be automatic. If something goes wrong, there will be a call centre somewhere, say, Merthyr Tydfil....

 

Or maybe an animated paperclip will interrupt the holographic movie you're watching on your seatback video screen and say: "It looks like you're attempting re-entry.  Would you like some help with that?"

 

(Apologies, there may be some readers of RMWeb who are actually not old enough to remember that particular abomination perpetrated on an unsuspecting world by Microsoft.)

[Flying Pig]

19 hours ago, Ramblin Rich said:

I love the idea of an airship getting up to speed for an orbital transfer, but the speeds are way too low - only a few hundred mph. Plus, balloons expand hugely at high altitude and so have to be largely empty at ground level, making them fragile and a low carrying capacity.

 

Try http://www.jpaerospace.com/

 

Also, people might find the Upward Bound playlist on Isaac Arthur's Youtube channel of interest.  There are an awful lot of ways of getting to orbit.

 

8 hours ago, woodenhead said:

so when the Sun decides it's had enough

 

...an unimaginably long time into the future - billions of years, though it is possible Earth will become uninhabitable in only hundreds of millions of years.  We'll either be as long gone as the trilobites by then or well capable of dealing with the issue. My favourite approach to fending off fiery oblivion is Star Lifting  which requires no new physics (just very big machines) and could extend the habitabity of Earth to trillions of years.  That should be enough for anyone regardless of the size of their kit stash.

[Steamport Southport]

6 minutes ago, ejstubbs said:

 

Or maybe an animated paperclip will interrupt the holographic movie you're watching on your seatback video screen and say: "It looks like you're attempting re-entry.  Would you like some help with that?"

 

(Apologies, there may be some readers of RMWeb who are actually not old enough to remember that particular abomination perpetrated on an unsuspecting world by Microsoft.)

 

I thought that was Q?  

 

 

[tomparryharry]

Right! Let's get this straight!

 

We're not going to Mars, or anywhere else . Remember, the Clangers own the catering contracts for interstellar space travel,  and there isn't enough string pudding to stretch that far.  Anyway, if you go too near the edge*, you'll fall off...

 

* Barry Island

[APOLLO]

Humans will visit our Moon, Mars and perhaps a moon or two of Jupiter / Saturn this century - and that will be about it. But those places are a bit like Widnes, no atmosphere and sod all there.

 

This is interesting

 

 

Brit15

 

 

[Kendo54]

Love your comment about Widnes. Have worked there and so true.But have have worked in Wigan !!!  Now in Alberta, Canada and it's lakes, mountains and trees.... lakes, trees and mountains, etc.  Nuff said 

[The Johnster]

On 06/10/2020 at 05:55, tomparryharry said:

Right! Let's get this straight!

 

We're not going to Mars, or anywhere else . Remember, the Clangers own the catering contracts for interstellar space travel,  and there isn't enough string pudding to stretch that far.  Anyway, if you go too near the edge*, you'll fall off...

 

* Barry Island

Barry Island is for people who have already fallen off, a bit like Wetherspoons...

 

It used to be a euphemism for how far you could go with girls, similar to the American 'base' system.  Some girls wouldn't even go as far as Grangetown, and while most would go as far as Dinas Powys or even Cadoxton if you were lucky, and a few as far as Barry Town (we always called it that, though it is of course just 'Barry'), if you were very lucky the girl would go all the way, to Barry Island.  I achieved some minor notoriety by claiming to know how to take a girl to Barry Pier, not that I'd have known what to do with her once I'd got her there.  Take her up the breakwater, probably.

 

Is string pudding really noodles?  I understand there is a lot of research being done into dried water powder for the purposes of long distance space travel.  You put the powder in a cup and add, um...

[jonny777]

On 06/10/2020 at 09:32, APOLLO said:

Humans will visit our Moon, Mars and perhaps a moon or two of Jupiter / Saturn this century - and that will be about it. But those places are a bit like Widnes, no atmosphere and sod all there.

 

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

The problem with the farthest destinations in that list, are that once a human moves beyond the earth's magnetosphere (about 70,000km) and encounters the full background cosmic radiation, no one knows what the effect might be on the human body. 

 

Our problem as a species, is that we have evolved to cope with conditions experienced on the earth's surface; and even if we could find a cheap and lightweight way of reaching escape velocity, it is no guarantee that we could cope with months or even years in space. 

 

Remember that the distances are huge, and even if we could accelerate safely up to around 10,000mph with small amounts of fuel, it would take (assuming my maths is not too far adrift) about 7 years to reach Saturn. 

[TheQ]

On 05/10/2020 at 19:29, Steamport Southport said:

 

I thought that was Q?  

 

 

No definitely not me..

[DIW]

50 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 You put the powder in a cup and add, um...

 

Milk!

 

Any other suggestions?

[Reorte]

55 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

Remember that the distances are huge, and even if we could accelerate safely up to around 10,000mph with small amounts of fuel, it would take (assuming my maths is not too far adrift) about 7 years to reach Saturn. 

 

It's not really about getting up to a constant speed and then sitting at it. You need to be going faster than 10 000 mph to get in to low Earth orbit... Escape velocity from Earth is 25 000 mph.

 

The lowest fuel way to reach Saturn (assuming no gravity assists from other planets) takes 10.3 years. You're also limited to being launch windows that roll around just over once a year (which is at least better than Mars, where they're every 2 1/2 years, which is why you tend to get several Mars missions launching at about the same time).

Edited October 8, 2020 by Reorte

[tomparryharry]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

Is string pudding really noodles?  I understand there is a lot of research being done into dried water powder for the purposes of long distance space travel.  You put the powder in a cup and add, um...

Cue mashed potato advert....

[rocor]

1 hour ago, jonny777 said:

 

 

The problem with the farthest destinations in that list, are that once a human moves beyond the earth's magnetosphere (about 70,000km) and encounters the full background cosmic radiation, no one knows what the effect might be on the human body. 

 

Our problem as a species, is that we have evolved to cope with conditions experienced on the earth's surface; and even if we could find a cheap and lightweight way of reaching escape velocity, it is no guarantee that we could cope with months or even years in space. 

 

Remember that the distances are huge, and even if we could accelerate safely up to around 10,000mph with small amounts of fuel, it would take (assuming my maths is not too far adrift) about 7 years to reach Saturn. 

 

 

I am not totally convinced (even allowing for Elon Musk evident enthusiasm for it) that the first manned mission to Mars will be propelled on the planet to planet trajectory by chemical rockets. Six months sitting in a tin can, seems excessive. There are other interplanetary propulsion systems under development that will reduce the travel time, and when that the first manned Mars mission is ready to launch, may well be mature enough to be the one adopted. 

 

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, rocor said:

I am not totally convinced (even allowing for Elon Musk evident enthusiasm for it) that the first manned mission to Mars will be propelled on the planet to planet trajectory by chemical rockets. Six months sitting in a tin can, seems excessive. There are other interplanetary propulsion systems under development that will reduce the travel time, and when that the first manned Mars mission is ready to launch, may well be mature enough to be the one adopted.

 

What else have we got? Ion drives aren't really a practical prospect for a manned mission. Even if we did invent something more efficient it will always be a case of whether you use that to get there faster, carry more, or reduce costs (and / or increase the engineering practicality of being able to build it).

[Dave47549]

.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Dave47549
Removed pointless guff

[The Johnster]

6 month in a tin can is a long time, but the tin can will be a little larger than the Apollo Moonships, and there will be stuff to do so they won't be bored; apart from exercise, constant health checks, and producing food, there will be maintenance and scientific experiments to keep 'em busy.  They may in fact complain of being overworked, and if they get tired sleep should be encouraged as it will reduce the loadings on the various life support systems.   One would hope that better propulsion is available for Mars missions though, but even then it's going to be a long haul.  The big problem will be communication with Earth; they might have wi-fi and phone signal, but the time it will take to connect at light speed will be increasing the further away from Earth they get, and will be about 20 minutes by the time they get close to Mars.  This will thus have to be very formalised and structured, and will I suspect be the most stressful feature of the inter-orbital transit for the crew.

 

But long periods in space, much longer than required for an out and back Mars trip with a few weeks on the ground at Mars, are already common on the ISS, so it isn't altogether new ground.  But the ISS crew can see home out of the window, and all who have been up have said that this is a very pleasant and comforting thing; to see home receding on a daily basis is going to be pretty discouraging! 

 

The highest speed achieved so far in space by crewed ships is less than escape velocity, 24.000 and some mph by the return leg of the Apollo 10 mission, but a spacecraft once away from Earth orbit would need to be going very fast indeed for the movement to be detectable on board.  They will feel that they are stationary for much of the time, with no sensation of movement at all.

[The Johnster]

3 minutes ago, Dave47549 said:

 

 

Great, now I feel like a pervert... 

 

Why do you think there's that phallic symbol at the end...

[Dave47549]

.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Dave47549
Removed pointless guff

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, jonny777 said:

10,000mph with small amounts of fuel,

We can already accelerate to much faster than that, and long distance missions to the outer plantes use 'slingshot gravity' to increase speed to save fuel.  Onboard power is supplied by solar panels.  Given sufficient fuel, even a very gentle acceleration over a long enough period and distance can build to some very high speeds, ultimately to light speed.  We could conceivably mount out'n'back manned missions to the moons of the outer planets, but it is far easier and cheaper to send robot probes on unmanned craft.  

 

The distances are so large that it is difficult to get a handle on them mentally.  The speed of light is used as a known constant that is fast enough to keep the number of zeros you need in check, and light takes about 8 and a half minutes, 8.5 light minutes distance, to travel the 90 million miles ball park from the Sun to Earth, so you can think of it for the sake of simplicity as 10 million miles a minute.  The distance to the nearest star, Alpha Promixa Centauri, is 4 and a half light years.  The light you see from it when you look at it left it's surface 4 and a half years ago,  That means, according to my phone's calculator, that Proxixa is 5.46834e10 miles away, whatever that means.  It is beyond my capacity to envisage; I can more or less grasp the 250k miles to the moon and the 90 million to the sun, but I cannot really get my head around the outer planets, or the Oort Cloud, or Proxima.  Galactic distances within the galaxy are beyond me, and intergalactic distances are impossible; my head would explode. at which point the matter would become academic as far as I am concerned...

[rocor]

36 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

What else have we got? Ion drives aren't really a practical prospect for a manned mission. Even if we did invent something more efficient it will always be a case of whether you use that to get there faster, carry more, or reduce costs (and / or increase the engineering practicality of being able to build it).

 

Where spaceX’s starship development is introducing technology for a large reduction in the cost of launching mass into space may well pay off, Is in the possibilities that it introduces for the construction of large mass structures in space  that allow for systems such as those for beam powered propulsion.

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, The Johnster said:

The distances are so large that it is difficult to get a handle on them mentally.  The speed of light is used as a known constant that is fast enough to keep the number of zeros you need in check, and light takes about 8 and a half minutes, 8.5 light minutes distance, to travel the 90 million miles ball park from the Sun to Earth, so you can think of it for the sake of simplicity as 10 million miles a minute.  The distance to the nearest star, Alpha Promixa Centauri, is 4 and a half light years.  The light you see from it when you look at it left it's surface 4 and a half years ago,  That means, according to my phone's calculator, that Proxixa is 5.46834e10 miles away, whatever that means.  It is beyond my capacity to envisage; I can more or less grasp the 250k miles to the moon and the 90 million to the sun, but I cannot really get my head around the outer planets, or the Oort Cloud, or Proxima.  Galactic distances within the galaxy are beyond me, and intergalactic distances are impossible; my head would explode. at which point the matter would become academic as far as I am concerned...

 

It helps to put them in context relative to something we can grasp. The (mean) Earth - Sun distance is a commonly used unit of distance within the solar system (and other stellar systems) - the astronomical unit (AU). That makes grasping distances within the solar system a little easier - Mercury is on average 0.39 AUs from the Sun, Venus 0.72, Earth 1, Mars 1.52 etc. On that scale a light year is about 63 000 AUs (and Voyager 1 has travelled about 150).

[Steamport Southport]

9 hours ago, Kendo54 said:

Love your comment about Widnes. Have worked there and so true.But have have worked in Wigan !!!  Now in Alberta, Canada and it's lakes, mountains and trees.... lakes, trees and mountains, etc.  Nuff said 

 

Widnes and Wigan?

 

Places full of men with odd shaped balls. I won't mention Barry.......