Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Unknown Target on January 05, 2006, 09:46:09 pm
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Thought this was interesting:
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=16902006
AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.
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Not really new for the US government to put money in these types of things.
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At least this is something I wouldn't mind having.
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I can see 8 problems:
- There's absolutely no guarantees that it will work in the slightest.
- A powerful enough magnetic field to generate the hyper-drive would wipe out all technology on the Earth.
- The field would have no definable limits, so you could potentially find a huge chunk of the Earth suddenly deciding to move through space.
- The most fundamental concept in science is that to move forward, you have to apply pressure to something behind you. This 'drive' pushes against nothing.
- It still needs energy. It's totally useless if it requires 3 weeks worth of output from every power plant on Earth just to get 10ft.
- Jumbo jets still need wheels. Anything big enough to actually mount and run the drive would undoubtedly be of the 'OMFG! Did you hollow out a mountain?!' variety and as such would require hundreds of trips into space to build, at a cost exceeding the GDP of France.
- Who says the dimension it shifts too will have a faster speed of light?
- Even if the speed of light were faster, you'd still need to generate the thrust to get it upto and past OUR speed of light.
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Shhhh! Don't tell them it's a completely moronic idea at the moment! The US futzing even more with its economy is a good thing... at least for everyone else...
The prospect is kinda cool though, but I agree wholeheartedly agree with an0n that the US is much more likely to vapourize a large chunk of the planet than get this up and running. I'm thinking someone at the Pentagon has been watching faaaaar too much Babylon 5...
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:wtf: 5 years? They must be kidding.
The closest thing to a working FTL drive is the Alcubierre warp drive (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Alcubdrive.html) and it's improved version, the micro-warp drive (http://www.analogsf.com/0002/av0002.html), and even that's still far away.
This reminds me of when Nasa asked George Lucas to give them ideas about future propulsion systems.
Oh, and Alcubierre's been watching way too much ST, but at least his theory isn't based upon assumptions like 'the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster' ;)
The same theory is used in Event Horizon BTW, nothing new ;)
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The whole point of the B5 hyperspace dealy was that the shortest path to your destination is a straight line. Time and space are curved.
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He said the engine would enable spaceships to travel to different solar systems. "If the theory is correct then this is not science fiction, it is science fact," Prof Hauser said.
O noes, he used the f-word!!!
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I thought Hawking was supposed to be working on a warp drive?
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Generating gravity fields through magnetic fields? Uh-huh.
I hope the DoD folks aren't dumb enough to take this seriously.
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Welcome to Mars express: only a three hour trip
o/` "a three hour tour.....a three hour tour" o/`
:p it had to be said. :D
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Next problem, scraping the crew off the back of the cockpit when it arrives ;)
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Would it have that affect though? Granted I'm not too up on physics but assuming the ship didn't rip itself apart - I don't remember there being any problems from firing rockets in space... I mean the astronauts don't even get pinned against the wall.
So it shouldn't be that bad if the accelerate to the speed of light, should it :p
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iirc, it's not the target speed that is the problem, it's the rate of acceleration. I suppose it really depends on how it's done etc, but it's always been the problem which near c travel, is how to accelerate to it without taken something like 4 years speeding up and 4 years slowing down to keep the crew safe. :)
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I don't suppose putting the crew in some kind of concentrate syrup / liqued solution would help would it? Kinda like the hibernation tanks for the Lewis and Clarke in Event Horizon.
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I remember reading that, if possible in the first place, the speed of light could be reached in 1 year if a constant acceleration of 1G was maintained. That might have just been an abstraction or approximation though.
Good to see they're at least thinking about it and not reverting to the mantra, "the speed of light cannot be exceeded". Although technically they wouldnt be doing that.
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I remember reading that, if possible in the first place, the speed of light could be reached in 1 year if a constant acceleration of 1G was maintained. That might have just been an abstraction or approximation though.
Good to see they're at least thinking about it and not reverting to the mantra, "the speed of light cannot be exceeded". Although technically they wouldnt be doing that.
That's classical physics: v=a*t --> t = v/a
With speed of light c and acceleration a = 1g = 9.81 m/s² we get t = 353.9 days
The problem is that when we reach relativistic speeds (say a few % of c), the mass of a body increases, thus we need more energy to further accelerate it. If you reach c, your mass is infinit and you need an infinitive (sp?) amount of energy to accelerate any further.
And the mantra of c being the ultimate barrier still stands, as long as none of the wild theories yield not more than technobabble.
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Hmmm... Some kind of 'velocity responsive' gel might work (one that solidifies under pressure) or possibly short bursts of high G acceleration. For short journeys, such as to Mars, the Gel would probably be better, but for longer journeys, where the pilots would not be able to rely an oxygen supply from breathing apparatus and would instead need to recycle air in the same way that Nuclear subs do, the latter might be a better idea :)
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Would it be possible to accelerate faster than your mass can keep up with... thereby punching through the barrier before physics has time to catch up... allowing for infinite speed before infinite mass takes note?
(Shot in the dark.. I know).
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Well, I'll admit, my knowledge of physics in Space travel is about 20 years old in places, so some of these problems may have already been solved. ;)
I suspect that if we discovered that something like the 'Graviton' existed, you could 'cheat' physics by adding another vector to the equation, so you could match the pull backwards with a nose mounted gravity source pulling the pilot forwards at equal or near equal force. It'd be a delicate balance, but, purely in theory, could work.
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Would it be possible to accelerate faster than your mass can keep up with... thereby punching through the barrier before physics has time to catch up... allowing for infinite speed before infinite mass takes note?
Hmm.. but what is it that accelerates, if not the mass?
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Generating gravity fields through magnetic fields? Uh-huh.
I hope the DoD folks aren't dumb enough to take this seriously.
Actually, that's not so far-fetched as it might sound.
There are no actual gravity fields according to general theory of relativity. There are only energy and its interaction with space-time continuum. A lot of energy confined into one place curves the space-time regardless of its form (though relativistic energy forms such as kinetic energy naturally don't add to gravitational interactions, when you count every koordinate conversion into the equations, but that's getting technical...)
The point is that every form of energy curves the space-time continuum. Mass has energy according to famous equation E=mc^2... electric and magnetic fields have energy, thus they curve the space-time around them.
The trouble is, however, that for creating a magnetic field that would have equal energy to one gram of matter is utterly impossible for today's technology. If we want to create a similar effect, magnetic field should also be confined to equal volume as the mass is. For example, if we have a cube of iron that has a mass of 1 g (0,001 kg), it would be quite small in size, eh? However, it has equal energy to 89 875 517 873 681,764 Joules. That's a lot of energy... almost 90 TV. Converted to kWh, it is 24965421,63 kWh. That's the minimum energy input to create a magnetic field that has similar gravitational effects as one gram of matter. Naturally, confining this much energy in form of magnetic field into such a small space as the one manned by that one gram iron scrap would also be *quite* difficult, and my guess is that instead of working as planned, such energy density would cease to be a magnetic field and become something else, proposedly particles - which would bring us to starting point.
Damn, the cost of electricity needed to power up one-gram equivalent magnetic field is 943 693 € here in Helsinki. That is, if all electrical energy used would be converted to magnetic field without energy losses (which cannot be the case, actually...).
Needless to say, it's completely useless to create mass effects by magnetic field. For it to have any significant gravitational meaning it would require much greater mass equivalence than one gram, hence it would need literally astronomical amounts of energy output.
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Would it be possible to accelerate faster than your mass can keep up with... thereby punching through the barrier before physics has time to catch up... allowing for infinite speed before infinite mass takes note?
(Shot in the dark.. I know).
Hehe, if you did it really, really, really fast .... maybe.
That's where quantum effects occur. You can "borrow" immense amounts of energy, but have to give it back within a very short period of time. As long as you stay below Planck's constant with your energy*time product, you can do pretty much anything because it's not observable anyway. B
ut that only applies if you're an electron or smaller ...so good luck to you ;)
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Interesting....
However, I have a strange feeling that MABY, just maby, all those scientist have a better idea of what they are talking about than any wikipedia-physicist here at these forums.
Of course, they could allso be wrong...but only time will tell, right?
and one thing is certain - no matter what mode of inter-stellar transport you come up with it will ALLWAYS require astronomical ammounts of energy...in space, everything IS astronomical :D
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Interesting....
However, I have a strange feeling that MABY, just maby, all those scientist have a better idea of what they are talking about than any wikipedia-physicist here at these forums.
Of course, they could allso be wrong...but only time will tell, right?
and one thing is certain - no matter what mode of inter-stellar transport you come up with it will ALLWAYS require astronomical ammounts of energy...in space, everything IS astronomical :D
US government - or any big government - pours money into really stupid projects. Psychic warfare? Check! Invisibility machines and laser swords? Check! Black hole weapons? Check! The men who stare at goats? Check!
The idea is that although majority of these projects are complete bunk and never result in anything else than unintentional comedy and hilarity, some of them actually have benefits. NASA has an entire section dedicated to FTL systems and it's just one of those progs.
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Scientists are also far from never wrong, one only has to think the words 'Cold Fusion'. ;)
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However, I have a strange feeling that MABY, just maby, all those scientist have a better idea of what they are talking about than any wikipedia-physicist here at these forums.
That's a terrible scientific attitude. If everyone just assumed that these sorts of people were always right, who knows what they would have gotten away with.
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He wasn't assuming they were right, he was assuming that they knew their material better than everyone here who happened to take a crash-course in reading through five pages of Wikkipedia documentation.
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He was missing the point that Janos made about how NASA and the American military have wasted millions if not billions on pie in the sky nonsense projects. So we have prior cases of both wasting money on things that someone "who happened to take a crash-course in reading through five pages of Wikkipedia documentation" could tell is a load of ****.
While I'm always willing to respect scientists who have greater knowledge in a field than I do, I always check their track record on the subject and NASA has a habit of wasting money on this kind of stuff.
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I belive I said they may very well be wrong.
Research of FTL is a GOOD thing. Discovery of any FTL engine would prrolly be the biggest tech advancment in human history. WE can't stay on Earth forever you know...even if we don't poison it or blow it up we all know how it's gonna end...
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Cthulhu rises from the deep and takes command of us all?
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Only on a Monday.
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Well, they had to put off Ragnarok till Tuesday, cos of rain ;)
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However, I have a strange feeling that MABY, just maby, all those scientist have a better idea of what they are talking about than any wikipedia-physicist here at these forums.
Of course, they could allso be wrong...but only time will tell, right?
No, science is all about being skeptical (see my signature). What you're describing is religion (if the bible says so, it must be true!).
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I would have that Freespace geeks would be more receptive to the idea. I thought it was cool, anyway.
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Oh it is cool, but we don't let that get in the way of having a debate ;)
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Well, it would be cooler than anything if it worked, but... Current knowledge of physics doesn't apply proposed kind of manipulation to space-time continuumwithout use of insane amounts of energy.
On the other hand: In the end of 19th century and in beginniing of 20th, most scientist thought that all of physics had mostly been figured out, and that classical dynamics and electrodynamics and wave motion and stuff was enough to explain all phenomena encountered in nature - only minor tweaking might be needed to apply, but general lines were thought to be firmly established and steady. Then came Albert Einstein and Max Planck with Special&General Relativity and the Quantum theory, which basically changed the very basis of pretty much everything.
Mother nature might have funny little surprizes behind her back. Even now we use on daily basis many devices that would be considered impossible to build or even to reverse engineer with use of just classical mechanics and electrodynamics... So, history has shown us that pretty much everything is impossible until it's made reality.
I cincerely DO hope that some day some more useful means of transportation will be utilized, than the currently only known way to travel through space (conservation of momentum). It would be such a waste of space not ever to be able to explore the universe further than solar system...
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Well, it would be cooler than anything if it worked, but... Current knowledge of physics doesn't apply proposed kind of manipulation to space-time continuumwithout use of insane amounts of energy.
Douglas Adams has already pointed out that you can cross vast interstellar distances with nothing more than a strong cup of tea as a power source. ;)
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Well, it would be cooler than anything if it worked, but... Current knowledge of physics doesn't apply proposed kind of manipulation to space-time continuumwithout use of insane amounts of energy.
Douglas Adams has already pointed out that you can cross vast interstellar distances with nothing more than a strong cup of tea as a power source. ;)
sour cherry bubble yum is aparrently a pretty potent fuel source, too :p
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Scientists are also far from never wrong, one only has to think the words 'Cold Fusion'. ;)
It's been done.
It didn't break even AFAIK, but it was done and it can be reproduced. IIRC it used a crystal to focus an electromagnetic field.
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Scientists are also far from never wrong, one only has to think the words 'Cold Fusion'. ;)
It's been done.
It didn't break even AFAIK, but it was done and it can be reproduced. IIRC it used a crystal to focus an electromagnetic field.
:eek2:
Source, source!
Actually, alas, cold fusion has been claimed to have been done, but it has never been reproduced aside from the few initial experiments where it is claimed to have happened - at least according to my best knowledge of this matter.
If you really have some information about successful and reproductable cold fusion experiments, could you throw a link or two? You'd think some newspapers would have told about it by now...
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Well, it would be cooler than anything if it worked, but... Current knowledge of physics doesn't apply proposed kind of manipulation to space-time continuumwithout use of insane amounts of energy.
Douglas Adams has already pointed out that you can cross vast interstellar distances with nothing more than a strong cup of tea as a power source. ;)
Pff. what you want is a proper Bistro, none of that dangerous mucking about with improbability factors.
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Pff. what you want is a proper Bistro, none of that dangerous mucking about with improbability factors.
True, I didn't pass my A-level in advanced bistromatics though so I'm not going to risk it.
I am awfully careful when making tea now though, one slip of the spoon and I could be gasping for air around Neptune.
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Pff. what you want is a proper Bistro, none of that dangerous mucking about with improbability factors.
True, I didn't pass my A-level in advanced bistromatics though so I'm not going to risk it.
I am awfully careful when making tea now though, one slip of the spoon and I could be gasping for air around Neptune.
you think that's bad? All I did was discombubulate the milk matrix and ended up floating in an upside down purple-toned Skegness run by a half-fish, half-goat, half-Welsh mayor called Malcolm.
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:eek2:
Source, source!
Actually, alas, cold fusion has been claimed to have been done, but it has never been reproduced aside from the few initial experiments where it is claimed to have happened - at least according to my best knowledge of this matter.
If you really have some information about successful and reproductable cold fusion experiments, could you throw a link or two? You'd think some newspapers would have told about it by now...
Wikipedia has it under Pyroelectric Fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroelectric_fusion).
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Thanks!
I should have been more exacti with my word... Would have saved a little time.
What I meant was that no cold fusion with capacity to produce net energy output greater than input has been implemented, at least not in a reproductable manner.
Yes, fusion happens in this phenomenon, but it demands more energy than it produces, thus being *not* useful power plant basis. There are other means of generating fusion in apparently low temperatures than than pyroelectric fusion, ie. myon catalyzed fusion, but they are all similar in this respect: they don't produce energy but instead consume it.
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Well, they had to put off Ragnarok till Tuesday, cos of rain ;)
Snow, actually. Heehee.
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I didn't know the end of the world was in Inverness.
Although, thinking about it, it does make sense........
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On the issue of faster than light and the problems of acceleration:
1) With all the energy in the universe you DON'T go faster than light as long as you have mass
2) The problem with acceleration has nothing to do with the acceleration itself - it's the force that creates the acceleration that's problematic.
All our prolusion methods produce surface type forces. In simple terms, the force will be countinously transmitted through surfaces. So when the rocket accelerates and I'm standing the floor will push against my legs. My lower bones will puch against my pelvic bone, against my spine...and so on up to my head.
The problem is that the very same force will exist between all the particles of my body along a given axis.
Changing position - sitting, kneeling, lying down can alleviate the problem since the human body has different tolerances in different positions. Note, that this tolerance also has a timelimit - on how long one can suffer this acceleration without injury.
A proposed theory - proposed by forefather of rocket sciences Tsiolkovsky - is to submerge the body in a solvent with similar density to the human body. The trick is that while the force of acceleration will act on the human body, the liquid will counteract with the Archimedean force - hence a body that floats in liquid would witstand a lot bigger accelerations and for longer periods of time.
This was tested and the human tolerance for acceleration was almost doubled. (A further step would be using liquid breathing medium, but this hasn't been tested yet.)
The nice thing about gravity and fields (electromagnetic) in general is on the scale of the human body they can be treated as volumetric forces. This means that the each and every single particle in the body will be pulled by the same force, instead being pushed by the neighbouring particle.
With a gravity field we could accelerate mass a lot more, since the differences in the field would produce surface forces only on very high accelerations.
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On the issue of faster than light and the problems of acceleration:
1) With all the energy in the universe you DON'T go faster than light as long as you have mass
2) The problem with acceleration has nothing to do with the acceleration itself - it's the force that creates the acceleration that's problematic.
1. Yes, that's why the only way to seemingly exceed the speed of light would be to
a. Shorten the path between A and B, as in Star Trek's warp speed, or
b. Create some space-time that connects A and B being shorter than the original path (or in other words, create a wormhole between the places)
c. Move onto another space-time continuum, where our space-time-continuum's places seem to be a lot closer to another, move from A to B in there, then jump back to normal-space (FS2 / B5 sub/hyperspace method)
If the path to B from A shortens, the time to travel the distance does reduce even if the ship doesn't (and can't) exceed the speed of light. This does not even breack the laws of causality.
2. Yeah, well... you could say that, I suppose, but since force is always tied to acceleration in relation F=ma, different sized people can stand forces of different magnitude, but generally the ability to withstand accelration remains the same.
Example. Here we have a skinny little kid (45 kg) and a Sumo wrestler (150 kg). Now, if the same force is applied to both person's feet by spaceship's floor (let that force be F = 4413 N), they have different acceleration. Skinny kid would accelerate at ~10 g and would probably faint if he was forced to stand rather than lay down. The sumo wrestler would only accelerate at 3 g and would probably withstand it quite long even when standing.
Yes, when it comes to causing injury the force is the primary culprit, but you must remember that the supporting force is defined by ship's acceleration and the injured ones mass. On the other hand, in a spaceship that accelerates steadily at 10 g, the sumo wrestlers spine and joints and whole body would be in a lot bigger risk of sustaining injury, because of his greater mass and thus much greater supporting forces.
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On the issue of faster than light and the problems of acceleration:
1) With all the energy in the universe you DON'T go faster than light as long as you have mass
2) The problem with acceleration has nothing to do with the acceleration itself - it's the force that creates the acceleration that's problematic.
1. Yes, that's why the only way to seemingly exceed the speed of light would be to
a. Shorten the path between A and B, as in Star Trek's warp speed, or
b. Create some space-time that connects A and B being shorter than the original path (or in other words, create a wormhole between the places)
c. Move onto another space-time continuum, where our space-time-continuum's places seem to be a lot closer to another, move from A to B in there, then jump back to normal-space (FS2 / B5 sub/hyperspace method)
If the path to B from A shortens, the time to travel the distance does reduce even if the ship doesn't (and can't) exceed the speed of light. This does not even breack the laws of causality.
2. Yeah, well... you could say that, I suppose, but since force is always tied to acceleration in relation F=ma, different sized people can stand forces of different magnitude, but generally the ability to withstand accelration remains the same.
Example. Here we have a skinny little kid (45 kg) and a Sumo wrestler (150 kg). Now, if the same force is applied to both person's feet by spaceship's floor (let that force be F = 4413 N), they have different acceleration. Skinny kid would accelerate at ~10 g and would probably faint if he was forced to stand rather than lay down. The sumo wrestler would only accelerate at 3 g and would probably withstand it quite long even when standing.
Yes, when it comes to causing injury the force is the primary culprit, but you must remember that the supporting force is defined by ship's acceleration and the injured ones mass. On the other hand, in a spaceship that accelerates steadily at 10 g, the sumo wrestlers spine and joints and whole body would be in a lot bigger risk of sustaining injury, because of his greater mass and thus much greater supporting forces.
Oh, boy, you've got it all mixed up. The ship is accelerating - all occupants will bear the same acceleration regardless their mass.
The point where you're wrong is that they would both witstand the same force. It won't be the same force.
Why? Becuse it's a counter force. Actually the thrust of the ship will do Z Newtons. This will force the ship to accelerate by Z/M=A where M is the mass of the ship.
All occupants will also accelerate with A. However their feet will have to produce different ammount of force to counter this. The heavier the person is the more his legs will have to work....you see you actually got it all backwards.
If I draw a coordinate system where the human inside the ship is stationary I can better demonstrate what happens.
I'm in freefall, I don't have to exert any whatsoever force.
The rocket kicks in.
In this coordinate system the floor starts pushing against my feet. The molecules in my feet in turn push against the molecules in my leg. This goes on from foot to head.
The reason why my feet have to handle the biggest force is beacuse Newton 3rd law, and the fact that I can add the counter force from all the molecules above.
Inside a forcefied - gravity, an electromagnetic field - there each and every particle in my body can be accelerated at the same time. Therefore, my body won't have to transfer the force from one particle to another.
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I don't actually have anything mixed. If you read my message again, you'll see that what I wrote was exactly the same thing you wrote in your last message, but in a slightly altered form.
If skinny kid and sumo wrestler are standing on a floor of a rocket that yelds standard power to give itself standard acceleration, the force exerted to sumo wrestler by the floor (and through the legs up to head, all the way becoming smaller as the amount of supported mass reduces) is bigger than the force exerted to skinny boy. That's really basic physics and I know that very well... ;)
So, in this scenario (and basically every else, too) there actually is a difference between how great an acceleration these people can take before collapsing to ground because their legs no more can transfer the induced supporting force to body and upwards. The skinny boy supposedly will be able to stand longer, as his bones, joints and muscles will have a fraction of strain that the sumo wrestlers bones, joints and muscles must withstand if the acceleration is the same.
Unfortunately, as long as the acceleration is the same and both can support their weight, still both of them will faint in this scenario, before their "structural integrity" collapses (aka legs no longer can support the great powers working on them). This is because the blood packs to their lower body, and this happens quite equally with both the skinny kid and sumo wrestler. There are some individual differences between people, but generally the blood packs to legs if they're standing upright in great accelerating movement, like on this example. Thus, both people faint and collapse to floor at ~4-5 g's, I'd wager. They might be able to support their weight even in greater acceleration, but it becamos impossible when they are no longer able to control themselves when their brains black out of loss of oxygen.
However, generally it can be said that the smaller the mass, the greater is the acceleration needed to inflict damage, because if the acceleration is the constant and the force needed to inflict damage (for example, break a bone) is constant (it probably is, if the skinny boy and sumo wrestler are both healthy people, their bones will be approximately of same strength), then when the Sumo wrestlers ankle bones start crakcing and being crushed, the skinny boys ankles are just fine, because of lesser force is applied to them.
Thus, lighter person can withstand greater acceleration than a heavier person, because of that difference in forces in effect if the acceleration is constant. So, actually there is no difference between our opinions, I just wanted to make clear that I don't have this thing mixed up at all, even if my last message might have been a bit ambiguous.
Of the force field moving the ship as a whole... I don't think it's even possible. Except that with space time manipulation there is no longer any need to accelerate, actually. Just make clear that there is nothing between A and B, then create a shorter path between those two, take a short ride at nice and pleasant acceleration, and after a few minutes, you're in B, after seemingly passing thousands of light years.
That is, if such space time manipulation ever will be possible... :rolleyes:
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Boy, I'm getting tired of this but let me give some further info:
Although the force is bigger for the heavier person, weight alone doesn't tell which will collapse first.
Thing is, muscles are pretty complicated machines, and in this reagard we could simply say the stronger person will stand longer.
However from a structural integrity point of view what matters is tension not force - which is force divided by the surface of the crossection of the body through which force is transmitted.
Heavier people have bones with a bigger cross section, unless they spend their life in a wheelchair.
It's not that easy to tell.
However this whole discussion has nothign to do with FTL drives.
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*peeks inside*
LoL.
Leave it to the scientists to debate boys and girls. :p
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*peeks inside*
LoL.
Leave it to the scientists to debate boys and girls. :p
A worthwhile contribution indeed. What's wrong here?
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Well tho it may b a farshot i still think its good that they are interested in space travel and space related things.
Does anyone else notice this:
Shouldent we be working on better and bigger space craft and stations before we take the big leap into warp and subspace drives? Its like seriously. Going from caveman to our age now, skipping midevil. We should come up with several space stations, bigger ones, like Arcadias', and then a larger amount of space craft, and come up with FIGHTERS and faster ships; BEFORE we jump into warp surprassing several dimentions..
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Well tho it may b a farshot i still think its good that they are interested in space travel and space related things.
Does anyone else notice this:
Shouldent we be working on better and bigger space craft and stations before we take the big leap into warp and subspace drives? Its like seriously. Going from caveman to our age now, skipping midevil. We should come up with several space stations, bigger ones, like Arcadias', and then a larger amount of space craft, and come up with FIGHTERS and faster ships; BEFORE we jump into warp surprassing several dimentions..
Did you ever consider that maybe the reason why we don't have giant ships and space stations is because current propulsion methods make it prohibitively expensive to travel into space anyways? And that maybe, just maybe, being able to realistically and cheaply reach exploitable resources might just be a spur to expansion into space?
also, are you drunk?
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:eek2:
Source, source!
Actually, alas, cold fusion has been claimed to have been done, but it has never been reproduced aside from the few initial experiments where it is claimed to have happened - at least according to my best knowledge of this matter.
If you really have some information about successful and reproductable cold fusion experiments, could you throw a link or two? You'd think some newspapers would have told about it by now...
Wikipedia has it under Pyroelectric Fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroelectric_fusion).
Tabeltop fusion is NOT cold fusion.
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Yep. Cold fusion is bunk. It's never been repeated by any test and the claims originally made for it seem pretty unlikely anyway.
Tabletop fusion is very different. It involves completely different materials and a completely different branch of physics from cold fusion.
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eeeeem heres a question that might be stupid
if you make a anti gravity generator cant you place a field arround say a ship which would mkae the ships weight (notice weight not mass) 0? in which case the relativity theory dosent apply since photons have no weight either you should be able to pop to C in notime?
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I think for that to work, you'd have to have a mass of absolutely 0.
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It's mass, not weight, that determines limits on acceleration given a finite force. So that wouldn't help. More importantly though, an anti-gravity generator is probably more far-fetched with current technology and understanding of the laws of Physics than a FTL drive of any kind.
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well i dont see FTL happening without AG unless you use the B method of travel (dimensional portal to a place that is 100000x more compressed than ours) oh the bending of space thing :)
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From what I hear, some kind of transporter technology is more likely. You send a robotic probe, it lands on the planet, sets up the transporter mechanism, then you just send people over. Hopefully you get the coordinates right. And pretty soon you have Just As Fast As Light (JAFAL) travel.