Space In General

[Shoe67]

Then how do you make it so you pull towards a selected destination?

Have the energy focused in that direction

 

[Ealirendur]

Then how do you make it so you pull towards a selected destination?

Unless you fold the curvature enough that you just arrive there with minimal movement and don't need to be "pulled":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

A single "ship" with a "drive" probably couldn't use that mechanism to get far, though, even with exotic matter, negative energy densities, and so forth assumed to be possible. The "pull" sort of thing is rather like the billiard ball on the rubber mat being able to magically "push down" a gap ahead of it, and move that way; the wormhole is more like bringing another part of the mat close enough to pop right through a hole in each side*. It's not two or even three dimensional, though, so visualization is hard.

That sort of mechanic for FTL has obviously been used before in SF (sub-light ships seeding a distant location with a traversible-wormhole-equivalent generator) many times.

*There is a bit of an argument over whether you would wind up on another mat entirely, that may or may not be nearly identical.

 

[nealcropper]

Unless you fold the curvature enough that you just arrive there with minimal movement and don't need to be "pulled":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

A single "ship" with a "drive" probably couldn't use that mechanism to get far, though, even with exotic matter, negative energy densities, and so forth assumed to be possible. The "pull" sort of thing is rather like the billiard ball on the rubber mat being able to magically "push down" a gap ahead of it, and move that way. It's not two or even three dimensional, though, so visualization is hard.

That sort of mechanic for FTL has obviously been used before in SF (sub-light ships seeding a distant location with a traversible-wormhole-equivalent generator) many times.

This is all very complicated, I'm not even going to pretend to know what it's all about.

It's certainly interesting though.

 

[Stevisiov]

For those interested in the warp drive proposed earlier, Michio Kaku, dedicated an episode to it. Most of the explanation of how it would work is in part 2.

 

[Brett]

Milky Way Center Region Mosaic

Thumbnail version:

More information

 

[CodeRedR51]

Wow.

Edit: Print screened my way to a new desktop.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Snapped this photo tonight with my crappy point and shoot. Best I could get out of it.

(Jupiter on upper left)

 

[MisterEads]

Snapped this photo tonight with my crappy point and shoot. Best I could get out of it.

(Jupiter on upper left)

crappy point and shoot?

ever seen a broke mans camera?
i have terrible seeing the moon with it haha

 

[CodeRedR51]

Yeah, that's super max zoom and the original size looks like crap. I had to edit that one a bit to get rid of the noise and sharpen the edges.

 

[Brett]

I meant to look for that last night after the basketball game I went to and forgot until this morning when I saw some tweets about it.

 

[Minty]

Space mining is apparently going to be a thing soon.

Still wrapping my head around that. I mean...it doesn't all sound terribly complicated compared to a lot of the things going on in space. But it's still mining asteroids. It's the kind of stuff I could only imagine when I was a kid.


And about the feasibility as a business; it seems like they're discussing it like these minerals will be sold for the same price as they come from the Earth. They're thinking about it entirely too much from a scientific perspective. Imagine how much more people would pay for a ring made of space platinum then they would for exactly the same ring made from plain old earth minerals. People spend $5 for a 16oz bottle of water because it was bottled in some remote mountain somewhere. Apply the same thinking to rare minerals, add a bit of clever marketing, and you've got some serious profit to make.


And even if it doesn't start being profitable for the next 10 years or so, these guys will have been in the game long enough to have it pretty much covered. Waiting until a business is popular to get in on it means you have more competition. For now these guys are it.(Er...for whenever they start on this, I mean.)


And the bit about potentially finding ways to divert asteroids away from the Earth is cool. Wonder if it could be worked the other way around.

 

[CodeRedR51]

And the bit about potentially finding ways to divert asteroids away from the Earth is cool. Wonder if it could be worked the other way around.

Oh they're already all over that.

 

[ghskilla]

And the bit about potentially finding ways to divert asteroids away from the Earth is cool. Wonder if it could be worked the other way around.

I wouldn't be surprised if some decide to use an asteroid as a substitution for a nuke...

 

[Emptyone]

I thought this picture was pretty stunning:

It's of the star Zeta Ophiuchi, and it's as much desktop background worthy star if I have ever seen.

 

[MisterEads]

I thought this picture was pretty stunning:

It's of the star Zeta Ophiuchi, and it's as much desktop background worthy star if I have ever seen.

Saved.

love it

 

[Dennisch]

I wouldn't be surprised if some decide to use an asteroid as a substitution for a nuke...

I always thought of that. Who would ever suspect a country when a piece of space rock comes down and destroys, let say Tehran or Pyong Yang...

 

[GazMac]

I have always thought, what is space? It's space as we know it with stars and planets etc, but why? who created it? Think deep in to your minds and think there's earth, and there's space... But what if there was nothing? Space has to end somewhere along the million billion trillion miles upon miles away, so there must be something out there. When I think what if there was no space? What would there be? Iknow this is so confusing, basically, there's earth, space, there must be something else, but, what if there was nothing at all????? Make sense? Like nothing, no exsisting thing, no living, no planets, no nothing? That's what I've always wonderd, and I woudl LOVE to be able to actuall user what's beneth the sky's of other planets, but there so far away

 

[Crispy]

^Well according to string theory, there's other universes out there. Those exist in 11-Dimensional space. Down to the particle level there's things like Quarks that make up Protons, which are made up of strings that vibrate.

 

[nealcropper]

^Well according to string theory, there's other universes out there. Those exist in 11-Dimensional space. Down to the particle level there's things like Quarks that make up Protons, which are made up of strings that vibrate.

I actually believe a certain amount about string theory. Who's to say that the Big Bang was as we have been told?

 

[Michael88]

I always thought of that. Who would ever suspect a country when a piece of space rock comes down and destroys, let say Tehran or Pyong Yang...

There are already plans to build satellites that carry simple solid metal projectiles - so called kinetic projectiles - covered with a heat shield coating weighing up to approx a metric ton. It can be dropped anywhere on earth, it has fins that guide it to its target and since it impacts with a velocity of approx 10 kilometers / 6.2 miles a second it releases as much energy as a small asteroid.

Lets do the math, a one metric ton projectile @ 10 km/s impacts with 36866506697.18 ft/lbs. A car weighing 3300 lbs / 1500kg hitting something solid with 60 mph / 100 km/h releases 416250.41 ft/lbs of energy.

Also, something that fast can't be stopped with any kind of rocket interceptor system.

 

[kk20]

Also, something that fast can't be stopped with any kind of rocket interceptor system.

Why not

 

[Stevisiov]

^Well according to string theory, there's other universes out there. Those exist in 11-Dimensional space. Down to the particle level there's things like Quarks that make up Protons, which are made up of strings that vibrate.

I actually believe a certain amount about string theory. Who's to say that the Big Bang was as we have been told?

Time will tell on validity of string theory. At the moment its just a compelling mathematical concept with little in the way of practical observations. There are certain experiments taking place now in places like the LHC which may shead morel light on it in the coming years.

 

[BobK]

Does this talk of dropping rocks from space remind anybody else of Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?

 

[Dennisch]

 

[sumbrownkid]

The moon just seems like an exit away on the highway, considering how far everything else is to us.

 

[alfiD]

Space mining is apparently going to be a thing soon.

Still wrapping my head around that. I mean...it doesn't all sound terribly complicated compared to a lot of the things going on in space. But it's still mining asteroids. It's the kind of stuff I could only imagine when I was a kid.


And about the feasibility as a business; it seems like they're discussing it like these minerals will be sold for the same price as they come from the Earth. They're thinking about it entirely too much from a scientific perspective. Imagine how much more people would pay for a ring made of space platinum then they would for exactly the same ring made from plain old earth minerals. People spend $5 for a 16oz bottle of water because it was bottled in some remote mountain somewhere. Apply the same thinking to rare minerals, add a bit of clever marketing, and you've got some serious profit to make.


And even if it doesn't start being profitable for the next 10 years or so, these guys will have been in the game long enough to have it pretty much covered. Waiting until a business is popular to get in on it means you have more competition. For now these guys are it.(Er...for whenever they start on this, I mean.)


And the bit about potentially finding ways to divert asteroids away from the Earth is cool. Wonder if it could be worked the other way around.

I had a class where they talked about sending robots that would mine the asteroids in the asteroid belt. They would mine the materials, and treat them there. Maybe even use them to build more mine bots and send them to other asteroids, planets, etc. The materials would be shipped on freight ships to manufacturing facilities based on other asteroids or planets, where parts for space colonies and other necessary stuff would be manufactured. The thing is that it is really expensive to do. A good candidate would be rocks close to Mars.

 

[niky]

Kind of optimistic sending Von Neumanns out into the "belt", as you'd need to find enough rocket to push the Von Neumanns around, or give them some form of solar drive not dependent on chemical propellants.

 

[Dan_]

I honestly fail to see incredible value on bringing space material down here to earth, escaping our gravitational well is very expensive and any stuff that's already in space is several orders of magnitude more valuable than the very same material down there on earth.

The prospect of manufacturing hardware on space is much more appealing, and I believe that both Planetary Resources and DSI are aiming for this goal in the next decades.

For those who are interested, the concept image used by DSI on it's PR actually came from this site:

http://spacehabs.com/

There are tons of conceptual ring orbital stations, mars habitats and asteroid mining panoramas. Worth a look for the convict space geeks.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Awesome link! Thanks!

 

[DK]

When I was scrolling through that scaled-down pic showing Earth and the Moon I was half expecting Longcat to show up.