Space Program - Travel

[PeterJB]

The program I watched mentioned the fact that mars being a similar sized planet would have a pretty substantial gravity.

Retro rickets would be needed to land as well as take off.

Considering the amount of fuel needed to get out of our planet and the size it takes up.
Creating fuel on mars was considered the best choice at the moment.

Not my info. Patrick Moore sky at night.

Mars' Gravitation is actually about half of the Earth's. But then Solar energy is halved aswell. If we discovered crude oil on Mars, then their is a definite possibility to developing fuels from it, but we need to find it first, which probably won't happened any time soon.

 

[Dapper]

We harness a minute amount of the sun's energy right now. Our ability to harness the sun's energy is growing exponentially. Once we have exhausted Earth's resources we will have the ability to harness enough energy from the sun, or any other star, to enter and exit any atmosphere.

 

[Exorcet]

We harness a minute amount of the sun's energy right now. Our ability to harness the sun's energy is growing exponentially. Once we have exhausted Earth's resources we will have the ability to harness enough energy from the sun, or any other star, to enter and exit any atmosphere.

Well, that's not going to be any time soon. And even with 100% efficient solar panels I don't think you'd be moving much stuff around, unless it was arranged like a solar sail. And that's not going to like being launched from a planet with an atmosphere.

 

[Dapper]

Think about how far solar panels have come in 60 years.
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/04/12/worlds-first-solar-panel-still-works/
Now consider where they will be in another 200 years compared to today.
http://www.qsolar.net/#!products

Maybe it's just me, but I can't grasp discussing current technology when thinking any further than 5 years in the future.

 

[CodeRedR51]

What about the idea that you could travel into space, or just outside the planet's atmosphere, on a vehicle that could pull itself up a cable to a docking station held there by the planet's rotation?

Called "Space elevator".

Edit: Like this.

 

[Exorcet]

Think about how far solar panels have come in 60 years.
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/04/12/worlds-first-solar-panel-still-works/
Now consider where they will be in another 200 years compared to today.
http://www.qsolar.net/#!products

Maybe it's just me, but I can't grasp discussing current technology when thinking any further than 5 years in the future.

The future is difficult to predict, but there are a lot of ways to check your answer. The study of limits is important in science.

A perfect solar panel would get ~1500 W/m^2 from the Sun (I'm trusting Wiki on Sun's flux on Earth) near Earth.

To produce the same power as a Corvette Z06, you would need 2700 square feet of panels. That's a lot, and it doesn't sound like something that would fly through air easily.

Space elevator

That could help. Once you get off the ground, a lot more structures/designs become feasible.

 

[CodeRedR51]

That could help. Once you get off the ground, a lot more structures/designs become feasible.

My only question would be, how the heck would you connect that cable between the two points?

 

[Dapper]

The future is difficult to predict...

Actually, it's not. The future is very predictable, and I posted a link(several times) that has empirical proof.

 

[Dan_]

My only question would be, how the heck would you connect that cable between the two points?

Carbon nanotubes, I'm on my phone right now so I can't provide links, but even specialists reckon the space elevator as physically doable, although quite costly with current technology. The main issue with such structure would be obtaining profit from such herculean effort.

Ferrying resources from earth to orbit can be done for reasonable costs by chemical propulsion, the space elevator would demand an absurd levels of activity and yet, perhaps it never land a single nickel in direct profit. I wouldn't get my hopes up for seeing one of these in my lifetime, though.

 

[Exorcet]

Actually, it's not. The future is very predictable, and I posted a link(several times) that has empirical proof.

I've not read the whole thing, it's long. But after the part about stating that advancement isn't linear, the article dives deep into speculation. Unless the article can list out specific times and events with great accuracy, it can't predict the future.

The article also seems to assume that advancement has no limits. That's not true. Going back to solar panels (or anything) 100% efficiency is all you can ever hope to achieve (though not really when you look at thermodynamics). Efficiencies for jet engines run into the 80-90% range depending on the part of the engine. Getting up to that percentage was pretty quick, but advancing beyond it is very, very slow. In terms of percent efficiency, advancement has probably slowed down in recent time.

Another example would be airliner speed. It kept going up and up until the 60's/70's. Now it's pretty much constant. The reason why is the sound barrier. It's expensive to break through it. Travel time may not get any better for quite sometime. In fact it may get worse, as the next generation of airliners might be like the D8, which is limited to about Mach .7 cruise speed as a result of its quest for ultra efficiency.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/future_airplanes.html

 

[alexleighton]

If we spent our money on rockets instead of bombs, we could do whatever we wanted. But as it stands today, we spend a massive chunk of our money blowing our cities to bits, then another massive chunk rebuilding them.

Has anyone seen GM's Futurama from the 1939 worlds' fair? It showed what the world would look like in 1960, and it was wonderful, and completely doable. It showed automated freeways, beautiful cities full of green spaces, sidewalks elevated above roadways. But then all the world's resources turned to blowing each other up, and then rebuilding. It's an endless cycle we seem to be stuck in, which is preventing the technological leaps and bounds we all want.

Now, I do realise a lot of our advancements have been created because of war.. But this doesn't have to be the way in the future.

 

[Dapper]

@Exorcet- It's apparent you missed the part about paradigms. People said what you just said a long time ago, even before computers.

My mom bought my grandfather a computer that cost $3,000, and it took up almost the entire table, about 20-25 years ago. What I'm typing on right now cost $50, fits in one hand and can do things that were unimaginable when that computer was new. And this is all using the same 2-d circuit technology. I bet once we exhaust the 2-d circuit's ability you think advancement will just stop, but in reality there will be a paradigm shift to 3-d circuits which will continue technology's exponential growth.

The same thing is happening with fossil fuels to renewable energy. We almost perfect burning gas and coal, so we move on to something better and cheaper. And solar energy will be dirt cheap in the near future and is obviously far better than burning gas and coal.

 

[Stevisiov]

@Exorcet- It's apparent you missed the part about paradigms. People said what you just said a long time ago, even before computers.

Before you get too carried away with what Ray is telling you, its worth noting that he claimed (in 2005) that by 2010, that the personal computer will have disappeared altogether, instead computer chips would be emedded in our clothes, and embedded in our brains, with projector lenses in our eyes projecting virtual and augmented reality.

Predicting is the future is not quite as easy as Ray makes out, price/perfomance of computing technologies is what Ray cited for his prediction, and while price/performance of computing has obeyed Moore's law there have been a number of factors which have prevented the progress predicted.

Not all technologies obey expenential growth, some display linear growth, some display diminishing growth and some don't display any notable growth at all.

Kurzweil raises some interesting points, some of which correct. Just don't take everything he says as gospel.

 

[Dapper]

Stevisiov, almost everything you described in your first paragraph is reality.
http://singularityhub.com/2010/07/2...t-to-program-brain-activity-treat-parkinsons/

 

[Exorcet]

@Exorcet- It's apparent you missed the part about paradigms. People said what you just said a long time ago, even before computers.

That was one of the parts I skimmed over. I'm not convinced that shifts will occur. But I'm certainly open to the possibility that they may occur.

My mom bought my grandfather a computer that cost $3,000, and it took up almost the entire table, about 20-25 years ago. What I'm typing on right now cost $50, fits in one hand and can do things that were unimaginable when that computer was new. And this is all using the same 2-d circuit technology. I bet once we exhaust the 2-d circuit's ability you think advancement will just stop, but in reality there will be a paradigm shift to 3-d circuits which will continue technology's exponential growth.

I never assumed anything about 2D circuitry. But I do know that your grandfather's computer, your computer, my computer, and jet engines don't operate at 100% efficiency. There are hard limits to what can be done. As much as it's nice to think that things can get better and better constantly and forever, there's a good chance that the idea isn't true.

The computer anecdote above doesn't disprove it. We've just not run into a limit in that area yet. On the other hand, travel speed has, as I pointed out in my airliner example.

I'm not out to say that affordable high speed transport is impossible; what I'm trying to point out is that it can be hard to fit progress to a simple plot. The article would have you believe that airlines would all be flying SuperSonic Transports (SST's) at the moment. We've already broken the sound barrier, and speed shot up like crazy during the early days of aviation. But right now we're pretty stagnant, or slowing down even. Hiccups like this should be expected (and if things like this are mentioned in the article, I didn't see it, sorry). The tone I got from your link was that the world would only see improvements. There would be no major road blocks or mistakes made.

If we spent our money on rockets instead of bombs, we could do whatever we wanted. But as it stands today, we spend a massive chunk of our money blowing our cities to bits, then another massive chunk rebuilding them.

Has anyone seen GM's Futurama from the 1939 worlds' fair? It showed what the world would look like in 1960, and it was wonderful, and completely doable. It showed automated freeways, beautiful cities full of green spaces, sidewalks elevated above roadways. But then all the world's resources turned to blowing each other up, and then rebuilding. It's an endless cycle we seem to be stuck in, which is preventing the technological leaps and bounds we all want.

Now, I do realise a lot of our advancements have been created because of war.. But this doesn't have to be the way in the future.

If you're not making bombs, you're waiting for someone who does to come bomb you. Certainly without war, we would have more money to spend but that wouldn't allow us to do "anything".

 

[Dapper]

Note that in the above two charts we can actually see the progression of “S” curves: the acceleration fostered by a new paradigm, followed by a leveling off as the paradigm runs out of steam, followed by renewed acceleration through paradigm shift.

This is describing curves within the exponential curve. Slowing in one particular technology is to be expected at one point or another. Consider the advances in humans travel as opposed to just advances in flying. Of course physical laws must be considered also.

 

[sumbrownkid]

Are we talking about using space to travel to destinations on Earth like Chicago to Hong Kong, or from Earth to Mars?

 

[PeterJB]

I would be kinda pointless when you consider we already have planes for that.

 

[Exorcet]

I would be kinda pointless when you consider we already have planes for that.

The higher you go, the faster you can go. If it was cheap and easy to get to orbit, planes would become outdated.

 

[BobK]

If we spent our money on rockets instead of bombs, we could do whatever we wanted. But as it stands today, we spend a massive chunk of our money blowing our cities to bits, then another massive chunk rebuilding them.

What cities have been blown to bits lately? Have I missed something on the news here? Or is blowing cities to bits such a routine thing that it doesn't even make the news? Is there a schedule of cities to be blown to bits, so I can find out if any cities near me are on the list?

 

[Small_Fryz]

Iraq?
Afghanistan?

But lets not turn this thread in that direction.

I agree with most, until we find a more effiecent way to harness and store power it will be impossible to generate better propulsion systems.

I guess if you look at the progress made in the effectiveness of bombs, one could hope that we could control that energy better and use that in some shape or form.

Maybe the future is in harnessing the sun, I mean its something you can pretty much take for free once you have built the panels.

 

[Leonidae@MFT]

Well, one efficient and ecological method of propulsion would be laser-powered jet engines, but the power requirements for such lasers are far too big, as is the equipment. NASA has been experimenting with such motor designs for a while now, in order to find a cheaper way to get payload up to the orbit, with promising results.

 

[Venom800tt]

Iraq?
Afghanistan?

But lets not turn this thread in that direction.

I agree with most, until we find a more effiecent way to harness and store power it will be impossible to generate better propulsion systems.

I guess if you look at the progress made in the effectiveness of bombs, one could hope that we could control that energy better and use that in some shape or form.

Maybe the future is in harnessing the sun, I mean its something you can pretty much take for free once you have built the panels.

Well, pulse-detonation engines rely on the power of rapid explosions to generate thrust. Those are only viable for speeds up to around Mach 4 or so, although they can be used to augment current propulsion systems such as turbofans or Ram/Scramjet engines. Although, pulsed-detonation engines tend to vibrate a lot due to the rapid explosions. I also hear they sound like jackhammers on speed...
As of yet, only one PDE has ever flown, and it was for a short time. Was installed on a rocket assisted Long-Ez.

But as far as space flight goes, the only thing that will be seriously commercialized in the not too distant future is sub-orbital spaceflight. You will probably start seeing civil hypersonic aircraft around mid-century or sooner if someone were to seriously invest in hypersonic sub-orbital craft.

 

[DK]

Well, one efficient and ecological method of propulsion would be laser-powered jet engines, but the power requirements for such lasers are far too big, as is the equipment.

This guy approves of your suggestion:

In all seriousness, I'd love to see what technologies arise within my lifetime, but I doubt that I'll ever see interstellar travel.

 

[Stevisiov]

Stevisiov, almost everything you described in your first paragraph is reality.
http://singularityhub.com/2010/07/2...t-to-program-brain-activity-treat-parkinsons/

Read my quote again carefully.

We are talking about proliferation of these technologies to the point that PC's become redundant. The technology exists but its still at the trail stage, last I checked my housemates all use PC's and laptops like myself, non of us have chips embedded in our brain, non of us use contact lense projecters for the basis of augmented or even virtual reality. Yes they exist, but have they replaced PC's yet?

He's soon to be 2 years late on his prediction, and its not looking like augmented reality will take over for a few years to come yet.

The technology will be here, and probably much sooner than most people expect. Unfotunately for Ray, his deadline on his prediction has already expired.

This of course brings me to my point, some technologies hit barriers unforeseen by exponential improvement predictions. Many technological growth systems display a remarkably smooth exponential growth, seemingly immune to chaotic effects on that system. It's worth remembering that not all technological growth systems share the resilience of say the microprocessor industry.

 

[Dapper]

This of course brings me to my point, some technologies hit barriers unforeseen by exponential improvement predictions. Many technological growth systems display a remarkably smooth exponential growth, seemingly immune to chaotic effects on that system. It's worth remembering that not all technological growth systems share the resilience of say the microprocessor industry.

Like what?
I should say that I don't agree that a technology being widely popular is a prerequisite for advancement, or growth.

 

[Stevisiov]

Like what?
I should say that I don't agree that a technology being widely popular is a prerequisite for advancement, or growth.

Your (and my) opinion on what constitutes technological growth is entirely irrelevant to this debate.

My point (Which you missed entirely) on what you first quoted me on, is that Ray Kuzweil was incorrect on his 5 year prediction, and is still incorrect even a year later with no signs of being correct in the near future.

PC's have not been replaced and become redundant by the the specified technologies yet.

Importantly, it casts doubt on Ray's mathematical models and of course the accuracy of his predictions. Furthermore, it goes to show that predicting the arrival (and proliferation), of exponential growth technologies is not as straight forward as it sounds.

Exponential growth does not happen across the board with all technologies, paradigm shifts don't always appear at exactly when they are needed to sustain exponential growth.


With this in mind what you are suggesting with regards to Rocket propulsion systems, holds very little solid grounds. Rocket propulsion needs a paradigm shift on technology which is fundamentally half a century old before you can start ascribing exponential growth to it.

 

[Dapper]

My point (Which you missed entirely) on what you first quoted me on, is that Ray Kuzweil was incorrect on his 5 year prediction, and is still incorrect even a year later with no signs of being correct in the near future.

What you don't understand is that from a different point of view than yours, his prediction was at least partially correct. Besides, that is one of many predictions. Even Einstein was wrong sometimes.

This of course brings me to my point, some technologies hit barriers unforeseen by exponential improvement predictions.

What technology?

 

[ProjectVRD]

Well, commercial space travel really isn't anything more than an expensive novelty. It's not likely to ever become cheap, and it's not really useful for anything.

So... it won't start to become commonplace until we have colonies of substantial size built on Mars. Which I have a feeling may be a long, long while. If we don't kill ourselves in the mean time.

Skylon which being built by Reaction Engines Ltd has seen your post and laughs in your face.