# Methods of Space Travel



## dreamwalker (Nov 10, 2005)

Hey guys, im currently writing a book and creating a virual technical guide caled the Sky Union, similar to the Terran Trade Authoritys Handbook and various star wars incredible cross section books.
Hopefully, it'll be an open and expansive hard science fiction community devoted to the development of fictional space vessels based what is known within current science and science theory. 
Right now, I want your help!
I want to know your suggestions for how a human, space-faring civilisation, 60,000 years from now would travel through space. Theres two sections I want to focus on.

Impluse Drives/Other
Methods such as rocket engines and ion drives for propelling vessels at roughly 400 tons / 800,000 pounds (http://www.theskyunion.com/starfighter.jpg) at up to 4g for short periods of time. 

TFL Drives/Extra dimentional
Methods such as hyperspace or warp fields, which something weighing up to 400,000 tons could use to travel faster than light, negating relatavisatic effects such as time dialation and twins paradox!

*Your suggestions could and probably will effect my designs, *keep them relativly serious with consideration into there fuels, and the more ingenoius/origanal the suggestion, the better.

Good Luck!


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## Marky Lazer (Nov 10, 2005)

I sometimes think about this, and I think spaceships in the future need some kind of advances system for fuel. I mean travelling that far just on fuel doesn't make sense, how can they bring enough fuel? So, without an idea, I'd say, think about something that uses very little fuel, or something like that. Otherwise, it just doesn't work, in my opinion. Maybe invent a new energy source or something like that.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 10, 2005)

I'm going to write one of my massive technical exposes on this. If you think it'll scare everybody else off, I'll PM it to you. If it could stimulate others, I'll post. Anyway, it'll take me a while. I'm a slow typist


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## bendoran (Nov 10, 2005)

I have only ever written one sci fi story and in it i used portal technology for instantaneous travel.  But interstellar travel in space ships used graviton engines.  the idea behind them being manipulation of gravitional waves to create mass displacement.  by altering a physical objects affect on gravitional fields to negate its weight and funnel that displaced force at points on the eliptical to produce massive amoutns of thrusts.  By controlling gravitional displacement waves inertia could be controlled and gravity manipulated.  So no acceleration is felt within the bubble of the gravity field.  i never try to explain how this is achieved though with current real life research on gravitational fields it isnt so far out there as to seem impossible


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## Arkangel (Nov 10, 2005)

Fuel would be a real problem in space flight when it gets over you need to go in search of it to refill. I was wondering if ZP Energy (Zero point) would be any good since it is everywhere. Maybe you could use that with a energy/matter converter to produce the fuel required.

For proplusion how about a electrogravitic one, antigravity could do a better job than an Ion drive. It can handle the mass and can also be a source of energy on its own making the ships range infinite since it will never run out of energy.

For TFL drives, how about singularity drives or gravity drives visit this site it could be helpful http://www.freewebs.com/spinstate/. I do not know how much you know about this so i am not going to write anything that would be obvious.


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## dreamwalker (Nov 10, 2005)

I wrote a really long reply covering all your points and questions, but then IE screwed it up.
Mark, check this out. *Fuel isn't a problem, so long as you know how to use it!*
Also engines would only be used for short bursts, with total burn time equaling that of no more than a few hours on the 400ton sized vessels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_impulse
The ion drives or its future anestors, (with exust velosities up to 150,000,000 m/s) are my first choice for impluse drive as there the most veristile, they use much less fuel therefore, carry much less fuel, thus needing less fuel... if that makes any sence.

Chris, look forward to it!
Bendoran check out. As I think it sounds similar to what your trying to describe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
http://w210.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/dbt/volltexte/2001/240/pdf/09warp.html
I think its my current first choice for TFL systems

Arkangel, ZPE used to excite me, but now many people equate it with cold fusion and many other past fads which have come and gone, its a very interesting energy source though and as for the electrogravitional drive, sounds interesting, any more info?


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## Marky Lazer (Nov 10, 2005)

dreamwalker said:
			
		

> I wrote a really long reply covering all your points and questions, but then IE screwed it up.
> Mark, check this out. *Fuel isn't a problem, so long as you know how to use it!*


Well, that all depends on how far you're going and all, doesn't it?


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## dreamwalker (Nov 10, 2005)

Btw, focus on the idea, the brief concept, what it would need to work, how powerful it would be, and the issuses of used them because any technology people 60,000 years from now would be using, would appear like magic to us. 
For example, try explaining a how a television would work to a cave man...


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## dreamwalker (Nov 10, 2005)

> Well, that all depends on how far you're going and all, doesn't it?


 
No, only how quickly you wanna get there!


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## dreamwalker (Nov 10, 2005)

see for more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_propulsion


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## Arkangel (Nov 10, 2005)

Electrogravitics is an ongoing research of the US Navy and Airforce once developed it might change the way we fly in air and space. It basically works using electrostatic energy to create a gravitational field around an object. What electrogravitics is really and its science you can go through this declassified report http://www.padrak.com/ine/INE24.html. 

This basicaly works by pushing gravity away from behind and sucking in more from the front. Just fastforward the science to 60,000 years and you could really have something that we cant even imagine now.


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## bendoran (Nov 11, 2005)

@dreamwalker - cool links, never heard of that before. Obviously i have seen star trek but never heard of that hypothetical propulsion method. my idea is p[ure fiction ofcourse and not backed up by hard science at all. mostly involving a redistriubtion of gravity and force. imagine mass as a measure of displacement.  every object with mass causes a displacement wave in proportion to its mass. larger mass bigger wave.  Therefore the earths wave is massive compared to a person and so the displacement creates a force that pulls the smaller object toward the larger.  manipulation of these fields alter an objects gravity, but mainatins an objects mass.   sort of like force = mass X acceleration. so by forcing an objects gravitonal displacment into a bubble of force about it the mass can be reduced and acceleration will become reciprocal to the reduction in mass. so say an object has a gravity displacement which equates to 500tons of force under 1g. by altering its displacement wave the enegery must go somewhere,so as mass decreases, then acceleration increases. if force is directed the object will accelerate. 10% mass = 10g acceleration with no effect within the bubble. 

obviously it is total craziness but it sounds good


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## Eradius Lore (Nov 11, 2005)

i reckon you should use my anti matter stream engines which is an engine powered by the matter stream given off by a quatum singularity (black hole for all you dumb asses out there)


due to the power out put and the purpetual energy you would have fast powerful engine with a infinate amount of fuel.


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## Pyan (Nov 12, 2005)

What about the Bussard ram-jet? There's hydrogen everywhere, and at least the engineering looks feasible.


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## dreamwalker (Nov 12, 2005)

anti matter srteam engine? sounds interesting, not sure about the mechanics of it. Is it one of your own inventions or sourced from somewhere else Lore?

Bussard ram jet is just too slow (and ehem, Lame) for what these vessels are going to be doing.


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## Dave25 (Nov 12, 2005)

My throughts on this are that 60,000 years is too far in the future for me to even guess at what they would be doing but here goes... Some sort of huge sail almost like a parachute slowing a dragster but in pushing it instead and of course much much larger. The sail can take the energy emitted from stars and the solar rays/wind/flux which is the form in which the energy is emitted. Once out of any gravitational field in theory this could then just keep accelerating and acclerating, okay maybe not to the speed of light but at least to somewhere close.

I like the idea of an matter/antimatter drive too, purely because of the amount of energy that could be released in collisions and then used to propel the craft.

Possibly a combination of the two above methods, the matter/antimatter drive for relatively short flights and to get the craft up to speed faster with the solar sail used for large distance travel.

Alternatively assuming that in future man or woman can control or harness the ability to create wormholes and predict where you would emerge then you would not need the ability to travel too fast just "jump" through the wormholes and you could "jump" around space.

Well there you go thats my ideas for just now anyway...


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## Eradius Lore (Nov 13, 2005)

Are you proposing just a sail, because as you should no there would be no propelling "wind" in space. Perhaps what you meant is that the sail collects energy or "fuel" for a propelling engine on the back of the craft, of course you would need a large part of the ship to convert solar energy into propelling fuel for the engines. Another method instead of a sail, i think maybe a fusion reactor would work well in its place. as for wormhole jumping, it is possible to detect them but is impossible to predict where they go to, or even for how long the will be open for, being caught in a wormhole when it destabilizes could, propel you into a part of a distant galaxy or complete erasing from existence or history itself. because of the theory that wormholes have the power for time travel as well as space travel, that means that all of time runs through wormholes, which would mean if you where to die there everything that was to ever do with you would seem like it had never existed.

The antimatter stream engine:-



this works by containing a black hole using gravatronic rings then using the matter stream fired out of the black hole centre to propel the ship, rocket, missile what ever. it also needs no fuel as a black hole is self perpetuating. it also 'if connected to a ship' could be used as a generator for the ship as the black hole would be giving out trillions of teraquads of energy.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 13, 2005)

Eradius Lore said:
			
		

> Are you proposing just a sail, because as you should no there would be no propelling "wind" in space. Perhaps what you meant is that the sail collects energy or "fuel" for a propelling engine on the back of the craft, of course you would need a large part of the ship to convert solar energy into propelling fuel for the engines. Another method instead of a sail, i think maybe a fusion reactor would work well in its place. as for wormhole jumping, it is possible to detect them but is impossible to predict where they go to, or even for how long the will be open for, being caught in a wormhole when it destabilizes could, propel you into a part of a distant galaxy or complete erasing from existence or history itself. because of the theory that wormholes have the power for time travel as well as space travel, that means that all of time runs through wormholes, which would mean if you where to die there everything that was to ever do with you would seem like it had never existed.
> 
> The antimatter stream engine:-
> 
> ...


Am I allowed- oh, anyway,
A micro back hole is not self perpetuating- I won't put the mathematics but the black hole drive used in Clarkes "Imperial Earth" wouldn't have been stable, though he couldn't have known so at the time. A black hole big enough to be stable would be of (at least) planetary mass, which would be extremely difficult to accelerate. But, at any rate this propulsion system (like several others offered) doesn't address the problem of conservation of momentum- energy is available, but for you to go forward, something's got to go backward, and the faster it does so the less you need. Black holes are for fixed instalations, too massive for mobile.
Still, if you've got some antimatter and some water and some good magnetic containment, you can build a very good drive system- a couple of microgrammes of antimatter and a few gallons of wter, project the two so they meet in a powerful electrostatic field, giving us lots of nice energetic plasma (not really steam, but sort of containing all the bits) nice and charged so the magnets can interreact with it and direct it backwards- the only problem (well, apart from minor details like handling antimatter and getting the requisite magnetic field strengths- technical matters) Is how much reaction mass (water) you have to carry, and how much this adds tu your start mass.


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## Eradius Lore (Nov 13, 2005)

your quoting from fiction where i actually quote from visable thoeries. and i never said it was a micro black hole its a compact black hole.

as a black hole is a gateway to antimatter space the balck hole is self peptuating as the energy is created through the colision of matter and antimatter. and if you use the theory that matter can not be destroyed it can only be tranferred from one form to another, you come to the conclusion that there is an infinate amount of matter meaning an infinate amount of energy.


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## bendoran (Nov 14, 2005)

who ever said a black hole was a a gateway to antimatter space??  hehe

and blackholes give off energy, they only grow in size if the mass coming in is greater than their outgoing energy.  to maintain one would require a constant stream of matter injected into the blackhole at exactly the right point to maintain its mass and stability. to much and it would grow, too little it would die.


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## dreamwalker (Nov 14, 2005)

> your quoting from fiction where i actually quote from visable thoeries


Really? Then state your sources.



> i never said it was a micro black hole its a compact black hole


There the same thing. The hole part of a black hole is infinitly small and within it contains dimentionless space.
The thing that might describe a black holes size is its Event Horizon, which is the area around it in which light cannot escape from. thats determined by its mass, so in essesnce, if its gunna have a small Event Horizon, then its going to be a relativly "light" black hole as all black holes are infinity dense - you just can't have a "compact black hole" in terms of density and radius.


> as a black hole is a gateway to antimatter space


Who said so? It's more likely to be the gateway to Hell, as far as physics is conserned. antimatter is matter, just with a different set of quarks. Negative matter which has negative mass, negative momentum and could produce anti-gravity is an idea, but even that is total conjecture and if it existed, it probably wouldn't be in the dimentionless space of a black hole.


> the balck hole is self peptuating as the energy is created through the colision of matter and antimatter.


Black holes contain only gravitational potencial energy, the same with all mass in the universe. And black holes can lose this energy through Hawking Radiation. The smaller the black hole, the more of this radiation they give off.


> and if you use the theory that matter can not be destroyed it can only be tranferred from one form to another, you come to the conclusion that there is an infinate amount of matter meaning an infinate amount of energy


huh?

I pretty much agree with what bendoran and chris said I don't like the idea of carrying something hat weighs the mass of the earth with you and i don't see black holes as such a great energy source!


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## Quokka (Nov 14, 2005)

What happens if you actually can get to say half the speed of light and you hit some form of matter? a planet, a meteorite, a spec of dust? 

add the difficulties of navigating gravitational factors (there may be a chance that the universe looks nothing at all like what we currently concieve of it due to negative refraction, either way wouldnt such effects make navigation extremly difficult? add the constant movement of physical matter and that's a whole lot of changing circumstances to account for.) and is it really practical that space travel will take the form of planes with better engines?

It's strange but Stargate is starting to look a lot more likely than Star Trek, in that any real ability to explore the universe is likely to take, not necessarily wormholes, but a means of moving outside the physical parameters as opposed to just going faster?

Just a few rambling questions for my 2 cents


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## Dave25 (Nov 14, 2005)

Eradius Lore said:
			
		

> Are you proposing just a sail, because as you should no there would be no propelling "wind" in space. Perhaps what you meant is that the sail collects energy or "fuel" for a propelling engine on the back of the craft, of course you would need a large part of the ship to convert solar energy into propelling fuel for the engines.


 
Hmm, I was thinking that it could somewhat harness the energy emitted from stars, such as the radiation they emit. I'm sure that i had some sort of plan but it seems to be escaping me for the moment.

Oh and yea I was well aware there is no "wind" in space, i think Alien taught me that one


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## chrispenycate (Nov 14, 2005)

As a matter of fact, there is a wind of charged particles emanating from every star, and a solar sail can run on pure radiation pressure. The problem is, that unless you've got someone at home shining a laser at you, the pressure drops off as the square of the distance, and that your 0-60 time is measured in months. Still, the lack of fuel requirements and speed limits means you can't write off the lightsail to fast, even if it doesn't quite meet the present specifications.

Any vehicle doing half c is going to need an ablative shield in front of it to absorb stray particles and dust motes- and well in front, as impact velocities on that scale will produce significant radiation. This needn't be solid- magnetic fields might well clean the vacuum. You'll need some kind of forward detector (probably active radar or scanning laser- it's dark out there) to spot stray planetoids, comets and suchlike, and either boil them off path with a laser beam, or take evasive action. 'course the amount of empty space compared with the amount of matter means that statistically the risk of a big bit is negligable, but when you don't take yor raincoat…  On the other hand, at speeds like that, navigation should be no problem- any effective drive system (even a can of compressed air) can correct vectors over that sort of distance, and you're still slow enough for continuous feedback.


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## bendoran (Nov 15, 2005)

proposed solar sail systems exist by which solar sails are combined with ion drives for propulsion in system. Not as fast acceleration compared to rockets but the top speed would be greater for little fuel as energy would come from a the solar radiation and b the ion drive. beyond the vanhailem belt(excuse spelling) the suns rays are very potent, and the radiation in solar rays is very high. A solar sail would be used not in terms of a conventional wind sail, but to store and transfer that radiation and light into energy for use within a drive system. 

in terms of avoiding collisions, before every journey was taken a detailed trajectory would be set out, of course. Between systems would be relativily low in terms of matter, though all interstellar craft with velocities even a hundredth of the speed of light would have to be exceptionally well designed toward perfectly streamlined design. Spoace is massive, and the amount of matter small, but at exceptionally high speed the distance betweeen these small amounts of matter is realitivly speaking less. Therefore there would actually be a lot of resistance to think about. 

With ideas like wormholes and stargates, they need to be placed in order to work, which i doubt they would anyway. Acting as anchors so to speak, or nodes of entry to some kind ofg underspace where the laws of physics can be nullified or negated. Therefore deep space travel will still be necessary if only to expand the network of these gates. 

if the time period we are speaking of though is 60000 years, or even six thousand, i would say we would have capabilities hard to fathom even now. With the increase in computer power every year, true AI is surely only a few hundred years away, if properly controlled and implemented the advances possible in science would be phenomenal as the processing capabilites expanded exponentially.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 15, 2005)

bendoran said:
			
		

> proposed solar sail systems exist by which solar sails are combined with ion drives for propulsion in system. Not as fast acceleration compared to rockets but the top speed would be greater for little fuel as energy would come from a the solar radiation and b the ion drive. beyond the vanhailem belt(excuse spelling) the suns rays are very potent, and the radiation in solar rays is very high. A solar sail would be used not in terms of a conventional wind sail, but to store and transfer that radiation and light into energy for use within a drive system.
> 
> in terms of avoiding collisions, before every journey was taken a detailed trajectory would be set out, of course. Between systems would be relativily low in terms of matter, though all interstellar craft with velocities even a hundredth of the speed of light would have to be exceptionally well designed toward perfectly streamlined design. Spoace is massive, and the amount of matter small, but at exceptionally high speed the distance betweeen these small amounts of matter is realitivly speaking less. Therefore there would actually be a lot of resistance to think about.
> 
> ...


the combination of solar sails an ion jets seems to be a risky one. If a solar sail gives 9 newtons of thrust per square kilometer for a hundreth of a g of acceleration using a 90 kg spacecraft you'd need a square kilometer of sail, and it would be shaped as a parabola, focussing the suns energy onto your power plant (and you can use it for smelting metal when you're not going anywhere- a kilometer squared of solar energy is a lot. I was going to focus the energy from my couple of thousand square kilometers on Cleveland Ohio. Interesting political detail- any drive system giving enough thrust that the accelerations are acceptable to us is an absolutely devastating weapon) If the ion drive can't give more ?V than that, it's not worth adding it. So you're forever overtaking your sail which, without the tension in the shrouds to hold it in shape goes all floppy and ultimately folds itself round the ship (of course, you couldn't see where you were going anyway with this thumping great mirror blocking your view, but it gets in tha way of the ions, too. Spin it so it stays in shape? Your turning circle, never small, has become astronomical, and you still don't dare accelerate any faster than the sun can push the sail. Divert a part of the ion stream forwards, towards the sail, trusting the ions to stick and push it into shape (then, when there is enough charge on the sail excess ions are reflected back, pushing the sail, and ultimately the ship, forwards- I'd have to do the mathematics) This puts the ship bang in the middle of its exhaust stream, and likely to be charged to attract same- bears thinking on.

Collisions- you would of course know the positions and trajectories of all planets, comets and large junk on your projected route, but even something the size of a brick has a lot of em vee squared at half a cee. Which makes it worth keeping a good lookout (with a light sail, difficult. Still, for the amount of light pressure available out there, you'd probably furl the sail and freewheel) While there are doubtless inumerable brick size objects between here and alpha centauri the number per cubic lightyear's probably quite small, so you'd be very unlucky to hit one unitil the route gets over travelled, and it's century old jettisoned underwear you have to dodge. (oh. and {pedant mode} space is not "massive" It's enormous, but if it had mass it would simplify our task massively)

I just ignored the sixty thousand years, and translated as well into the future. I don't really have much expectation of the human race doing another sity thousand in a recognisable form unless they clean their act up in the next few centuries.


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## dreamwalker (Nov 15, 2005)

chrispenycate said:
			
		

> I just ignored the sixty thousand years, and translated as well into the future. I don't really have much expectation of the human race doing another sity thousand in a recognisable form unless they clean their act up in the next few centuries.


The part about it being 60,000 years is relativly important, as im trying to get you to think about what is possible to accomplish in that time, and what is likely, and also to speculate the gulf in understanding that our ansectors had 60,000 years ago to what we have now.

I'll be posting a anothing thead soon on the whole 60,000 year time line and how things happened.

Just note that within the 60,000 year timeline i'd be proposing, most of the human development or positive advancement (eg, rebirth of civilisation, intersellar travel) happened within the end 10,000 years of it.


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## bendoran (Nov 15, 2005)

i think i maybe didnt explain the last point so well. i did not implky a sail as a method for interstellar travel due to the problems of massive space between solar systems. The sail was in my theory more of an in system propuslion system which could be used more as a source of recharge for any engine the ship had(clearly then it would be retractable), similar to theoretical ram scoops as some scifi authors call them where ships extract gas from gas giants by skimming the atmosphere as a means of replenishing fuel. as you point out, moving at half a cee with a massive sail blocking your view aint exactly bright also any interstellar travel at speeds reaching half a cee will involve no change of course. to do so would cause unbelievable gee force on ship inhabitants plus send you way of course. any asteroids or debris would need to be dealt with by some form of defence system at the fore of the ship. evasive action would most likely be as deadly to the crew as a collison


best solution:- invent robots/androids etc to send into deepspace with equipment to build stargates and terraform planets.  have them do all the dirty work and then just step through. one thing i would insure though with AI's would be that they never achieved full sentience, too dangerous.


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## dreamwalker (Nov 15, 2005)

I see sails as a reversion back to previous ways of thinking, and past technologies. 
When people mention sails, I have this image of a cave man saying the same thing... "we could sail too the moon". Our understanding's changed a little, but our thingings still the same. Safe, bound by conventions and favorible to what we know instead of what could be better...
I'm gunna stamp some authoriaty on this thread, well, be cause I created it and it's use is for a project im understaking.
Rule 1
*No more solar, ionic or photonic sails.* We've mainly covered them and so far, there there "thrust to issuses ratio" is way too low!

*If your going to reinvent the universe, make it believible. *Yes, make sure you know how things that already exist work, so that when you invent your own particles or new space time paradoxes and mechinisms, there not rejected straight away because they sound lifted from a star trek enclyclopidea.

*Don't take your idea too seriously, and expect them to be disproved.* That way we can have valid discussions without having arguments on '_why my idea is just so much better than the others'_

If your ideas from somewhere or based on someone else's research, or from another topic entirly, *add some links or referances*.

Have fun with it, and try not to be too serious and logical... all you need to be is convincing! As it is science fiction after all, hard science fiction, but with a posivite goal of encouraging people to think about this stuff in a "what if?" way that removes some of that Star Trek/Star Wars hue -


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## chrispenycate (Nov 15, 2005)

Sixty thousand years is hunter gatherers to moon rockets- and worse than that, not only does "progress" seem to be accelerating, the second derivitive (the rate of change of rate of change of rate of change- why don't they put mathematical symbols into these cymbal sets?) seems to be going up. Predictions over that length just butterfly out. Still, a couple of dark ages (dark for all humanity, or advancing in waves at dark speed?) with byzantine reservoirs of forbidden knowledge could just just slow it down enough that we still recognise human beings.
Most of the ideas put forward so far could be done in a couple of centuries (when the first colonists crawl out of their hybercrypts to look at their new world, a mighty civilisation greets their eyes. built by people who started travelling a century after them, and arrived fifty years before) At least 60,000 years gives us time to get some worthwhile terraforming done.

Perhaps information technology is the key- if information can travel faster than light (and despite Einstein's assertation there is some evidence that this is so, even if neither matter nor energy can)  we could send the information about how to build our preferred body and send our minds from star to star, body to body (cheapskates can always use a standard rentabody), while freight ships take a reasonable couple of centuries. Or life extension technologies, virtual reality and the infoweb make a thousand year trip no more upsetting than a transatlantic flight (though I hope they give you lanky types more legroom) After all, any stellar system should have an adequate stock of elements- and if stocks are short, a little elementary transmutation should clear it up- it's only information about the organisation of it that's complicated. Oh, and analysing and imposing this information. And stopping people existing in too many places at the same time (interstellar copyright laws) And interference (fly, anyone?) Well, only minor details, anyway.


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## dreamwalker (Nov 15, 2005)

I do not believe that to be the case. I highly doubt the rate of change/deveopment of technology is increasing. More slowing down.
Where getting to the point in which we actually need smarter humans for any major leaps in the sciences to take place, and possibly the smart versions of the humans to make even smarter ones and so one (artifical inteligence in one sense I guess btw - this is also in the timeline, cira 100 years from now).

Look at the wikipedia article on the Kardeshev Scale.
The concept in itself is interesting, but more importantly, it has links to so many ideas to do with technology, society and civilisation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

With my 60,000 year time scale, I streched it out. Added the likely cataclysims, dark ages and aspects of human nature, social facters etc.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 15, 2005)

You could be right- this could be a bump in the curve. I certainly can't see how the second derivitive can go on rising- it'd be like inflation in Argentina (the moment you got your wages you went out and spent them, because if you waited until going home in the evening they'd buy thirty percent less- imagine the equivalent in the "publish or perish jungle)
Until the nineteenth century only a tiny section of the population had the leisure, the educational oportunity and the wealth to do fundamental research. More importantly, only a very small percentage of this minority had any interest in doing so- indeed, for most of them, religious or aristocratic, the status quo was the optimum situation.
The twentieth century gave us meritocratic education (in theory, and in a minority of cultures) The industrial revolution demonstrated that knowledge could be wealth as well as power. Children, both rich and poor, were encouraged to think (as long as they thought about the right things) and experiment. Wars ended with the scientific advances outweighing the impoverishment due to destruction, the amount of information available increased geometrically and improving communications made cross fertilisation between different groups possible, then inevitable. Governments noticed that countries with the best technology tended to win wars, while corporations noticed the same about profits. and they all pushed universities and tried to buy the most inventive youngsters for themselves- meaning still more people inflating the information reservoir. Electronics increased the speed yet again, and improved accessability and sorting capability- gone the punch card and knitting needle. And knowledge is still being democratised, while new knowledge is being added faster than ever. So while the ability of the top peformers isn't enhanced, we get a parallel processing phenomenon where highly specialised nonentities solve chunks of problems, and anyone can access their results to add bits of sky to the jigsaw puzzle. 
No, I don't know what the next stage will be- but, unless something fairly drastic happens, that mass of inventiveness is going to develop one. Improved human/computer interface? Algorithms to let the computer do more of the work on its own, only needing occasional human guidance? (after all, computers are getting more powerful every month, irrevocably, with no major breakthroughs needed) Or some form of drug/genetic modification/hypnotic treatment to push the genius button in humans?

All of which is seriously off topic, and my previous post was mainly about how to avoid space travel rather than optimise it when it's essential.


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## Arkangel (Nov 16, 2005)

One thing that will determine any kind of technology for space travel is cost effectiveness. Though we have Concord we still fly in Boeings just because they are cost effective.

Same rule would apply to space travel as long as companies run them. Manufacture of an ultra super technology would lose out to a cost effective one. I would go with a Stargate or a teleport system over spaceships. Instead of producing the same drive engine over and over just produce a few massive drive engines and rip a portal open and push things through it. You save energy, transportation of materials from storage to a port and then burn precious energy to break orbit and hurtle it an unimaginable speeds to a point where it can rip space and time to reach its destination and follow the same procedure in the reverse order to get the material to storage. No company would go for it if a cost effective technology would eliminate the need to get their goods or people through space to reach their destination.

We do not travel by sea do we until unless you or on a cruise or transporting large amounts of raw materials.

No matter how romantic a notion of space travel would be to us but for a corporate it is just a damn lot of space in-between.

60,000 years from now nobody would want to waste time traveling the slow way when instantaneous travel would be available. My theory for such an assumption is all our technological advancements is for serving only one purpose and that is to make our life more comfortable with least discomforts and that self-serving purpose has not changed in all our evolution and will definitely not change in another 60,000 years. This drive of us to better ourselves will eventually lead us to a point where space travel would be an unnecessary expenditure of time and energy and would drive us to build something that could be more faster and what could be more faster than instantaneous.


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## Jaxom_Ruatha (Nov 29, 2005)

Sorry, I didn't have time to read this whole thread, but I thought you guys might find it of interest (That is if you didn't already know, or someone hasn't already said it here) that military people (Don't ask me who) are considering forming a "Space force" similar to the air force only in space, wouldn't that be cool! I think it was decided if possible it could begin forming in around 10 years.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 29, 2005)

Oh, all right then. A space propulsion system, tailor made- but I suspect only a few thousand years on.
Fuel :- several million small diamond spheres, laid down round a central core of lithium hydride and a tiny quantity of something black, probably graphite. At the rear of the craft a heavy parabolic reflector, with superconducting threads in it (high temperature superconductor, as we will see) Four multi gigawatt lasers, producing light at a frequency at which diamond is transparent, aim toward the focus of the parabola. A sphere is fired into the focus point, and zapped by a pulse from the four lasers, and a perfectly reflective force field generated over the entire surface, covering the laser apertures. The matter inside the sphere is instantaneously plasmolised (OK, nothing’s instantaneous. But it’s faster than anything can measure) but the diamond holds the pressure for a nanosecond and a small percentage of the matter inside undergoes fusion and produces several million times the energy received. Bye bye diamond, and the incredibly hot (stellar core heat, not photosphere) are forced back along the path of the craft, pushing it forward. Down comes the force field, and the miniscule percentage of energy left in the space goes to heat the parabola, the heat is transmitted by the superconductors (which are obviously thermal superconductors as well) to a straight forward heat engine (I’m tempted to use a steam engine) to a radiator on the front. This « waste » goes to run the lasers, the force screen, the rest of the drive and life support, with a large superconducting loop acting as a backup battery.
Accelleration depends on the rate of pellet feed, and the actual speed (when the craft’s forward velocity is equal to the admittedly high but not infinite exhaust speed there is no further gain- cut the power and freewheel) Steering is done with a pair of orthoganally mounted gyroscopes, turning the entire ship, so you can give up thoughts of fast cornering. Braking’s the same- turn the thing end for end and blast forwards (but please be very careful not to aim the drive plume at your destination, or it might be somewhat the worse for wear when you arrive) Dampers link the rear plate to the living and cargo quarters, so the pressure is reasonably smooth rather than a series of jerks, If the force field fails, the rear plate is vaporised, but there’s no risk of the rest of the fuel exploding, so good design should make it a survivable experience. This is a putter around insystem drive- actual 0-60 figures will depend on the temperature (and thus the velocity) of the exhaust plasma, and the mass of the craft (including plate)


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## Dean (Jan 12, 2006)

I am currently designing a craft that will use (*) for propulsion, the ship will use energy at a level that puts occupants in exactly One gravity for a long duration Inter-galactice journey that will take about 60,000 years to reach its destination, deceleration of the ship will also use (*) drive to slow the vehicle after manuevers keeping the occupants again at exactly one gravity. Its tricky to control course and speed but the (*) drive is low fuel consumption, durable and trouble free. "(*)=) totally imagination driven)"


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## They (Jan 16, 2006)

Isaac Asimov's book The Gods Themselves proposed an interesting propulsion system. It proposed opening a wormhole into another universe, this universe would in a stage in which it had just under gone a big bang. To use this as a propulsion system you would simply have to funnel the energetic "plasma" through the wormhole and out you space ship.


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## chrispenycate (Jan 16, 2006)

They said:
			
		

> Isaac Asimov's book The Gods Themselves proposed an interesting propulsion system. It proposed opening a wormhole into another universe, this universe would in a stage in which it had just under gone a big bang. To use this as a propulsion system you would simply have to funnel the energetic "plasma" through the wormhole and out you space ship.


And there's  your interplanetary drive. And, since that universe is so much smaller than ours, yet must correspond with it at every point, for interstellar travel we put the ship into that universe- what, the multi million degree ambient temperatures? A mere engineering problem - oh, all right, we'll go into one a few thousand years older, where it's cooled down some, but distances are still enormously reduced. Navigation is a bit of a problem, you can hardly stick out a periscope, and if physical constants are modified, as in "the gods themselves" (you're sure it was that book? Not that I'm contradicting, and the idea's splendid, but I just don't remember that comment. Still, it's been a long time) then a tendency to osmose through the walls and other passengers, and an even more disturbing possibility of my liver osmosing outside my skin - yes, could be inconvenient.  



			
				Dean said:
			
		

> I am currently designing a craft that will use (*) for propulsion, the ship will use energy at a level that puts occupants in exactly One gravity for a long duration Inter-galactice journey that will take about 60,000 years to reach its destination, deceleration of the ship will also use (*) drive to slow the vehicle after manuevers keeping the occupants again at exactly one gravity. Its tricky to control course and speed but the (*) drive is low fuel consumption, durable and trouble free. "(*)=) totally imagination driven)"


Do you have to go intergalactic on your maiden voyage? A drive like that would be perfect for puttering round this galactic arm. I assume you'd have relays of human imaginers, with well coordinated change overs so that you didn't spill the bath water at changeovers. In three years you'd be up to reletavistic speeds, and I hope the screenings good, 'cause a milligram grain of dust would strike with more energy than the entire nuclear arsenal of the planet. Of course, mid way through the journey you turn the ship round and start one g decelleration, maintaining thrust all the time; you could just push in the other direction but then you'd have to put all the furnishings on the ceilings, and nobody could have a bath while it was changing.
We should be brreding these imaginers now - slight overkill for interplanetry transport, but if they could just keep it up for an hour or two…


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## HieroGlyph (Jan 17, 2006)

This is the dichotomy betwixt sci-fi and fantasy.

In fantasy you can invent what you like and postulate how things 'could' be within your given new universe.

In sci-fi you are to *bend* the given Laws of Nature or *add* your own new sub-laws. New means of travel with some new-fangled advance-tech...

Hence no need to ask the question of 'Methods of Space Travel'.

Sorry to throw the spanner in the works, but within the Universe we know you cannot have super-luminal travel. Hence in your new Universe you 'invent' whatever type of travel you like. Or how are we to answer if we dont know your rules? So, if people are travelling across this galaxy 60,000 years hence, they will 'need' _super-luminal_ or _worm-holes_, or something far (x10^20) faster than driving down that road to simply make it 'worth-a-human-lifetimes-while'!!!

Theres my spanner-in-the-works.
HG


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## Thunderchild (Jan 17, 2006)

dreamwalker said:
			
		

> The part about it being 60,000 years is relativly important, as im trying to get you to think about what is possible to accomplish in that time



Think about whats been possible in the last 150 years, saying that we need 60 000 years to accomplish this isn't giving us enough credit I think.

Anyway I'd hate to interupt this discussion about magical drives but I once heard that a way to get allot of acceleration quickly would be to simply let off a nuclier device behind your ship - obviously you would need to have significant shielding but its a rather simple idea to get allot of velocity in a short time.


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## chrispenycate (Jan 17, 2006)

Thunderchild said:
			
		

> Think about whats been possible in the last 150 years, saying that we need 60 000 years to accomplish this isn't giving us enough credit I think.
> 
> Anyway I'd hate to interupt this discussion about magical drives but I once heard that a way to get allot of acceleration quickly would be to simply let off a nuclier device behind your ship - obviously you would need to have significant shielding but its a rather simple idea to get allot of velocity in a short time.


Never mind about 150; less that half that gets us from the Wright brothers to a moon landing.
The problems with the Orion drive (that's the nuclear goose) is that, if you don't want accellerations to be too high, you need to use a very heavy vessel, and that it works many times better in proximity to a planetary surface (essentially makes it an energy only problem, and gets rid if the conservation of momentum handicap. Thus, fro getting large masses into orbit, it's splendid, now all we need is a country from which to take off (the fallout is a little inconvenient - I'd suggest Afghanistan or Australia, somewhere noone really wants, and yo can't do much damage. Then we could lift entire space stations into orbit, having done all the buiding work on Earth, and prepare the mars mission with one launch.


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