If you were told you had been given a powerplant which developed a TerraWatt of power, £10 bn and 5 years only, how would you attempt to cross the cosmos? I'd build the mother of all ion engines.. Launching would, of course, be from the Sciforum spacestation in high orbit.
A terrawat under witch time frame (a year?) Also is it in orbit or on earth. Either way if the goal is to make a interstellar flight I probably would spend the budget to alter the powerplant so it can transmit that terrawatt of energy to space as microwave energy and on the development of starwisps (a ultralight 80grams 100m² mesh of cables that ones proppeld by the power source reach maybe 10% of the speed of light. I'm still doubtfull that it will work and it will never arrive in the 5 year time period but with the closest star at 4.3 LY then 5 years is realy unrealistic Look at this link if you want to know more abouth starwisps More realistic Japan thinks it can develop and build a space elevator for 5mil£ So considering you have 10mil£ I would donate a other 5mil£ to increase help their development and a other 2.5mil£ on prices for developments in the private sector and use the last 2.5 mil£ to keep that terrawatt plant opperational and sell the power to the public, people use around 15 terrawatt a year. So that would be 6.67% of the global energy demands... I'm going to be rich Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. After 5 year commercial spaceflight would be a fact and we probably could make a cable of 38000km out of materials with a high enough tensile strenth to actually build it perhaps we will have even made it and in a perfect scenario found a way to launch it. It may only be the first step to the cosmos but that first step is a hard one
I'd go I think the original poster's intent was to ask "If you could explore the cosmos, would you?" I would and I'm 62! Even if I knew my chance of getting back was almost zero, I'd go. I pity the fools that wouldn't.
Define explore? Do you mean you would go "out there" (the moon,mars,space in general) to go there or to actually achieve something? I can't imagen a bigger tragedy then having spend millions of dollars and almost a decade to go to the moon walk on it surface and wondering what the hell your doing there only to return to the earth afther a couple of hours and having taken some minor rocks and a lot of footage that will come in handy to tape old family guy episodes over later. I believe that in space you need a purpose, look for something, mine something, study something but I don't believe in yust being out there for no reason
Terraform my own planet and only let people I like there. Then how would I get cable TV and internet usage... Maybe bunny ears for TV, but I would only pick up signals from the sixties... That seventy's show isn't even going to come on for another ten plus years!!
A terrawatt, $15 billion and five years? Couldn't be done. It'd take about 5 years to install the five mile, up-a-mountain, $5 billion maglev rail alone! The research to build a working ion engine is $2-3 billion and the working model is another billion. The spaceship- complete with a lifetime supply of air and food is a good $5 billion And it would take another $2 billion to launch it all up into space for assembly over a 3 year period! $15 billion over 10 years is doable. Would I do it- assuming I could control relativistic speed? Nope. Not unless I was also immortal.
I would start mining asteroids. Especially if im given a high orbit starting point. But how much mass do I get to start with? For about 20million I can get 1000kg to geo stationary (high) orbit using current tech.. (Gota love the Russian space program). So thats about 250ton of equipment and propellant. I would use ion engines and use the mass of the ship to create a gravity tug to move ore too the earth. On the way I would also mine and process as much as I could. I would deliver a stream of small parcels, 20-40ton, insulated with slag for the re-entry. Buy a 1000km^2 station in the outback to drop it all on. At AU$10 a kg thats a max of $400,000 per parcel. Im sure I could cut, process, and deliver 40ton a day. If I can split the power source by 10 I would have a return on investment in 5 years, and a profit from then on...
PS it may take up to 10-20years before the first delivery from object in near Earth solar orbits. So a refined return on investment of about 35years. Many banks would love this deal if I had the high orbit power to start with.
But has been discovered the majority of asteroids are made up of iron, not anything very useful to get fuel from.
Ok, so let's reset the parameters. I think a TWatt of power is ok, but it looks like the cash is a bit short, so we'll go cap in hand to the Sciforum bank and ask for another 10bn. I say 5 years, you want 15 years,m so let's comprimise and call it 10 years. The purpose of the experiment is to go as fast and far on a terrawatt reactor that has a lifespan of, say umm..20 years before you start having to look for more fuel. This isn't meant to be totally accurate, it's a thought experiment about design, engineering, physics and most of all, fun.
We have power, we only need a propellant. Iron would be a great propellant. I would be after the stainless steel asteroids. Best option the asteroid Amun. Current value $20,000 billion and a near Earth orbit. Also it may hit us in the next million years, so a ill add a community service to the bill.. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The bottom line is the tradeoff between a life spent and a life spent exploring the Universe... I wouldn't do it.
Hee hee. that's the spirit! I was thinking to build a kinda space-going derby racer, but I'd probably have a lot of weight due to extra shielding on the nose for micro-meteorites and dust. Hit them too fast, and it could spell trouble. I'm also wondering if my giant ion engine would have enough acceleration..Maybe I should blast U235 with a laser for the reaction mass. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
A lot of empty space out there. I prefer to explore the universe from my arm chair in my caravan. At least I can stop at any time and see a new environment. It would be nice to go to the Moon or Mars but after a few weeks I think it would be a bit ohh hum.. It would be nice to have a view over the rings of Saturn, or a close up view of the crab nebular, watch an eruption against the orb of Jupiter on Io. But I would rather enjoy the easy life on Earth over the decades of life inside a tiny smelly tin box, with stale food, and tiny spots of light out the window, to get something that would quickly become mundane.... Boring old me... Life on Earth is many times more interesting then the rocks, dust, and gas of space.
If you really wanted to explorere the cosmos, you could always use part of the budget to develop,build and launch one or more hyper telescopes that could observe the cosmos for you in far greater detail then the hubble and other telescopes could. Perhaps, with the budget and perhaps in the time frame you might be able to make a actual picture of eart or lowers sized exo planets
