Easier way to get to Mars and back to moon...

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by cosmictotem, Feb 3, 2016.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    ?? No. Where do you get that?

    (Well, it's literally true I imagine; after all, it is a vacuum.)
     
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  3. cosmictotem Registered Senior Member

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    It means interstellar travel is probably beyond us and all the scifi we watch and read is BS.

    We're not going to be wandering the Galaxy. We can't even construct anything for human habitation in open space.

    We're going to be relegated to this planet for the life of our species.
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No, I definitely didn't say that.
    Why not?
    Only if we want to be.
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No, not necessarily. A permanent moon base, deep under the surface is possible. Even self sustaining after a few generations with some support from Earth, as a "life boat" for the species.

    I have even described a thermal power source that is feasible for it and twice (or more) efficient than any possible on Earth. (It uses the 14 day long very cold night side as the heat sink for a Carnot cycle engine/ generator and sliding thin reflective cover to keep it cold during the 14 day full sunshine period. I. e. during the day the hot source is charged up with thermal energy, and protected during the night with the same sliding cover over it.)

    I won't go into now, how food is produced, with little lose of water. (Pound for pound, more valuable there than gold.)
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2016
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  8. cosmictotem Registered Senior Member

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    Well, that's something. :/sniffle, sniffle/:
     
  9. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    As are active and passive shielding for deep space missions.
     
  10. cosmictotem Registered Senior Member

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    Wait, BillyT said shielding was logistically impossible.
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, he did. It's not.
     
  12. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Deep space manned mission will require humans in suspended animation cryogenic containers - just consideration of the feeding requirements for awake or normal sleeping ones shows that. That has been achieved, for a few hours in a small percent of the attempts, in dog as I recall, but how well cognitive abilities survived is not known.

    Also complicating this "frozen humans" approach is going fast {so in their frame the duration is much less} thru space is the background of protons - making them into radiation damaging particles.
     
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No it won't. There are plenty of solutions that don't involve freezing people.
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    That was in reference to your many way stations, in many rings orbiting the sun as the shielding mass required is roughly the top 1/3 of a mile of ALL the earth's land surface, with sea water flooding more than 2/3 of where people live.

    If you don't go too fast, and have energy to make a strong magnetic field around your inter stellar craft, (only one) the shielding mass problem is small compared to the needed food mass, if the people are not frozen.
     
  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Tell one. (For a one-way trip to star with suitable planet to colonize.) Also how do you accellerate and then as approaching the star, de-accellerate into its trajectory (and the planet's orbit)? If with any existing chemical rocket, the expelled mass is greater than the mass of the moon, by far and about the same as the mass of the earth - where do you get that mass?
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2016
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    For radiation - Hydrogen-dense layered shields. Water as shielding. Active magnetic shielding. Gaseous shielding.
    For food - mostly closed ecologies. Direct synthesis from waste.
    For propulsion - Standard ion engine/HTGR. Vasimr/HTGR. Nuclear thermal. Nuclear pulse.
     
  17. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Oh whoa is us!
    There was also a time when TV would have been thought of as magic, and mobile phones as the work of the devil, and horseless carriages a figment of some ratbags dreams, and computers more work of the devil.
    Not to mention heavier than air machines taking us around the world! How childishly ridiculous is all that!
    Time for another

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    and a big

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  18. cosmictotem Registered Senior Member

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    Three.

     
  19. centaurus Registered Member

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    Me, personally, would love to go out in space. Space as in hovering around the entire solar system; satellites of the planets; numerous comets, asteroids, and meteoroids; and the interplanetary medium! I know I won't ever be an astronaut lol but man, that's my dream.

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