Escape timelines for my interstellar ark

[thinice]

<i>A solar system wide extintion event is possible</i><br /><br />I used to weeping about Earth-wide catastrophic event, but solar system-wide extinction event is something new. What is this?

 

[vogon13]

Sun collides with a brown dwarf, Jupiter explodes, aliens arrive and kick us out.<br /><br />That sort of thing.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[vogon13]

Forgot about the giant piranha bees too.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[thinice]

An interplanetary swarm of giant carnivorous alien bees? Well, this makes sense. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" />

 

[strandedonearth]

C'mon, vog, no hyperspace bypasses in our 'hood please, or i'll be forced to sign a petition or sumtin.

 

[vogon13]

'Aliens kicking you out' was my subtle nod at the bypass . . . . . .<br /><br />Make sure your telephone has been recently sanitized.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[jh2001]

<p>Sorry to rain on your parade but why an ark?&nbsp; Certainly not as a way of getting people to Alpha Centauri.&nbsp; There's much better ways of doing that.&nbsp; The ark would be traveling so slow that later technologic advances would see that hugely expensive ark being passed by later faster rockets.&nbsp; By the time it arrived at Alpha Centauri it would be completely colonized by the people who arrived much earlier using other means.&nbsp; Also, by that time suspended animation would be mastered and people could travel the distances in their sleep.</p><p>If you're so enamored by an ark because it makes for interesting fantasy SciFi then maybe I can understand.&nbsp; But if you wanted to be more useful in this life, why not put your intellectual abilities towards figuring out a more practical way of getting to Alpha Centauri?</p>

 

[keermalec]

<p>Lol Vogon 13!&nbsp;</p><p>And who will be going to Alpha Centauri, Telephone Sanitizers?</p><p>On a more serious note, I also question the massiveness of the thing. Assuming you wanted a 2x1 km cyclindrical ark, assuming a 1m-thick Graphite Epoxy skin and, say 5 meters of soil inside, that "only" masses around 120 million tons or 1.2x10E11 kg, 1000 times less than what you are planning on.</p><p>And why call it the Celestial Titanic, are you considering making it collide with a Celestial Iceberg? there are a few around beyond Neptune as a matter of fact.</p><p>Also, fyi I once did a (very long) computer simulation of planetary formation at Alpha Centauri and found that orbits around Centauri A and B were stable up to around 1.5 AU only. Beyond that the interferring gravity fields of the other star would usually send any would-be planets into deep space. Beyond 80 AU planetary orbits were stable again around the common center of mass of the two stars, though you wouldn't want to go out on any of them without your evening sweater. As Centauri A and B are both slightly less massive and less hot than our sun, their habitable zones (ie where water can exist as a liquid at pressures approaching Earth sea level) are within 1 AU so potentially habitable planets could exist around each of them, if they had the good sense to&nbsp;form in the right orbits.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>“An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” John F. Kennedy</em></p> </div>