If we find a habitable extrasolar planet, what would we do?

[grokme]

If we were to find an extrasolar planet that was habitable, let's say within a couple hundred light years away, what would our next steps be? Tell us your vision of how events would unfold.

Would we attempt to send an unmanned mission there? It would take at the least a few hundred to thousands of years to get any results back, and then what would we do, the usual soil samples, spectrum readings, etc...? Would we just continue to perfect our technologies for imaging and studying the planet from this great distance? Would this be an impetus for someone to try an interstellar manned mission, perhaps using a generational type transport? Is an interstellar mission, either manned or unmanned, just so far fetched that we would never attempt it?

 

[clint_dreamer]

While it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of makind, I think there is really only one acceptable answer to your question. The planet must be left alone. Humans have a planet already, but we haven't been too responsible with ours till recently. I don't think it would be right for humans to play any sort of role in the evolution of another world. That is their chance to live. We have too many issues of our own to start worrying about how to destroy the next planet.

 

[grokme]

While it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of makind, I think there is really only one acceptable answer to your question. The planet must be left alone. Humans have a planet already, but we haven't been too responsible with ours till recently. I don't think it would be right for humans to play any sort of role in the evolution of another world. That is their chance to live. We have too many issues of our own to start worrying about how to destroy the next planet.

That's an interesting take on the situation, and one that Sagan stated when discussing life on Mars. It seems counterintuitive though that humans would just leave it alone. We've never been able to keep our hands off in the past when we go on these quests of discovery.

I guess I'm hoping for someone to put forward their suggestion on how we would "mess with" the planet, because I think that's probably the eventual outcome.

 

[MeteorWayne]

It's really a moot point. The only thing we could currently do is send a radio or light message to the projected location.

As far as sending a craft, that's a thought for future generations, centuries from now.

 

[PiotrSatan]

Well, I believe we would send a signal first. If we get something back we might either start something like a chat. If we find aliens not cool or primitive, or we find their weakness through the chat, in few centuries(or years) we will, most likely, master space travel, therefore we would go there with future machines and if life appeared to be really there, we would take guns and machines and make what we did with Indians. People were acting stupid, and ARE acting stupid, Come on! It IS 21st century. Isn't it time for a change?
If we don't change that might soon cost us our future!

 

[centsworth_II]

I would selfishly be interested in what we could learn about that planet in my lifetime. So I would want to see money spent on bigger and better instruments to study it from afar rather than on missions that I would never see the results of.

 

[ianke]

I believe the OP said habitable not enhabited.

If it is habitable, and we someday have the technology to do so, I would hope that we go there.

If it is enhabited, perhaps we should just leave it be. As has been stated, they should have their own rights to life, even if it is simple life.

 

[grokme]

I would selfishly be interested in what we could learn about that planet in my lifetime. So I would want to see money spent on bigger and better instruments to study it from afar rather than on missions that I would never see the results of.

I think that's the problem. Most investors would look at it that way, so the chances of launching a mission would be small. We would always be looking for the instant fix. The only thing that I think would change this is an immediate threat to the human species. Then, we might see action.

 

[grokme]

It's really a moot point. The only thing we could currently do is send a radio or light message to the projected location.

As far as sending a craft, that's a thought for future generations, centuries from now.

Right, well I'm not talking about only the here and now. I'm talking about the long term plan, over centuries or millenia even. How would we go about this thing? I would like to see the progression, as people who do these studies think it would play out over the long term.

 

[grokme]

I believe the OP said habitable not enhabited.

If it is habitable, and we someday have the technology to do so, I would hope that we go there.

If it is enhabited, perhaps we should just leave it be. As has been stated, they should have their own rights to life, even if it is simple life.

Yes, I was assuming that we wouldn't know if life was there or not, just that it had the potential for life, especially the support of human life for future settlement.

 

[grokme]

So, how would the great diaspora of humanity come about? How would we leave? Try to jump to an immediate habitable planet, or maybe go to another close star, and form an outpost out there where we terraform. We might "hop" to this habitable planet over centuries or moving from uninhabitable star to star.

 

[Shpaget]

If it were couple of hundred light years away it would take many thousands of years to get even a probe there.
In that time anything can happen.

 

[ZenGalacticore]

Hey Grok!

If we detected an Earth-like living planet with our ever exponentiating remote sensing and multi-spectrum telescoping capabilities, then said habitable exo-planet would be closely observed, studied, and scrutinized for centuries or millenia by us. (As Wayne and you yourself said and implied.)

Many underestimate how much we can learn by remote-sensing. While today we will be able to detect from scores of light-years planets with N, O, C, atmospheres, what we'll be able to detect, image, and study from afar, in the coming decades and centuries, nobody knows!

But, alas my friend, we won't live to see it all. :|

 

[grokme]

Hey Grok!

If we detected an Earth-like living planet with our ever exponentiating remote sensing and multi-spectrum telescoping capabilities, then said habitable exo-planet would be closely observed, studied, and scrutinized for centuries or millenia by us. (As Wayne and you yourself said and implied.)

Many underestimate how much we can learn by remote-sensing. While today we will be able to detect from scores of light-years planets with N, O, C, atmospheres, what we'll be able to detect, image, and study from afar, in the coming decades and centuries, nobody knows!

But, alas my friend, we won't live to see it all. :|

So we would just sit around and remote sense it for a few centuries trying to find a way to get there? What about the idea of making hops to it? We might try our closest star within the next century or two. From there we set up an existence, maybe a remote outpost where we can build the technology for the next trip. Then over another century hop to the next one . Over time we might accumulate enough distance that we would eventually get there as a natural progression of events, not necessarily a straight trip to it.

 

[robnissen]

If it were couple of hundred light years away it would take many thousands of years to get even a probe there.
In that time anything can happen.

Yes, in addition, just sending and receiving a message would take 400 years. IMHO, the most we could hope for in the next 50-100 years would be about .1c. At that speed, it is over 40 years just one-way to AC and would be 2000 years to a star 200 ly away. I'm afraid we are stuck in this solar system for the foreseeable future.

 

[Boris_Badenov]

The technology to travel at 20% of C exists today. Daedalus Mission
Cost, will & need are different things all together.

 

[robnissen]

The technology to travel at 20% of C exists today. Daedalus Mission
Cost, will & need are different things all together.

Such technology does NOT exist today. Your link is merely to science fiction that postulates a nuclear FUSION reactor that would send a circa 100,000 TON ship to AC. There is not a single working nuclear FUSION reactor in the world today. Nor is there any technology today that could send a 100,000 ton ship out of the solar system. Science Fiction is not working technology.

 

[crazyeddie]

If we were to find an extrasolar planet that was habitable, let's say within a couple hundred light years away, what would our next steps be? Tell us your vision of how events would unfold.

Would we attempt to send an unmanned mission there? It would take at the least a few hundred to thousands of years to get any results back, and then what would we do, the usual soil samples, spectrum readings, etc...? Would we just continue to perfect our technologies for imaging and studying the planet from this great distance? Would this be an impetus for someone to try an interstellar manned mission, perhaps using a generational type transport? Is an interstellar mission, either manned or unmanned, just so far fetched that we would never attempt it?

It's difficult to speculate on questions such as this. We may not have the technology to send interstellar probes to even nearby stars for centuries, and even then there would be no point in sending a probe at the minimal acceptable velocity if there was a reasonable chance that higher velocities might be possible with further development. Otherwise, you'd spend a lot of money on a vessel that would set out on it's voyage, only to be overtaken by a newer, faster probe a few years or decades later, which would render the first one superfluous.

Unless we can find ways of either perfecting hibernation technology or extending human life spans, I don't think manned interstellar trips will be practical without a scientific breakthrough in propulsion that is scarcely imaginable today. The more I learn about the difficulties involved in interstellar travel, the more pessimistic I feel about it ever becoming a reality. We may be stuck in our solar system forever.

 

[Boris_Badenov]

It doesn't use a Fusion Reactor, it's an Orion type engine.

The world's first engineering study of an unmanned spaceship to explore one of the nearer stars was made by a technical group of the British Interplanetary Society between 1973-77. The target selected for the exercise was Barnard's Star, nearly 6 light years distant from Earth. The contributors recognised that the work, based on the technology extrapolated to the beginning of the 21st Century, could represent only a first approximation to the solution of starflight.

Here's a Wiki article; Project Daedalus

Polywell Fusion is on the way as well.

 

[bushwhacker]

Good readin,Boris. I especially liked the polywell concept. And it seems the Navy is still funding the reasearch.

 

[centsworth_II]

It doesn't use a Fusion Reactor, it's an Orion type engine.

From your Wiki article:
"This velocity is well beyond the capabilities of chemical rockets, or even the type of nuclear pulse propulsion studied during Project Orion. Instead, Daedalus would be propelled by a fusion rocket..."


Daedalus is not an Orion type engine. It is a nuclear fusion engine.

 

[robnissen]

It doesn't use a Fusion Reactor, it's an Orion type engine.


Here's a Wiki article; Project Daedalus

According to the Wikipedia article, its not "the type of nuclear pulse propulsion studied during Project Orion."

And, although its engine may not be a prototypical nuclear fusion reacter, it "would be propelled by a fusion rocket using pellets of deuterium/helium-3 mix."

But no such fusion rocket currently exits. In additiion, "Due to the scarcity of helium-3 it [would] be mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter via large hot-air balloon supported robotic factories over a 20 year period."

Thus, even if the technology currently existed to mine "the atmosphere of Jupiter," (it doesn't), if we started today it would still take over 20 years, just to acquire the fuel.

Thus both the rocket and the fuel necessary for the rocket do NOT currently exist for us to reach speeds of any serious fraction of C and any claims that such speeds can be currently reached are science fiction.

I am hopeful, however, that in 50 years we may have such technology, but that is probably overly optimistic. Consider that in the forty years from Apollo to Cassini, the maximum speed of objects not in orbit only doubled (from 25k/mph to 50k/mph, Cassini reached almost 50K after it received a gravity assist from Jupiter), it is hard to see how we will be able to increase the maximum speed 1000 fold to reach .1c in the next 50 years. IMHO, the most likly candiate would be a laser-powered sail, but there are numerous technolgy problems that will have to be overcome.

 

[grokme]

If we were to find an extrasolar planet that was habitable, let's say within a couple hundred light years away, what would our next steps be? Tell us your vision of how events would unfold.

Would we attempt to send an unmanned mission there? It would take at the least a few hundred to thousands of years to get any results back, and then what would we do, the usual soil samples, spectrum readings, etc...? Would we just continue to perfect our technologies for imaging and studying the planet from this great distance? Would this be an impetus for someone to try an interstellar manned mission, perhaps using a generational type transport? Is an interstellar mission, either manned or unmanned, just so far fetched that we would never attempt it?

It's difficult to speculate on questions such as this. We may not have the technology to send interstellar probes to even nearby stars for centuries, and even then there would be no point in sending a probe at the minimal acceptable velocity if there was a reasonable chance that higher velocities might be possible with further development. Otherwise, you'd spend a lot of money on a vessel that would set out on it's voyage, only to be overtaken by a newer, faster probe a few years or decades later, which would render the first one superfluous.

Unless we can find ways of either perfecting hibernation technology or extending human life spans, I don't think manned interstellar trips will be practical without a scientific breakthrough in propulsion that is scarcely imaginable today. The more I learn about the difficulties involved in interstellar travel, the more pessimistic I feel about it ever becoming a reality. We may be stuck in our solar system forever.

Okay, well one of my questions is whether finding said habitable planet would be the impetus for exploration. In other words, we find this planet. Suddenly, people see that there is a destination to go to, so they create the technology to get there. Look at it this way. If the Greeks had intimations about there being a western world, I think they would have figured out how to get here in short order. They had the capacity to come up with the technology if needed. I think the same could be said for us. If we can dream it, then we seem to be able to find a way to get there, and technological leaps aren't always that uncommon once a need arises.

 

[thnkrx]

Pollywell Fusion?

Bussard believed that this device can run with net energy production on boron-11 and proton fuel. Todd Rider calculates that bremsstrahlung losses with this fuel relative to the fusion production will be 1.20:1.00.[13] Bussard said that his calculation of the losses are about 5% of this, and therefore, greater gains than unity are possible.[14]

According to Bussard the high speed and therefore low cross section for Coulomb collisions of the ions in the core makes thermalizing collisions very unlikely, while the low speed at the rim means that thermalization there has almost no impact on ion velocity in the core.[12]

Another paper on the feasibility of IEC fusion, using the full bounce-averaged Fokker-Planck equation operator, concluded that IEC systems could produce large fusion energy gain factors (Q values). However, a deuterium-tritium reaction was necessary to minimize operating potential and Bremsstrahlung losses in order to reach large Q.[15]

If I am understanding this correctly (probably not), then...

... we are looking at a violation of the laws of thermodynamics, but...

...if it is true, we are looking at what might be a viable star drive, something potentially capable of getting a spacecraft to a fair percentage of the speed of light without a fuel mass the size of a large asteriod or small moon. Especially true if it could somehow be combined with the buzzard ramjet.

 

[bushwhacker]

i really dont care how they do it i just want to be on that ship. i know i wont make it but maybe my great great grandkids will. generation ships are the only way that we will ever get out of this solar system