Interstellar Travel proposals?

ace5 · May 18, 2006

Anyone acquainted with the most recent (and scientific-based) scenarios for a manned voyage to the nearest stars? Where are Orion and Deadalus now???? Is there any newer proposals/studies for sending humans to another stars?

vogon13 · May 18, 2006

Orion is waiting in the wings . . . . Well, Considering the EMP problem from even launching one from high earth orbit, I am pretty much resigned to Orion not being utilized for quite a while. Maybe a micro-fusion HDT version will be feasible someday. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

qso1 · May 18, 2006

Below is a link to Daedalus but currently I know of no ongoing research into that particular project. It was basically a study which I believe was completed in 1977. http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/2049/DAEDALUS.HTM Orion was basically shelved in part due to percieved potential violations of the atmospheric testban treaty. It too was a study although the scientists had grand plans for Orion. My own concern about Orion was the fact that anywhere from 30,000 to 300,000 nuclear bombs would be needed to propel it. The United States and Soviet Union built somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 50 thousand bombs during the entire arms race at a cost of at least a trillion dollars and a time span of 40 plus years. A massive undertaking and one that would probably be rejected for manned spaceflight due to cost. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03h.html Below is the only link I found that could be thought of as a current proposal although I didn't read it yet, I'm not sure if there is any specific method or craft proposed for getting to nearby stars. http://www.centauri-dreams.org/ <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

vogon13 · May 19, 2006

The big Orion interstellar craft was envisioned to take a couple of centuries to build. The expected growth in global GNP during the project was expected to easily pay for it, and make the final price tag palatable. Additionally, should some major solar system crisis require us to build one, who cares what it costs? {That one took, IIRC, 30 million nukes.} {It also was big enough to take a viable colony. As I have pointed out a few times, our ancestors pretty much spent the last 4 million years banging rocks together, what's wrong with humans spending the next 4 million years colonizing the galaxy with Orion starships?} <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

qso1 · May 19, 2006

We can't sustain a space program for much more than a decade judging by Apollo. Even so, I do recognize that the economics would have to be very different to afford Orion. In the major crisis scenario you described, your quite right, nobodies gonna care what the price tag is but...it would have to be a crisis that would afford us the century or two you say would be needed to build it. Global warming might qualify but we cannot even agree on whether global warming is actually occuring, much less if its a crisis in the making. I see no problem with the colonization scenario. The only other thing about Orion is that its basically a 20 century solution for a probable 22nd or 23rd century problem at the earliest. I'd like to think we can advance in that time to something that in all aspects will make Orion the equivalent of someone in Jules Vernes time suggesting using a gigantic cannon to go to Saturn. Whatever we might build, it could still be called Orion. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

spacefire · May 19, 2006

could we build an orion plate in space by detonating nukes around a metal rich asteroid until it gets flat and super-dense? then put another hollowed out asteroid in front of it to support the colonists and have a go at it? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> http://asteroid-invasion.blogspot.comhttp://www.solvengineer.com/asteroid-invasion.html </div>

publiusr · May 19, 2006

Sea Dragon NSWR would be my approach. Just add water

chriscdc · May 19, 2006

Orions are wierd, they're supposedly meant to get more efficient the larger you make them. Probably because they can then carry larger bombs which are therefore more efficient.

vogon13 · May 19, 2006

Launch mass for the interstellar Orion was largish as I recall. Also, some 2nd and 3rd generation improvements were not incorporated. Best guess (from me!) for a contemporary Orion Starship, with all reasonable tweaks, including a segmental pusher plate (jettisonning annular outer rings as the mass of the ship decreases) and the latest high efficiency nukes (with far greater gradations in yield, also scaled for the decreasing mass of the vehicle) and the best advances in materials science (carbon fibers, aluminum/lithium alloys, etc) might get you a vehicle with a launch mass under 300 to 400 million tons, <30 million fusion impulse propulsion units (yeah, the nukes) and a delivered mass under 50 million tons (remainder of pusher plate, unused nukes to subdue natives at target planet (joke!) and all the accoutrements of a viable colony. The mass of the bombs is around 80% of the vehicle. Some trade offs would be for a longer voyage, ie. fewer bombs, less speed, more payload, or maybe more bombs, faster flight, and less payload (in the case the target planet seems especially hospitable. Seems like they envisioned and acceleration taking 30 years (decel too) I figure with a segmental pusher plate, you can accel a little faster and decel quite a bit faster (think this is desireable too, for other reasons). Also, in the 60s, the big Orion was viewed as rather fragile, I'm thinking with materials improvements, we can make a more sturdy craft. Not figured in the original, but suggested at the time, was a depleted uranium layer coating the pusher plate. The neutron flux from the nukes would breed plutonium in the pusher plate that could be used in a nuclear power plant you could build at the target for the colony. I think enough leftover nukes could be scavenged for the materials to do this at the target so I'm not sure you would want to bother with processing a pusher plate for Pu. Yields for the propulsion uni <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

qso1 · May 20, 2006

Actually, it might be more feasible to build a pusher plate on the asteroid and detonate the nukes against the pusher plate Orion style. Hollow out the forward portion of the asteroid for colonists. However, I'm thinking that by the time we can do this sort of technology, we should be advanced enough to at the very least, sustain nuclear fusion and derive thrust from the exhaust or reaction mass of the uh...reaction. Better yet, we develop something far better not yet even imagined by us in this century. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

qso1 · May 20, 2006

During research I was doing for a section of my book dealing with Orion, I came across a book called "The Starflight Handbook" in which it was stated (Pg 66) that 30,000 to 300,000 nukes would be needed. He was probably referring to the proposal that can be found at the link below: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/oriative.htm The heat sink version requires a copper pusher plate 20km diameter to absorb the nuclear blasts. And the cost is quoted as being equal to the U.S. GDP. Among the reasons Orion does not seem practical to me from a cost standpoint. http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/oritsink.htm <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

vogon13 · May 24, 2006

Although Orion has been possible for ~40 years now, and an interstellar laser sail remains (to my thinking) as kind of iffy. How do you aim the beam? How does the craft stay in a beam that will be jittering worse and worse at it travels outbound? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

qso1 · May 24, 2006

I'm not entirely convinced Orion is even possible with todays or near term tech capability. I'm convinced that with present day economic methods, Orion is well beyond our ability to afford it barring some doomsday scenario as you pointed out. As for laser sailing, how would you stop the craft at the destination planet? And how would the craft return to Earth if a return scenario is called for. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

vogon13 · May 25, 2006

Sagan, etal, suggested a segmented sail that would separate near the target, part goes past the target and reflects the beam back to the decel portion. Seems aiming that mess would be a factor of 16 worse . . . . . <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

qso1 · May 25, 2006

Gotcha, and yes, aiming that mess is also on the edge of practicality but...I'm no expert at this stuff. Part of my assertion comes from development of current projects. We are all familiar with the shuttle not living up to its promise and technically, shuttle is much easier than Orion or laser sailers. But its not just shuttle. The B-2 advanced technology for bombers in many ways but at a cost. Only 20 or so were eventually deployed when the original order was for 132. Why? Cost...and God forbid the day we ever loose one in a crash. All hell will break loose as to what its worth to have them. As you already know, Orion involves the sequential detonation of nuclear bombs against a pusher plate. In the interstellar scenario, this plate approaches the size of New York. Weve never even come close to building something like that, much less getting it to orbit and the most practical plate for withstanding megaton blasts would be laregely one piece. Building it out of many pieces would require reassembly into one peice in which the bolted together peices would have to withstand repeated 1Mt blasts. The shock absorbers would also have to be large, or impractically numerous. The one thing that could and probably would make Orion or laser sails practical is the passage of enough time, perhaps a century. Enough time to allow for the economics to become practical. Inexpensive access to LEO, construction on a widespread, economical basis in LEO or even at various points between Earth and Moon. New technology and techniques that could allow for construction of such supersized structures as 20Km copper plates. Barring the discovery and development of an as yet unforseeable propulsion technology, then an Orion style craft, or laser sail might well be the method of choice for interstellar travel. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

vogon13 · May 25, 2006

You have the interstellar pusher plate a little big, as I recall it masses out at around 10% of the vehicle mass, 30 r 40 million tons. That much aluminum foil woudn't cover Maine . . . The pusher plate just needs to intercept the blast radius of the nuke. Seems like 1 or 2 megaton nukes have already been detonated in space (google Starfish, IIRC) and they didn't swell drastically into a sky filling zap-o-teria. You assemble in orbit the pieces brought up from earth's surface via smaller Orion ships. Actually, small Orion ships are harder to build than larger (up to a point). I am thinking a segmental pusher plate is a plus actually. Every 6 months or so during accel, your trim the radius of the plate and start detonating smaller nukes. (the vehicle becomes drastically lighter after you detonate 500,000 nukes after all, so a smaller pusher plate, smaller bombs, equals higher velocity and/or more mass at the target star.) Progressively smaller nukes, pusher plate, and vehicle mass means a progressively decreasing load on the shock absorber system. Imagine a car only driven 100 mph per hour when new, and driven progressively slower as time passes. Seems like we cheat the MTBF rules with this operating scheme. Might even scale back the shock system for more payload . . . . <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

vogon13 · May 25, 2006

Damn! Orion gets better every time I post! <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

qso1 · May 25, 2006

The pusher plate came from this link: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/oritsink.htm Vogon13: The pusher plate just needs to intercept the blast radius of the nuke. Seems like 1 or 2 megaton nukes have already been detonated in space (google Starfish, IIRC) and they didn't swell drastically into a sky filling zap-o-teria. Me: This I realize but its not how large they appear that counts, its the blast effect upon the plate, the need to align even 10,000 explosions to detonate at precisely the right angle and timing to keep the vehicle on course and at proper accelleration. Vogon13: I am thinking a segmental pusher plate is a plus actually. Me: Good points here, the technology advances as reflected by what your thinking and the concept of relying on ever lighter blasts is also an advance. The moral here, you have come up with a way to improve the basic concept. Continued improvements over the coming decades coupled with the requisite advances could result in a practical Orion craft. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

spayss · May 25, 2006

Where exactly is this Orion ship going? If some force made our solar system non-inhabitable it would be external to our solar systen and equally impact nearby stars. Even if a ship could each 1/10th c, nothing inhabitable our 'dot' of the galaxy would be reached for thousands of years.

vogon13 · May 25, 2006

The recently delayed (or was it canceled?) Terrestrial Planet Finder project . . . . . I'm thinking some of the larger telescopes on the drawing boards (like that 100 meter job) would be particularly useful for getting atmospheric comp data on nearby neighboring worlds. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!So many people, so few recipes !!Let's clean up this stinkhole !! </div>

qso1 · May 26, 2006

Excellent question, but to expand on it: Vogon13s on the right track here as far as the next logical step towards eventual interstellar travel. Orion, or any manned interstellar craft logically will not even begin development until we have a reasonable preliminary astronomical database from which to determine a reason to go. By the time we can develop an Orion or equivalent, we should already know if there are earthlike worlds that are earthlike enough to support human life. We would also have to find something within a reasonable distance as well as you have pointed out. IMO, we will probably eventually realize that anything less than 75% or greater SOL is not worth doing if say, the closest earthlike world is detected orbiting some sunlike star 80 LY away. Even then, we will have to have a substantial data base on what is orbiting such a star. It is also probable that such a star ship would be a colony class vessel and in the event no planet works out, this vessel is where this group of people will be trapped until they can no longer be supported. Of course, if we are leaving because of impending doom. I tend to think this scenario is actually least plausible. Much of what is considered to be possible doomsday scenarios are too immediate to be able to respond to. No time to build an Orion based escape scenario resulting from impending nuclear war for example. Scenarios such as global warming, too slow. We have been aware of this possibility for four decades now and we still can't decide if we are causing it, much less how to deal with it. For that reason, some as yet unforseeable earthbound solution...moving the population underground for example, may be adapted before going to a starship scenario. The starship escape scenario would only save a few thousandths of a percent of the worlds population at most anyway. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

craig42 · May 26, 2006

You're being a planetary chauvinist, we don't need to find sutiable planets by the time we have the orbital infrastructure to build an interstellar Orion we will have some kind of orbital colonies. Have an Orion engine push one of those out to Alpha Centarui. Asteroidswork just fine for O'Neil colonies. <blockquote>In reply to:<hr /> Of course, if we are leaving because of impending doom. I tend to think this scenario is actually least plausible. Much of what is considered to be possible doomsday scenarios are too immediate to be able to respond to. <hr /></blockquote> An interstellar spaceship would be quite handy when the sun nears the end of its lifetime <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

spacefire · May 26, 2006

well I doubt that the human race will always require planets for living. I bet there will be some spaceborne subspecies of humanity adapted to live in zero gravity conditions, and eventually artificial gravity will be created too. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> http://asteroid-invasion.blogspot.comhttp://www.solvengineer.com/asteroid-invasion.html </div>

qso1 · May 26, 2006

craig42: Asteroidswork just fine for O'Neil colonies. Me: Actually, case you havn't noticed, there are no O'Neil colonies so we don't actually know if they would work. But aside from that, your looking much further into the future, especially in regards to the sun nearing the end of its lifetime. Surely we will be so advanced by then Orion will seem like a Roman Chariot to us today. And yes, in that situation I do agree that we do not necessarily require planets. In 5 billion years (Scheduled sun death), we should be able to build planets or at least terraform useless ones. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

barobrain · May 26, 2006

"The worst scenario I can think of is a multi-kilometer-diameter, long-period comet discovered several months out on an impact trajectory as it is entering the inner solar system," he said. "There is absolutely nothing we could do about it at this point in time. Nothing." I understand this to be true but actually heard an interesting solution for this problem on a podcast (memory fails me on exacts). But someone was talking about actually sending out a spacecraft to meet the comet and use the gravity of the ship to "nudge" it safely out of the way. The problem is the amount of time involved. He gave some figure of 150 days or something like that when it was just outside our solar system. Not to mention the time it would take to meet it. But it sounded like it might actually work if we could actually see it coming way before it got here. The quote I took was from the orion article posted by someone earlier on in the thread. Is there any truth to this?

Interstellar Travel proposals?

ace5

Guest

vogon13

Guest

qso1

Guest

vogon13

Guest

qso1

Guest

spacefire

Guest

publiusr

Guest

chriscdc

Guest

vogon13

Guest

qso1

Guest

qso1

Guest

vogon13

Guest

qso1

Guest

vogon13

Guest

qso1

Guest

vogon13

Guest

vogon13

Guest

qso1

Guest

spayss

Guest

vogon13

Guest

qso1

Guest

craig42

Guest

spacefire

Guest

qso1

Guest

barobrain

Guest

Similar threads

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Share this page