A
adrenalynn
Guest
It's gonna suck if that "tiny hole" is through the entire rack of control systems, or through the side of your head as the pilot or passenger. But it would explain much.
Up to now we are 1 step ahead. A tiny hole will activate our ultra high speed sensors(pico seconds).So the question of detection is resolved if no radar detection possible or so. Ions and electrons will be deflected in a 1mm magnetic shield, radius of deflection r=mv/Be , m =m(e) or m(p). Calculate it for a B=1 tesla to get a normalised radius. Almost .5mm for electron at 100000km/s. Locally generated magnetic field will deflect ions. What is left is the magnetic pressure which as I said a material at near 0K being a superconductor with zero resistance should be able to generate electric power to charge our super batteries or be radiated away or sustain magnetic shield. Please think of this type of material . Perhaps we may get 1 more step ahead. Due to generated mag. force of ions our structure will not be damaged by this mechanism and the energy of impact will compress this sort of material. Is it possible to trap all ions in a magnetic field circulating flux lines? Please complement with your bright ideas, anyone. ----->orionrider":3p3xbrct said:A grain of sand or a CO² snowflake or just a fuzzy hydrogen cloud at high velocity (>100km/sec) would instantly become a plasma on impact. Even if the entry hole was quite small, the result inside the hull would be devastating, with incandescent hull fragments flying all over the place. Something akin to an anti-armor shaped-charge. Any exit hole would be many times larger than the entry.
Piezo materials cannot absorb that much energy. Even if they could, the instantaneaous generation of such a huge electrical current would fry every bit of electronics on board, not to speak of Ohm's law melting the materials.
The more I examine this problem, the less I come with an idea. Inertia is so basic it can't be countered.
orionrider":3ee8focf said:A grain of sand or a CO² snowflake or just a fuzzy hydrogen cloud at high velocity (>100km/sec) would instantly become a plasma on impact. Even if the entry hole was quite small, the result inside the hull would be devastating, with incandescent hull fragments flying all over the place. Something akin to an anti-armor shaped-charge. Any exit hole would be many times larger than the entry......The more I examine this problem, the less I come with an idea. Inertia is so basic it can't be countered.
Thanks Andrew. I believe the biggest challenge is not so much the required energy, but rather the tremendous G-forces induced by any alteration of the course of a fast spacecraft. Not to mention the effect it would have on the space toilet...In order to avoid the disastrous collision, how much energy would be required for lets say a craft the mass of the Space Shuttle, or of lets say an unmanned craft like Voyager or New Horizons or a giant city sized colonization ship with thousands of personnel?
There is a Wikipedia article on the Helios probes (two) here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_probesorionrider":pvdotpj5 said:The Helios probe was lanched in the '70s. It is the fastest man-made object at about 70km/sec.
@KhashayarShatti: do you have any ref or link to this marvelous technology? I have never heard of anything like that....
The Helios I and Helios II space probes, also known as Helios-A and Helios-B, were a pair of probes launched into heliocentric orbit for the purpose of studying solar processes. A joint venture of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and NASA, the probes were launched from the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Dec. 10, 1974, and Jan. 15, 1976, respectively.
The probes are notable for having set a maximum speed record among spacecraft at 252,792 km/h (157,078 mi/h or 43.63 mi/s or 70.22 km/s or 0.000234c).
orionrider":3tsd85a9 said:The Helios probe was lanched in the '70s. It is the fastest man-made object at about 70km/sec.
@KhashayarShatti: do you have any ref or link to this marvelous technology? I have never heard of anything like that.
@Silylene: granted, a 1 micrometer rock isn't much of a threat, even at high speed.
So is it possible to devise a material that upon impact produces light and electricity efficiently?
Deflection of electrons by magnetic or electric field up to 60 degrees.
bdewoody":1r4n854j said:I am sure that by the time mankind has found a way to travel at high percentages of the speed of light most all of the other problems associated with deep space flight will have been solved including chance encounters with small solid objects. But my guess is that these developments are at least 2 to 3 hundred years away.
orionrider":10u9ikkr said:Electrons have no mass to speak of (1/1836th of a proton). Besides, they are obviously charged and that makes deflection very easy. Atoms don't react like that.
Hehe, you have gotten more pessimistic than I have in my old age. When I was 17-18 watching Star Trek and 2001 a Space Odessy I was sure that by 2010 we would have a colony on the moon and be at least whizzing around the solar system. Maybe we would have even made First Contact. But alas some of the wheels of progress grind more slowly than others, because in 1968 I would never have guessed I'd have my own personal computer, a phone I could take anywhere, all the music I would ever want to hear coming out of something the size of a cigarette pack and all of the other marvels we use daily.orionrider":zhrsyyge said:bdewoody":zhrsyyge said:I am sure that by the time mankind has found a way to travel at high percentages of the speed of light most all of the other problems associated with deep space flight will have been solved including chance encounters with small solid objects. But my guess is that these developments are at least 2 to 3 hundred years away.
+1
However, I think this is the 'best case scenario'. I believe there is a possibility that a whole other level of 'exotism' will be required to completely avoid the laws of inertia. Something like quantum teleportation for instance. Make that millenia from now, if progress does not stop. :|
orionrider":3kya91v8 said:Except maybe in the field of genetics, there has been no fundamental game-changing discovery in the previous half century.
Cherish your dreams and your optimism - you're in good company:trumptor":2gka2314 said:...Obviously, I'm just dreaming at the moment, but I do think there is much more to how the universe works than we know, and we can't in our wildest dreams even imagine the technologies we'll have at our disposal even 50 years from now. Or we may get wacked by a meteor or destroy ourselves somehow, which would pretty much put a monkey wrench in my optomistic view.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 1 scene 5
trumptor":3icp7asi said:Just the fact that quantum entanglement exists gives me hope that we will be able to one day find it possible to circumvent the speed of light.
Generation ships, as envisioned, are not like the ISS. They're generally considered to be more like mid-sized cities with populations ranging up to 100,000 people, "downtown" areas, "suburbs", "industrial" areas and "rural" areas.jaxtraw":3twyylag said:Skipped through the thread and haven't read it all, sorry, but on the points made about "slow ships" taking a long time to get there; generation ships are morally and psychologically implausible, if not impossible. You may want to lock yourself in a flying prison for the rest of your life, but do you have the right to lock your children and your childrens' children in there, and how the heck are they going to feel about it, knowing that back on Earth life in all its glory goes on and they're permanently denied it? I couldn't do that to my kids. I couldn't stand the hatred. There's no reason to think they would have any enthusiasm for this miserable life sentence for some future "greater good" of colonising a planet they'll never see. No, I can't see it ever happening.