What technology currently available combined with the best launch window, gravity assist etc exists? Might as well send a probe.
500+ years, and it would likely need to be inert for most of that trip, space is big
Try 74 832 years actually.
First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
141–150 of 330 posts
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back yard meaning we can see it but never touch it. If the ship to get there was ready today, it would get there in the year one-million? Back yard is Mars, Venus, moon. And I'm being generous with Mars and Venus.
Yeah, if your username is any indication of your age, you've possibly taken much the same trajectory of pessimism that I have. As a youth, I assumed we'd be hitting multiple Cs or bending space time when I was an adult; As an adult I thought we might get a percentage of C and conquer the solar system; Now I realise Just How Much Effort it would be to accomplish much of any value on our own Moon, never mind Mars. I st…
> Yeah, if your username is any indication of your age
You might want to look up what the unix epoch is based on ;)
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder about all the extraterrestrial AI swarms that have already imaged earth. Surely it has happened. They must have all spotted our planet millions of years ago and must be watching us with a continuous high-resolution feed. They've seen our dinosaurs. Their interest will really be piqued when they finally see us invent electricity, though that might be some time in the future for them. Perhaps even gravitationa…
As Lynn Margulis reminded us we are not the main show. Our individual intelligence is highly over rated. The brain itself is kludge upon kludge accumulating over thousands of years, to solve problems that keep changing with time and environmental changes. Its quite a piece of crap actually if you tabulate all the accumulated junk. We arent as interesting as we think we are. Some of the tech and knowledge generated mi…
I'd be impressed if those microbes or butterflies visited the moon and came back to tell about it.
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#14448 light years is in our back yard. Close enough that we could probably develop a probe to get there in the next few centuries and check it out. What are the current popular candidates for propulsion systems capable of accelerating to near the speed of light?
Just going to recycle this comment I made in reply to an almost identical comment as yours. I don't think you folks realize how big space actually is.
The speed of light is 1079 252 848 km/h, the fastest space craft ever made was the Parker Solar probe (using a sling shot) clocking in at 692 000 km/h. So at that speed it would take, 1559 years to travel one light year.
This planet sits at a distance of 48 light years, so it would 74 832 years to get there. Just for good measure, when it gets there it would also take 48 years for us to know that since radio travels at the speed of light.
Note, that the speed of the spacecraft I mentioned was the peak speed. Space is big, really big.
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s highly unlikely we’re ever getting FTL. We should become comfortable with that and let go our fantasies. Let theoretical physicists chug away at this, we should get underway with projects that are possible with known science.
Depends on who you mean as "we". The speed of light isn't a speed limit. If you can create a ship that is capable of 1g acceleration, it doesn't just stop accelerating as it reaches the speed of light relative to some stationary object, like Earth. Instead you start getting relativistic effects and things start getting very weird with time and distance doing some funky stuff. You keep zooming along just fine from you…
This isn’t gonna work, space isn’t truly empty. Even with antimatter propulsion the interstellar medium will start to vaporize your ship at speed above 0.2c.
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#146We should build a solar lens telescope. By the time we're ready to use it, we'll have a bunch of candidates to point it at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOLIMAN
They’re building one for stars within 10 parsecs of the sun ( and more specifically for Alpha Centauri) which should launch in the next year
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
In order to get something there fast enough it would be traveling out very fast. Getting something there to orbit I think is not realistic for us any time soon.
I guess the point he's making is that the orbital velocity is pretty slow, so it's not too different to "get there" and "orbit there". Of course, the rocket equation often makes "just add a few percent more delta V" pretty hard ;)
> so it's not too different to "get there" and "orbit there".
But to "get there" within any reasonable timespan requires going really fast - which is currently highly impractical. And then once you get there, you have to them cancel pretty much all of that velocity which is not just a "few percent more delta V".
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#148i do hope in my lifetime we find other animals on other planets
So that we still have animal to kill in our lifetime, after the ones on Earth are all extinct?
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#149Underlying paper from Science[0]
[0] https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-spot-fir...
Re: First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But even at 0.12c, we are looking at 400 years to get there. And we'd be zooming by at 12% the speed of light. If we want to slow down a bit that'd add hundreds of billions to the cost. That’s the really hard part. If it’s almost science fiction to accelerate to 0.12c, it’s certainly much more difficult to slow down. At that speed we’d travel and pass this small system in mere minutes.
You just turn around halfway and use your main drive to decelerate. Yes, that does double the travel time, but it's the only way to do it. The hard part is then finding ways to get to a faster speed at turnaround time.
There is no drive, it’s all orbital slingshots with current technology. None of the other stuff people are talking about here exists…