281–290 of 330 posts
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Doesn't it need to slow down
Yes, and that should also take 1 year.
Remember, a lighter ship can start slowing down later so it will arrive to its destination faster. This might be important if you are traveling with a flotilla of ships & decide for a little race at the end. Also helps if you have some heavy hibernation pods on board[0].
I spent some time contemplating the analog of a shower or a bath and generally washing oneself and how that would look in a zero gravity based environment. My favorite idea is "water" injected into a contained environment to produce a particular pressure and or flow setting with a scuba type hose for breathing. All liquid is evacuated through the base and an air jet helps produce a drying effect plus clear out the ca…
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1j1ijsw/...
https://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/thl...
It worked well enough, but ISS opted for wet towels & I am not sure what the Chinese are using currently. Will be interesting what some of the upcoming commercial space stations opt for. :)
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> Nature produces a truly unlimited amount of novelty, especially if you’re moving through it. I'm sure it was a lot of fun, in the Dwarf Fortress sense.
FUN!
The double exclamations signal that an object is on fire in DF.
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How would you power it? Solar sail or nuclear? How big would the payload be?
> How would you power it? Given that the payload would be tiny compared to a generation ship, I expect the powerplant would be able to get it there much faster. > Solar sail or nuclear? Solar sail won't work outside the solar system. > How big would the payload be? We cannot build it yet. But I expect the technology to do it seems possible.
Being a probe sized craft, deceleration as well as a very close flyby close to a star should be much more doable than with a big honking interstellar ark.
As for power - even a small nuclear reactor would be fine initially if it can last long enough for it to land somewhere suitable and start spamming solar panels. Then you are finally ready to get going on you first extra-solar Benchy. ;-)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect [1] https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2021/10/06/assessing-the-obe...
> Habitability for 1,000 ± 500 people over centuries Is this enough for a healthy breeding population?
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Do you mean Biosphere? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
OH yea, I confused it with the movie name. Surprisingly, the wikipage fails to mention it was a failed experiment and doesn't mention the ocean issue at all.
Its not like sustainable extraterrestrial habitats will not be needed elsewhere anyway, so it should be hopefully long established technology (by the lava tube settlers of the Moon or the Oneil Cylinder bunch from L3) when you do the first interstellar ship.
An interstellar ship is indistinguishable from a generational colony ship because there's no way to realistically travel between stars in timelines that don't span generations unless we extend human lifetimes to centuries or longer. That's possible but doesn't change the trael times. It just means you live to the destination rather than your descedants do. And let's aside the serious ethical issue of you choosing to…
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> we are never leaving this solar system unless we discover some new physics to get around our speed limitations The winning proposal coasts at 0.01c. Propulsion systems--not the speed of light--and thus engineering, not phsyics, are the relevant limitors.
If you can build and maintain a system capable of sustaining the lives of 1,000 humans for 400 years, why do you care about interstellar travel anymore? “The indefatigable spirit of exploration” isn’t the answer. People, as a mass, only explore to find new resources due to scarcity. There are exceptions, but they tend to be thrill seekers or publicity hounds seeking to capitalize on a measure of fame upon their retur…
With exponential growth and the second law of thermodynamics, there’s no such thing as solving resource scarcity, only delaying it.
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>> kill their relatives > Rural Americans > high school dropouts Lol HN you really are too much sometimes. Covid went really well in all the intellectual bastions of liberal democracy right? NYC, SF? California famously no downsides from their policy choices at all. And then to top it off, you compare response to China - the government that lied through it's teeth about covid from the beginning, jailed journalists an…
Oh, nobody managed Covid well. The question was capacity to sacrifice for the common good. New York is a bad example to call out since it was one of the first places to get hit, locked down hard after a delay, and yet came out with lower per-capita deaths and a stronger economy than most red states. (Speaking as someone who lives in one of the reddest states in the union.) > jailed journalists and destroyed evidence…
COVID didn't test for capacity to sacrifice for the common good. Sacrifice is voluntary. It tested for capacity to submit to authoritarian control for the common good.
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I think the problems would come in the 2nd generation, who didn't choose to go on the mission.
Provided the first generation volunteered, I expect the second generation would still be indoctrinate enough to the idea and mission to be fine, but the third generation would definitely be stirring some shit up.
If they did rebel it would probably be more along the lines of reaching the target inhabitable planet and refusing to leave the ship. Just grab enough material to set a new course for the next one and keep going.
The next set of rebels would be the ones who actually fulfilled the mission.