[Graeme]

I saw this impressive article a few days ago. It's impressive because even now enthusiastic space buffs are thinking about the long-term survival of the human species. The challenges involved for humans travelling in space outside our solar system are astronomical (pun intended) but nevertheless are worth pursuing. The process has begun.

Reality check for starships

Last month's "100-Year Starship" conference, backed by NASA and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, threw a huge spotlight on the idea of sending spacecraft far beyond our solar system — but how realistic is that idea? Check out what one of the world's top experts on the subject has to say on "Virtually Speaking Science."

Marc Millis, the researcher behind NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project and the nonprofit Tau Zero Foundation, was my guest on tonight's show, which is available as a podcast via BlogTalkRadio and iTunes.

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Millis estimates that it'll take 200 years to get in position for the first missions to stars beyond our own, but he says there are lots of small steps we can take starting tomorrow to "chip away" at the challenge. Experiments with solar sails have already started, and Millis says the next step there is to figure out the business case for more ambitious light-powered trips.

There are all sorts of potential breakthroughs to consider: Could the recent reports of faster-than-light neutrinos point to a way to break the speed limit set by special relativity? Could laser experiments let scientists warp the fabric of space-time on a small scale? "What creates the properties of an inertial frame, and how does that relate to space travel?" Millis asked.

Is it worth spending money on precursor missions — for example, sending a "Super-Hubble" space telescope beyond the edge of our solar system to look outward, and inward? "What would it take to do that? How much would it cost?" Millis said.

Here's an edited transcript of my pre-show Q&A with Millis:

msnbc

[peripato]

I saw this impressive article a few days ago. ... The process has begun.
Reality check for starships

Last month's "100-Year Starship" conference, backed by NASA and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, threw a huge spotlight on the idea of sending spacecraft far beyond our solar system — but how realistic is that idea? Check out what one of the world's top experts on the subject has to say on "Virtually Speaking Science."
...
Is it worth spending money on precursor missions — for example, sending a "Super-Hubble" space telescope beyond the edge of our solar system to look outward, and inward? "What would it take to do that? How much would it cost?" Millis said.

Here's an edited transcript of my pre-show Q&A with Millis:

msnbc

Jeez you post some s*** Graeme, but this takes the cake...FTL travel? F%k'n hell, spare me. If that were in any way possible the Earth would have long been turned into an amusement park for bored bug-eyed alien housefraus, like this one;

[Graeme]

OK. Lets have a look at our history then. It appears that our species has evolved to be migratory breeders. And the first among us to migrate were female! Just think outside the box, will you?

Humans 'evolved as migratory breeders'

Humans have evolved as a migratory species with the highest fertility shown by those who move first into unoccupied habitats, a new study suggests.

Women among the first "wave front" of migrants into a new area marry earlier and have more children than women who settle in the central "core" of a region that already has an established population, the study found.

Scientists believe the findings demonstrate the importance of being in the first migratory wave of people who move to new, unoccupied regions.

They believe it sheds important light on how humans have evolved since they first began to move out of Africa about 50,000 years ago.

"We find that families who are at the forefront of a range expansion into new territories had greater reproductive success. They had more children and more children who also had children," said Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal. "As a result, these families made a higher genetic contribution to the contemporary population than those who remained behind."

independent

[The Practician]

OK. Lets have a look at our history then. It appears that our species has evolved to be migratory breeders. And the first among us to migrate were female! Just think outside the box, will you?
Humans 'evolved as migratory breeders'

Humans have evolved as a migratory species with the highest fertility shown by those who move first into unoccupied habitats, a new study suggests.
... "As a result, these families made a higher genetic contribution to the contemporary population than those who remained behind."

independent

Yes, Graeme, we all know how "successful" our species is when it comes to using up resources at unsustainable rates and then moving on to greener pastures. So tell us Graeme, wheres the next planet? you got your advance ticket on the first flight off this rock?

[peripato]

OK. Lets have a look at our history then. It appears that our species has evolved to be migratory breeders. And the first among us to migrate were female! Just think outside the box, will you?
Humans 'evolved as migratory breeders'

Humans have evolved as a migratory species with the highest fertility shown by those who move first into unoccupied habitats, a new study suggests.
... "As a result, these families made a higher genetic contribution to the contemporary population than those who remained behind."

independent

Pure comedic genius. FTL space travel and interstellar colonisation are just destined to be because we are humanz - get it. Hey, wait a minute. I know let's call it; Manifest Destiny. Oh, that's been done already.

[Graeme]

Well, 430 have already booked a flight into space. And Branson has further plans for colonisation of Mars within 10 years. He's not the only one. Google it. Here's one, and Nasa's.

[peripato]

Well, 430 have already booked a flight into space. And Branson has further plans for colonisation of Mars within 10 years. He's not the only one. Google it. Here's one, and Nasa's.

Stop, you're cracking me up! Haven't you heard? NASA is out of manned space flight now and has to rely on ex-commies to hitch a ride just up to the space station.

[Graeme]

The shuttles are being replaced by Boeing's space taxis.

[peripato]

The shuttles are being replaced by Boeing's space taxis.

I hope they carry enough change for the fare.

[Graeme]

Good you've got a sense of humor. You'll survive.

[peripato]

Good you've got a sense of humor. You'll survive.

[Loki]

Dude, put down the Star Trek pipe and step away....

[Windmills]

I doubt that we'll ever establish a moon base, much less set up a multi-billion dollar, taxpayer-funded camping trip to Mars. Manned space travel outside the solar system? I'm hoping to just be able to travel around my own country cheaply in the future. The prospects for that don't even seem great.

[Graeme]

If I could refer you to just one website that demonstrates the benefits of the space program, it is this one. I will focus on just one technology that is appropriate for this site:

Solar energy

Homes across the country are now being outfitted with high-performance single crystal silicon solar power cells that allow them to reduce their traditional energy expenditures and reduce pollution. The advanced technology behind these solar devices—which provide up to 50% more power than conventional solar cells—originated with the efforts of a NASA-sponsored 28-member coalition forming the Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) Alliance. ERAST’s goal was to develop remotely piloted aircraft, intended to fly unmanned at high altitudes for days at a time and requiring advanced solar power sources that did not add weight. As a result, SunPower Corporation created advanced silicon-based cells for terrestrial or airborne applications.[3]:66-67

Note in the link that "NASA claims that there are over 1650 other spin-offs in the fields of computer technology, environment and agriculture, health and medicine, public safety, transportation, recreation, and industrial productivity".

[AgentR11]

There is not now and never will be FTL travel.

As long as humans insist on the stupidity that is "go and safely return" we aren't getting past the moon, and even that is hard as h***.

Change it to "go and stay".
Change the mission success chance to 95% down from 99%..

And we be in business.

But people MUST accept that people die when they travel. Always have, always will. Its really ok.

[sicophiliac]

As optimistic as I am when it comes to space travel, starships are a pipe dream in out life times. Best case scenario would be an interstellar probe and that's probably at least 100-200 years away, plus the time it takes to reach a star which is likely another 100 years or so. If you read about project icarus http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/ which envisions nuclear fusion technology you can see that 10-20% light speed is the most optimistic projection based on our current grasp of physics and probable technology. That would be great for a robotic probe but for humans much more challenging unless we had greatly increased the length of human life spans and had all sorts of automated/ self replicating technologies to set up infrastructure to survive at the destination planet.

Maybe solar sails or antimatter could push us closer to the speed of light but that's asking for gargantuan amounts of energy and or the ability to to contain hundreds if not thousands of tons of antimatter perfectly for years if not decades. One slight fluctuation in some sort of magnetic containment or one tiny micrometeorite might be all it takes to completely atomize the entire ship. Imagine going through the ort cloud and hitting a piece of ice at a good chunk of the speed of light.

I think we have a much better shot of colonizing and perhaps partially terraforming mars and having another home for humans that'd be good for several billion years. Venus too might be at least partially terraformed allowing for human habitation at least in the polar regions if the far off future.

[eXpat]

I for one, think that we should build an armada of starships and go attack the Grey's homeworld for all the abductions and anal probing...
Is not that difficult really, we could use Nazi UFOs' technology

[Graeme]

Sicophiliac, Thanks for your post. I wasn't aware of Project Icarus or the Tau Zero Foundation. I've delved into this subject a little deeper by searching Internet, and I've found the following 2 sites that I'd like to share with you.
The first is the wiki page on space colonization which summarizes quite nicely colonization within our solar system and the challenges facing interstellar travellers.

Interstellar travel
Many scientific papers have been published about interstellar travel. Given sufficient travel time and engineering work, both unmanned and generational voyages seem possible, though representing a very considerable technological and economic challenge unlikely to be met for some time, particularly for manned probes.

The main difficulty is the vast distances that have to be covered. This means that a very high speed is needed. Otherwise, the time involved, with most realistic propulsion methods, would be from decades to millennia. Hence an interstellar ship would be much more severely exposed to the hazards found in interplanetary travel, including hard vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and micrometeoroids.

[edit] Intergalactic travel
Intergalactic travel, as it pertains to humans, is impractical by modern engineering ability and is considered highly speculative. It would require the available means of propulsion to become advanced far beyond what is currently thought possible to engineer in order to bring a large craft close to the speed of light. Unless the craft were capable of reaching extreme relativistic speeds, another obstacle would be to navigate the spacecraft between galaxies and succeed in reaching any chosen galaxy, star, planet or other body, as this would need an improvement over current understanding of galactic movements and their coordination.[citation needed] The craft would have to be of considerable size, without reaching speeds with noteworthy relativistic effect as mentioned above it would also need a life support system and structural design able to support human life through thousands of generations and last the millions of years required, including the propulsion system—which would have to work perfectly the millions of years after it was built to slow down the machine for its final approach. Even for unmanned probes which would be much lighter in mass, the problem exists that the information they send can only travel at light speed, which would mean millions of years just to receive the data they send.

Current physics states that an object within space-time cannot exceed the speed of light,[20] which seemingly limits any object to the millions of years it would at best take for a craft traveling near the speed of light to reach any remote galaxy. Science fiction frequently employs speculative concepts such as wormholes and hyperspace as more practical means of intergalactic travel to work around this issue. However, some scientists[20] are optimistic in regard to future research into techniques considered even in concept sheer science fiction in the past.

The second is an article by W H Siegfried of Boeing also on space colonization. He doesn't discuss interstellar travel but he does list the benfits of space colonization for the inhabitants of Earth. Apparently there are already 32,000 spinoffs from the Nasa space program already! I'd like to point out that he mentioned 3 potential spaced-based energy systems that can be used here on Earth: Helium 3, solar power satellites (SPS), and a lunar (solar)
power system (LPS).

TABLE 1. Space-Based Energy Sources.
Helium-3 system concept
■ Helium-3 is mined on lunar surface and transported to Earth for use in fusion reactors
■ Deuterium and He-3 fuse cleanly and produce little radiation or waste
■ We estimate that enough He-3 is on lunar surface to satisfy current world energy needs for 1000 years
Solar Power Satellite (SPS) concept
■ Four to six satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit transmitting solar energy to the surface
■ 10 GW of electric power per satellite
■ Use lunar materials for construction of SPS and transportation system to place in geosynchronous orbit
Lunar Power System (LPS) concept
■ LPS will collect solar energy on lunar surface and transmit back to Earth
■ LPS used first to power lunar base to demonstrate technology

[RedStateGreen]

I think generation ships are a possibility. We're talking 1500 years to Proxima at 1 g, assuming there are decent planets there ... big assumption. Basically a one-way crapshoot.

Then there's the issues of how you gonna feed these people, etc. You'd have to have a self-sustaining system, etc.

It's basically moot until you can prove you can get people to Mars (about 2 years) and have someone survive the trip.

[peripato]

I think generation ships are a possibility. We're talking 1500 years to Proxima at 1 g, assuming there are decent planets there ... big assumption. Basically a one-way crapshoot.

Then there's the issues of how you gonna feed these people, etc. You'd have to have a self-sustaining system, etc.

It's basically moot until you can prove you can get people to Mars (about 2 years) and have someone survive the trip.

Bloody brilliant! Don't you know, according to this writer-critter at Forbes, they're discovering whole new planets to search for oil every day! Imagine how many we'll have found in 1500 years, by the time we've gotten to Proxima Centauri? No more peak oil to worry about, now or ever...Yee haw!