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Newtonian ships or not?.
With the attention my thread on Aliens is getting I thought I'd try something else.
What are peoples views on propulsion for space ships of the future?. Obviously ships of the near future will be Newtonian and have to do things like turn halfway through the trip to decelerate. Will there, though, be ships in the future which can manouvere like planes?. It seem that in literature there are the hard science writers who only using newtonian movement, and there are the more "pulp" writers who have ships moving about wherever they want. In the "Timeships" the writer still has newtonian movement in about 800,000 AD. To move from the Dyson Sphere to earth a pod with no personal propulsion is flung on a gravitational course to intersect earths orbit. The Time traveller asks what if they miss, and the Morlock after trying to understand the question says simply they won't because its impossible for the calculations to be wrong. |
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I was thinking about this the other day.
If by chance we do begin to explore the stars our technology, even though advanced, would be compareable to the old wooden sale vessels that we used for centuries here on Earth. Those wooden ships were the ticket for how many centuries before the invention of steam came along and then metal ships and ultimately neuclear power? When we start exploring space, and I believe we will never do this, but the ships used will be a standard design for many decades. Think of it this way, we used those wooden ships for centuries before Steam power was developed, and a new form of locomotion was adopted. The same can be said here. We will use the technology we have at the time and it will slowly improve until one day a major break through will occur that will propel our understanding of space flight technology forward by leaps and bounds. How long that will take only time can tell us. |
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Hard to say since there is practically no theoretical basis that I know of suggesting any way to develop FTL travel. It will be difficult to get to other systems though without something FTL, and FTL generally means something extra-(as in "beyond")-Newtonian.
Some Sci-Fi writers who avoid considerations of Newtonian movement are doing so because they want to simplify things and make them more recognizable and/or appealing to unsophisticated audiences, or to enable or disable certain kinds of situations. Other writers are themselves more interested in a certain imaginary existence than they are about making probable predictions. I don't think Newtonian movement or conservation of momentum will ever "go away" though, as some bad sci fi flick animation seems to suggest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif PvK |
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Last I heard, there where tiny particles that travel faster than light. Neutrinos, I think. And, of course, electromagnetic radiation travels as fast a light. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
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There are theoretical FTL particles called tachyons, but they've never been experimentally observed.
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In order to 'maneuver like a plane' there would have to be an atmosphere for wings to work on. Or alternatively, you need to be moving at a signifigant fraction of the speed of light in order to get similar effects from the 'vacuum' of space (which is of course not an 'absolute' vacuum even between the galaxies). The maneuvering spaces would be seriously huge at those speeds, of course. Your turn radius would be larger than the solar system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Did you know that they have estimated ships moving at around 70 percent of the speed of light between stars will heat up to several thousand degrees like an SR-71 due to the friction of interstellar gases? So even if they develop a means to accelerate near the speed of light they will have to develop a means of dealing with the heat buildup to actually travel that fast. In space all you've got for eliminating heat is radiation. Now as for the 'Newtonian' movement question I think that what you are asking is will we ever have reactionless drives or will we always have to throw something out behind our ships to make them move... It's tricky to predict technology. If they ever figure out how gravity works they very well might find a way to manipulate it, and then we've got reactionless drives. |
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your post stired up a thought...what if the heat generated by interstellar dust was used to pre-heat the reaction mass?
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While I personally cannot concieve of any realistic theory of propulsion that will allow us to achieve FTL travel, (heck I personally can't concieve of the theory of relativity and quontum mechanics, and those have been demonstrated in experiments. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) I hope that as a species we don't give up dreaming about it trying to discover ways to do it.
It would be as if we became so convinced that the earth was flat that we don't bother to send sailing ships beyond the horizon. |
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This sort of reminds me of the idea of putting generators on the wheels of an electric car. Yeah, it should work (and some electric cars do recover a small amount of energy this way) but the inherent inefficiencies put some pretty steep limits on its effectiveness. Maybe there are simpler ways to do it? Do thermocouples actually 'use up' energy and reduce their heat levels by generating electricity? A ship with a skin made of thermocouples is an interesting concept. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Peltiers reduce temperature by moving the heat around but you still have to dispose of it somewhere, somehow and the Peltier effect USES energy and creates more heat. It's a very difficult problem. [ March 27, 2004, 04:02: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ] |
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FTL via worm holes:
http://www.quantonics.com/Faster_Tha..._Discover.html Good info: http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/warp.htm There should also be an article in the London Sunday Times on 4 Jan 2000 in which some US scientists managed to accelerate light pulses past the speed of light. I would have loved to include the link but the London Times charges for its archives. You guys just aren’t that important for me to start forking out my cash! Anyway I feel that one day we will have starships able to move faster than light. I am not saying that a human crew will be on it, maybe robots. |
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Actually it is possible to go past the speed of light, just not the speed of light -in a vaccum-. IIRC the 2000 experiment didn't break c, just the speed of light elsewhere.
There's actually a specific type of radiation that you get when you break the local speed of light, much like the shock waves when you break the speed of sound. cherenkov radiation |
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Well, like I've said before, just maybe not on here, people once thought 60 miles an hour would tear the skin off your face. They thought the speed of sound was unbreakable. Well, I don't know how many other things we've done have been labeled impossible, but probably a lot.
I don't truly beleive that impossible is the right word...I think 'non-existant action/direction' is better, that is, if you think of any action we take as an action/direction, there are places you can go and places you can't and if you can't, it's not because you're blocked, it's because that action/direction doesn't exist. Also, the nature of light itself lends some credence to the theory of holes? in or around or something the speed of light barrier. |
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It's possible we are alone, although I think it's very unlikely. It's possible that there are others out there, but none as advanced as us. Again, I think it's an unlikely possibility. The most likely possibility I suspect is that your assumtions are overly optimistic. It may in fact be much much harder then you you think to travel between the stars. Without some major breakthrough that we can't predict or plan for, it's very unlikely that we will progress in 100 years to any sort of technology that will allow for reasonable travel times. If it takes centuries to get to the nearest star, then it becomes much more difficult to build ships that can stay together long enough to get us there alive. We aren't even sure yet how will overcome the damage to our bodies living in space for the few months it takes to get to Mars. Not even considering the prospect of our ships wearing out. Assuming we can get there, you are wanting the people you sent to get right to work building another ship. This of course will have to be built entirely from local materials. Which means a lot of infrastructure work building factories and extracting resources, on top of whatever needs to be done just to survive in their new environment. What will be the impetus driving the colonists to send ships to another system? Wouldn't many of them be more interested in exploring their new planet and system? Making a life for themselves? I am sure eventually they will get to the point of sending out another ship, but 100 years seems very soon to me. If we do not make any sort of tremendous breakthrough in travel speed, I think it will be a very long time before we leave our own star system. For one main reason, why go? If you overcome the problems with living in space for long periods of time, and can build the size of ships that would be neccesary to send thousands of people to Barnards Star, why not build an L5 colony instead? Or a domed city on Mars, or an undersea city on Titan? There are a lot of interesting places to go right here in our own solar system. And there's lot's of room to expand. It will be quite a while before we run out of room. You could get your fill of exploring new and interesting places, and still be just a few months or years from mother earth. |
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That's about the length of recorded human history. But even if he meant it would take 100,000 years, considering the age of the galaxy we should be seeing someone out there. So either we are alone, or they don't want us to know they are there, or it's a lot harder then we think to get around out there. Geoschmo |
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Not only travel but simple survival in space might be more difficult than we realize. It's amazing to think how little we really know about space travel. Only the dozen or so men sent to the Moon in the 1960s and early 1970s have ever been outside of the Earth's magnetic field. And that only for a few days. Everything else we think we 'know' about space travel is speculation from SciFi.
Just about every single lunar astronaut had some sort of psychiatric problems when they returned. You could easily assign this to 'stress' of course. They had been on a very dangerous mission (think of the creaky little tin-can space ships they traveled in!) and were trained very rigorously, so being released from that pressure and sitting back and realizing what a dangerous thing they had done could have had an effect on their mental stability. But we don't have access to their medical records. Only the US Government has access to all of their medical records. I've seen some NASA people post on other discussion Boards that the 'real reason' we haven't returned to the Moon is classified. In other words, it was not simply budget reductions. There was a real reason that the Moon missions stopped. Could they have noticed something in the medical information about the returned astronauts? Were they affected in unexpected ways? Maybe life here on Earth has some important relationship with the magnetic field and leaving the earth's magnetic field unbalances something in our biology? Changing your home might not be as simple as jumping from one rock to another in space. Life processes could be dependent on other factors that we haven't figured out yet. We may be part of this planet in a way that we cannot change. [ March 28, 2004, 00:30: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ] |
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Good point Baron, and I am not criticizing but I want to point out for those that may not know, the moon is not outside of the earth’s magnetic field. With that in mind what you [Baron] say is very important. If this was the effect on humans that where under the influence of the moons, sun’s, and the earth’s magnetic field what would happen when the only influence is that of the sun? A little confused by what I just asked? Think of migratory birds and many other creatures (insects, mammals, reptiles, etc) and what happens to them when scientists have tinkered with their heads.
I should also point out that even though we are under the influence of the moons gravity I was speaking specifically of the reverse: More moon, less earth. [ March 27, 2004, 20:38: Message edited by: President Elect Shang ] |
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The Moon is well outside the normal reach of the Earth's magnetic field. There is a 'tail' extending away from the sun, because of the solar wind, which the Moon might enter at certain times when it is on the far side of the earth from the sun, but normally it is well outside the field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere On the sun's side of Earth, the magnetopause distance is approximately 10 Earth-radii. Abreast of the earth the distance grows to about 15 earth radii (distances change with solar wind pressure and density; The magnetosphere is made to flap and compress by the solar wind) while on the night side it extends into a long cylindrical magnetotail at least several hundred radii long, gradually turning into a wake. Since the earth's radius is about 4,000 miles that makes the magnetosphere about 40,000 miles on the sun side and about 60,000 on the trailing/leading sides. The outward side is obviously highly variable but the Moon doesn't orbit exactly on the earth's equatorial plane so it won't necessarily contact this tail even when out the outward side of its orbit. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/sub...tosphere.shtml William Gilbert hypothesized that the Earth was a giant magnet in 1600. Thomas Gold proposed the name "magnetosphere" in 1959. The Earth's magnetosphere extends far into space and is influenced by the solar wind (ions and electrons emitted from the sun). It extends into space from 60 to 37,280 miles (100 to 60,000 km) towards the Sun, and over 186,500 miles (300,000 km) away from the Sun (nightward), forming the Earth's magnetotail. The Moon orbits just about 220,000 to 250,000 miles from earth so it would only rarely enter this 'tail' when it was at its most extended. [ March 27, 2004, 21:15: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ] |
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acutally as I´ve said before... FTL travel doesn´t need to happen for us to clonize the galaxy. I´d say in a couple hundred years MAX technology will be developed enough to enable us to build giant ship that can travel at sub-light speeds and carry a couple 10-thousand people to the nearest solar systems. And if you give those people there say 100 years and then have them send out more ships... you could colonize the entire galaxy in a couple 100-thousand years... if we never develop FTL travel.
so the real question is: why hasn´t anyone done it yet:)) how come I don´t have a weird little green man for my neighbour... no wait I do.. at least the weird part:) [ March 27, 2004, 12:22: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
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ACK! Now how did I transpose the meanings of gravity and magnet? Gravity field of the earth holds the moon, but you are refering to the magnetic field that the eath generates. Shame on me! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
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I suspect that it's less a problem with being outside of the reach of earth's magnetosphere and more of a problem of being exposed to those nasty things that the magnetosphere normally protects us from. There are types of radiation out there that our little aluminium foil space ships don't protect us from very well. We will probably find ways to shield agaisnt it, but it's not easy.
As far as the Lunar astronauts medical records being classified, I wouldn't be so quick to ascribe it to conspiracy theories. Medical records are personal information afterall. It's bad enough those guys couldn't take a pee for years without filling out a report in triplicate listing the quantity, temperature and color. Would you want all that info turned over to the kooks and curiosity seekers if you were an astonaut or one of his family members? |
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It's not that their medical records are private, it's that the reason we stopped going to the moon is classified. Don't misattribute my reasoning.
It's true that we don't have to be dependent on the magnetic field of the earth in a 'positive' sense. It could indeed be what it shields us from, but the effect is the same. We are dependent on the earth until (and unless) we can understand what happens to people who leave. It might not be as simple as putting shielding on starships. The current concept of 'shielding' is to keep the radiation levels down below what would be considered 'dangerous' but NOT on duplicating the ambient level of radiation at the surface of the earth. Is it really certain that high(er) levels of radiation for weeks or years won't have serious effects on people? Just because people who live at high altitudes get marginally higher radiation than those of us at sea level, or people who work at nuclear facilities get occasionally higher doses, don't immediately crack up and get put in the loony bin doesn't mean that the completely different radiation outside the earth's magnetic field -- or possibly the lack of the usual types of radiation that we experience here on earth -- might do very surprising things to our biology that could higher mental functions. Especially over the weeks and months and years of interplanetary travel. People at high altitude or working at nuclear facilities are still within the earth's normal environment, they just get some 'extra' radiaton on top of the usual ambient stuff. [ March 28, 2004, 02:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ] |
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As far as the reason for later Moon missons being cancled actually being classified instead of the budgetary issues that are well known and easily confirmable, the only evidence we have is your assertion that someone you believe to work for NASA made comments to this effect on a forum somewhere. We have no way of knowing these people even work for Nasa, or that if they do work for Nasa they would neccesarily be privy to such information. So we have a conspiracy. One large enough to be at least partially known to your mysterious Nasa buddies, but that has otherwise been succesfully kept secret all these years. Sure, it's possible. It's also possible that we never really went to the moon and it was all faked to begin with. Quote:
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Again you misattribute my reasoning. I 'seem to be making the point' that the reason for the missions ending is classified. It is in fact known that most of the astronauts had psychiatric problems after their missions. There was even some speculation that John Glenn would have had his past problems used against him if he had been successful in his run for the presidential nomination. No need for 'conspiracy theories' about this when it's public information. No need for access to their medical records. And the fact that the reason for the end of the Moon missions is classified might not be all that difficult to verify. Often times the government will admit that something is classified. I have not done any research on it. I am simply speculating with fragmentary known information. Making the connection that the (possibly) 'classified' reason is or is not in fact some medical effect from space travel will have to wait until the reason is declassified or space travel beyond orbit becomes routine enough to show that there are no serious side-effects. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
[ March 28, 2004, 04:16: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ] |
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Except for that secret mission that I'm not allowed to say anything about. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif How is speculation that John Glenn had a speculative mental condition that a speculative political operative might have speculativly used to damage him politically realate to anything? And we aren't talking conspiracy theories? Riiiigght. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif It is NOT in fact "known" that "most" astronauts have had psyciatric problems upon returning to earth. It IS of course rumored to be true by people that have no way of knowing one way or the other. And that rumor takes on life over the internet becasue otherwise intelligent people such as yourself give it more weight that it deserves. Buzz Aldrin had some well publicized isssues. By his account it was a sudden lack of any goals to work towards in his life. It's a common malady suffered by may people who reach retiement age and no longer feel a purpose. After all, when your life long goal as a pilot and astronaut has been to push the envelope farther and faster, what do you do when you've walked on the moon? There is litereally nowhere to go but down from there. Who else? Can you name one, give a link, anything? If it's well known you should be able to very easily. Shouldn't take much research at all. There were less then 27 astronauts that ever orbited or landed on the moon. Maybe a couple hundred that have ever made it as far as orbit. So if only a few had mental problems it would be a significant percentage of the overall total. But the numbers would be too small to have any real meaning as a statistical sample. And considering the intense nature of their occupation it's highly explainable for other reasons. All that said, there is definetly stuff out there that's bad for us. Recent studies of radiation levels on Mars have put the possibility of any manned missions to mars in doubt for the near term, even if we decided to do it. I don't disagree with you there at all. But it's not neccesary to buy into any conspiracy theories about it. Nasa will tell you all about it if you ask. What possible reason would they have for classifying the end of the Moon missions? Is there some reason they need to keep us in the dark about what they know and understand about the dangers of long term and deep space travel? If so they have a funny way of keeping secrets, cause they admit that stuff all the time. They are always telling us that they don't stuff. Their whole reason for exsistance is to find out stuff, so telling us they don't know stuff is job security. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif The kind of stuff Nasa covers up is engineering screw ups. If it will get someone fired, I could see them trying to cover it up. I see no incentive to them in covering up the fact that there are things about space they don't quite understand yet. [ March 28, 2004, 13:31: Message edited by: geoschmo ] |
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Think of it this way: the earth magnetic field is something like 10^-4 Tesla, right? Well I´m not sure but our cell phones give out a GREAT deal more than that... and if you think that the distance from that 10^-4 T can harm you I´m sure the cell phones would screw us up completely by now... heck just having someone bring a magnet to your head and wave it around would would prolly have you confined to a mental institution if weak EM fields would have any impact on the human mind. I dare not think what a MRI would do to you:) In conclusion: The Earth´s magnetic field (or the absence of it) did not affect the state of mind of those Lunar astronauts (if there even were any affects we can speak of). If there are the reason has to be something else. |
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I don´t think that we can explain it away with "technical problems" because one way or the other we can colonize other worlds its just a matter of time for the right tech to develop. To be honest I really cannot think of a good reason why we haven´t been visited by aliens before... EXCEPT if I dip into the border-line things some others have come up with: Maybe we were visited eons ago but our planet was already populated so they moved on... say they have a sort of "prime directive": don´t mess with other life forms until they develop warp drive or a VCR that lets you set the clock easily or whatever.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif In any case I wouldn´t be at all surprised if we find out the galaxy is full of colonized worlds... and in reverse I wouldn´t be surprised if we find is scaresly populated. |
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Geo:
Yes, now that you have rammed it into the thread we are talking conspiracy theories. I however did not intend to referance any conspiracy theories or any political subjects at all. I am talking about the problem of why we aren't over-run with aliens if intelligent life is possible on other planets. The publicly know facts of science plus the rumor that the Moon missions were cancelled for more than budgetary reasons allow for a speculation about space flight being more difficult than we currently believe. Not about political conspiracies. You had to find political conspiracy theories in it. If you are obsessed with conspiracy theories (and insisting on debunking them is just another way of being obsessed with them) that is your problem, not mine. [ March 28, 2004, 18:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ] |
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Roughly 100,000 light years to travel across, colonizing (actually we're about 30,000 LY inside, but there will be slowing factors such as having to branch the colonizers to multiple planets, regions where there are directions with no direct hop of sufficient shortness, systems without usable planets, etc.), so say 100,000 LY to cross. With the assumption we can achieve 10% the speed of light effective travel speed, eventually, and with the IMO huge assumption that we can set off for a system and expect to find a planet which we'll be able to land on, survive there, settle, build a usable infrastructure on, and be ready to send out another identical ship within 100 years...
200 years per 10 LY covered. 100,000 LY / 10 LY / 200 Years = 10,000 * 200 years = 2 million years. So, yes not a lot in astronomical time. I just wanted to clear up the idea from a human perspective, that we could wrap this puppy up in 4000 years. Note too it'll take another 70,000 years to send the virtual postcard back to Earth with the words "game over". Also, expect lots of break-away republics, lack of willing volunteers, and so on to put some cramps on steady adherence to the master plan for 2 million years straight. Continue that line of thought, and notice that the more difficult assumption is probably that people really want to go trying to set up another planet in every system in the galaxy. What is the chance that a planet full of humans with space flight tech might get envious or mean and stop playing nice, and/or even become hostile? After some thousands of years at least, colonies which actually found useful planets (part of the assumptions above) would develop their own cultural identity, and not just be possessions of Earth. So even if we manage to colonize the whole galaxy in 2 million years, the result is a populated galaxy with perhaps billions of potentially independent self-interested governments in it. In SE4, it usually makes perfect sense to colonize absolutely everything. In the real universe, perhaps not everyone wants to do that. Therefore, aliens advanced enough to be able to travel around the galaxy, may also be advanced enough to have no desire to go conquering and disturbing natives everywhere. Some kids and entomologists like to play with ant hives they discover, but most ant hives get ignored by humans unless they happen to be in an inconvenient place. If an alien race were based on my own personality, and had existed for a few million years, I think I'd send exploration ships out to see what's in the quadrant, carefully and humbly at first in case there was something dangerous or more advanced out there. First we'd focus on sustaining and making nice the homeworld, and then play on the home system planets a bit, and perhaps eventually set up communities on some planets that were empty but very similar and pleasant compared to the homeworld, if any. But probably they'd be limited to a very manageable number, rather than spreading like an inconsiderate plague everywhere. An exploration/science process might involve spreading out over the galaxy over the course of a few million years, but it would be done cautiously and without colonizing everywhere. Knowledge of the galaxy is perhaps desirable, but I wouldn't want to over-procreate and thus create a huge number of communities with the potential for lots of unhappiness. Discovering a planet like Earth with 21st Century humans on it, I'd be inclined to allow scholars to study them but wouldn't make contact, since a preliminary psych study would no doubt show that humans are still very uncouth, selfish, violent, and probably wouldn't react in a desirable way to news that they were way behind the science of an alien race. It might depend though on the number of such planets in the galaxy. Some or all would probably eventually be talked to and helped out, once it was certain they had achieved a place where they wouldn't be harmed or otherwise act negatively. PvK |
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That's a very positive scenario Pvk. There is no reason not to believe it, and I do hope for it to be true.
My own suspicions are a little more pessimistic. Not quite as negative as Atrocities though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I think we are going to find it's exceedingly difficult to travel between the stars. I do have some hope that we will someday make contact with other intelligent races by radio, or some similer means of long distance communication. I could easily see a vast communication network of intelligent races sharing information about themselves. Of course even at light speed it would be slow, but the mere fact someone is out there talking to you would be fascinating. Over time you could get enough information about one another to take "virtual" trips to one anothers planets. |
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don't you see what we are doing here... its like 2 pesant from the Dark ages would start arguing weather one could build "ships" that would fly like the birds. Pesant1: I think we will find it exeedingly difficult and since it would require enormous energy to sustain such ships in flight even if we could do it it wouln't be practical in any way. And besides it would be very dangeus to fly. No... I think people will never go far from their place of birth, why should they... if we want to talk to other people on other continets we can just send them a mail. Sure it takes a while to get there but its better than nothing. Pesant2: I think its gonna be inevitable that we develop such flying ships... the same as our ancestors developed the wheel and then the ship. Its just another step. Pesant1: no no... listen why would you want to be flying around and making new "countries" all over the place?? they'll just end up goint to war with one another. Pesant2: Nah you're crazy old man, I wonder why I even bother talking to you! Pesant1: Your mamma! Pesant2: Now why did you have to bring my mummy into this. Now'll have to hurt you... ... it got ugly then http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif So my point is that we don't know what the hell we are talking about. We just don't have any real experiance in how difficult or how easy space flight is. Its silly to argue if its possible or not. [ March 28, 2004, 20:52: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
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I don't really consider this an argument. It's a discussion. Perhaps a debate at some points of disagrement, but that's kind of the reason for having a public forum, to discuss one anothers opinions, see things from a different perspective, and learn new things.
Your point we don't really know any of this stuff that we are talking about is kind of redundant. I think it's pretty clear from my comments that I don't diasgree with this. I'm not sure if you haven't read what I said, or if I wasn't clear. Or it could just be that you are restating it in your own words. That's fine too. It's all part of the discussion. As far as comunication between alien cultures being a fantasy. I totally disagree. Difficult? Of course. But not impossible. It's not likely to be something we crack in a manner of weeks like the book Contact or anything. But the book does have a pretty good idea about one way we could possibly learn to communicate with each other through mathematics. Even if the time frames are unrealistic. Probably it will take generations of work on both ends before we get beyond anything more complicated then just being aware of each others presence. |
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Of course the underlying assumption(s) to all of this speculation is that any 'intelligent' race would want to expand across the cosmos. And further that civilizations would remain stable enough to do so. Why do we assume that? Maybe most races are content to remain on the planet where they evolved -- or at least in the same star system -- and solve all of the riddles of mathematics and philosophy. Or play video games... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Or maybe they are all like us and too busy competing with and killing each other to cooperate long enough to even get out of their own atmosphere... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif |
Re: Newtonian ships or not?.
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It does appear I had a couple small errors in computation. You are right it would be new colonies every 200 years, not every 100 years. I think I had another error somewhere that I am not sure of cause I didn't write all my work down. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif When I figure it now with all the assumptions I get that it would actually take 15,000 years, not 4,000 years to colonize the entire galaxy. But by point is still valid because compared to the age of the galaxy and the history of our own civilization, that's a drop in the bucket. 2 on year 400 4 on year 800 8 on year 1200 16 on year 1600 32 on year 2000 1024 on year 4000 32,768 on year 6000 1,048,576 on year 8000 ... At this rate of growth you pass 200 billion sometime around year 15,000. Of course this number is modified up or down by some significant factors. First of all, even if there are 200 billion stars, it's unlikely that all of them have habitable planets. So that will decrease the time needed for complete galactic colonization. On the other hand, I must concede it would likely take longer because of one major factor. As the colonized territory got larger, the systems in the interior would be unable to efficently send out new colony ships. Available planets would be farther from them then the assumptive 100 year trip time would allow for. Of course that is an average figure and it's assumed that some trips would take less time, so it balances out to a degree. But once you reach the point where it takes multiple centuries for your core systems to send clony ships I would expect that those would stop and only teh colonies on the periphary would continue expanding. This would cause the overall rate of expansion to drop. By what ammount I don't know. The math get's a little over my head at that point. Quote:
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Re: Newtonian ships or not?.
No, GEO, I mean a COUPLE 100.000 years.
I didn´t do the math as you did because there are some serious limitations to your exponent-theory. I just assumed our galaxy to be 100.000 light years across and since if you jup from one star to the next you must go in a straight line from one end to the other... you cannot SIMPLY say: we got 1 star now and in 100 years we'll have 2 then 4 then 8... etc. etc It doesn't multipy like that because you must take into acount that colonists won´t be leaving from your first star anymore (and if they do they won+t get to the colony "much" sooner than those from your secondary colonies... making the whole thing pointless). Think about it geo you´ll see there is a big logical error in your exponent-calculation. So you really have to think in terms of a "virtual ship" traveling from one part of the galaxy to the other. the real question is: how long would it take for this virtual ship to cross the galaxy if it took "pit" stops every 10 light years for 100 years each stop... the answer is: 100.000light years/10 light years = 10.000 stops 10.000 stops*100 years/stop= 1.000.000 years ... or in other words "a couple 100.000 years" since we are not exactly at one edge of the galaxy. (and I didn´t take into account the travel time between the stars.. only the stops of 100 years) If we are traveling at SUB-LIGHT speads we should be able to clonize the galaxy in a couple 100.000 years. To see how very wrong your 4000 years estimate is ... just try to explain to yourself how we are supposed to reach the other edge of our galaxy (some 60.000 light years away) in 4000 years if our colony ships are traveling at 1 ligt year per year at most (not taking into account that they are stopping at planets for 100-200 years) The colony expansion is NOT exponent in nature.. it is very much LINEAR. Just imagine it as a circle that grows from our solar system outward. Get it? but anyway you tweek the numbers...any race that is acpable of developing some sort of anti-matter driven space ships (for the low mass/fuel ratios) and genetically modify its population so it can travle in space for several decades would be able to colonize the galaxy in roughly 1.000.000 to 10.000.000 years... which is still nothing to the WAST eones passed. [ March 28, 2004, 13:11: Message edited by: JurijD ] |
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