Lasers Could Get Us To The Nearest Star Systems (20 Years) and Mars (3 Days)
When I was a kid I took a field trip to Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana which had an observatory. During the field trip it was said that we could never travel faster than the speed of light. I was a Star Trek Next Generation fan so this was sole crushing to hear this because while I knew we couldn't go "warp" speed yet I felt that in the future we would figure it out. I complained about this to my dad when I got home from the field trip and he said something that was very true. NEVER is an awfully long time. He also said that is according to our understanding at this current time.
After all it wasn't until 1947 when we broke the sound barrier in a manned aircraft. And it wasn't until 2012 when Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier in just a space suit during the Red Bull Stratos project. We had no clue if these guys would just blow to pieces when they broke those barriers. Now we know!
As I studied more and more about space exploration growing up I was once again devastated to know that with our current rocket propulsion methods that it would take unacceptable amounts of time to get to the nearest star system Alpha Centauri which is 4.3 light years away.
At a maximum speed of about 17,600 mph, it would have taken a US Space Shuttle about 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
Yeah Unacceptable! NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is now traveling at 0.006 percent of the speed of light. That type of velocity isn't a meaningful fraction of the speed of light compared to the vast distances of space. Even when utilizing gravity assist to sling a space craft at higher speeds it just isn't enough. I thought maybe I would never live to see interstellar travel. This was very sad to me.
One day earlier this year I read and article that made me believe again that we would conquer the vast distance sooner than later. It still wasn't going to be "Warp" speed or multiples of it but a considerable fraction of it.
20% - 25% The Speed of Light
The premise of the technology is that lasers that are either ground based or in orbit would then push spacecraft. Since space is relatively low friction the craft would accelerate. I'm assuming that once it reaches the desired speed then the laser can be turned off. This could be used to push supplies and people back and forth in our own solar system. Smaller probes can be sent to Mars in 3 days and I guess larger vehicles carrying people could take a month but that is a considerable time reduction in the 6-8 month journey our current technology would take us. Here is a must watch video from NASA explaining some of this. It makes a lot of sense and is super exciting.
Not only is NASA working on this but others such as Yuri Milner the Russian Billionaire and famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking along with Facebook Founder and Steemit "Frienemy" Mark Zuckerberg. They are apart of Breakthrough Starshot. Their goal is to send small nano-probes connected to a sail to Alpha Centauri. They would utilize ground based lasers probably in the high desert of Chile or a similar place. The goal would be to send pictures and readings back. I think one of the biggest problems to solve are that if you make the lasers ground based and not space based that our atmosphere could make it hard to place the laser properly on the sails that would be connected to the space craft. This might not be an issue at all though depending on the size of the sail. The premise of having a device in orbit that would shoot the laser doesn't make a lot of sense to me because if you are going to exert that much power to shoot the laser at the sail then there will most likely be an opposite reaction causing the orbit to get screwed up for the laser cannon. To me it would make sense to put it on the moon where there would be a solid base and no atmospheric issues to deal with. We would need to put a nuclear reactor up there to power it. With that setup it would seem that we could shoot tons of little mini probes all over our solar system and into the closest star systems which would accelerate our learning significantly. Here is a video explaining Breakthrough Starshot in more depth.
Conclusion
I have once again began to dream of the possibility that we will at least get pictures back of nearby star systems in my lifetime. NASA and the world's space agencies have done great things but for a long time now we have been pretty stagnant on flying faster both on Earth and in space. We also got stuck in low Earth orbit for many decades. 20 years ago I would have never imagined that we would still not have landed men and women on Mars by now. It is a tough problem to solve but we have the technology and brilliant minds to figure it out.
It just might be these private initiatives funded by billionaires that will push the boundaries and explore the unknown. What do you think Steemit?
With companies wanting to move into space exploration I fear we won't see the future Trekkies envision but one where unscrupulous companies such as Monsanto and nestle have even more power than they already do.
@phoenixmaid Yeah Monsanto is pretty bad. Basically one of the biggest rat bastard companies on the planet. It is good that people are calling them out and aren't scared to expose them for all their bully lawsuits. I have a feeling that most of the exploration won't be done by the companies themselves because it is hard to show a return to shareholders with exploration of that nature. It will be groups of billionaires who are pooling their personal funds to for other companies / groups to do it. But I don't know. SpaceX is going to send hardware to Mars in a couple years and there is no short term gain with that. It will be interesting to see but if 10 or 20 of these people could get together and fund this stuff we could do great things.
It seems the interests that control government have the moral fiber from the humans in Star-Wrek rather than the ones from Star Trek.
something my friend and i have thought of for really long and have tested a few things with lasers . so it is definitely possible
Don't get me wrong I have been really impressed with what we have accomplished so far but we have just started. If people could put aside their petty differences and focus on projects like this just think where we could get. It would be unreal. Thank you for viewing!
Nice post @brianphobos. Space travel will be privately funded. Unless there is an imminent threat I don't our governments will care much beyond lower orbit. Hoping scientists will have more say on how things are run some day.
Thank you for your comment. I'm sort of hoping that some of the privately funded projects will push the government agencies to compete. If SpaceX beats NASA to Mars that could be a game changer.
Having the government compete with private industry is not ideal. Tom Woods did an episode about going to Mars with private funding.
Love this post. Could you imagine the whole world at peace and all working together in the knowledge that's Man's future lies out in other Galaxies. It's been said that maybe dark holes are portals to other Galaxies or dimensions , as Man is going to have to travel a lot faster than light to just be able to look around our back yard.
The sad thing is as Trekkies, we won't be around to see it.
If some "power" Gave me the choice to suspend my life now and come back in a thousand years, I would take it , even knowing that there's a high chance of returning to total ruin and destruction, because man has fucked up again.
It wouldn't surprise me if aliens had "hovered " in space and observed us , like we would a colony of ants and said "You know what? These cavemen animals are just not ready to know the TRUTH.
@cryptobiker maybe we will get there someday. Things are progressing fast in some regards but I worry that it won't be fast enough. If they could unlock aging as well maybe that could save us.
I certainly feel like an ant when I think about the Cosmos and it would be possible that Aliens have visited and observed us. It is hard to say either way. I mean just the time we spent in the dark ages could give another civilization enough time to develop interstellar travel even in a star system roughly the same age as ours.
To think that Man went from the horse and cart to going to the moon within a hundred years, so technology has gathered pace, but alas we need more time even if we had life extension. That would be for the billionaires
This is a interesting idea... My boyfriend would love to read this article too
Thank you for viewing! I really have a lot of hope for this technology. The two videos alone made me a believer.
fantastic read!! the possibilities could be endless if we stopped funding war and put the all that mega $$$ to proper use like space research
@jbones Thank you for reading. I agree. NASA's budget is half a penny on a dollar of American's tax money. The majority of it goes to the war machine. Like we need to have a base on every inch of the planet. Just park some battle ships and subs and we can go to the stars!
All we can do is dream and write about them so as to plant the seed in young minds so they can carry mantle to the next generation
Great post. I actually read about this sort of propulsion when I was at school and it was just a dream.
Seems amazing that a couple of decades later it is actually close to being reality. The Milner news brought a lot of well needed publicity (in addition to the money) to this concept.
I think sometimes bringing something in to the public consciousness is the most important step in really getting things done. Just look what happened with Elon Musk talking about the hyperloop - another old idea that looks like it will now happen.
Things are really starting to get exciting.
I hope the technology matures to the point where I can one day visit Mars (even if I'm very old at the time). Have wanted to go ever since I saw Total Recall as a kid (the Arnie version).
I love your quote from your father "NEVER" is a long time. That is so true, in science you can't really say "never" the most you can say is that something probably won't happen.
Technology and science is constantly changing and evolving. New physics may evolve that allows for faster than light travel - in a sense we already have some of this in the form of wormholes.
If you could take back a working Iphone somehow to a person a thousand years ago they could not possibly even understand how such a device was possible. To them it would seem impossible or at best some kind of magic or sorcery.
Thank you for your comment! It is getting exciting and I feel like we are going to have a lot of progress in the next 10 or 20 years. I have also had a fascination with Mars as well and have liked almost all the movies about it. Total Recall, Red Planet, Mission To Mars, Martian .....etc We will get there and beyond.
Great post, and nice presentation.
This is a real breakthrough that opens up an area that I thought was closed to us for all time. I think it goes to show that very little is insurmountable. Exciting times ahead!
I agree! Suddenly we have found over 2000 extrasolar planets and are finding more all the time and now we are working on technology like this that could get us there. With the proper funding I feel it can become a reality. We could be shooting little small probes all over the solar system. If the technology gets good enough it might not be such a big deal to send a probe some place for a school project. Just think about how hard it was 20 years ago for someone to take video footage of the upper stratosphere. Now we have kids literally sending GoPro cameras up on balloons all the time on YouTube which show the terminator. Maybe in 30 years they will just be shooting little probes to Europa and then posting it on Steemit!
That would be fantastic, and not too difficult to imagine now either. How about sending some to KIC8462852? I'd love to know what's going on there...
It's great how the advance of science seems quite slow most of the time, and then something happens that's so unprecedented that it almost makes you feel like the world has reinvented itself.
It does seem like slow progress sometimes but in other areas it seems really fast. The progression of electronics and communication has been pretty amazing in the last 20 years. I really think that has the capability to accelerate our learning to an entirely new level. Searching the worlds knowledge is so much faster now and if all that time isn't spent trying to find pieces of the answer then the final answers can be arrived at way faster. Also the connection of genius level work is more accessible. There was a time when these people would be working basically in isolation of each other. Now the information of research can be shared and expanded on so much quicker. If we don't blow ourselves up we can do it!
I think connecting the fields together is the key to solving a lot of our current problems. Still seems to be some dogma though and resistance to merging knowledge across specialities. I think it might be beneficial to us to start training and valuing 'scientific generalists'.
Deffo agree your point on self-annihilation as well. Humanity needs to be very careful
How do you slow down when you get there?
@stan It is a great question. I feel like If we had one laser station here and one on Mars there could be a system of utilizing the lasers to both accelerate and also brake the spacecraft. Retro rockets I don't feel would work because the speed at which it would be going it would be hard to brake. Going to other star systems is an entirely different problem because if it is just a little Nano probe how would you have any mechanism to counter act the speed. And let's say it was flying that fast could it take a clear picture or would it just be blurry? I'm surprised New Horizons was able to take clear pictures of Pluto considering it was going so fast and the light is so dim out there. You would have thought it would have needed to be a long exposure and that thing was moving pretty fast and was just zipping by. But somehow they got really good images. But again New Horizons was going snails pace compared to this laser technology.
wow... amazing knowledge @brianphobos
Thank you for reading!