Here Is the Future of Interstellar Spacecraft

[kevindavis007]

AN EARLY AND VERY AMBITIOUS START


In 1973, the British Interplanetary Society — now, the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world — launched a five year study to design an unmanned spacecraft that was capable of interstellar flight. Project Daedalus was the first to tackle the question of the possibility of interstellar travel. The goal of the project was discover the feasibility of getting a person to travel to a variety of different target stars using technology of the near future, and getting them there within their lifespan.


Read More: http://www.isn-news.net/2017/08/here-is-future-of-interstellar.html

[kevindavis007]

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[Cripplecreek]

AN EARLY AND VERY AMBITIOUS START


In 1973, the British Interplanetary Society — now, the oldest space advocacy organisation in the world — launched a five year study to design an unmanned spacecraft that was capable of interstellar flight. Project Daedalus was the first to tackle the question of the possibility of interstellar travel. The goal of the project was discover the feasibility of getting a person to travel to a variety of different target stars using technology of the near future, and getting them there within their lifespan.


Read More: http://www.isn-news.net/2017/08/here-is-future-of-interstellar.html

In my book, Project Daedalus is still the most generally feasible plan.

[kevindavis007]

In my book, Project Daedalus is still the most generally feasible plan.

If it wasn't for the Anti-Nuke crowd we would have the original Project Orion and Daedalus.

[LateForLunch]

Top speed 10,000 KPS = about 1/10th the speed of light. So the nearest system is about 5 light years x 10 = 50 years away (and it's a one way trip). For the expense and effort, what would the return be? Any human crew would be marooned there, likely to die in a very unpleasant manner (lack of biological necessities). And we'd never even know if they made it!! Wow. Talk about a pointless project.

So why not just send them to the bottom of the ocean and leave them there to die? They couldn't even send back information because we have no transmitters that can cross interstellar space.

Maybe we need to go back to the drawing board and hope for a breakthrough in FTL transportation before we start aspiring to become space mariners. In fact, if things keep going forward as rapidly as they have been with technology, any mission traveling to another system at 1/10th C would likely be overtaken by some vessel using FTL drive the way the road runner would overtake the coyote.

And space being as big as it is, an FTL vessel trying to locate and intercept (uh, rescue) any slower vessel would likely be unable to find it in the vast emptiness of the universe. Even a few fractions of a degree of deviance from a straight course (say if they had some sort of navigation system failure or minuscule mis-calibration) would, after years of drifting, put them outside nominal trajectory so far away from any search team's vicinity that they might as well be in another universe.

[Joe Wooten]

Given we communicate over huge distances with the Voyager probes which have about a 30 watt signal, I'd bet we could communicate with the Alpha Centauri system with a megawatt class transmitter. signal conditioning software is very advanced these days and can make sense of a very weak signal. I bet if we put a receiver in the AC system, it could receive and make sense of the vast amount of radio transmissions we have send out every year.

[Cripplecreek]

Given we communicate over huge distances with the Voyager probes which have about a 30 watt signal, I'd bet we could communicate with the Alpha Centauri system with a megawatt class transmitter. signal conditioning software is very advanced these days and can make sense of a very weak signal. I bet if we put a receiver in the AC system, it could receive and make sense of the vast amount of radio transmissions we have send out every year.

Aren't we using laser for some transmissions of large amounts of digital data to the space station?

[LateForLunch]

Aren't we using laser for some transmissions of large amounts of digital data to the space station?

Nope. Solar systems have a shock-front caused by the orbital trajectory through the galaxy. Solar systems exist in sort of a bubble with a shell orbiting around it of debris and gas, that would be difficult to punch through with either an optical signal or a radio band signal.

[Joe Wooten]

Aren't we using laser for some transmissions of large amounts of digital data to the space station?

I don't know. But I know someone who probably does.....  @Just_Victor     Vic????

[Cripplecreek]

I don't know. But I know someone who probably does.....  @Just_Victor     Vic????

NASA installs space laser on the ISS, uses it to transmit high-speed data back to Earth

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/183876-nasa-installs-space-laser-on-the-iss-uses-it-to-transmit-high-speed-data-back-to-earth

Obviously a couple hundred miles is a different ball game than 26 trillion miles but with enough power it seems feasible. Maybe a relay system.

[Just_Victor]

I don't know. But I know someone who probably does.....  @Just_Victor     Vic????

I don't think so.  IIRC there are two antenna's for vehicle to ground transmissions; one Ku and one Ka band.  I'd have to go back and look it up to be sure.  They might have added laser data transmission, but light is light so there's no speed advantage, and aiming a laser for data transmission would be an extremely precise operation.  Regular radio transmissions don't require that kind of pinpoint precision.

I don't see the advantage.

[Just_Victor]

NASA installs space laser on the ISS, uses it to transmit high-speed data back to Earth

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/183876-nasa-installs-space-laser-on-the-iss-uses-it-to-transmit-high-speed-data-back-to-earth

Obviously a couple hundred miles is a different ball game than 26 trillion miles but with enough power it seems feasible. Maybe a relay system.

Whoops I should finish reading the thread.

Clearly there is an element to the technology I am unaware of.  Getting an order of magnitude faster data transmission from a laser I would guess has something to do with the density of pulses the beam allows.  Interesting article.

[LateForLunch]

Whoops I should finish reading the thread.

Clearly there is an element to the technology I am unaware of.  Getting an order of magnitude faster data transmission from a laser I would guess has something to do with the density of pulses the beam allows.  Interesting article.

Slightly off topic related to astrophysics - telescopes saw bright microwave-band flares from areas with large concentrated clouds of CO2 in near proximity to active stars. They figured out that solar-wind from a star was moving as a high energy electron pressure-wave through the cosmic gas clouds, generating a massive naturally- occurring CO2 MASER.

With enough energy, something similar might be done to send signals (focusing energy derived from solar wind to power some sort of massive MASER) across interstellar space.

There are LASERS which use optical-band light to initiate laser reaction in a specially-made crystals. There are experimental solar-pumped lasers.   

Of course, unless some sort of sustained, modulated pulse could be achieved, the best they   could do might be to send a very slow version of Morse Code.