A Thread Of Space Travel Speculation

[MacLec]

A. Is it possible to travel @ or near light speed (or beyond!)

 

B. Would general relativity slow time down enough inside your spacetime bubble (?) to allow you to travel x far.

 

C.What are the most likely methods of fuel or propulsion/spacetime manipulation

 

D. Materials needed to build such a vessel

 

E. In our lifetime or ever

 

I have none of these answers or anything that would even resemble an answer.

 

My answer would be maybe

[Airbrush]

I cannot answer most of your questions, but this is an interesting subject. Just a few nights ago I saw a science documentary on TV where a scientist speculated that in 100 years from now people would be thinking about travel to a new Earth, and 200 years from now, people would be waving back at us here on Earth.

 

That does not seem likely to me. Within a decade we should have a large number of Earth-sized planets to wonder about. The next generation of space telescopes should be able to analyze atmospheres of these nearby "Earths". But will that be enough to decide to send people there? I doubt it. I think we would first send a number of unmanned probes to the best prospects, and after we get a report back from them, would we decide which direction to go.

 

We are entering a very challenging time for humanity. We have sea-level rise from global warming, growing population, water shortages just over the hill, and the threats of nuclear terrorism, supervolcanoes, and asteroid strikes, just to mention a few. In a perfect world we may get to the next Earth sooner, but we live in a VERY imperfect world.

Edited February 27, 2014 by Airbrush

[Endercreeper01]

A. Is it possible to travel @ or near light speed (or beyond!)

 

If you have mass, it is impossible to go at the speed of light, but it is possible to go near it. The energy required to get an object with mass m to a velocity of v is

[latex]E=mc^2 \left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}} - 1 \right)[/latex]

Where c is the speed of light and E is energy.

However, it requires huge amounts of energy which are difficult to obtain with our current technology. Currently, we are not able to, but we may be to one day.

[Enthalpy]

A. Very near to speed light, that's already done, but just with electrons, protons, lead ions. To propel a human body near speed light, we have no technology, not even a guess of it.

 

A bis. If the traveller survives permanent 30m/s², he achieves speeds similar to light within four months. At least that would go.

 

B. Yes, time would slow down without limit as he approaches light speed, so that the traveller could reach any distance (which looks smaller to him) within a limited time - if only technology could achieve the speed. Notice that time doesn't slow down for his family that stayed on Earth.

 

C. None. Nuclear fission and fusion are not concentrated enough to achieve anything near light speed. Antimatter would, but is out of our technological reach.

 

D. Ignoring all about the propulsion, how to answer about the materials?

 

E. I'm too old to say "never", for having seen things realize that were doomed "impossible" before: detecting and even imaging exoplanets, imaging individual atoms... But I'm old enough to say "not with the current technology", even wildly extrapolated.