NASA discovers most Earth-like planet yet, and 1400ly is a galactic stone throw Options

[Shiro]

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-kep...cousin-to-earth

""On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington" The new guy, for now called Kepler-452b, is around 60% larger than Earth and has a 385 cycle around its a star (Kepler-452) that is around 1.5*10^9 years older than the Sun. It's inside of the inhabitable zone and has an atmosphere that most likely contains a lot of oxygen and has liquid water too.

Discus this one, do you think we can eventually make it there and check it out?

[Svea Rike]

In our lifetimes? No. But in the distant future, that planet might just be a new home for humanity. As soon as we've eradicated the indigenous population, that is.

[Sargeant Rho]

It's 1400 lightyears years away. To get there within a human lifespan you have to travel at 99.9995% of the speed of light, where the travel time for the passengers would shrink to 14 years. But such a speed would be ludicrous. So if we want to go there it'll either take several thousand years, or NASA will have to build a working warp drive

That being said, there are other planets, similarly high on the Earth Similarity Index nearby. Kepler 452b has an ESI of 0.83, possibly 0.89 (Earth is 1). Much closer to us are Gliese 667Cc at 23.6 lightyears, with an ESI of .84, Gliese 832c, at 16.1 lightyears and an ESI of .81, but other values are better than Earth, it might actually be more suitable for Life than Earth, same goes for Gliese 667Cc, and finally Tau Ceti e, 11.9 lightyears, ESI of 0.78.

The planets I listed here could actually be reached with a probe we could develop right now, the journey would still take a bit over 230 years to reach Gliese 667Cc with the best thing we could develop at the moment though. In 50-100 years we might actually have propulsion methods that can push a ship to 1/3 of the speed of light, putting these within reach.

[Oliver]

Why not? We are already going to "colonize" Mars, so to say, this isn't going to be much a surprise if it happens in our lifetime after the tech boom.

This post has been edited by Oliver: 25 Jul 2015, 13:11

[Sargeant Rho]

Well, we'll have to find a way to concentrate a LOT of negative energy or mass into a ring in order to build the rear half a warp drive. But I think with current tech it would actually be possible to build the frontal section of a warp drive, it wouldn't allow for faster than light travel, but it might allow you to go really really fast.

But with slower than light, it will still take several thousand years to get there.

Edit: Did some digging, and by digging I mean 2 minutes of google, and found this:



This is the most plausible Star Ship design to date, and could accelerate to about 4.5% of the speed of light. It'd take a very long time to reach Kepler 452b with this. It'd take about 100 years to get to Alpha Centauri. Saturn V for scale.

This post has been edited by Sargeant Rho: 25 Jul 2015, 13:53

[Sanguivorant]

Honestly, I just want to know what kind of animals live on that planet. Can we make a magnifier of that kind of power?

[Sargeant Rho]

Not really. We can find the exact chemical composition of the atmosphere from here, but not what kind of animals live there. We can see if there's chloropyll using plant life though.

[Shiro]

Honestly, I just want to know what kind of animals live on that planet. Can we make a magnifier of that kind of power?

Not really. IIRC the best magnifier we have so far has a reach of 500,000 km or something, which would give you a picture the size of a post stamp. Basicly if we send a probe, it would take at least 1400 years to reach and realistically A LOT longer than that, then the signals would have to be send back, which means they would most likely disperse on the way back and thus result in a lot of static and nothing else. That means that the probe would have to come back, which may take about the same amount of time. So for you and me, we will most definitely, 99.99999999% sure never know.

[3rdShockArmy]

If all important space agencies start working on a ship now, it might take a whole century or more to make a ship fast enough to get there in the life-span of the crew. We still have no idea how human body copes with superspeeds (we have some theories, and they don't sound so good). But technologically speaking, if Russians start working on the highly advanced rocket technology, Americans and Japanese on new age of electronics and Europeans on advanced biology studies, than we might have a chance in a relatively near future.

This post has been edited by 3rdShockArmy: 25 Jul 2015, 19:41

[Sargeant Rho]

Velocity is not an issue for the crew. It is an issue for the ship, because at the speed you need to go to reach Kepler 452b in a human lifespan, dust grains impact with the force of nuclear bombs. But that's actually the lesser problem, and nothing a laser and a magnetic field generator can't solve. The bigger problem is that there is no conceivable propulsion system that can speed a ship up to 99.995% of the speed of light and then slow it back down again. Antimatter rockets can do 92% at most. It might however be possible to use a magnetic sail to brake, and spend all of your fuel to speed up, in which case it may just be possible to reach those speeds. 1 year at 1g gets you really close to the speed of light.

This post has been edited by Sargeant Rho: 25 Jul 2015, 19:51

[Pepo]

Velocity is not an issue for the crew. It is an issue for the ship, because at the speed you need to go to reach Kepler 452b in a human lifespan, dust grains impact with the force of nuclear bombs. But that's actually the lesser problem, and nothing a laser and a magnetic field generator can't solve. The bigger problem is that there is no conceivable propulsion system that can speed a ship up to 99.995% of the speed of light and then slow it back down again. Antimatter rockets can do 92% at most. It might however be possible to use a magnetic sail to brake, and spend all of your fuel to speed up, in which case it may just be possible to reach those speeds. 1 year at 1g gets you really close to the speed of light.

The only technology that I think we can use nowadays for interplanetary traveling is using nuclear explosions to accelerate a spacecraft(aka project orion) granted it would probably irradiated all the earth atmosphere, but if we build a large enough ship with a working biosphere, the trip will be feasible at about 30% , which is a realistic estimate of a speed( your estimate of 92% is kinda of unrealistic considering the increase of mass once you start approaching the speed of light)

[Sargeant Rho]

Orion is a rather inelegant solution. You can take measures to avoid nuclear fallout to the greatest possible extent, and such a drive wouldn't produce large electromagnetic pulses either. Orion also doesn't go much beyond 1% of the speed of light, so it's not exactly interstellar travel material (470 years to alpha centauri).
The Z-Pinch Fusion drive of the Firefly (ship in the picture above) in turn can do 4.5-5% of the speed of light if you use Deuterium-Deuterium fuel, and I think much more if you use Deuterium-Helium 3 fuel.

92% isn't my estimate, it's the estimate from Project Valkyrie, a study by Charles Pellegrino and Jim Powell, which does however have some problems, mostly the production of antimatter, and lack of rigidity of the ship. both of which are solvable however. Valkyrie would look kind of like the Venture Star in Avatar.

We don't actually have Orion nowadays. We do have Z-Pinch fusors.

Interplanetary travel in turn is relatively easy, clustered solar-powered hall effect ion engines can do that. A miniaturized Firefly engine could do the trick too. Another possibility is to have spacecraft with magnetic sails, and have particle cannons fire at those sails, pushing the spacecraft along, without the spacecraft itself needing fuel. This system can be fucktoupled in size and be used as a sort of interstellar highway.

This post has been edited by Sargeant Rho: 25 Jul 2015, 20:44

[Svea Rike]

Rho, how are you so smart?

[Sargeant Rho]

High Functioning Autism and too much free time.

[3rdShockArmy]

Rho, how are you so smart?

The guy's a fricken walking Britannica.

[Pepo]

Orion is a rather inelegant solution. You can take measures to avoid nuclear fallout to the greatest possible extent, and such a drive wouldn't produce large electromagnetic pulses either. Orion also doesn't go much beyond 1% of the speed of light, so it's not exactly interstellar travel material (470 years to alpha centauri).
The Z-Pinch Fusion drive of the Firefly (ship in the picture above) in turn can do 4.5-5% of the speed of light if you use Deuterium-Deuterium fuel, and I think much more if you use Deuterium-Helium 3 fuel.

92% isn't my estimate, it's the estimate from Project Valkyrie, a study by Charles Pellegrino and Jim Powell, which does however have some problems, mostly the production of antimatter, and lack of rigidity of the ship. both of which are solvable however. Valkyrie would look kind of like the Venture Star in Avatar.

We don't actually have Orion nowadays. We do have Z-Pinch fusors.

Interplanetary travel in turn is relatively easy, clustered solar-powered hall effect ion engines can do that. A miniaturized Firefly engine could do the trick too. Another possibility is to have spacecraft with magnetic sails, and have particle cannons fire at those sails, pushing the spacecraft along, without the spacecraft itself needing fuel. This system can be fucktoupled in size and be used as a sort of interstellar highway.

Z-pinch fusors are good for solar system traveling, but not for interstellar manned flights. A 4,5 % speed of light is only usable for the nearest system. That's why I believe the nuclear propulsion is the only technology we can use for a big spaceship now a days. A pulse engine is really simple, which means that it also reliable. It can attains great speeds , much bigger than other none experimental technology of today ( and yes, it can reach a 30% the speed or light or even greater, it all depends on the number and size of the bombs) Also the emp effects in smaller bombs can be easily neglected. The main drawback is radiation and is a very big one. However it is the only technology that can we used today for interplanetary flights. I think that magnetic flags can also be great , but more research is needed. Antimatter on the other hand hasn't been attained outside of labs and reacts violently with normal one, so there is still a long time before it can even be consider an option

But I think that even at speeds nears the one of the light, space traveling would take to long . until we discover faster-than light communication ( theoretically possible but it will be hard to use it in RL) , faster than light traveling and some advances terraforming, I think that interplanetary flights would need to wait

[Sargeant Rho]

Orion can't realistically do 30% of the speed of light. 3.3% is the useful limit. Also Orion has one major issue: Stress. The extreme forces inflicted on the shock absorbers will wear them down, while a Z-Pinch fusor has no moving parts except for the fuel.

The crew on a starship wouldn't be awake, they'd be in some form of suspended animation or cryonic sleep, so for colonization purposes, 4.5% is more than enough.

Helium 3-Deuterium based fusion engines could get a starship up to 20% of the speed of light, as could a bussard ramjet, which however would have to be accelerated to 0.2% of the speed of light before it actually works, which it could do with on-board fuel.

Antimatter storage is a field of ongoing research, one way is to store it in a series of magnetic rings, another would be to keep it in a state of deep freeze using lasers, and suspending it magnetically, in the form of anti-hydrogen.

Addendum: Nobody has ever built facilities for the purpose of producing and storing spaceship-levels of antimatter. There are ways to cheapskate the production, by siphoning antiprotons and positrons from Earth's and Saturn's Magnetic Fields with large magnetic traps.

This post has been edited by Sargeant Rho: 26 Jul 2015, 0:31

[Keeper]

I don't know that much about science, but didn't the LHC find the particle that is responsible for the mass of objects?

FTL is impossible due to the e=mc^2 equation, which means to have something approach light speed, it'll have to weigh infinite tons.

Theoretically, couldn't you apply that particle onto a rocket so that it weighs 0 grams, thus allowing it to go faster than light?

This post has been edited by Dementor: 27 Jul 2015, 1:10

[Sargeant Rho]

That's not how it works. Most particles interact with the Higgs field, giving them mass. The interaction is done through the Higgs boson, similar to, but not exactly, in the way the electromagnetic force is carried by photons, which also are bosons. You can't really shield anything from the Higgs field, as it is literally everywhere. Furthermore, not all particles get their mass from the Higgs field. The Higgs Boson itself doesn't, and dark matter possibly doesn't get it from the Higgs field either.

Now, FTL is not impossible. But it also is impossible. You can't ever get to the speed of light in your own reference frame (you can move *faster* than light, but you can't accelerate through the speed of light, and physics get really complicated at that point. But spacetime itself isn't subject to that limit at all, and an Alcubierre Warp Drive would make use of that fact. It contracts spacetime in front, and expands spacetime behind the drive, creating a bubble of spacetime that can move at any arbitrary speed, several times the speed of light relative to the point of origin even. The important part is that the ship itself doesn't move. It's stationary in the bubble, and doesn't even get close to the speed of light within that bubble.

A massless particle can only move at the speed of light, and no velocity other than the speed of light. We should rename c from speed of light to speed of massless particles actually.

On a somewhat related topic, NASA and ESA are each sending probe to Europa, respectively the Europa Multiple Flyby Mission (previously called Europa Clipper). and the JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer).

This post has been edited by Sargeant Rho: 27 Jul 2015, 19:30

[Tobæ]

I'm late but why cant we have human embryos growing in the ship to massively expand the ships lifespan?

I'm also pretty sure that the most troubling thing is how to slow the ship down. To slow the ship down 90% you would have to use 90% of the fuel/power you used for accelerating.

Also manoeuvring the ship is excessively hard and inefficient meaning the only way would be to precisely work out the maths to fly there (angle velocity etc). This option would leave a stupidly small window for error. Like ridiculous making the mission success rate astronomically low.

Last thing, asteroids, in belts, stray ones, what ever. They exist and cant be picked up and tracked by Kepler. They don't play nice with space ships...

This post has been edited by Tobæ: 27 Aug 2015, 16:32