Nearest Star has a Possibly Habitable Planet

Your late to the party. Look 5 threads down.

Duplicate topic alert.

Rough crowd.

Well some of us are known to be the 'Scratchy Bitey Fighty' types.

Yeah, we are a tough crowd. Sorry for the late arrival. The idea that any tabloid would leap to the preposterous idea that the neighboring star's planet could be visited, let alone explored, just seemed like perfect food for CR4 fodder.

So, can anybody tell me why CR4 no longer has good discussions?

The Mars trip is booked up. Where do I sign up for this one?

I heard you can get there in 17,000 years using current propulsion technologies. Be sure to take the missus with you. Your descendants will thank you.

Even by hyperloopy?... Or wait.. Maaaybe someone can devise a flod in spacetime and walk right onto rhe planet.. Just ask your nearest hypothetical physicist.

It might be possible to get there quicker with this technology.

Bouncing photons is a very inefficient way to transfer momentum. Compare the energy of a flashlight beam compared with the amount of kinetic energy gained by something illuminated by it. Not very efficient!

Accelerating any significant mass to a fraction of the speed of light requires considerable energy and it can't be really inefficient.

The biggest problem of an interstellar vehicle is reaction mass. We have abundant energy sources if we use nuclear. The problem is converting this energy into momentum.

Rockets can only accelerate the reaction mass which they carry, and are only able to navigate the solar system by playing gravitational pinball with the planets. This is not going to work for interstellar travel.

Aircraft convert energy into momentum by accelerating the surrounding air. What is needed for an interstellar craft is a means to capture interstellar gas (which is very rarified) and, like and aircraft, accelerating this gas. If the gas is ionized, perhaps some kind of magnetic "scoop" (Brussard ramjet, or modifications) can capture this gas to use as reaction mass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Just my thoughts.

I have always liked the daring concept of the Bussard ramjet but it and even more an Earth based laser propulsion system pose for me an unsolved problem, slowing down safely. A laser from Earth maybe able to push a craft to extreme velocities but it cannot pull it back. Similarly a ramjet can conceivably capture interstellar gas on the forward side to make thrust out the back side but I don't see how the net forward thrust can be redirected to slow anything down.

I suspect the Brussard ramjet would brake at high speeds if you shut off the fusion. I don't know if that would be sufficient.

Here is another interesting idea I read about a long while back, a magnetic solar sail. It could be used for acceleration at this end and braking at the other end.

http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/space/M2P2/

When there is so much nothing that a magnetic funnel is needed to capture interstellar gas for fusion then there won't be much friction to slow anything down. One has to be careful in a friction-less environment.

Ions can be steered electromagnetically to come out a set of front-facing nozzles, yes?

I reckon we could piece together a rocket at the ISS and ferry fuel up to it, to make a high speed vehicle that could reach this planet...maybe get up to a million miles an hour....it's only about 24,738,000,000,000 miles away, that would put us at 24,738,000 hours transit time, or roughly 1,030,750 days....or 2,824 years...give or take...so yeah we're going to need some serious speed...

Hey, this thread looks familiar!

What no white light?...sounds very depressing, count me out....

Psychology taught us that if Earth is our wife and we are her husband. The next big thing Earth could expect after knowing her husband is speculating and finding somewhere to get it on to is a Divorce.

Must be a very bad news for Earth.

It will be interesting to learn more about this planet. I hear Whataburger will open a franchise there within a couple of years.