How Do We Go About Exploring New Planets?

We need speed before anything else!!!

"The fastest probe, however, is Voyager 1 with a velocity of nearly 39,000 mph (63,000 km/h). Given its greater speed, Voyager 1 currently holds the record as the fastest interplanetary spacecraft and has passed the Pioneers to become the farthest manmade object from the Sun.

None of these four spacecraft is traveling towards our closest star Proxima Centauri that lies about 4.2 light years away. If Voyager 1 were headed in that direction, however, it would still take the vehicle over 73,000 years to get there! "

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q0225.shtml

Did you miss this advance in the speed? Expected to reduce a trip to mars from 2 years to 40 days. At that rate, you could get to Proxima Centauri in... just 4,000 years?? Ah well, they'll still have to build on this one.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/01/07/tech-space-plasma-rocket-nautel.html

"closest star Proxima Centauri that lies about 4.2 light years away. If Voyager 1 were headed in that direction, however, it would still take the vehicle over 73,000 years to get there!"

Going over to those distance places doesn't sound possible in near (even farther) future. Even communicating with them would only be possible if only we find some media that is much, much faster than light! For example, if we send a signal at light speed, it will return after 4.2 years. If we get a medium at 12 times faster than light, it might return in 4.2 months, right?

There could be planets which evolved much earlier to us and much advance than us. Why are they not probing us? Or probing us and enjoying funs here without our knowledge?!

Yesyen, I just can't explain crop circles. They are too well done to be finished in one night by people with strings and planks. We have way too many UFOs for comfort. Sooner or later one is going to be publicly displayed before the government can hide it.

They are too well done to be finished in one night by people with strings and planks.

EH???
How many man days work do you think there is in walking around in a field??
I expect they plan it first and they are people who want to do it and be creative and have fun...
It won't take as long as it takes the average middle management meeting to decide on the colour for the new product and the font for the brochure
Del

Space is large and mostly empty. Even one such probe will be very expensive with negligible chance of hitting pay dirt. We should have detected structured raidio transmissions from other nearby intelligent beings (assuming that they are at least matching us in technology) by now.

This is not to say that such do not exist, only that we have not detected any signals (not necessarily aimed at us). There is no usable solar power once we exit oour solar system. An unpowered ballistic station will not be fast enough nor can it maintain course.

I am afraid that each such civilization is destined to remain isolated.

When we are evolved enough, the aliens will show us how it works. Right now we are too savage.

Or, when they feel it is in their best interests, the folks that do know, from examining alien craft, will tell us. Right now, it's still secret. Don't hold your breath.

I'm sure if anyone stumbled across how to transport or time travel, he soon would get a visit from the men in black. Don't think they don't exist. They do.

Start googling 'Philadelphia experiment' or too much Tesla stuff and see if your phone doesn't get tapped.

The aliens are shielding themselves very well. The dark mass is probably shielded civilization. They do this for fear we will form cargo cults.

Look it up.

If you have any doubts of this, just ask yourself, what do we call the area 51 groups?

They will have specialists who study us from afar with stealthy artifacts we are unaware of, who have their type of politically correct groups to leave the earthmen alone, remember, any contact with an advanced culture destroys he lesser.

My wife's an alien, I asked her years ago. She said we need to fold space. I Still can't get my head around folding a vacuum. I guess string theory must have some thing to do with individual strands within the fabric of space. Maybe you fold it like a sheet or a pair of pants. I wonder though what type of fabric that is. Maybe it's Kevlar? it's gotta be pretty strong to hold all them planets in there orbits. If that fabric was painted black would that account for dark matter or does it not really matter at all?

Aside from that she says that it's pretty much a useless proposition. Most extraterrestrial species are well aware of us and stay well out of site on purpose. They consider it slumming to be here. The wife is here under a political/asylum program. As long as she does not provide information helping our species with time/space travel they will not annihilate us. Kind of a don't ask don't tell policy arranged between our immigration department and their department of interplanetary affairs.

Personally I like not being annihilated. At least not often.

does she have a control pod inside your cranium, and drive you like an automaton?

No pod.

But she certainly tries to get into my head every chance she gets and control my every thought and movement.

I think she uses telekinesis on me. Or perhaps she's empathic as she's often trying to make me feel guilty about things. Usually in the evening after a hard days work when I'm trying to unwind, especially on those rare occasions when there's a new episode of Dirty Jobs or Mythbusters.

She just doesn't under stand. Us earthlings don't have special powers of telepathy and what not. We have to do things the old fashion way. It's not like we can just re-define things to suit our needs. However this does seem to be working for those damn-ocrats. Maybe their aliens too.

So what you are saying is... the last great mystery of the universe... the final frontier.. is Not space and other planets.. It's Women! Doc Brown was right!

(I wonder if we can get some government funding to study them?)

The sort answer: we don't.

The long answer comes from Wikipedia:

"The velocity for a manned round trip of a few decades to even the nearest star is thousands of times greater than those of the present space vehicles. This means that due to the square law, millions of times as much energy is required. Accelerating one ton to one-tenth of the speed of light requires at least 450 PJ or 4.5 × 10¹⁷ J or 125 billion kWh, not accounting for losses. This energy has to be carried along, as solar panels do not work far from the Sun and other stars.

There is some belief that the magnitude of this energy may make interstellar travel impossible. It is reported that at the 2008 Joint Propulsion Conference, where future space propulsion challenges were discussed and debated, a conclusion was reached that it is improbable that humans will ever explore beyond the Solar System. Brice N. Cassenti, an associate professor with the Department of Engineering and Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, stated "At least 100 times the total energy output of the entire world would be required for the voyage (to Alpha Centauri)"

Now if we could make a wormhole or "fold space"....

Chris has opened the door, I'll add a little. It is believed that psychic activities are instantaneous, irregardless of distance. Like when Lord Canarven (King Tut financier) died, his dog knew right away. Stuff like that. Out of Sci-Fi is 'The Force', which can represent all kinds of psychic abilities. Not sure if it's true, but I read of tests that confirmed ESP to be instantaneous. Hard to do a test, even the moon is only about one second away at light speed.

If this is true, psychic powers could connect with distant planets in an instant. Don't know if any tests have been done, like distant viewing or whatever it was that the CIA was doing.

This is a little off the beaten path for CR4.

I say this in good humour - because I have followed CR4 and Chrisg288 seems to be a really good guy.

Chris - you are from Alberta. You ARE a flatlander!! (he-he)

- - - [from a BC'er]

hee hee.. no really flat land is next door to the east. I'm only two hours from the mountains due west.

I'm stuck between saskatchewan and sasquatchewan (bc)

Chris

GA to Chris. But I think if we have to stop being flatlanders then we must also get out of the box of thinking we are in a box. Startrek dared to search for the final frontiers or at least its writers dared to conjure the magic that held us in awe when it first came out and perhaps still does. I like the idea of thinking nothing is impossible. A good friend of mine keeps telling me " impossible only means it will take a little longer". He is a carpenter who can work magic. Well I think if all the astrophysicists and engineers can be locked in a room until they came up with an idea for space travel the idea will come. It just may take another millennium or so. Maybe man will actually harness particles like photons and build something like a photon ship that can carry other larger particles. Perhaps this ship would then be slowed by dragging all the heavier particles but would reach speeds we think are impossible today. The sun is a very rich source of photons. "..beam me up Scotty." Hell I'm only dreaming.

The recent discovery of exoplanets and with better earthly observations we just may find another earth like planet in the much nearer future. When that happens discussion of how to get there and what to bring with such a ship may become an important issue.

In the meantime we can only dream or have out of world experiences.

I thought I was the only person to read Flatland, it's so weird, a great little book.

is this the one?

Yeah, that's it. Good reading, will make you smart.

Good reading, will make you smart.
So will a damn good spanking
Del

I was just thinking the other day: "Gosh, the internet is cool!" In my lifetime, we've gone from writing computer programs using holes in paper to waving our digits in front of a screen.

The iPhone was released in 2007, three freakin' years ago, and there are 30 million+ of them out there. Fifteen years ago, cell phones were bricks (IIRC). Now, they're the size they are because they need to be large enough for a human to use. (They could be a lot smaller.) And roughly 1/3rd of humanity has one now.

I give it about ten years before humanity develops something that looks vaguely like a hive mind. A couple years after that, someone(s) will stumble on the way to fold space, zip through the next higher dimension, etc. What we'll find, I won't venture a guess beyond it'll be beyond our expectations.