Talk:Interstellar travel/Archive for 2011

NEEMO & Nautilus-X
At a very preliminary and elementary level, some things are actually happening at NASA that begin to be of interest for the foundations of very long duration crewed missions. More on MMSEV & Nautilus-X is at Space exploration, here, and here. While NASA is not quite ready to fund an interstellar mission yet ("NASA 100-year starship"), there is already some recognition in the Agency that these studies and exercises may be (along with the ISS) foundational steps in that direction. Wwheaton (talk) 21:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Nautilus-X, already an article. I fail to see what relevance some powerpoint presentations have to interstellar travel, since these plans are unlikely to look anything like some (far) future intersellar mission.  These studies might have an impact on Interplanetary spaceflight, perhaps. ChiZeroOne (talk) 00:39, 11 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The powerpoint presentation shows, this is a concept study involving all the major NASA centers, using the MMSEV as representative, with current investigation ongoing as reported here. Although interstellar application is obviously far in the future, still it gives a (referenced) benchmark to the state of present activity.  We need to know where we are to gauge how far we are from where we would like to go, after all.  This is explicitly addressed in the refs.  And of course nobody knows what a far-future interstellar mission is going to look like. Wwheaton (talk) 02:01, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Space debris
One of the dificulties is the space debris too. Spacecraft moving at 10-30% of "c" could be devastated even by some dust particle. SpaceMan91.148.84.61 (talk) 19:56, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh,it's already mentioned. Sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.148.84.61 (talk) 17:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Charged Black hole Jumping
Can anyone substantiate this section? It seems poorly written and has no citations. Unicorn27 (talk) 16:13, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Bad references
The first referenced article, by Ian O'Neill, is a piece of crap pretty with the same style and incompetence as the Required Energy section. To say that storing 100 years of current earth energy production is the insurmountable obstacle to space travel is ridiculously silly. To state that this *energy* must be mined from other planets or asteroids is more ridiculous. The energy would be captured from the Sun. The energy can be stored over multiple years. Energy production has grown exponentially and will likely continue to grow exponentially for quite some time. The sun can clearly provide as much energy as the Earth currently consumes per year. We can imagine scaling up existing space based solar panel systems while benefiting from manufacturing economies of scale and the learning curve that reduces costs as we gain production experience. We scaled up computer processing power by a factor of a billion in 60 years. We've easily doubled energy production from grid-tied solar PV every two years. Separately, we've also doubled wind power every couple of years. To suggest that humans cannot produce the requisite energy is to state that humans now know everything that humans ever will know and humans can no longer innovate. 71.141.106.56 (talk) 06:02, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The Ian O'Neill page appears to be poor commentary on a Wired article: http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/space_limits?currentPage=all. The wired article is closer to a primary reference. But this really needs a primary reference more directly connected to Cassenti. 71.141.106.56 (talk) 06:43, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMJPC08_1874/PV2008_4797.pdf, a paper by Cassenti possibly presented at the conference the Wired article refers to seems to suggest that Cassenti is mis-represented by Wired and various references to that article. The wired article concludes: "reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible". Cassenti states "The results clearly show that the interstellar ramjet will have to overcome significant problems; hence, it will not be a reality for any of today’s generation. Nevertheless, we will see, that it may actually be feasible." 71.141.106.56 (talk) 06:43, 6 December 2011 (UTC)