222 Comments

1. James M. Essig on January 28, 2007 at 18:33

   Hi Adam;

   Thanks for the above clarifications and corrections. Also, I agree with you on the great difficulty posed for the manipulation of photons on the Planck energy scale. I can see that we have trouble enough dealing with photons on the ~ 1 million to ten million eV range from nuclear reactions that require a lot of shielding. I cannot imagine what sort of manmade materials and/or ship sized apparatus that might be required to produce and/or beam, let alone provide shielding, from Planck energy scale photons. Perhaps sometime in the distant future the materials science folks and/or the transport phenomena folks will figure this one out.

   At least for the relatively near future, It seems that we may be stuck with ramjets and mass-beam drives. It seems that if these systems are optimized, we may be able to travel about the Milky Way Galaxy within the ship board lifetime of a modern contemporary human. Pushing relativistic time dilation even further, may enable us to reach out to other galaxies. Perhaps any future medical interventions to greatly enhance the human life expectancy could be of help to any future decision makers for human space exploration to the more remote regions of the Milky Way and beyond.

   Very Respectfully;

   Jim

2. James M. Essig on January 29, 2007 at 2:55

   A few more notions regarding interstellar space travel that have circulated in the open literature over the years have come to mind tonight.

   1) It has been suggested that the net positive energy associated with the zero point energy vacuum state of our cosmos is on the order of 120 orders of magnitude greater than the real particle energy density within the current cosmos or big bang as we know it. According to this supposedly but possibly outdated notion, we do not notice this tremendous positive energy density because it is almost completely counterbalanced by negative energy to yield a result that is in line with observations such as those that measure the influence of electromagnetic zero point energy fluctuations between two parallel conductive plates in close proximity to each other. Theoretically, there are also zero point energy states and associated fluctuations involving the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity, and the various proposed forms of the Higgs Field which are; according to the standard model of particle physics, mediated by Higgs Bosons, and finally perhaps other types of vacuum energy fields.

   The conjecture I am outlining here involves the possibility that perhaps the positive and negative energy balance can some how be locally depolarized such that the tremendous positive energy can be released at least in part to power interstellar spaceships, be these craft powered by: 1) reactionary means such as electron or ion rockets, photon rockets, tachyon rockets magnetoplasmahydrodynamic, electroplasmahydrodynamic, or electromagnetoplasmahydrodynamic drive systems, reaction with the interstellar and/or intergalactic magnetic fields, and photon or mass drive sails; 2) spacetime warpage through means such as antigravity; 3) the production and maintenance of stable wormholes, etc.. If the latent positive energy density of this magnitude could be decoupled from the nearly equal magnitude of the negative energy density (together which result in an almost zero overall net vacuum field energy density) within a cubic centimeter of the 4-D spacetime that we are familliar with, the resulting energy release would boggle the mind at dozens of orders of magnitude greater than the total real particle energy content of the observable universe. Obviously great care would have to be excersized in depolarizing even a tiny volume of spacetime such that the resulting energy release does not trash the currently observable universe, let alone lead to a spatial and temporal runaway phase change in the vacuum energy state of the observable cosmos.

   Now its been said more recently that recourse to such a high positive energy density state within the big bang is no longer theoretically necessary and seems to be in conflict with scientific observations, partly because we have not detected any such enourmous energy densities, but perhaps it may be useful to “dust” this concept off and deconstruct some of the more recent mathematical reasoning and theories to see if we might indeed have such an enourmous energy supply right under our hands and feet.

   2) Regarding vacuum energy state phase changes and the use of harnessing a socalled artificially induced collapse of a vacuum energy state to a lower potential energy and the resulting release of energy, it has been suggested that there is a possibility that the big bang we live in could indeed naturally enter another phase change and perhaps another associated period of rapid inflationary like accelleration of expansion. Infact, it has been suggested that there is no lower limit to how low of an energy state that such drop could result in, nor potentially any limit on the number of sequential drops that might occur for repeated collapsing of the vacuum state of our cosmos. This might be the case due to the possibility that there may be no lower absolute boundary to which the universe’s vacuum energy state is bounded. In effect, the universe’s vacuum energy state may forever be prone to the danger of tunnelling to higher energy states and/or lower energy states with the tunnelling to lower energy states much more likely due to the thermodynamic principle that natural systems tend to drop to the lowest energy states available at the time.

   If such a phase change action could be induced on a local scale without endangering the rest of the cosmos, then perhaps an even greater volume specific release of energy is possible than under item 1) above. Also some or all of the propulsion methods listed under item 1) above may apply to the vacuum energy state collapse as described here in item 2).

   3) Another more down to Earth method I remember reading about involves the use of a large sail that is reflective to the ambient cosmic microwave background radiation [CMBR] impinging on one side and transmissive or absorbing of the CMBR impinging on the reverse side. Here, the sail would be pushed along by the CMBR incident on the reflective side whereas the CMBR incident on the reverse side would either; 1) pass through the sail imparting virtually no momentum to the sail, and/or be atleast partiallly absorbed and converted to useful forms of energy such as electrical energy which could then run an electron or ion rocket or other form of reactionary propulsion.

   In order to greatly increase the mass specific thrust of the sail, it might optionally be composed of a highly conductive if not superconductive fiberous mesh or grid with grid spacings on the order of the average wavelenght of the CMBR. The fibers could optionally be composed of carbon nanotubes; and as such, they might only need to be a few nanometers thick.

   Anyhow, my brain is out of juice right know, and, so I will stop here. I look forward to further correspondance in the days ahead.

   Jim

3. Edg Duveyoung on January 29, 2007 at 12:45

   A theory I came across years ago in the comic book The New Gravity (or something like that title, or Gravity is the 4th dimention maybe, dunno for sure it was by K.B. Robertson) says that electromagnetic energy is radiant at all times and that gravity is an illusion caused by the mutual expansion of EVERYTHING.

   Too much to explain that theory here, but if it is true, perhaps a “vacuum rail gun” can be a propulsion method. Inside the ship, a “perfectly empty of all radiance” space might be constructed in a chamber with a “loose” mass that can be expected to “fall into” or be “sucked into” this space. Nature abhors a vacuum, right? Well when the mass arrives in that space, the momentum created would be imparted to the ship when the mass “hits bottom” inside the perfectly empty space. Like a rail gun, this process can be repeated arbitrarily. I have no idea if such a perfect vacuum concept even makes sense to today’s physics’ concepts of the vacuum state. All we need to do is find the perfect shield to keep radiation out of the “empty space chamber.” Easily put into words, eh? The acceleration imparted to the ship would be as if an outside agency is throwing that mass at the ship. There won’t be any opposite and equal reaction of the mass of the ship — it won’t be that mass that anchors the “vacuum rail gun.”

   Does this write up make any sense to anyone other than me? Probably not, but if anyone wants to explore this more, comment here, and I’ll do more to explain this “invention.”

   Edg

4. george scaglione on January 29, 2007 at 14:15

   thank you all very very much for your comments and taking the time and energy to make them.that is putting them out there for all to see! also jim…thanks for the kind comments i hope i (we) are indeed doing some good !! and… as for the concept of using the zero point field to propell spacecraft,YES i have been pushing that idea myself for a long time now everywhere from discussions on line with my friends via e mail a group i founded and call “spacegroup” to nasa’s brakthrough propulsion physics project! i mean… if a ship could “tap into” this potentially HUGE amount of energy,which would be free and everywhereand which the ship would not have to carry…well people,i leave it to your fertile imaginations!! with great good wihes to all your friend george scaglione udt109@aol.com

5. Adam on January 29, 2007 at 18:08

   Hi James

   Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee sequence of stories/novels invokes the GUT force to create energy just like inflation created mass-energy “ex nihilo” – I think that’s somewhat like what you’re suggesting, that we could harness the ‘energy of creation’.

   The areal energy density of the CMB is very low and probably too low to use for thrust. It’s 3E-6 W/m^2, or in thrust terms a mere 1E-14 N/m^2. What could be spread out enough to produce useful thrust from such a meagre source is beyond me. Anything light enough to give even nano-gee acceleration is probably too light to reflect and absorb microwaves 1 mm in wavelength.

   Adam

6. Adam on January 29, 2007 at 18:11

   Edg

   Expansion theory explains one or two things and nothing else. It’s contradicted by what it doesn’t explain, which is why the author never mentions those things.

   Why postulate expansion to ‘explain’ what didn’t need explaining – like magnets sticking to fridges.

   Adam

7. george scaglione on January 30, 2007 at 9:22

   adam, thank you for sharing your excellent comments. but you know the problem is this… we NEED ALOT of scientific progress to BEGIN to know how to do the things we’d like to do! maybe sometimes i wait a bit impatiently for these things to finally come to light! respectfully your friend george

8. James M. Essig on January 31, 2007 at 2:02

   Hi Adam;

   I was thinking about the materials specifications of a CMBR absorbing membrane and realized that a one Km^2 membrane at near 100% absorptivity and conversion effeciency of CMBR to electrical power would yield ~ (3 E-6)(E +6) watts or about 3 watts/(Km^2). Assuming the density of carbon nanotube material is on the order of 1000 Kg/(m^3) and that such can be made superconducting in such a way that its effective skin depth for attenuating and absorbing CMBR and converting it to electricity is ~ 1E-9 meter, then a Km^2 monolithic membrane with one nanometer thickness could capture and convert ~3 Watts of CMBR to electrical power to run an ion or electron rocket with a deployed energy capture surface of just one Kg. If it is assummed that the membrane has a grid or mesh type construction that includes 1 nanometer thick fibers spaced about one millimeter apart, then the weight of the energy capture surface is reduced to about 1 milligram/(Km^2).

   For a one nanometer thick monolithic membrane as described above, a 1,000,000 metric ton membrane with surface area of 1 E 9 (Km^2) could capture and convert ~ 3 E 9 watts of CMBR energy into electricity. If the membrane is of the 1 milligram /(Km^2) porous type described above, then the mass for a ~3 E 9 watt capturing and conversion membrane drops to 1 metric ton.

   Now if it turns out that a 1 nanometer thick carbon nanotube membrane can be made absorptive and capable of converting nearly 100% of the incident CMBR to electricity, a monolithic billion Km^2 sheet having a mass of 1,000,000 metric tons as descibed above would result in very low spacecraft accelleration, while using a 1 nanometer thick sheet that has a grid or mesh structure with 1 nanometer thick fibers spaced on average 1 millimeter apart would result in a 1 billion Km^2 sheet with a mass of only 1,000 kgs. Note however, that whatever the form of energy collection sheet, electrical power configuration and collection sytems would no doubt add significantly to the mass of the CMBR collector.

   One very large surface collection area that might be deployed would consist of a train or series of 1 billion Km^2 membranes that are spaced far enough apart in the direction of travel such that the CMBR energy swept out by a forward membrane is replaced by CMBR which fills up the gap between the forward membrane and the sucessive membrane wherein this next membrane in the series is effectively able to convert the ~ 3 E 9 watts of energy incident on it to electricity, and so on, down the entire train or series of sheets. Assumming a 1.5 million Km long series of sheets with each sheet being spaced approximately 30,000 Km apart to allow CMBR radiation filling between the sucessive sheets, then ~ 150 Gigawatts of power is available to power an ion rocket, an electon rocket, or other type of propulsion system.

   If the 1 metric ton 1 billion Km^2 square sheet is used for each stage , then 50 metric tons of energy capture sheet material would be available to provide 200 million horse power which is about the same power output that the Apollo Era Saturn V moon rockets produced at full power output or about 150 Gigawatts.

   Thus, even including the mass of the energy processing, conduction and distribution systems, propulsion system, and crew habitation module, it might might be possible to use CMBR to power long duration manned missions to the nearest stars, and perhaps considerably farther a field, if the human life span can be medically enhanced and/or some forms of suspended animation could be developed such as those that were often featured in science fiction movies during the last half of the 20th Century.

   Assumming 150 Gigawatts of power is available to power a space craft and that the propulsion systems have an efficiencey of ~66 %, then in one year, (10 EXP 11)(3 x 10 EXP 7) Joules or 3 x EXP 18 Joules of kinetic energy can be imparted to the spacecraft. Over 30 years, this adds up to approximately the mass equivalent of kinetic energy of 1 metric ton. For a ship with a total mass equal to 100 metric tons, this results in a velocity after 30 years Earth time, or approximately the same in ship time, of 0.14 C. Long living humans might be able to reach the nearest stars within a human life expectancy of 100 years and yet arrive at these stars early enough to do useful exploratory work.

   If 50,000 metric tons of the 1 metric ton per 1 billion Km^2 grid like material described above is used wherein 150 Terawatts of power may be captured, which at 66% propulsion system efficiency results in a 100,000 ton craft achieving a 30 year Earthtime reference frame kinetic energy increase of the equivalent of 1000 metric tons converted into energy, then after about 30 years Earthtime, the craft will have reached a velocity of about .14 C, allowing it to effectively visit some of our closest stellar neigbors assumming a useful human life expectancy on the order of 100 years can be developed.

   Eventhough the above grid like material would be very fragile and otherwise hard to work with, it would seem to allow for greatly reduced drag that results from passing through the interstellar medium compared to the drag induced on the monolithic membranes. Perhaps some sort on nanotechnology-based self repair mechanism could be used to maintain the membranes as they passed though the interstellar medium. Even if currently impractical for manned interstellar flight, perhaps space probes could be powered this way wherein the crafts would send out messages from humanity as well as be used for scientific exploration. In theory, neglecting drag, such crafts could accellerate for as long as CMBR exist, or, essentially forever.

   No doubt that various materials science and technology hurtles would have to be overcome before such a system could be deployed. It may happen to be the case that even carbon nanotubes, which are theorized to have a tensile strength as much as 60 times higher than an equivalent mass of steel , are far to weak to use in the construction of such a system, but that even stronger materials might be developed which would work.

   As far as vacuum energy harnessing and creation of mass-energy ex nihilo, I am beginning to wonder, as has been suggested in previous scientific literature from others, if spacetime and mass energy are only relatively stable accidental aspects of, or subsiding in, a more fundamental physical substratum or more primative form of naturally occuring material or, ontologically speaking, substance. If such is the case, and we learn how to manipulate any would be such fundamental physical substratum, perhaps we can develope the technology to produce space and time and mass-energy from scratch. Who knows, if such a substratum exists, maybe it subsists in yet a more fundamental or more primitive substratum, which perhaps subsists in yet another substatum, etc.

   I have read of theories in which is was suggested that upon compressing small but macroscopic amounts of a medium called a false vacuum to the volume on the order of a proton, the compressed false vacuum would eventually yield an explosive increase in mass-energy quantity and spacetime production originating from the small volume wherein a baby universe would result, and if the false vacuum state were properly designed, we might be able to create a habitable universe with simmillar, if not ideally identical or nearly identical laws of nature, and fundamental phyical constants to our own universe. No doubt, this would result in a brand new habitat for humanity as well as any other extraterrestrial races that might inhabit our universe.

   Edg, Adam, and George;

   Thanks as always for the continued critique and comments.

   Respectfully;

   Jim

9. Adam on January 31, 2007 at 6:37

   Hi Jim

   Ion rockets need reaction mass and eventually it runs out, thus no eternal acceleration. Also the red-shift will eventually make the CMBR too larger or too short in wavelength to be captured anymore.

   But the ultra-thin dielectric sail isn’t totally without merit as an idea, just wrongly deployed – why not use it to capture the Sun’s light at a low perihelion for truly massive acceleration? Or if it’s power you want then huge starlight collectors will do for power-supply within the Galaxy. Such have been seriously proposed for Oort Cloud colonies.

   Another problem is that a 150 GW power supply used at 66% efficiency produces 50 GW of heat – something of a drag to dispose of. Ion rockets have relatively low efficiencies because the ionisation energy for the propellant is quite large compared to the ion stream’s kinetic energy. More jet-power reduces the relative inefficiency, though magnetic losses will be quite substantial and require large cooling systems.

   Finally I just don’t see how you can produce a substantial bias and net energy from an isotropic CMB – something must balance our the effect you’ve discussed tho I can’t think what. There’s no heat imbalance to drive an energy flow because there’s no sink to the system you describe. I suspect that the absorption of photons one side and the reflection of photons on the other is neglecting emission of heat by the sail itself.

10. James M. Essig on January 31, 2007 at 10:00

    Hi Adam;

    Thanks for the feedback.

    I like the idea of using a dialectric sail to capture sunlight. If such sails could be deployed in a low perihelion for others stars, especially type O or blue supergiant stars, because of their much greater luminousity and intensity of radiation based partly on the T^4 integrated spectral radiancy power output for a black body, I can see that much higher and longer lasting periods of accelleration could occur. Given the fact that type O stars are effectively black body radiators with a surface temperature about 10 times greater than the sun, for a given perihelion approach that would bring a craft to a point corresponding to one for the sun wherein the apparent angular diameters of both stars would be the same, such a craft would receive 10,000 times the power output than it would from the sun. One problem obviously would be how to handle the intense heat combined with the rapid acceleration, but perhaps, suitably temperature resistant, highly reflective, and mechanically strong materials can be developed for this purpose.

    The concept of using huge star light collectors is also interesting. A society that has advanced to the level of cosmic, stellar, or perhaps only planetary scale engineering might to well to capture star light from such reflectors and use the light to power spacecraft and their general energy supply infrastructure. Since star light will be around atleast for the next 10 EXP 14.5 years, due to the relatively extremely long lives of red dwarf stars (which are very common), why not spend lengthy periods of time building the requisite infrastructure to support galactic and perhaps intergalactic energy needs over cosmic time frames.

    Regarding CMBR absorber membranes, you make a good point. I cannot think of a nanometer thick composite material that would have an index of refraction pattern on one side that would permit absorption or reflection of radiation incident on that side but not on the opposing side. If such a material can be engineered, it would probably be a lot thicker than 1 nanometer, and thus would provide for very poor mass specific power output. In order to collect blue dopplar shifted CMBR at extreme relativistic velocities, the sheet would need to be monolithic, once again resulting in extremely heavy and impractical CMBR absorbers.

    Thanks Again;

    Jim

11. Adam on January 31, 2007 at 15:34

    Hi James

    Extreme relativistic speeds do enhance the CMBR and I have wondered what could be done with the anisotropic situation – bright-light forward, darkness behind. Surely some sort of power could be extracted?

    Adam

12. george scaglione on January 31, 2007 at 17:01

    hello all sorry if a partial posting may have been acidentally posted a moment ago had a small computer glitch and i dont know what happened to what i was about to say – so…i’ll try again : thanking all of you for your very interesting and well thought out comments.i enjoy reading them and like it that so much quality thought goes into these subjects! and adam,as to your comment above “suely some sort of power could be extracted”well my friend i have not been hanging around here as long as i have other places on line yet but if i had we all would know that – EXTRACTING POWER for spacecraft propulsion is one of the drums i most like to beat!! you know i’ll tell you the truth my friends the universe is full of things and phenomena which produce HUGE amounts of power i would love to see us be able to tap into!! lately in fact i have been discussing traversable wormholes perhaps more than anything else with friends in other locations such as this.what is the keyword for it all? GRAVITY!!! the power in the force of gravityis in my opinion paramount for several drives up to and including opening the above mentioned wormholes.your comments my friends as always will be welcome. i appreciate them. thank you most respectfully your friend george

13. george scaglione on January 31, 2007 at 17:08

    re read the above and had to add one more comment.i said what i said about gravity because imho it is the one force that can manipulate space/time to do things like,well…open worm holes. even at that i feel it is only fair to say that i am also a great fan of creation of the warp field to help get us around the galaxy too! serious work has started there too (thank goodness)! thank you all yet again george

14. James M. Essig on February 1, 2007 at 0:05

    Hi Adam;

    Hi George;

    Adam, thanks for the feedback regarding dopplar shift induced anisotropicity of the CMBR. Perhaps ulta high relativistic velocities could be achieved first be using something such as beamed electromagnetic energy and/or beamed mass as you suggested previously, followed by the harnessing of the dopplar blue shifted anisotropic CMBR and/or star light after the craft has left the practical beam range for the originating laser, particle accellerator, mass driver, and the like.

    With a value of 1/{{1-[(V^2)/(C^2)]}^(1/2)} = 10^5, the CMBR photons would be blue shifted to extreme ultraviolet regions while the star light would generally be dopplar shifted to hard X-ray and gamma ray frequencies.

    George, thanks for your feedback also. The science of gravity seems to be on the verge of some major developments. It is interesting to note that according to most versions of the big bang, the seperation of gravity as a distinct force theoretically came first through the seperation of gravity and the socalled strong-weak-electromagnetic force so often talked about in G.U.T. theories followed by the electroweak unification, and then by the seperation of the electromagnetic and weak force. Because of this hierarchy and the fact that general relativity deals very strongly with gravity as spacetime curvature, in a very real sense, gravity could be said to have a preemenant role as far as the four known forces are concerned. However, I wonder if other forces will ever be discovered.

    If certain supersymmetry theories are correct, then there exist particles called photinos, gravitinos, gluonos, and weak force particle analogues whereby these particles would be partners to the photon, graviton, gluon, and weak force bosons respectively. Likewise particles called squarks, selectrons, and snuetrinos would be the supersymmetric partners to quarks, electrons, and leptons. Note that there six quarks that come in three flavors as well as their antimatter counterparts. Likewise, there are three leptons (electrons, muons, tau particles) and their antimatter counterparts. There are three neutrinos, one associated with each of the three leptons described above as well as three antineutrino antimatter counterparts. In addition, theoretically, other bosons exist that are referred to as Higgs Bosons or quanta of the Higgs field which theoretically is what imbues massive particles with mass. Some inconclusive evidence was uncovered in certain accellerator experiments a few years back offering hints that the Higg’s Boson was created in a few instances whereby it decayed ultrarapidly into more familiar particles. So far, no absolute experimental proof exists for the existence of Higg’s Bosons. There may according to some theories exist multiple species of Higg’s Bosons.

    Now it is in no way true that I am attempting to lecture or belittle the readers of this blog, rather, the point I am trying to make is that there seems to be so many particles that one wonders if there are additional forces and particles waiting to be discovered. I know that string theory, metatheory, and/or P-brane theory propose to simplify the explanation of this particle zoo, but given the large number of particles allready seriously being proposed in conjuction with the set of known particles, many begin to wonder if what we might discover with more powerful accelerators as they come on line is simply more particle species and/or perhaps further composite structures to the supposedly simple and fundamental particles of the quarks and leptons.

    The point I am really trying to make with this digression is that there may be a huge amount of undiscovered and unimagined physics which may enable us to develope currently unimagined space propulsion techniques and other energy and industrial infrastructure.

    Many years ago, perhaps during the late 1970’s, I remember having read about concepts such as the artificial production of hybrid forces as distinct from the concept of accellerating particles to such an extent that the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the electromagnetic force would become unified, and/or the unification of gravity with the G.U.T. force would become manifest. I have not heard much else on the subject and I wonder if this concept of hybrid forces is no longer emphasized or no longer in vogue. If such hybrid forces could be created, one can only imagine the technological wizardry that would result for space transportation and/or other energy and industrial processes.

    Anyhow, that’s the rap for now.

    Very Respectfully;

    Jim

15. Eric James on February 1, 2007 at 0:25

    Adam Says: January 31st, 2007 at 15:34

    Extreme relativistic speeds do enhance the CMBR and I have wondered what could be done with the anisotropic situation – bright-light forward, darkness behind. Surely some sort of power could be extracted?

    Adam,

    I wonder about that. Wouldn’t any attempt to collect this forward energy put a drag on the ship?

    Also, this messes with my understanding of relativity. Since any arbitrary location in the universe is suppposed to appear to the observer to be the center, and motion is strictly relative, isn’t stating that you can move relative to the CMBR essentially the same as saying you can move relative to the universe? Isn’t this vaguely like one of those dreaded aether concepts?

    I understand that you’re really moving relative to the local reference frame photons, but it still bugs me. It implies that space itself is a medium made of low energy photons, just ambling about – sort of like an atmosphere. Moving slowly through the atmosphere we hardly notice it. Push hard and fast and you encounter wind resistance (an opposite force/forward energy). Of course, like with the CMBR you’re really only experiencing a relative relationship with the local atmospheric atoms and molecules.

    Any attempts to collect this forward energy simply results in added drag. Why would this be any different for a relativistic vessel?

16. Adam on February 1, 2007 at 8:34

    Hi Eric

    Quite rightly you’ve noted that the CMB does provide an absolute reference frame, something verboten in Special Relativity – but actually fully allowed in General, so there’s no incompatibility. And space really is a medium of low energy photons – plus there’s effects like Unruh radiation to take into account. But the point is that it’s not a medium propagating any waves like the old aether theory.

    As for the drag effect, extreme relativistic speeds would experience drag from interacting with the CMB – aberration and red-shift combine to intensify and move it all forward of the moving vehicle. I’ve no idea how we’d counteract such a flux other than a needle of refractory material preceeding the vehicle – and even then it’ll get damned hot. Minimising the frontal cross-section relative to the volume seems like a good idea.

    And not that long ago we had the curious prospect of a relativistic mass having its gravity focussed into a forward facing beam of repulsive force – anyone remember that curious result from plain old General relativity?

    Similarly the radiation from a radiating mass moving at high-speed is focussed into a beam. Gamma-ray bursts are focussed by just this effect, which allows their speed to be inferred – something ridiculously close to light-speed is what I read recently.

    My point is that even “vanilla flavoured” physics might surprise us yet.

17. Adam on February 1, 2007 at 8:46

    Hi All

    References…

    Extreme GRB fireball speeds… http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0612607

    Repulsive Gravity… http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0505099

    …both worth a look, though the utilisation of the last would be quite a feat.

    Adam

18. James M. Essig on February 1, 2007 at 13:11

    Hi All;

    Adam, good comment regarding “vanilla flavoured” physics. I suppose if U.S. and other world players in manned spaceflight put more money into space travel, we might not even have to wait for novel interpretations and counterintuitive applications of known physics or “vanilla physics” to get to the nearest stars. Perhaps good old beamed energy and/or mass momentum transfer to a sail, effecient fusion rockets, and other simple reactionary propulsion methods and systems based on well established principles and uses of physics that we already understand could get us to the nearest stars by the end of the 21st Century. The perhaps ironic aspect of this occuring is that we would become the visiting extraterrestrials to any nearby inhabited star systems by applying currently well known physics principles even though a lot of engineering R&D would be required.

    I am hopeful that many further surprises and developments in “vanilla flavoured” physics await us, not to mention even more from unknown or yet to be discovered or yet to be imagined physics.

    Respectfully;

    Jim

19. george scaglione on February 1, 2007 at 15:03

    jim eric adam, just finished reading your latest postings and i very much appreciated the opportunnity to have been able to !!! now,as to a huge amounts of undiscovered and (as yet) unimagined physics awaiting us that may rather easily be linked to concepts of again,asyet,unimagined space propulsion techniques,i not only surly hope so but i would bet that,that is almost certainly the case. i think that that is the gist of the sort of aliens dipicted in 2001 a space odyyssey by arthur c clarke and contact by carl sagan! i mean these “guys” can right now do things that for us,right now,fall very much into the undiscovered and unimagined categories. afew postings back i had said something about the huge amount of work that still lies before us before we CAN BEGIN to do many of the things we currently wish for !! same argument for the drag on the vessal mentioned above.but yeah,maybe just maybe afew of the good “old fashioned” concepts is where the answers lie. that could equally be the case. thanks to one and all george

20. James M. Essig on February 2, 2007 at 4:03

    Hi George, Adam, and Eric;

    Other forms of interstellar propulsion techniques occured to me today that I am sure at some point previously were thought of by others. They involves ordinary nuclear physics and special relativity. I describe them below in the 4 items as follows.

    1) The first type of propulsion method involves a very long series of relatively small nuclear fusionable masses wherein the masses are placed every kilometer or so along a spacecraft runway in much the same way as the pellot runway system much talked about by certain space enthusiasts. One can imagine a craft with a very long and narrow yet very mechanically strong fusion energy capture chamber whereby the energy released by the detonation of, say, a one kilogram fusion mass every kilometer along the runway results in almost all of the fusion energy being reflected and/or absorbed by various types of yet to be developed exotic materials reflective and/or absorbtive of intense ionizing radiation. As the craft passed through the runway with the fusion masses passing into a cylindrical centrally located energy aborbing or reflecting tube, energy would be extracted to either directly propell the spacecraft or absorbed to power various propulsion systems such as ion rockets, electron rockets, photon rockets, magnetoplasmahydrodynamic drive (MPHDD), electroplasmahydrodynamic drive (EPHDD), and/or electromagnetoplasmahydrodynamic drive (EMPHDD)ropulsion systems. The central reaction chamber cylinder could have such a small diameter to length aspect ratio such that even at very highly relativistic ship velocites, almost all of the energy, even in the form of any of the many species of the mildy relativistic massive fusion reaction particles resulting from the various types of fusion reactions that could be utilized, would interact with the cylinder walls of the spacecraft. The process is analogous in some ways to the concept of the supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) technology being researched for hypersonic flight through Earth’s atmosphere and orbital spaceplanes wherein a long reaction chamber is required for complete combustion of the fuel before it has a chance to escape the relatively long scramjet engine combustion chamber.

    Highly energetic materials that could be used as an energy source include a series of small nuclear fission devices or bombs, small nuclear fission boosted thermonuclear devices, antimatter initiated nuclear fusion explosives and/or matter/antimatter interaction explosive charges such as the much talked about positronium (stable form of bound states of electrons and positrons) and explosively combined bulk seperated matter and antimatter materials such as hydrogen/antihydrogen and the same for any heavier elemental and antielemental materials.

    2) Another method would involve the use of explosive charges that take the form of shaped charged nuclear and/or shaped charged matter/antimatter explosives-the extreme analogue to the ordinary shaped charge chemical explosives that are used in antiarmour weapons by modern military forces. Publicly available literature on shaped charged nuclear explosives suggest that the maximum directed energy density or intensity from such devices could be 4 to 5 orders of magnitude greater than that for a typical spherically symmetric nuclear explosion, possibly implying the ability to produce a jet of charged plasma with particles having both kinetic energies and velocities that are ultra relativistic as well as any associated electromagnetic radiation of very energetic gamma rays (perhaps 4 to 5 orders of magitude greater than the gamma rays or x-rays produced by the initial reactants within the detonation phase of a nuclear bomb and the thermal blackbody gamma and x ray radiation resulting from the 300 million K or hotter plasma that exist during the microsecond timescale after the exothermic nuclear reactions have been completed). I suspect that the average velocity of the highly focused and concentrated component of the plasma’s charged particles could be over 99.99% of C. For hydrogen/antihydrogen and the like and perhaps even positronium (assumming that some of the positronium’s constituent electron and positron composition can be greatly compressed before undergoing annihilation), I would suspect that the relativistic kinetic energy of the massive particles and/or the photon energy density resulting from the detonation of appropriately configured matter/antimatter shaped charges could be in excess of 2 to 3 orders of magnitude greater than that for nuclear fission and/or fusion reaction based shaped-charge explosives. This relatively much higher massive particle kinetic energy and photon energy and/or photon field energy density might somehow be used to faciliate spacecraft accelleration by expediting the interaction of the explosive charges’ reaction products with the spacecraft’s cylindrical reaction chamber. Note however, that most likely, only a fairly small fraction of the above types of shaped charged explosives’ reaction products would achieve the extreme energies suggested above. A major problem would be to develope a mechanism to contain the explosions, and prevent the destruction of the craft from heat, blast mechanical energy, and ionizing radiation.

    If it is assummed that a craft of 1 thousand tons harnesses a lightyear long trail of 1 kg fusion masses placed on average at one km intervals along the runway and that the overall explosive energy capture and utilization process is 50 % effecient, then the equivalent (1/2)(1)(10 EXP 13)(.001)(.01) tons of matter or about 50 million tons of matter converted into energy would be imparted to the spacecraft as kinetic energy thus resulting in a final time dilation factor of 50,000 for the spacecraft after one year of extremely intense accelleration. If instead matter/antimatter charged are used instead, all the other parameters just mentioned above being the same, then a time dilation factor at the end of the one lightyear long trail for the 1000 metric tone spacecraft would be 5 million thus allowing the craft to visit galaxies as far away as several hundred million light years during the average crew life expectancy of a contemporary human for the ships reference frame. If instead, a much longer run way is utilized, say a 1,000 light year long one, all other parameters being the same including the use of matter/antimatter charges, then a terminal relativistic time dilation factor of 5 billion would result thus allowing the craft to travel about 200 billion lightyears during a ship board time span of a normal adult productive life expectancy of a contemporay human or about 40 years.

    3) Since any such craft would probably be unable to carry enough reaction mass to achieve such extremely high relativistic velocities while using an ion, electron, and/or photon rocket, or a MPHDD, EPHDD, and/or EMPHDD system, reaction mass from the interstellar and intergalactic medium would probably need to be harnessed such as interstellar hydrogen and/or helium gas, both of which combined make up more than 99% of the elemental species mass component within the interstellar and intergalactic medium.

    4) Since in the above propulsion schemes, a very small ship diameter to length aspect ration is assummed, the minimized ship cross section along the direction of travel would act to minimized the drag imposed on the ship from interstellar gas and photon pressure from sources such as the CMBR and starlight. If a way can be devised to harness the extremely blue dopplar shifted incident CMBR and/or star light, then perhaps even much higher terminal time dilation values for the craft can be achieved after the craft leaves the end of the run way.

    Now the accelleration encountered by the ship along the runway configurations with the parameters given above would be on the order of that experienced by a typical artillery shell while it is traveling down its barrel for the the case of the nuclear fusion masses and about the accelleration of a bullet traveling down the barrel of hypersonic muzzle velocity sniper rifle for the case of the matter/antimatter charges. Not only that, but the accelleration would be over a much longer interval of space and even ship board reference time frame. Some way would have to be devised to keep the crew and inside equipement of the ship from being crushed in the accelleration. Perhaps some sort of magnetic and/or electric field could be set up to magnetize and/or electrically charge the contents of the craft to counteract these tremendous forces due to accelleration. An artificial gravity or antigravity field would be helpful for this purpose also.

    Perhaps to start off with in any such design, in the near term, much smaller charges and/or much greater spacing between the charges would be appropriate inorder to limit the overall ship accelleration to one G or about 9.8 meters per second squared as is ofter assummed in discussions about practical runway pellot propulsion techniques thus minimizing the extreme requirments for the thermal and mechanical performance of the cylindrical reaction chamber.

    Anyhow, my brain is fried for the night or should I say this morning.

    Very respectfully;

    Jim

21. george scaglione on February 2, 2007 at 12:05

    thanks jim sometimes i too feel fried or lol scienced out or someting ! but it is a good cause. thanks george and… i have to ask something of any or all of us here… yesterday i read about a young iranian named mohammad mansouryar who may be according to one interviewer,the “new einstein” so, does anyone know anything about him? is that for real? i also direct all of this to our administrator among others.i just want an answer of some kind.the thing is this. the interview sounded very very good but when i boil it down,what was said? nothing that any one of US could not have said. mansouryar talks about traversable worm holes and warp fields and combining the two and claims he could do a valid experiment to make progress in all of that for only 10 million dollars! very excited at first after having read more i now take him with a grain of salt. you?? thank you very much george

22. James M. Essig on February 2, 2007 at 12:55

    Hi George;

    Thanks for the reply. There are a lot of individuals who propose a lot of novel and interesting physics concepts, and many turn out to be non-viable or contradictory to known experimental findings. I would think that if Mohammad Mansouryar had a really valid theory or theoretical frame work, it would probably get noticed very quickly and receive lots of funding. It is good to note that world wide efforts to attempt to discover and measure the properties of the proposed Higg’s Boson which is, according to the Standard Model of particle physics, the origin of mass generation have cost in the billions of dollars. Some viable wormhole theory that can be tested experimentally, because of its sensational subject matter, I think would have just about all technology based universities, companies, the military, and many private wealthy citizens jumping on board to do the experimental research. I think it is wise to take the report with a grain of salt, but keep an open mind about other more credible reports of new wormhole and spacewarp physics. This field seems ready for continued breakthoughs, atleast in theory, given the great mathematicalization that has occured within the field of wormholes and spacewarps over the past few decades. Also, as the new hadron particle accellerator at the European CERN facility opens for research, it will be interesting to see what the accellerated particle experiments reveal.

    Best Regards;

    Jim

23. george scaglione on February 2, 2007 at 15:54

    yes jim and thank you i look forward to hearing about the work of the new collider when it opens i am sure that it will be very exciting for all of us “physics fans” !! and…i went to mansouryars website,something i had not done yesterday.seems so far he is “just” a student claiming to be self educated in these subjects. i think he is just advancing his ideas in the same way we would.he may or may not be correct about any given theory that he advances.i get the feeling that the “new einstein” should be taken with two grains of salt!! but still i hope to hear from more of our group here before i make a final judgement. like you buddy i do look forward to breakthroughs on all of these topics and when i first read about mansouryar i guess i jumped the gun a little bit since he was saying what i wanted to hear. thanks again your friend george

24. Eric James on February 3, 2007 at 1:41

    Adam,

    Interesting that the CMBR might be used to brake a vehicle at relativistic speeds. Braking is, of course, a form of acceleration. Therefore, it can be stated that acceleration can be derived from the utility of the relativistic anistropy of the CMBR! Of course this notion has no practical value, but it’s interesting. I wonder if it might make for an interesting paper?

    Your references are interesting too. Too bad we don’t have any handy relativistic masses to try that gravitational acceleration thingy. It’d be like surfing on a bow wave!

    I think you’re quite right about “vanilla flavoured” physics. Suprises are in store, indeed.

25. george scaglione on February 3, 2007 at 13:59

    eric i was just in the neighborhood for a moment and saw your last posting. as to”suprises are in store indeed” – i can only comment,YES I AM COUNTING ON IT! respectfully your friend george

26. James M. Essig on February 3, 2007 at 22:25

    Hi George;

    Thanks again for your critique. Regarding the possible near term discovery of the Higg’s Boson after the CERN collider experiments resume, such would be a great milestone for the experimental physics community and perhaps for all of humanity.

    I can imagine that upon any such discovery, more effort would be given to an attempt to learn more about the Higg’s Field and Higg’s Boson. If mankind can learn to minipulate the Higg’s Field and arbitrarilly increase and/or decrease its strength at particular locations in time and space, since the Higg’s Field supposedly is responsible for generating mass in massive particles, the implications for manipulation of the mass and inertia of a spacecraft become enourmous. In the extreme case that the mass of a spacecraft can be reduced to zero by reducing the mass inducing effect of the Higg’s Field at certain location in proximity to the spacecraft as well as any other necessary locations, the possibility of being able to convert the craft’s motion state to suddenly that of exactly C opens up some enourmous potentials and implications for space travel and perhaps time travel to an arbitrarilly distant point into the future.

    A spacecraft, or atleast the energy defining the quantum mechanical state or wavefunction of the spacecraft, traveling at C would according to special relativity permit infinite distance travel, or if some defect in special relativity is manifest at super relativistic velocities, at least travel over cosmic distance scales during just an instant or atleast a very small time period relative to the ships reference time frame. Travel to an arbitrarilly distant location in time then also becomes possible as long as the time travel is accompanied by motion through space. One can imagine travel to very cosmically remote locations within the universe in terms of space and/or spacetime during a single light speed jump or a sequence of light speed jumps wherein before each successive jump, the interstellar and/or intergalactic medium is serveyed to make sure there would by no damaging object in the planned travel route for the craft which could disrupt the craft such as blackholes, neutron stars, other bodies and/or overly dense interstellar gas clouds.

    It has been also suggested that there might be a field called the Ultra Higg’s Field which limits the velocity of light to a finite limit, or alteast its current finite value. One can imagine manipulation of any such field on a craft that has jumped to light speed wherein the speed of light for the craft would then be changed to some increadibly high but finite value or perhaps even to an infinite value thus enabling the craft to travel to extremely remote locations within the cosmos in an instant with respect to the Earth’s and Crafts’s reference frame, thus effectively resulting in instantaneous travel. Imagine stepping into a spacecraft after saying “goodby” to an Earth-bound friend, traveling to a location that is located at a distance from Earth of billions of times the diameter of the observable universe, and then comming back to Earth before a fraction of a second has gone by on your Earth bound friends wrist watch. Now I know that special relativity prohibits faster than light travel and that there is no absolute reference frame, but in effect, at least one of these assumptions is wrong, namely that there is no absolute reference frame, because the cosmic microwave radiation is in some sense a reference frame that differs in intensity by no more than one part in 100,000. In fact measurements of the CMBR via Earth orbiting satellites have shown a strong bipolar spectral intensity distribution to the CMBR due to Earth’s motion through space wherein the bipolar measurements have to be substracted out of the observational data inorder to get an accurate baseline reading of the CMBR.

    With future advances within the fields of theoretical and experimental particle physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, the theoretical field of quantum gravity, general relativity, string theory, P-brane theory etc., God only knows what we will learn and be able to make use of for purposes of traveling through spacetime and the developments for cosmic habitats for humanity and related energy production and other industrial infrastructure. In encouragement of any and all space travel enthusiasts and anyone else who reads blogs on space travel websites, I make a quote by repeating the title of a movie that I saw several years ago, and that is, “What Dreams May Come”.

    Very Respectfully;

    Jim

27. george scaglione on February 4, 2007 at 11:58

    thank you jim you know i think i saw “what dreams may come” but do not recall it offhand,star was robin williams though,no? gotta look up the higgs field and get back to you later but it all sounds very promising indeed.thank you very much george

28. george scaglione on February 5, 2007 at 13:47

    jim,if we could learn to manipulate the higgs field i cannot imagine much that would be more valuable.this certainly falls under the heading of undiscovered and or unimagined physicswe where all talking about a couple of days ago! no kiddin,would be the best idea since sliced bread! :) thank you your friend george

29. James M. Essig on February 6, 2007 at 23:11

    Hi George;

    Thanks for your two previous comments. Your input is well appreciated. Lets continue to hope and pray that we learn how to usefully minipulate the Higg’s Field as well as learn how to produce safe and stable wormholes and spacewarps. While we are still working to achieve the above, we might still be able to arrive at nearby star systems with, optionally, the techniques described below.

    One method of manned transport to the nearest stars occured to me several years back but which must have been contemplated much earlier than when I first thought of it. The method involves the use of nuclear fission reactors to produce energy to power turbo-electric or thermoelectric generators which then provide power to an ion, and/or electron rocket to bring a spacecraft to a terminal velocity of 0.1C to 0.2C. The reaction mass for the ion rocket would be extracted from the interstellar medium. In addition, the spent fuel, which would still be radioactive, would be concentrated to provide heat for turboelectric, and/or thermoelectric generators to power ion and/or electron rockets.

    A major facilitating aspect of this propulsion system would be to use fissionable isotopes wherein the decay products would be maintained on the craft and placed in safe exterior positions around the craft and concentrated so that, upon being exposed to incomming interstellar dust and gas, the various atoms making up the spent fuel would capture some of the nucleons (neutrons and protons) that make up the interstellar medium in such a way that the spent fuels’ atoms are transformed into atoms of higher atomic mass and fissionable fuel suitable for nuclear fission reactors and reused to refuel the reactors. The resulting spent fuel would once again be concentrated and placed in positions so that it could undergo nucleon capture, and this process would repeat itself as long as necessary or practical.

    The amount of collected interstellar material could be enhanced by any of the collection mechanisms proposed for interstellar ramjets, such as use of an electric field based scoup or funnel and other means with or without an array of many low powered microlasers or nanolasers which could be deployed to more completely ionize the incident interstellar material. The initial fissionable fuel supply could be chosen such that the resulting spent fuel has the right properties to allow it to easilly absorbe the incident interstellar atoms for increased efficiency and increased net energy gain.

    Any excess heat generated by the impact of the interstellar gas and/or dust could be utilized to help power the turboelectric and/or thermoelectric generators to power the ion and/or electron rockets.

    In addition to ion and/or electron rockets, electroplasmahydrodynamic drives, magnetoplasmahydrodynamic drives, electromagnetoplasmahydrodynamic and/or the like could be used as the main drive and/or auxilliary drive systems.

    Given that we understand a lot about nuclear fission reactors and are always improving on existing designs and experimenting with new types of nuclear reactors, and given the fact that there might be large deposits of nuclear fissionable materials on other planetary bodies within the solar system and/or at least some of the many planetary moons that exist in the solar system and perhaps within asteroids as well, I would be surprised if we were not able to mine enough of the the requisite fissionable isotopes within the next 30 or 40 years as well as build the manned spaceships for launch by 2045 and arrival at the Alpha Centuari System or Barnard’s Star well before the end of the 21st Century.

    Very Respectfully;

    Jim

30. Adam on February 7, 2007 at 4:59

    Hi Jim

    Interesting idea, using proton capture to alter fission products, though I’d want to see a detailed analysis of the reactions involved before I thought it was practical. Fission produces a range of isotopes, half of which are quite light and many are very radioactive.

    Problem with current fission reactors is their very low burn-up fractions (1-3%). Any efficient design – and high Isp ion rockets need to be efficient – would require fast breeder reactor designs with very high burn-up fractions. The Integral Fast Reactor is one such system with 97% burnup. It’s also a liquid metal coolant (sodium) reactor which might make it amenable to high efficiency MHD power conversion. Perhaps a very tricky nuclear engineer could use the sodium coolant to best advantage by using a Liquid Droplet Radiator, which generally has a very low weight-to-watt ratio.

    But as a rule a high-end nuclear fission ion-drives only gets about 1,200 km/s for exhaust velocity, so a ship aiming to cruise at 0.1c would have a hefty mass-ratio. Nuclear fission fragment rockets get higher exhaust velocities, but need a LOT of fission fuel. Perhaps a nuclear fission photon rocket is an option for an low thrust design, though I am not sure what core temperature is sustainable for a reactor cooled only by radiation of heat/light. If all the energy in a fission fuel could be converted into kinetic energy then 0.04c exhaust velocity results – but the conversion process is the trick. Zubrin’s Nuclear SaltWater Rocket gets 0.015c and I don’t think any high-power system will do much better.

    As for ramjets… well they’re a nice dream.

31. george scaglione on February 7, 2007 at 16:55

    jim, i very much like the idea of mining fuel within our solar system ! having starships ready by 2045!? – just 38 years from now !! alpha centauri before the end of the century? all of it first rate! thank you very very much. however…will the people be willing to spend that much money or get excited enough to want to …especially so soon?! yeah I give it the go ahead now and so do i guess all of us here but i can only hope others will come to see it the same way! thank you your friend george adam, yes fission reactors are a “problem” with a burn of “only” 1 to 3% of their fuel. but we can hope for ramjets! you are correct.but since we are wishing my friend let us go all the way and hope for matter/anti-matter as fuel…that way we burn 100% ! much more efficient road to the stars.yes I’D LIKE TO SEE THAT. wonder how all the presidential candidates feel about all this? anybody here have a clue? respectfully once again your friend george scaglione

32. James M. Essig on February 7, 2007 at 20:55

    Hi Adam, George;

    Thanks again for the comments.

    Adam, I wonder if the ion and/or electron rockets that I mentioned could take the form of high energy particle accellerators wherein the reaction mass would be accellerated to ultrarelativistic energies and then allowed to exit the accellerator to provide thrust. The accellerators would have to have an energy recovery mechanism to capture electromagnetic and thermal energy that is lost due to the ineffeciencies in the accellerating process. Perhaps some sort of thermal and/or electromagnetic shielding and/or absorbing medium could be used to capture the otherwise wasted energy which would then be recycled and used to power the accellerator. Ideally, the only significant energy transmission out of the craft would be in the form of a beam of either electrically charged massive particles, or photons, if a photon rocket is used instead. Thermal blackbody radiation losses from the external surfaces of the spacecraft would need to be taken into account thus reducing the ideal efficiency of the propulsion system.

    George, I continue to remain hopeful, that after the CEV is developed and we hopefully go back to the moon, and plan for a manned Mars mission, the U.S. and hopefully the Global public, as well, will regain the enthusiam for more ambitious plans for human spaceflight that seems to have been lost with the termination of the Apollo Program. I am looking forward to the planned orbital flight testing of full scale CEV prototypes sometime early next decade and hopefully, humans back to the moon by 2020.

    Very Respectfully;

    Jim

33. Adam on February 8, 2007 at 1:13

    Hi George & James

    Your enthusiasm is appreciated :-)

    One problem with anti-matter is that it is so violently reactive and we maybe limited to fairly low efficiency reactions because the reacting mix blows itself apart before fully annihilating. This was a problem with nuclear fission bombs and the solution was to slam sub-critical chunks of plutonium/U235 violently together before the fissioning mass blew itself apart. I am not so sure that will work for matter-antimatter reactions. Perhaps some clever trick with Bose-Einstein condensates might solve this issue – at 0.1 K anti-hydrogen is supposed to be nearly inert, or so I’ve read. BEC “snowflakes” might be combined, be ferried into the reaction chamber and then warmed ever so gently.

    Maybe. OTOH the LHC might show us how to produce a sphaleron field able to perform en masse reverse baryogenesis – thus negating the need for antimatter entirely?

34. george scaglione on February 8, 2007 at 13:53

    jim yes we must continue to hope that all of these things will come to pass maybe the best bet would be if the return to the moon,as you say,created or should i say “re created” interest in space exploration.thank you. george adam,thank you for your comments.but one thing.could you please define reverse baryogenisis,i never heard that term before and when i looked it up it seemed to imply a perfect blend of matter antimatter fuel but i don’t see how that makes sense in the context of what you where talking about. thank you george

35. James M. Essig on February 9, 2007 at 0:53

    Hi Adam & George;

    Thanks for the critique.

    As I was searching the internet for ideas related to antimatter fuel, I happened to come across a description of an matter antimatter composite short lived particle called protonium, which is essentially a short lived bound state of a proton and an antiproton. According to the article, the computed lifetime of the particle ranges from 0.1 to 10 microseconds which is not too far removed from the lifetime of a typical positronium atom or a bound state of an electron and a positron.

    Now, as you know, its been suggested that stable forms of positronium might be produced with a long shelf live so that the positronium could be used as fuel for a matter/antimatter reaction rocket or other forms of propulsion systems. Since the energy level of the two constituent leptons would presumably be simmillar to that of an electron bound to a proton in the form of a hydrogen atom and since that mass of the positron is so much less than that of a proton (i.e.,~1,800 times less), I would expect that the density of room temperature liquid or solid positronium to be considerably less that of liquid or solid hydrogen. Although being electrically neutral and thus not subject to the very large coulombic repulsion forces of bulk single sign electrically charged matter, it might still be somewhat hard to store very large quantities of the neutral material within more compact versions of positronium powered craft.

    However, if it ever became possible to produce long lived proton antiproton composite particles or protonium atoms, due to the much shorter de Broglie wavelenths of the approximate 10 kiloelectron volt or so bound energy states of the protons and antiprotons in protonium, it might be possible to produce hybrid matter antimatter in bulk in the form of protonium with extraordinarilly high densities. In the femtometer scale limit where the strong nuclear forces that would act between the protons and antiprotons might disrupt any attemps to further reduce the size of the protonium atoms whereby any such reduction would seem to almost always result in immeadiate Fermi-Dirac pair annihilation, one can imagine densities of liquid and/or solid protonium approaching that of a neutron star or the density of a typical atomic nucleous. This density is approximately 1 billion metric tons per cubic centimeter or 10 EXP 15 or 1 quadrillion metric tons per cubic meter.
    It would probably be wise to manufacture and store large masses of such a hybrid material out in space so that the compressing effects of gravity at Earth’s surface would not destroy or destabilize the large quantities of the material. Doing such could obviously potentially reduce catastrophic consequences for life on Earth in the event of a runaway reaction or huge explosion of the stored material.

    The point I am trying to make here is that if the scientific community is addressing the possibility of producing long lived positronium, why not consider producing long lived protonium. Granted that the issues of the strong nuclear interaction among the nucleons might always overwhelm any attempts to keep the nucleons seperated on distance scales of 1 femtometer or 10 EXP -15 meters, it might be still be worth a try to develop a program to to produce stable protonium even if we are limited to considerably less dense protonium than the suggested density limits given above. Even given that this was the case, I would expect that the density of bulk protonium could still be several orders of magnitude greater than that of say solid Lead, Uranium, Plutonium and the like heavy metals.

    Before I get to far removed from the subject of interstellar transport here, I would like to suggest that super dense matter antimatter hybrid fuels might be ideal for powering interstellar spacecraft, manned or unmanned because of the high volume specific energy density of the materials. The result might be the potentially greatly diminished volumetric size of spacecraft thus resulting in greatly reduced drag at untrarelativistic velocites as the craft travels through the interstellar medium and also the reduced risk of impact with macroscopic objects such as large dust grains, space pebbles, and other potentially hard to detect objects near or within the path of the spacecraft.

    If very exotic materials can be produced with unheard of mechanical strength, heat capacity, and resistance to ionizing radiation, then perhaps a pellot runway of superdense protonium charges can be deployed along a multiple lightyear long path for extraordinarilly rapid spacecraft accelleration to velocites V = C-e where e almost becomes, for all practical purposes, vanishingly small, thus potentially allowing manned missions to any where within the observable universe and beyond in only a human living generation ship time. This would also allow the crew to travel well into the cosmically remote future of our Big Bang universe, perhaps even beyond the era of stellar activity (i.e., more than 10 EXP 14.5 to 10 EXP 15 years into the future). I wonder if in the comming centuries if not millenia, just such a mission would be launched on ethical, philosophical, religious, scientific, spiritual, and cultural purposes so that we as humans in this era of the universe, would have something to say to our very distant descendants and other races and civilizations that might inhabit the cosmos at those remotely distant points in time and space.

    There is no doubt that some sort of mechanism would be required to overcome the would be crushing G forces associated with such extremely rapid accelleration. Perhaps electrostatic, magnetostatic, and/or even artificial gravity or antigravity fields within the spacecraft could be of use in counterbalancing the tremendous internal forces due to the accelleration.

    Note that I have also read of a proposed atom composed of a helium nucleous, one electron, and one antiproton wherein the wavelength of this atom would be roughly 40 times that of a valance electron bound to an ordinary atom, thus potentially resulting in a density of liquid or solid bulk matter consisting of such atoms of ~(40) EXP 3 or about 64,000 times the density of typical liquid or solid matter on Earth at standard atmospheric temperature and pressure or STP . This type of atom might normally be a little more long lived then the protonium atoms, because of the nuclear electric field masking aspect of the electron. This material, if it could be produced in stable form might also be useful for manned or unmanned interstellar flight for much the same reasons of that for protonium.

    Anyhow, I have worn my brain out for the night and will stop here for now.

    Very Respectfully;

    Jim

36. george scaglione on February 9, 2007 at 10:19

    jim, thank you very much.you tend to see the BIG PICTURE,as do i your comments are very interesting and show huge imagination…reflecting the technology i wish we possessed and that i want.i hope that at the very least a group of intelligent people (as i say we are here),giving these subjects so much thought and sharing them with all the readers who may stop by to have a look.well – i think and hope and pray that,that CAN BE A BEGINNING!! very respectfully to one and all,your friend george

37. James M. Essig on February 9, 2007 at 21:57

    Hi George;

    Thanks as always for your encouraging comments and critique.

    An interesting version of resource utilization for fuel for fusion rockets would be to harvest low atomic number fusionable elements from cometary bodies. Note that I have read a paper about 1/2 year ago wherein the author described a five stage fusion rocket wherein each stage was 90% fuel and the remaining 10% being the propulsion system and other elements supporting each stage. The final payload was just 10 percent of the last stage for a final payload to initial 5 stage craft mass ratio of 1/100,000. However, the terminal velocity of the final payload would be over .63 C. This means that for a 10,000 ton final ship payload including living quarters, the amount of fuel required would be on the order of 1 billion tons. I began to wonder, “Where are they going to get all that fuel ?”, when the notion of harvesting it from cometary bodies occuring to me shortly thereafter.

    Comets, as I am sure you have heard, appear to be largely ice in the form of frozen water, frozen hydrogen, frozen nitrogen and other very cold atomic and molecular species that are mainly composed of low atomic number and multiple highly nuclear fusionable, isotopes. Given that individual comets may have masses of up to 1 trillion tons, harvesting them for manned interstellar ships with terminal velocities of well over .5 C and final payload masses of 10 million tons might be possible. I would expect that a 10 million ton spacecraft with effecient on board resource utilization might be able to support 100,000 to 1,000,000 passengers thus making the colonization of other worlds around nearby stars possible. Assumming accellerations on the order of 1/4 G to 1G, this should enable the craft to reach any of the stars within a 20 lightyear radius from Earth, the number of such stars being on the order of 1,000.

    Note that the craft might possibly be decellarated by a process known as magnetic breaking whereby large highly conducting, superconducting, and/or a combination of conventional conductive material and superconducting material based coils could be deployed to act as a magnetic break for the spacecraft. Even though the interstellar magnetic fields are very weak, it has been proposed that magnetic breaking forces of the order of one G could be achieved by this method and other simmilar methods because of the very high velocity of relativistic spacecraft through the ambient interstellar magnetic field. Not only could an intense magnetic field be developed by the huge currents that would be generated within the coil, but at least some of the current could be diverted or bled off to power reverse thrust ion rockets which might aquire their reaction mass from a modest onboard supply and/or from the interstellar medium itself. Any drag induced by magnetic breaking and/or the collection of interstellar reaction mass from interstellar space would be of use in slowing down the spacecraft. In essence, a sort of reverse thrust interstellar ramjet might be of use in slowing down the spacecraft as it nears the extrasolar destination.

    Note that by some estimates, there might be any where from 1 billion to 1 trillion comets located within the Oort Cloud. This would certainly be enough fuel to power billions if not trillions of manned missions to our local interstellar nieghbors. Long before we would be in danger of depleting this large reserve of fusion fuel, I suspect that we would have developed more effecient means to reach the stars such as space warps, hopefully wormholes, teleportation, macroscopically induced quantum mechanical tunnelling, higher dimensional travel shortcuts through spacetime etc. But in the mean time, while we are awaiting breakthroughs in “vanilla physics” and perhaps in yet to be imagined physics for the purposes of manned interstellar travel, it seems that we have no shortage of fuel for fusion rockets capable of better that 1/2C.

    Assumming a trillion tons of fusionable mass for each Oort cloud comet, this would enable any where of from 1 billion to 1 trillion .63 C trips for 10 million ton payloads to any of the nearby stars, or from 1,000 to 1,000,000 such trips a year for a million years. For the case of the smaller 10 thousand ton payloads, the amount of fusionable material, assumming the above cometary population specifications, that would be available to power .63 C trips, would permit 1,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 such trips to be launched per year for a million years, or 1,000 to 1,000,000 such trips per year for 1 billion years. By that time we ought to have long since developed more efficeient, faster, and effective propulsion methods.

    Anyhow, I am scheduled to pick up my brother from the airport, so I better stop here.

    Very Respectfully;

    Jim

38. george scaglione on February 10, 2007 at 10:08

    thank you jim but…problem one? the oort cloud is a little far away in the first place. given time quite naturally… no problem.but in our lives? pobably not. hope i am very wrong.but i think (darn it!) that i am correct. all the best and i hope the your trip to the airport goes well. your friend george

39. James M. Essig on February 10, 2007 at 13:20

    Hi George;

    Thanks for the Critique.

    I think you are correct. Given that we are now only actively planning a return to the Moon by 2020, and then to Mars several years later if not a decade later, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of concrete active major planning by NASA, or for that matter, any other major aerospace agency to get to the stars. Given that NASA is putting a lot of effort into developing the CEV, with follow on plans to use a CEV derived vehicle to send humans to mars, money for R&D for interstellar manned missions I think will be in short supply, at least for the next 25 years. By that time, I will be 70 years old. But it is still nice to dream. Once again, thanks for the critique.

    Your Friend;

    Jim

40. george scaglione on February 10, 2007 at 14:21

    thank you jim yes,i will be about 83 by that time! we are not now seriously considering alot in the usa/nasa…except for groups like these which i still persist in thinking do indeed do at least some good ! roflol you know what just crossed my mind?! what if in the now relativly distant future groups like ours get credit for being pioneers!!??? first ones to seriously consider star flight etc ! now i know that we are not alone,there are and have been “enterprises” like this one. i myself frequently talk about space,wormholes etc with another group i got going on line which i call “spacegroup”. we will see what happens. :) your friend george ps is your brother who you picked up at the airport interested in space? maybe he could join in ! the more persons the more ideas the better! thanks again g

41. James M. Essig on February 12, 2007 at 21:28

    Hi George;

    Thanks for the comments.

    Regarding the very next stages in space exploration, I read an article in the current issue of Popular Mechanics about the planned return to the moon by 2020 followed by numerous other missions wherein a permanent settlement would be set up which initially would allow teams to stay on the moon for 6 month rotations. The plan is to establish a permanent manned presence on the moon starting near one of the moons poles (I forget which one) wherein shelter from full sunlight and ionizing radiation from the sun would be provided but where solar energy could be utilized to power the living, mining and research infrastructure and produce liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen from ice (believed to be present within the depths of this cratered region) by electrolysis.

    The liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen produced on the moon could be utilized for manned expeditions to Mars where yet another permanent manned presence would become a reality if all goes well according to key visionary leaders within NASA.

    Regarding how we as interstellar travel enthusiasts and theorists will be viewed in the future, I think if we were able to remain alive on Earth at that point in the future where such travel would occur, we would be able to say “I told you so!”. Just as Jules Verne is credited with having insight in his book “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea” in forseeing the development of the modern nuclear powered, nuclear armed submarine, and in another one of his books, manned missions to the moon, I suppose that we interstellar travel enthusiasts will be viewed the simillar way.

    Regarding my brother, I have a total of 3 brothers and 2 sisters, and they all think I am a little bit wacked for my interest in manned interstellar flight. I was always kind of the black sheep of the family mainly due to my focusing on topics such as this, however our adult family relations are good and much better than they were when we were all a bunch of rowdy teenagers and young adults.

    We, as a civilization are not yet prepared for interstellar travel, but I strongly believe that one day we will be. In the mean time, as our technology, physics, and planned manned space excursions continue to develope, I will enthusiastically borrow a quote from a song from the popular late 70’s rock band “The Cars” and that is, “Let the good times roll!”

    Thanks Again;

    Jim

42. george scaglione on February 13, 2007 at 15:07

    jim, yes thank you i too very carefully read that article i believe the base was mentioned to be projected for the moons south pole.also… i have no doubt that people like us will be seen as “visionaries” when these things actually do exist! (?) and… i too wonder,what i wonder is how can anyone NOT be interested in space exploration!! respectfully your friend george ps i do not mean the slightest offense to those who are not interested it is just that i don’t get their point of view. thanks again g

43. James M. Essig on February 13, 2007 at 19:52

    Hi George;

    Thanks for the feedback. It is rather amazing that so many people are not interested in space exploration. Learning more about the uminaginable vastness of the cosmos, pondering what other civilizations might be out there, and pondering methods of interstellar travel are not only a deep intellectual curiosity for me and goals to be persued, but move me to the core of my being. When I view pictures such as the Hubble Deep Field View as well as pictures of more local objects such as nebula, backlit interstellar gas clouds, protostars, etc., I am deeply effected in a very spiritual sense as I ponder the seemingly timeless aspect to it all and its incredible size. Thus, I am greatly motivated to seek more of it including ways that we as humans can venture out to evermore distant locations within the solar system and beyond-even to the stars and other galaxies someday.

    Note that I am in the process of viewing internet based literature of relevance to yet another type of interstellar travel power source. I will have more information about the concept in my next posting as I try to determine if the concept has any credibility to it.

    Thanks Again;

    Your Friend Jim

44. george scaglione on February 14, 2007 at 14:39

    jim thank you ! i feel the same way about space. and can’t wait to hear about this propulsion method you are looking into! good luck!! your friend george

45. James M. Essig on February 15, 2007 at 2:45

    Hi George;

    Its good to here from you again. The following four interstellar propulsion schemes occured to me over the past few days.

    1) I recently read of a supposed possible exotic form of atomic bomb referred to as a quark bomb that would some how involve the splitting of protons to release their constituent quarks resulting in 1,200 times the maximum explosive energy of an atomic bomb of the same size. Such a device would have a mass specific yield approximately equal to matter antimatter annihilation. If such technology is actually possible, and not psuedoscience, then presumably quark bombs in large numbers could be carried along on interstellar spacecraft and detonated behind a pusher plate to propell the craft forward with simmilar levels of performance that matter/antimatter reactions would enable. Presumably, quark bombs could be made in very small, low yield configurations and detonated sequentially behind the space craft or within the spacecrafts rocket cone inorder to propell the ship in a “buzz bomb” like manner with out producing explosions so large so as to destroy the ship and its crew members.

    The types of propulsion systems that might effectively utilize such an energy source could include, but not be limited to the following: Quark bomb detonation based, massive and/or massless particle release drive in rocket form; Energy release for powering ion, and/or electron rocket drives; Energy release for powering photon rocket systems; Energy release for powering MPHDD, EPHDD, and EMPHDD systems. Presumably, the fuel could be carried along with the spacecraft as an energy source and/or distributed along a run way on the order of one light year long as is contemplated for the runway pellot fuel schemes that envolve nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, and/or matter/antimatter fuels. The pellot runway scheme would allow for much more effiecient accellaration since the fuel supply would not need to be carried along with the spacecraft, thus allowing the craft to potentially reach ultrarelativistic velocites.

    Note that there are very few credible descriptions of quark bombs available online. Many of the sites I looked at seem like psuedoscience and/or fanciful notions that at first glance, appear scientific. Also note that according to the standard model of particle physics, quarks cannot exist in a free state because when they are pulled away from each other, the binding force increases to a maximum and then remains constant, further separation results in greater energy strain until new quarks are formed out of the binding energy between the quarks in accordance with the relativistic mass/energy equivalence equation E = M(C^2). However, there does seem to be some thoughtful consideration as to how the quarks that make up the proton could somehow actually be liberated to yield a type of nuclear device commonly referred to as a quark bomb.

    The use of quark bombs might actually prove more useful in powering starships than antimatter, presumably because the quark bombs would be much safer to store given that there is no danger of unplanned matter/antimatter reactions in any quark bomb concept I have read about.

    2) The second scheme that comes to mind envolves somehow producing a stable but adustable permanent magnet with extraordinarilly high intensity and total field energy. thus extending far away from the craft that would contain the magnet. In this scheme, the magnet would be kept appropriately oriented so that the craft could be accellerated by being pulled along the galaxies magnetic lines of force to the North or South pole of the galaxy. Once the ship attained a high enough velocity, the ships magnetic field would be disrupted or terminated wherein the ship would freely coast in a direction tangent to the curvilinear path it was taking just before the field was discontinued. The ship would not produce its own propulsion energy in terms of generating it dynamically from within, but would extract it or harvest it from the usable reserve of magnetic field energy associated with galaxies. Even though the interstellar and intragalactic magnetic fields are very weak at approximately 10 EXP – 10 Tesla, the volume of a galaxy is huge. For the space permeated by the Milky Way Galaxy’s magnetic field, the volume is effectivly 10 EXP 15 cubic light years. Remember that the magnetic energy stored within a volume of space is proportional to the square of the average magnetic field strength within that volume, so therefore with a nominal average field strength of say 10 EXP -10 Telsa within the Milky Way Galaxy, the stored energy would be the equivalent of 10 EXP -5 cubic lightyears with an average field strength of 1 Tesla or about 10 EXP 34 cubic kilometers with average field strength of 1 Tesla. Recall that an average Magnetic Resonance Scan used in medical imaging produces a field on the order of 1 tesla and that operators of the scanner, patients being scanned, and all others in the magnetically shielded room where the scanning procedure takes place are routinely required to remove any iron based objects from the room because even a 1/2 inch steel ball bearing would be accellerated to the velocity of roughly that of a rifle bullet once the MRI scanner is activated.

    Perhaps the ship board magnet can be efficiently adjusted with very little use of energy by taking advantage of chaotic phenomenon wherein in the magnet would be carefully tweaked to keep its field oriented in the right direction.

    3) The third concept that comes to mind envolves a yet to be discovered material or mechanism capable of reflecting stupendously intense electromagnetic energy, so intense that the material would probably make the concept of negative mass, and/or imaginary mass look quite routine. The idea would be to place two spacecraft with their backsides facing each other wherein the backward side of each craft would have a pusher plate for reflecting a tremendously energetic but incredibly brief pulse of high frequency electromagnetic radiation.

    In this scheme, the craft would be seperated by less than 1 micrometer, perhaps even less than 1 nanometer. A hugely powerful pulse of light would be emmited from one crafts pusher plate across the tiny gap where it would reflect off the other crafts pusher plate wherein the pulse would bounce back and forth, thus accellerating the craft to highly relativistic velocities over a distance of less that one centimeter. If the plates were perfectly reflective to the electromagnetic radiation, or virtually so, then for each reflection in a sequence of many reflection, the pulse of energy would impart a very large momentum to each craft each time it was reflected by a pusher plate. Now granted, eventually the light would be dopplar redshifted as the crafts approached light speed, and the frequency of bounces would decrease as the seperation of the craft increased, perhaps thouasnds, millions, if not billions of bounces would occur before the craft distance of seperation approached 1 meter with each bounce contributing a large amount of momentum to the craft. Assumming that the right materials could be developed over the next billion or so years, it is anyone’s guess as to how to enable any of the crew members inside the craft to handle the accelleration, let alone prevent the ship from being crushed by its own inertia. Also, the issue of induced gravitation wave energy losses would have to be addressed so that the bouncing electromagnetic energy pulse does not die out to quickly by way of gravitaional wave energy emmission from the bouncing beam.

    4) The fourth and final interstellar propulsion concept I mention tonight involves a system of pulleys, cables, and stabilizing masses seperated by cosmic distance scales wherein the masses are connected by the system of cables, pulleys, etc.. In this scheme, as the cosmically distant masses drifted apart at a velocity near, equal, or greater than C, cables would be attached to one or more of the masses or between the masses wherein the cables would be made of some extraordinarilly high elastic modulus material such that they would not stretch along with the expansion of the cosmos as contrasted with the expansion of the space between the cosmically distantly located anchor masses.

    The desired result would be to have a cable’s free end, any object or ship attached to the cable’s free end, and/or an object attached to a system of cables and pulleys made out of the same non-stretch material described above to be pulled through space at a velocity just below C, at C, or perhap greater if not much much greater than C. Just as motion can be amplified through the use of pulleys, gears, and transmissions, drive trains, and the like, so would the motion of seperation between the cosmically distant objects described above. Perhaps the cables and the craft they tow at would be velocities greater than C could be somehow be casually isolated from the surrounding space by some spacetime configuration, sheild or whatever so that there is no contradiction to the relativistic principle that no signals can travel through space at velocities greater that C.

    Now I must admit that some or all of these ideas may seem far fetched, but in an age where the study of the possibility of wormholes, spacewarps, time travel, teleportation, is being ever more mathematicalized, the above four concepts might not seem to implausible afterall.

    Anyhow, that’s the rap for tonight. I need to get some rest.

    Many Thanks;

    Jim

46. george scaglione on February 15, 2007 at 10:20

    jim thank you.you know that quark bomb idea seems to be really good – heck it takes the original idea of splitting the atom just that one step futher! does it not? reminds me of the original idea of the orion project. not the word as it is being used today in conjunction with the new cev spacecraft better known as “apollo on steroids”.as to psuedo science , that reminds me i just read alot about two weeks ago about some iranian student who was being billed as “the new einstein”,yeah he had good ideas but no better and no better expressed than we do here.got excited at first but now i tend to discount him – heck alot of that was probably because he was from iran…a word on everyones lips of late !one more word: if quark bombs give us more energy for propulsion than matter antimatter then i will be the first one to say….GREAT!…let’s develop them! as to the use of magnetic fields idea above…if that is true my friend then FANTASTIC and wonderful love to see it developed!! reminds me of a long standing idea of mine to utilize the zero point field for space craft propulsion.seems almost similar to me in alot of what you said to describe it! if only nasa’s breakthrough propulsion physics project where still going strong! the next idea about using magnetism…i like it to. the fourth idea… i’m sorry but maybe you could re phrase it cause i did’nt readily catch on…maybe 4 good ideas all at once just swamped me though.(!?) our trouble mine ,yours, ours here,is that we want the technology of the hypothetical aliens who are a million years in advance of our technology…and excuse me lol- we want it NOW!! guess they themselves began with dreams just like us.one step at a time over lots and lots of years with several breakthroughs (to put it mildly) IS what we need! oooh and more patience! :) thank you very much for sharing these ideas with all of us because you can never tell what just might trigger something. and please get back to me on that fourth idea i think i may have missed something. thanks again your friend george scaglione

47. James M. Essig on February 16, 2007 at 3:03

    Hi George;

    Thanks again for your comments.

    Regarding the 4th idea I posted yesterday, the concept involves cables, cords, lines etc. made from some form of exotic material that would be largely immune from the expansion of the spacetime over distances of 10s of billions of lightyears, such that when one end of the cable is connected to a large mass ranging from anywhere from one solar mass to the mass of an entire galaxy, a supermassive blackhole for example, the other free end of the cable would be pulled through space at the recessional velocity of its anchoring mass relative to the space surrounding the location of the cables free end. If the recessional velocity as such would be greater than C, then perhaps the free end of the cable could be pulled along with the receeding mass at a velocity greater than C relative to the adjacent spatial location of the free end of the cable. Perhaps some sort of mechanism could prevent the free end of the cable from communicating with the surrounding space so as not to contradict the relativistic principle that no signal can travel through space at a speed greater than C. In the event that this relativistic principle turns out not to absolutely rigorously hold up in nature, then the cable might be used to tow a spacecraft, manned or unmanned, through space at a velocity greater C.

    Note that according to models of the Big Bang, locations that are more then about 13.7 billion lightyears distant from Earth or from any other location can travel along with the expansion of spacetime with velocities >>C. This is because such locations are moving at a relative recessional velocity > C as a result of the expansion of spacetime within the expanding universe located between the distant locations rather than traveling thru space at superluminal velocities.

    A further refinement of this idea would entail hooking up two cables to a huge spool which has a flywheel or rotor many times the diameter of the spool winding of the cable composed of the exotic hypothetical material. Thus, when the cables unwind by being pulled on by opposing supermassive anchors located at cosmic distances away from the spool and at locations on opposite sides of the spool, the outer edge of the rotor will travel at a rotational velocity presumabably equal to the ratio of the outer diameter of the rotor to that of the unwinding cable (or the recessional velocity of the two anchors from the spool). As a result, the rotor will spin many times faster than the superluminal recessional velocity of the supermassive anchors.

    If such s sytem could be constructed in the coming billions of years of human and/or extraterrestrial species evolution, then perhaps a way of accellerating space craft, manned or unmanned, to velocities much greater than C could be realized. The spacecraft could optionally be attached to the outer edge of the rotor to attain extremely superluminal velocities. All of this speculation of course assumes that general and special relativity might some how not hold up absolutely rigorously, and/or clever ways of side stepping special and/or general relativity could be accomplished to allow this type of propulsion system to work. No doubt, that materials with the right characteristics, mechanical strength properties, heat and radiation resistance, and other exotic properties would have to be developed which would make the concept of a magic wand seem like a simple soda straw sucking up Coca Cola from a McDonalds meal in comparison.

    It is also interesting to note that a macroscopic rotor traveling at relativistic or sub light velocites would seem to produce Lorentz contractions for each differential arcuate segment or sector due to special relativistic length contraction within the direction of tangental motion of the segment or sector. Who the heck know what would happen to a rotor wherein the outer edge is traveling at a velocity much greater than C, especially given the fact that the rotor would have to be constructed of bazaarly exotic materials

    Another idea occured to me as a method of generating a huge pulse of energy for purposes of accellerating a huge spacecraft to extraordinarilly relativistic velocities. The idea would be to construct a huge nuclear fusion bomb, matter/antimatter bomb, or perhaps a quark bomb ranging in mass from anywhere from a trillion tons to millions if not billions of solar masses without the bomb collapsing in on itself by self gravitation to form a blackhole.

    For bombs as such with a mass greater than that of a blue supergiant star (maximum stellar masses are predicted to be about 100 solar masses or roughly 10 EXP 29 metric tons), the device might be constructed as a rotating torous with a very small minor diameter to major diameter aspect ratio. The centripital accelleration would produce an outward force that would counteract the tendancy of the device to collapse under its own weight without inducing too great of tidal forces between the inner diamater of the ring relative to the outer diameter of the ring as a result of the angular accelleration differential between a given differential element relative to another such element located at a smaller or greater radius relative to the first differential element from the axis of rotation of the toriod. Thus the ring would look like a huge version of a very thin Hulahoop, a toy that was very common in the 60’s and early 70’s among elementary grade school students.

    The toriod could be constructed out of suitably strong material such as carbon nanotubes or might even be constructed out of material simmilar to that which white dwarfs are composed wherein the density of the material is on the order of 10 metric tons per cubic centemeter.

    Note that I did some rough pen and paper calculations suggesting that a ring with the diameter of the orbit of pluto travelling at a rotational velocity of several hundred kilometers per second to about one thousand kilometers per second could have a mass as high as 1 million solar masses and yet be stable from gravitational collapse if it where composed of suitably strong material such as white dwarf dense carbon atoms, compressed superstrong white dwarf dense hydrogen, other white dwarf dense fusionable elements, or neutron dense material such as neutronium.

    In the event that the toroid is made of nuclear fissionable materials such as hydrogen or carbon, the toriod could be detonated like a huge thermonulear bomb, and in the case of the million solar mass toriod, the explosoive yield would be at least four orders of magnitude greater than any single supernova could yield. If the ring is made of a matter antimatter hybrid material or of two seperated components, one matter and the other antimatter, then the yield would be a million times greater than any supernova could yield. Neglecting the destabilizing effects of gravitational interaction from other objects within the surrounding interstellar space and any unwanted vibrations that could develope within the ring, even larger diameter rings and/or more rapidly rotating rings might be developed with masses approaching or surpassing a billion solar masses resulting in yields as great a billion or more times that of the most powerful supernova.

    The point I am trying to make with this digression is that tremendous artificially produced energy pulses are potentially possible with the above yields which might some how be used to blast a spacecraft to velocites essentially equal to light speed or C- (eC) wherein e is for all practical purposes vanishingly small or equal to almost zero. If all of the energy of such an explosion could somehow be captured and delivered as kinetic energy to a ship with a mass of only 1,000 metric tons, then a relativistic time dilation factor for the ship would approach 10 EXP 34. For a ship with the mass of the sun, the time dilation factor would still be huge at a value of 1 billion. Even a ship with a mass of a billion times greater than the sun could achieve a velocity of .86 C with a time dilation factor of two. A ship with the mass of the entire Milky Way galaxy could approach 10 percent of the speed of light with just one such fully harnessed explosion. Thus, I think with this technology, if it should prove feasable within the next 10 billion to 100 billion years, I think the “Death Star” featured in the science fantasy motion picture trilogy of “Star Wars”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, and “The Return of the Jedi” would be way out done. The key would be to put such huge energy releases to good and peaceful uses for the benefit and prosperity of all of the intellegent species that might inhabit our universe such as for moving cosmically huge spacecraft to near light speed or for sending smaller spacecraft to distances in space and/time that are extremely cosmically remote from any of those within the currently observable universe.

    Note that any such rings composed of elemental species would have to be gradually constructed over very large periods of time so that they do not ignite or undergo nuclear fusion prematurely as a result of compressional heating by self gravition within the ring and instabilities that can result from improperly maintained elemental species degeneracy pressure. Also the ring would have to be gradually built up so that it does not tear itself apart or run into its own debris as it is being constructed.

    For a million solar mass elemental ring with the diameter of the orbit of Pluto, wherein the ring is composed of exothermic nuclear fusionable fuel, the energy resulting from its nuclear detonation would be about 4 to 4.5 orders of magnitude greater than the rotational kinetic energy of the fully formed ring.
    This would result in efficient use of construction materials and the energy and other resources that go into building the ring.

    For huge toriodal ring detonations as such, care would have to be exercised in the design of such rings and the locations where they are constructed. Based on the notion that spherically symmetric supernova explosions could theoretically be fatal to human life and animal life on Earth even at a distance of up to 100 lightyears, a million solar mass thermonuclear device detonation could be fatal as such up to a distance of 10,000 lightyears. A billion solar mass matter/antimatter toriod explosion could be fatal as such up to a distance of about 3 million lightyears. If unsheilded, if shieldling from such an explosion is even possible, the result could be the extinction of all species intellegent or not through out the Milky Way Galaxy and even throughout the nearby Andromeda Galaxy.

    Anyhow the concepts described above are extreme examples of the types of ideas of which they are a subset. Note that any first manned star ship that uses nuclear explosions to get to the nearest stars will probably utilize lots very low yield but efficient hydrogen bombs on the order of one kiloton each or only 10 percent of the yield of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Such a ship could reasonably expect to achieve 1 + G accelleration even with a final payload mass of 1000 to 10,000 tons.

48. george scaglione on February 16, 2007 at 10:22

    jim, i have said before: i very much admire your imagination,these ideas are very very interesting. now back to idea four, also good i like it but respectfully maybe it just wasn’t my favorite. now as to the digression… to say you think big is an understatement! a quark bomb that large would probably very easily provide enough propulsion to send almost any ship to the speed of lifgt!…maybe better! but …there we get into a whole new physics textbook! not to even mention the sheer SIZE of some of the ships you envision! you know it gave me another idea,every once in a while we encounter something in space that is new or that we don’t understand…well maybe those are failed engineering projects of races very much in advance of ours!!! lastly… what a shame we do not live next door to each other,we could write the science fiction novel to end all science fiction novels!!! respectfully your friend george ps i wish somebody else would jump in with some comments this whole part of the site is getting to be owned by just you and i lol g

49. James M. Essig on February 16, 2007 at 13:31

    Hi George;

    Thanks for the comments and critical review of my posting early this morning. The comment about failed extraterestrial engineering projects was very interesting and perhaps as we continue to explore the cosmos through Earth based observations and robotic and manned space travel, we will uncover some fascinatiing technological artifacts from other more advanced civilizations. Also, I like very much your idea about science fiction novels. I am sure that we could come up with some good ones. My family members and other friends tend to make the same comments about my thinking big. For some reason, while I was a young boy, I naturally gravitated torward things that were big.

    George, I encourage anyone who visits this website to post comments. As a result, I will temporarilly for the next few days refrain from adding additional comments given that my postings tend to be long. However, I encourage you to keep posting comments in the mean time whenever you have the opportuinity. I always enjoy reading what you have to say. I will resume my postings on this website in about a week.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

    ps Anyone else have any ideas or comments to add, please by all means, feel free to post them.

50. george scaglione on February 16, 2007 at 16:51

    jim,ok but i do not see why you should not post just because others might not.let me add this now and direct it at the people who may read but not post : well friends by now you have read quite a good bit of what i consider to be fine ideas (lol not just mine either!). we would all be the richer for it if you would add your voice to the admitedly small group which has been posting on this site under this topic. i eagerly await hearing from you.(!) thank you one and all, your friend george scaglione ps jim don’t stay away too long – keep those good ideas rolling!! thanks everybody and see you soon. g