Antimatter seems the boldest — and newest — of propulsion concepts, but in fact Eugen Sänger’s work on the uses of antimatter in rocketry goes back to the 1930s. The German scientist thought it would be possible to reflect gamma rays produced by the annihilation of electrons and positrons to produce thrust. His work wowed the Fourth International Astronautical Congress in 1952, but there was a catch: the gamma rays created by this reaction seemed too energetic to use the way Sänger hoped — they penetrated all known materials and could not be channeled effectively into a rocket exhaust.
Which is why most antimatter designs since have focused on antiprotons. When antiprotons and protons annihilate each other, they produce not only gamma rays but pi-mesons, short-lived particles also known as pions. Many of these are charged as they emerge from the proton/antiproton annihilation, and can therefore be controlled by sending them through a strong magnetic field. Early designs by Robert Forward and David Morgan (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) took advantage of these traits even though the technology to produce sufficient antimatter lagged far behind their visionary concepts.
But antimatter researcher Gerald Smith and colleagues have been working on a study for NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts that takes us back to positrons, one that could power a human mission to Mars with tens of milligrams of antimatter. Not only would such a design be far lighter than competing chemical and nuclear options, but it would be fast enough to dramatically shorten flight time to the Red Planet; advanced versions might make the trip in as little as 45 days.
Smith’s background in antimatter research needs little elaboration; he is a towering figure in the field. While at Pennsylvania State University, he oversaw two key hybrid designs called ICANN II and AIMStar that used antimatter as a catalyst to induce nuclear reactions. The author of hundreds of research papers, he is also the designer of both the Mark I portable antimatter trap and the current state of the art, the High Performance Antimatter Trap (HiPAT).
He is, in other words, a key figure when it comes to wedding powerful antimatter technologies to practical spacecraft designs. Now head of Positronics Research LLC in New Mexico, Smith has built on the lessons learned from these earlier concepts to promote a new design that seems to offer enormous benefits, if we can produce the antimatter needed to make it fly.
One advantage of positrons is that the gamma rays they generate are about 400 times less energetic than those created by antiprotons, making the spacecraft a far safer place for human crews. According to a description of Smith’s work posted on the NIAC Web site (PDF warning), the positron/electron annihilation “…results in the creation of two soft 511 keV gamma rays. These gamma rays can be easily absorbed to heat a working fluid in a closed, high-efficiency thermodynamic power system, or directly into a propellant.” The NIAC work is ongoing — Smith’s Phase I study was completed in March and he is now making the case for an advanced Phase II project that will examine design variants like the positron reactor shown below.
Image: A diagram of a rocket powered by a positron reactor. Positrons are directed from the storage unit to the attenuating matrix, where they interact with the material and release heat. Liquid hydrogen (H2) circulates through the attenuating matrix and picks up the heat. The hydrogen then flows to the nozzle exit (bell-shaped area in yellow and blue), where it expands into space, producing thrust. Credit: Positronics Research, LLC.
The high cost of antimatter is always an issue, but one that may become manageable. Smith is now estimating that the 10 milligrams of positrons a human Mars mission would require could be produced for roughly $250 million. It seems a reasonable assumption that antimatter production costs will continue to go down, just as it is also reasonable to question the wisdom of using staged chemical rockets with launch costs of $10,000 per pound when designs that could undertake far more sophisticated missions are waiting to be developed. Let’s talk more about these notions tomorrow and dig into antimatter’s advantages when it comes to deep space work.
you know jim i frequently make a pun but…a very telling one…we can’t do that…we don’t have the DATA!!!! thank you george anyhow such vast computational power certainly bodes well for ALL of the kinds of things we speak about here.
Hi George;
Thanks for the critique.
Some additional interstellar travel related concepts occurred to me out of almost nowhere while I was contemplating my day’s schedule for tomorrow. I think these ideas have definately been contemplated before, but since they are of interest to me, I thought that I would briefly summarize them below.
1) The first idea involves extracting energy from higher dimensional space wherein the energy is transferred to our 4 dimensional space-time in a form that is controllable and containable within our ordinary space-time. In particular, I thought that if a given 3 D slice of say adjacent higher dimensional space, say 4 D space or hyperspace, has an 3 D volume specific energy concentration roughly equal to that of a given typical 3 D volume that our space has, then perhaps a given 4 D macroscopic volume in adjacent higher dimensional space has an extraordinarily greater amount of energy than a “similar sized” volume of our 3 D space. Just as a cubic meter is composed of an infinite number of planar stacked 2 D planes, a 4 D hypercube with a volume of 1 meter ^ 4 in Euclidean Space would be composed of a ”stack” of an infinite number of 3 D cubic meter volumes for the case where space-time is continuous, e.g., not quantized into fundamental finite units at some smaller bounding scale. Thus a 4 D volume of such space e.g., a 1 meter hypercube would have an infinitely greater amount of energy than a 1 meter cube in our space. A 5 D volume analogue would have an energy content of (infinity) x (infinity) = (infinity) ^ 2 greater energy content. A 1 meter 6 D cube would have an energy content of (infinity) x (infinity) x (infinity) = (infinity) ^ 3 greater, and so on to (infinity) ^ (infinity) for infinite dimensional space, wherein the richness of the value of the infinity is defined to be that for the infinite multiple of 3 D one meter cubes comprising 4 D cube having the same linear dimension.
If the linear Planck distance scale (~10 EXP -35 meters) holds up to some adjacent 4 D space as it theoretically appears to do in our 3 D space, and if the adjacent 4 D space is flat with the same energy density per 3 D unit volume that our 3 D space has, then one would expect that the energy contained within a hypercubic meter (meter ^ 4) of this higher space would have about 10 EXP 35 times more energy stored within it then one cubic meter of our 3 D space because such a hypercube would be constructed of 10 EXP 35 “stacks” of flat 3 D space wherein each of the differential 3 D units in the stack would have a volume of one cubic meter. For an adjacent 5 D flat space volume of 1 meter ^ 5 quantized at the linear distance scale of 10 EXP – 35, with the same energy density per unit of 3 D volume element as an equivalent 3 D unit volume element in our space, the energy contained within 1 meter ^ 5 of the 5 D space would be (10 EXP 35) ^ 2 times greater than a typical cubic meter within our 3 D space. The 6 D analogue volume would have (10 EXP 35) ^ 3 times the energy. The 7 D analogue, (10 EXP 35 ) ^ 4 times, and so on to an infinity D volume of Euclidean space with an energy value of (10 EXP 35) ^ (Infinity) fold greater.
One can see that if somehow, the vacuum energy state within a given volume of our ordinary space can some how be depolarized to yield an energy density 120 orders of magnitude greater than that which is observed in our ordinary 3 D space vacuum as predicted by some older theories, then if such depolarized energy states can also be made manifest in adjacent higher dimensional vacuum energy states wherein the energy extracted could be piped into a local region within our ordinary 4 D space-time, a potentially huge quantity of energy could be made available for good or for evil in our universe, hopefully for good, for interstellar, intergalactic, and cosmic distance travel in space and/or time within our universe. If the energy resulting from a given depolarized 4 D volume of 1 quadric meter of any adjacent 4 D flat space with similar vacuum energy properties to our space is fully piped into a cubic meter of our 3 D space, then the energy density in the given volume of our 3 D space would become (10 EXP 120) x (10 EXP 35) = 10 EXP 155 times greater than that observed in our 3 D polarized stable vacuum. For the 5 D analogue, the respective energy density becomes (10 EXP 120) x [(10 EXP 35) ^ 2] or 10 EXP 190 times greater. For 6 D, (10 EXP 120) x [(10 EXP 35) ^ 3] = 10 EXP 225 times greater, and so on in a similar progression to that described at the end of the previous paragraph. This is just for higher dimensional cubes with linear edge size of just one meter, the amount of energy available from hyper cubes increases not only dramatically with an increase in the number of dimensions, but also simply as a result in the increase in the linear scale of the hypercubic volumes.
Even if the 10 or 11 dimensions of space time as predicted by string theory are highly compactified and thus perhaps have a much less volume than they would if they were flat or Euclidean, perhaps there are still other groups of flat or nearly flat spatial dimensions adjacent to our 3 D space that have not adequately been accounted for by theory and/or by conjecture. Perhaps these dimensions would be normally casually disconnected from our 4 D Einsteinian space-time, and even from the overall 10D or 11 D space-time predicted by string theory, but which could somehow be accessed if we could only find the metaphorical key to unlock these would be higher flat dimensions. Note that according to the Theory of Chaotic Inflation, baby universes are forming virtually constantly from just about every point in our universe. These universes accordingly either collapse back on them selves or continue to expand with their own space-time continuums which we do not notice because they become casually disconnected from our universe near the very instant of their birth. As a result, the concept of largely casually disconnected regions of space-time has been an intelligible concept for quite some time now.
Perhaps the extractable energy from these normally disconnected dimensions would be in the form of any of the four known or conjectured boson mediated types of energy i.e., electromagnetic energy, weak force nuclear energy, strong force nuclear energy, gravitational energy mediated by gravity waves or gravitons; or perhaps the conjectured super symmetric counterparts according to the super symmetry theories; or perhaps some form of dark energy in the sense that such is currently proposed to be part of the total energy makeup of our universe and also the reason for the apparent increase in the rate of expansion of our universe. If not any of the former, then perhaps some exotic type of energy that we don’t quite have the scientific nomenclature to define or conjecture about.
2) The second concept I mention tonight involves the notion that there might be certain form of mass or inertial mass M1 that have an energy equivalence greater, perhaps much greater than an equivalent mass (or inertial mass) M0 that we know about. Here either f(m) + M1 x (C^2) or perhaps f(m) x M1 x (C^2) might be the formula for energy equivalence that would be greater than M0 x (C^2), and perhaps much greater. Also, f(m) could be some unknown additive or multiplicative function which might or might not be exponential and/or might or might not be equal to a stable constant. Here M1 and M0 would both be equal to the same number of kilograms. Who knows, if we are willing to conjecture this far, then perhaps there is yet another form of mass or inertial mass M2 with an energy equivalence per kilogram higher, if not much higher than a kilogram of M1. How such other types of mass would be consistent with the current definitions of the mass that we know about and/or consistent with the thermodynamic properties and mass-energy transport properties of special and general relativity, I have no idea.
Anyhow, I am going to stop here for the night. I will be back on site latter today or tomorrow.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
According to NASA Watch, NASA plans to cancel funds for NIAC,
the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts:
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2007/03/killing_niac.html
ljk ! i sit here agast at that level of STUPIDITY just cannot freaking believe it!!!!! no disrespect to you my friend but i hope that you are wrong. respectfully george
ljk,just have to say one more thing about the above.so…first they cancel the funding for the break through propulsion physics project! now this.is nasa TRYING to go backwards! i almost refuse to believe it. (!?) george
jim, had a little computer problem yesterday and lost my reply to your comments above. was a little suprised to see today that you had not added anything yet but i will try to re create my lost comments as best i can. an aside first – did you see what ljk said above? i still can’t believe it.went over to nasa watch to check the article just in case he was wildly wrong…well…he was WILDLY right! nasa is acting like it wants to go out of business,no? but anyhow back to those lost comments : you know i think that when we have thoughts “out of nowhere” that are about things we think about all the time psychologically they are just ruminations of are sub conscious mind come to the fore. and as to energy from space itself,well it reminds me of years ago when i read a book wherein i found my first mention of the zero point field .it occured to me that if we could tap into that energy then we could fuel a spacecraft in that manner.well as it turned out…”my idea” had first been thought of in 1947,before i was born. also as to other dimensions and another form of mass i found those to be very promising concepts as well.but as with everything else only one problem,how do you do it? that then is the gist of what i had said. but one more thing that is very pertinent and i hope to get feedback from others too!… as above,if nasa sees fit to no longer fund the breahthrough propulsion physics program and furthermore to stop funding the institute for advanced concepts then where the heck are any advanced ideas going to go? maybe we should go back to bi planes and horses and buggies!? well gang end of comments…end of rant. very respectfully your friend george
Hi George and ljk;
George, I am glad that I have the opportuinity to post tonight. Thanks for the critique. I was busy today but its good to be back on site. You took the words right out of my mouth regarding NASA. I visited the link that ljk provided, and my immeadiate reaction was, “man is that dumb!” Does NASA think we as a nation are going to stay ahead of the game without such programs. I encourge private enterprises to work on new space propulsion concepts and theories and make them publically available where they can actually benefit humanity instead of stifling creativity and almost seemingly intentionally keeping mankind in the cradle.
Anyhow, I will post more ideas on interstellar transport later today after I formulate my thoughts on such.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
thank you jim i think we see eye to eye and unless i am very wrong everybody else here probably agrees too,i look forward to your further comments and will probably be back on line later today. your friend george
Hi George;
Some additional concepts regarding interstellar transport have occurred to me over the last few hours as follows.
1) The first example involves the notion of deploying a very long superconducting cable made of some form of incredibly strong material in interstellar and/or intergalactic space. The cable would have a mass of anywhere from 100 metric tons per kilometer to 10 EXP 15 tons per kilometer or greater resulting in a cable with a length of 10 billion light-years having a mass of between 10 EXP 25 metric tons to 10 EXP 38 metric tons or greater. The cable would preferably have a high strain capability and a high modulus of elasticity to avoid be snapped by the expansion of the universe over the distance scale of its length..
The cable would be electrified by electrical power generation stations located periodically along its length and would be capable of and actually be energized to carry a tremendous amount of electrical power be virtue of the materials out of which it is constructed. Note that the cable can optionally take the form of a closed loop in order to recirculate its electrical current. A space craft would travel down the length of the cable and extract electrical energy to power an photon rocket, ion rocket, electron rocket, magneto-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive MHDPD, electro-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive EHDPD, electromagneto-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive EMHDPD, or perhaps use a linearly co-located linearly repulsive cable which is made of magnetic material, or which exists in the form of a linear electromagnet optionally powered by the same or similar mechanism as the electrical power source cable is. The cable might utilize interstellar magnetic and/or intergalactic magnetic fields along with appropriate one way diodes to produce a net electrical current or alternatively be powered at least in part by the cosmic microwave back ground energy and/or star light.
A spacecraft traveling down the cable would ideally be capable of at least 1 G of acceleration, and perhaps ideally, accelerations as high as many orders of magnitude above 1 G. Thus extraordinarily high relativistic time dilation values would be achieved allowing any manned spacecraft riding along the cable system but not physically contacting it to travel to remote locations within the visible universe and beyond during the normal useful working life span of an adult human.
2) Alternatively, the spaceship energizing cable could have the from of a light conduit to carry light or other electromagnetic radiation in an assemblage similar to a giant fiber optic except that the cable would need to be composed of some incredibly transmissive material to prevent light attenuation along its huge length. Optional repeater stations located along the cable may be needed to re-amplify the beam as it becomes attenuated along a given interval of cable between any such would be repeater stations. A space craft would travel down the length of the cable and extract electromagnetic energy to power a photon rocket, ion rocket, electron rocket, magneto-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive MHDPD, electro-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive EHDPD, electromagneto-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive EMHDPD, or perhaps use a linearly co-located drive cable which is made of magnetic material, or which exists in the form of a linear electromagnet optionally powered by a repetitive electrical energy generation mechanism. Any electrically powered magnetic drive cable might utilize interstellar magnetic and/or intergalactic magnetic fields along with appropriate one way diodes to produce a net electrical current. The magnetic drive cable might alternatively be powered at least in part by the cosmic microwave back ground energy and/or star light.
3) Combinations of electrical conducting conduits and optical conducting conduits may also be used to provide energy for the spacecraft in similar manners to that described under items 1) and 2) above.
4) The fourth notion that I will discuss involves the notion of building a very long magnetic and/or electric drive tube with a length of up to 10 billion to 100 billion light years that is powered by electrical power provided by periodically located electrical power generation stations along the length of the tube. The tube may optionally have length specific mass similar in range to that of the electrical drive cable described under section 1) above.
As one option for reducing the cross-sectional size of the drive tube, a manned space-craft may optionally be rotated with a rotational velocity very near the velocity of light in order to perhaps cause its diameter to contract so that it may travel through a much more narrow tube. Perhaps some sort of artificially induced gravity field and/or electric and/or magnetic field within the spacecraft can enable to craft to rotate at an outward radial velocity of just under C so that the craft will not fly apart as a result of centripetal accelerations and also so that the crew would not be obliterated by such accelerations.
If the quantities of the magnetic permeability and electrical permittivity of the free space within the tube can be reduced as a result of limiting the number of zero point electromagnetic standing wave fluctuations within the drive tube, then perhaps the speed of light within the tube can be made greater than that in free space outside the tube thus perhaps resulting in a speed of light within the tube being greater then C in free interstellar and in intergalactic space. If the diameter of the tube can be made arbitrarily small, then one might be able reduce the set of allowed zero point electromagnetic fluctuation even further within the tube thus perhaps allowing for a velocity of light within the tube to become even greater yet compared to the velocity of light within a free unconfined vacuum. This might perhaps allow a spacecraft traveling down a narrow tube to achieve a velocity greater than that of C in free unconfined space. This might in theory allow time travel into the past as the craft travels down the length of the tube, thus perhaps allowing the craft to effectively arrive at the end of the tube just before the craft started its journey at the other end thus resulting in instantaneous travel, or effectively faster than instantaneous travel.
No doubt, the construction and maintenance of any such transportation infrastructure as mentioned above would entail intergalactic scale manufacturing technologies and methods and thus would probably only be possible in the remote future. But as always, it can’t hurt to start thinking about such infrastructure to soon even if only in a very cursory manner.
Note that any of the power cables, drive cables, and drive tubes described above might optionally be composed of multiple if not a series numerous separate linear or curvilinear positioned elements to facilitate construction, operation, and maintenance of such a system.
I will be back on site tomorrow.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
thank you jim, know what came to mind as i was reading the above? a sort of train in space! but….the size! wow! i do not think anything like that might be buildable anytime soon for sure. but what the hey all space transport ideas are worthy of at least being discussed.you never know where you might find a golden nuggert! thanks again your friend george
Hi George;
Thanks for the critical review of my last blog. I have summarized 5 additional broad concepts regarding maned interstellar travel.
1) The first idea involves using a space-time membrane for storing capacitive electrical energy wherein the space-time would be made to have a continuous form if such does not already exists or made to have a quantized form preferably in as small of units as possible, perhaps even units much smaller then the Planck distance scale in our universe. The space-time membrane would be folded over and compactly stored within a surrounding higher dimensional space wherein as much membrane surface area as possible would be contained within a given volume element in higher dimensional space. The electrical energy from this higher dimensional space-time membrane would be transferred from this higher dimensional space to our 4 dimensional space-time in a form that is controllable and containable within our ordinary space-time.
In particular, I thought that if a given 2-D space membrane folded over upon itself to maximize surface area contained in a 3 D slice of say adjacent higher dimensional space, say 4 D space or hyperspace, then the entire volume element of the 4 –D space under consideration might be able to store an infinite amount of energy in the limit that the quantized distance scale of the 4 –D space approaches zero. Just as a cubic meter is composed of an infinite number of planar stacked 2 D planes, a 4 D hypercube with a volume of 1 meter ^ 4 in Euclidean Space would be composed of a ”stack” of an infinite number of 3 D cubic meter volumes for the case where space-time is continuous, e.g., not quantized into fundamental finite units at some smaller bounding scale. Thus a 4 D volume of such space e.g., a 1 meter hypercube would have an infinitely greater amount of energy storage ability than a 1 meter cube in our space, and thus, could contain a folded 2-D capacitive space-time membrane with surface area infinitely greater than that for a 3-D 1 meter cube . A 5 D volume analogue would have the ability to store a 2 –D folded membrane having a surface area infinitely greater than that of the 4 –D one meter hypercube and thus could store an electrical energy content of (infinity) x (infinity) = (infinity) ^ 2 greater than a 1 meter 3-D cube. A 1 meter 6 D cube with a maximally folded 2 –D capacitive membrane would have a maximum electrical energy content of (infinity) x (infinity) x (infinity) = (infinity) ^ 3 greater than a 1 meter 3-D cube, and so on to (infinity) ^ (infinity) for infinite dimensional space meter wide volume analogues, wherein the richness of the value of the infinity is defined to be that for the infinite multiple of 3 D one meter cubes comprising 4 D cube having the same linear dimension.
If the linear Planck distance scale (~10 EXP -35 meters) holds up in some adjacent 4 D space as it theoretically appears to do in our 3 D space, then one would expect that the maximum electrical energy contained within a maximally folded 2-D capacitive space-time membrane within a hypercubic meter (meter ^ 4) of this higher space would have about 10 EXP 35 times the energy storage ability of a maximally folded 2-D membrane within our ordinary 3-D space because the surface area of this maximally folded 2-D space-time membrane within the 4-D space would be 10 EXP 35 times greater. For the 5-D 1 meter wide cube analogue with a maximally folded 2-D capacitive membrane, the electrical energy storage capacity would be 10 EXP 70 times greater. For the 6-D analogue, 10 EXP 105 time greater and so on to an infinity- D 1 meter wide hypercube volume analogue in Euclidean space with an energy storage value and maximally folded 2 –D surface area of (10 EXP 35) ^ (Infinity) fold greater.
The electrical energy extracted from the 2-D space-time membrane could be used to power a photon rocket, ion rocket, electron rocket, magneto-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive MHDPD, electro-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive EHDPD, electromagneto-hydrodynamic-plasma-drive EMHDPD, or other, yet to be developed propulsion mechanism, such as antigravity propulsion, space-time warp drive, wormhole production etc.
Note that in the very distant future, a whole new field of space-time continuum engineering will be developed that allows for the industrial research and development and manufacture of space-time continuums of arbitrary dimensionality, linear distance scale of quantization, curvature, and/or values for various zero point energy fields.
2) The second idea involves another method of accelerating large space craft to velocities near C involving the construction of a large series of large electrically charged plates, or some other charged series of geometric configurations, and wherein the electric field gradient between the plates would be very large, and wherein the plates would be located far enough apart such that the potential difference between them could be as high as if not much higher than 10 EXP 15 Volts. The spacecraft would start out by being pulled toward one plate, as the spacecraft passed through an opening in the first plate the electric charge would be quickly bled off the first plate and somehow shielded so that the craft could be pulled toward the next plate, wherein the charge from the second plate would be bled off or somehow screened, and so on, with the craft continuously accelerating from plate to plate. The bled off electrons or other charged particles could be reacted with their antimatter counterparts for added energy which could optionally be beamed to the transiting or exiting spacecraft. For example, protons and electrons could be mixed with neutral anti-hydrogen wherein the annihilation energy could be beamed to an incoming, transiting, or outgoing spacecraft. The charged plates could be forces to remain in position by some useful arbitrary means such as photon, ion, or electron rocket thrusters, antigravity fields (if such id possible), other known mechanisms, and currently unknown yet to be discovered principles as appropriate
3) The third idea involves using electrically conductive conduits, preferably super conducting conduits for beaming manned spacecraft down the tubes in the form of light beams. The quantum mechanical information of the spacecraft if not also the entire original mass and energy of the spacecraft would be transferred to and/or converted to pure photonic energy. If the quantities of the magnetic permeability and electrical permittivity of the free space within the tube can be reduced as a result of limiting the number of zero point electromagnetic standing wave fluctuations within the transmission tube, then perhaps the speed of light within the tube can be made greater than that in free space outside the tube thus perhaps resulting in a speed of light within the tube being greater then C in free interstellar and in intergalactic space. If the diameter of the tube can be made arbitrarily small, then one might be able reduce the set of allowed zero point electromagnetic fluctuation even further within the tube thus perhaps allowing for a velocity of light within the tube to become even greater yet compared to the velocity of light within a free unconfined vacuum. This might perhaps allow the beamed energy traveling down a narrow tube to achieve a yet greater velocity relative to that of C in free unconfined interstellar space. This might in theory allow time travel into the past as the beam travels down the length of the tube, thus perhaps allowing the beam to effectively arrive at the end of the tube just before the beam started its journey at the other end thus resulting in instantaneous travel, or effectively faster than instantaneous travel for the rematerialized craft.
4) The fourth idea involves some how altering the magnetic permeability and/or the electrical permittivity of free interstellar or intergalactic space in the region in which the craft is traveling wherein the value of 1/{[(Mu naught) x (Epsilon naught)]^(1/2)} would be made greater than the value of C that the speed of light would ordinarily have in a vacuum without artificially reduced values for Mu naught and/or Epsilon naught. If the product of Mu naught and Epsilon naught could be made arbitrarily small, then perhaps the speed of light can locally be made arbitrarily high, perhaps many times or even many orders of magnitude greater than 2.998 X 10 EXP 8 meter/sec.
5) The fourth idea involves somehow inducing remotely located regions of space-time (from each other) to become multiply-adjacently connected wherein leaving one differential volume of space would result in immediate entrance into a relatively remotely located region of space-time wherein the transition between the two remotely located regions of space-time would occur as a result of the multiply connectedness of the bounding surfaces of the two region but without any space-time stretching or warping, and without the utilization of any wormholes. Perhaps since one aspect of free space is the one that defines the very important property of the speed of light as C = 1/{[(Mu naught) x (Epsilon naught)]^(1/2)}, perhaps some how manipulating electromagnetic fields, if not the very values of Mu naught and Epsilon naught might result in the production of a state of multiply connectedness in mutually distant locations in space-time, past, present, or future, or perhaps be manipulated to cause some sort of electromagnetic teleportation (perhaps even instantaneously) between to mutually distant regions of space-time in the, past, present, and/or future.
Anyhow, that’s all for now. I will be back on site later today or tomorrow.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
really deep stuff jim and at this moment i really don’t feel able to make any real meaningful comments!!!! but lol if we all keep plugging away then maybe there is a chance that we will all cross the finish line together!!! :) your friend george
Hi George;
I would like to mention the almost sucess of SpaceDev’s attempt to launch a payload into orbit from a comercially owned facility a few days ago. It appears that the rocket had a fairly normal ascent until about 4 1/2 minutes into flight at which time it developed some form of aerodynamic instability which caused the failure of the vehicle. The good news is that if they had suceeded, they would have had the first sucessful flight of a vehicle that can lift a payload into orbit at a cost of approximately 10 times cheaper than the next best current alternative for the payload mass range that SpaceDev anticipates for this rocket model. Good news indeed! Cheaper access to orbit will enable the construction of more elaborate manned spacecraft which can travel about the solar system, and in the not too distant future, perhaps to our nearby stellar neighbors. The greater the number of aerospace companies trying to crack the problem of safe and low cost access to Earth orbit, probably the better.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
you bet jim,yes sir i agree!! i love the idea of building a large space craft in orbit like the discovery from 2001 a space odyssey.maybe we could call it the CLARKE after arthur c clarke. – instead of eva pods it could carry cousins of the lunar module for landings.at the very least it could do close manned flybys of planets and moons! maybe that would be a better plan than anything we are currently working on (cev etc). unfortunately if we wanted to build that soon we would have to use fission power since we do’t as yet have fusion or anti matter. come to think of it maybe we should hold our horses and develop those first! an interesting statement comming from me since i am not normally all that patient a man!! especially when i talk about progress in space. your friend george ps i’d love to hear everybodies ideas on not just starships but what everybody feels should be the first steps before that to lead us up to that point !! maybe sometimes i (we) think about moving forward too fast!!! but anyhow thanks again george
Hi George;
Thanks for your response and critique.
I rather like the idea of a fission powered space ark type of vessel that could obtain perhaps .05 C. This could allow us to arrive at the Alpha Centuri system in about 80 years. The ship could be very large and have accomidations for multiple generations that would be born while in transit. If we can crack the aging problem and allow humans to live atleast on average more than 150 years, perhaps the prospect of finding crew members and passengers for such a vessel would be an easy task. To slow down, the craft might apply some sort of magnetic breaking such as any one or more of the various types proposed in scientific literature. The craft could reach Barnard’s Star at a distance of about 6 light years in 120 years. Even at .05 C, a lot of territory is opened up for potential settlements.
I have some additional concepts to share regarding the first steps of mankind out into our solar system and/or into Oort cloud that; although a little less exotic than a fission powered space ark, I still find very intriging. I will post these ideas early tomorrow morning if not later on tonight.
George, good comments about our need to take the first baby steps. It will be interesting to hear what people have to say about such on site.
I am a little sleepy from my days activities, and so I am going to crash for the night.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
thank you very much i look forward to seeing some ideas on those “baby steps” it is what we are forced to look at first anyhow! the concept of space arks always reminds me of the original star trek episode “for the earth is hollow and i have touched the sky” !! alot of people i am sure have very fine ideas about what direction the space program should take in the near future.and… i am first on line to at least want to hear! thank you your friend george
Hi George;
It occurred to me to comment about an old interplanetary/local interstellar star system transport method of using low yield nuclear bombs detonated behind a pusher plate made of temperature resistant and radiation resistant material optionally augmented by a strong magnetic and/or electric fields to act as a protection mechanism to protect the pusher plate from extremely hot plasma and to enhance propulsion by more effectively reflecting the blast.
Perhaps using modern or even improved nuclear weapons warhead designs which maximize the wieght specific yield of the warhead but with reduced yield could enable us to get to the stars, perhaps allowing us to reach 1/4 to 1/3 C thus putting the thousand or more star systems within a 12 light year radius of Earth within our reach in one human generation ship and Earth time. If we are willing to persue 80 year excursions with this technology, then 10s of thousands of star systems become accessable during a current human life expectancy time period. If we are able to extent the human life expectancy to 150 to 200 years, then hundreds of thousands of star systems are opened up for feasible and oneday practical manned travel.
This is a technology that might be implementable in 20 to 30 years with a robust research and development effort.
George, I look forward to hearing more from you regarding planetary and interstellar transport.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
Hi George;
I could not pass up the opportuinity to blog again tonight. I thought that I would share a couple of ideas tonight which are available in aerospace literature.
1) While looking around on the internet tonight, I had read a reference to a project referred to as Project Medusa wherein a very large parachute like sail would be deployed in front of a spacecraft but connected to the craft by strong cables. Nuclear bombs would then be detonated between the craft and the sail but safely away from the craft and far enough away from the sail so as not to damage it. The potential benefits of this approach over that studied in project Orion during the 50s and 60s is such that the bombs can be detonated further away from the craft thus allowing increased yields and also in efficiencies which result in higher temperatures in the final few nanoseconds of the nuclear reaction process before the detonation phase is completed. This may result in considerably higher Isp over the crude nuclear bombs in existence during the 50s and early 60s. I cannot not think of a more useful application for modern nuclear weapons technology than to put it to use to drive a starship.
2) Another concept involves the use of antimatter catalyzed fission wherein small quantities of solid uranium 235 or other fissionable elemental species and/or isotopes are made to undergo explosive nuclear reactions wherein the reactions products would be used to propell a ship forward in a manner simmilar to that of project orion. According to the web site I read, the critical mass of a fissionable fuel pellot might be brought down to as low as 1 gram due to the very large flux of fission fragments that can result when; say, a relatively small number of antiprotons are directed into a 1 gram pellot of U-235. Note that one gram of fully fissioned U-235 is about equal to 22 metric tons of TNT in explosive energy yield.
Perhaps inorder to prevent enhanced radioactivity from the on ship storage of vary large amounts of weapons grade uranium, plutonium, americium, thorium etc., perhaps the pellots could be stored in small tethered pods located in back of the craft along long tethers to prevent premature detonation or dangerous sub-critical mass reactions. When it is time for a given batch of the fuel to be used, the fuel pods could be reilled in and the fuel extracted for use.
Note that one gram of solid uranium has a volume of only about 1/25 of a cubic centemeter, about the volume of a small uncooked grain of white rice. A lot of mass would be involved in manned missions to the nearest stars this way, but the volume specific energy storage density of uranium, plutonium, americium, thorium and the like is potentially about one order of magnitude greater than hydrogen, dueterium, tritium, and other low atomic number elements typically considered for fusion rockets.
Now if uranium 238 can somehow be induced to undergo explosive nuclear fission at very low critical masses, perhaps by fission being catalized by antiprotons, then we have a huge source of fuel for local interstellar trips since depleted uranium is much more common than the Uranium 235 isotope is. Also depleted uranium might make great structural materials for building the craft as long as background radioactivity can be reduced to a safe level. Infact, depleted uranium was, at least at one point, included in the composite armour of M1 Abrams tanks because of its density and hardness.
Note that I can hardly think of a better application for all of the weapons grade plutonium and uranium currently stocked around the globe than to aid mankind in the comming decades in tooling around the solar system, and hopefully within a century, to start tooling around our local interstellar nieghbors.
Anyhow, I am going to get more rest shortly. I will plan to be back on site tomorrow.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
Hi George and Other Folks;
I was thinking about the volume specific density of nuclear energy in bulk fission fuel materials and it occured to me that a 14 and 1/2 inch cube of uranium 238 has the equivalent of about 22 Megatons of TNT stored within it in the form of potentially accessable nuclear energy even though depleted uranium as such is currently viewed as not useful as nuclear fuel by itself in nuclear devices. But suppose a much larger bulk quantity of U-238, perhaps a 12 foot cube with a mass of 1,000 metric tons could somehow induced to undergo complete fission (such as by antimatter catylized fission) within a fraction of a microsecond. The question I then have is “Could or would there be any bazaar or exotic unknown effects resulting from the aggregation of such a large number of fission events in such a relatively small volume and small time period?”
It might be possible that such effects are not noticed in the detonation of current or past nuclear devices because either the effects were masked by the incredible release of nuclear energy in the form of gamma rays, thermal energy and massive particle types of ionizing radiation, or perhaps the energy density of the detonations when combined with the limited scale of the total energy release from each of the detonations was not sufficient to produce any detectable yet to be discovered exotic or bazaar effects.
If such bazaar effects do exist, then perhaps they occur to some degree in supernova explosions. If they occur strongly in such supernova explosions, perhaps the effects are masked by the shear magnitude of the supernova explosions and so as of yet have remained undetected. Another possibility is that such effects occur very strongly within the depths of exploding stars but that the effects are screened by the overlaying dense and thick stellar materials by one or more of the following proccesses: 1) sceening as a result of the containment of the phenomenon by they overlaying mass of the outer portions of the exploding star; 2) screening by the aggreagated effects of the overlaying highly ionized matter composing the overlaying bulk material of the star including effects that may be dependent on the isotopic makeup and distribution of the plasma’s constituents and/or be based at least inpart on the indices of refraction, the magnetic permeability, and/or the electrical permittivity of the overlaying plasma; 3) screening by the intense gravity fields that exist within the highly compressed portions of the exploding star and/or the gravity from the star as a whole; 4) other screening effects.
Now I am not trying to come accross as a mad scientist, but I am curious if there are any such exotic effects that can be demostrated here on Earth in a controlled laboratory style setting and if such effects upon discovery can be used to promote interstellar spacetravel by way of any of number of mechanisms such as but not necessarilly limited to: 1) zeropoint vacuum energy extraction; 2) extraction of zero point energy and/or real particle energy from higher dimensional space and/or higher dimensional structures within such higher dimensional space; 3) extraction of zero point energy and/or real particle energy from lower dimensional objects or structures within higher dimensional space; 4) bazaar quantum scale and/or macroscopic scale effects on the geometry of ordinary Einsteinian 4-D spacetime, or on higher dimensional spacetimes such as those proposed to exist in string theory, metatheory, and/or the theory of higher dimensional analogues to effectively 2-D membranes in ordinary 4-D spacetime also known as the Theory of Branes for short; 5) the production of bazaar effects involving unknown or yet to be discovered properties of electromagnetic fields; 6) other unspecified mechanisms.
If bulk quantities of antimatter can one day be produced, then perhaps bulk quantities of antimatter uranium can be produced and studied for possible bazaar fission induced effects. Eventhough the energy release by combining matter with an equal amount of antimatter is over a thousand times greater than that for nuclear fission, perhaps the process of nuclear fission in bulk quantities of antimatter uranium could shed some light on any bazaar effects mentioned above if they exists or perhaps shed some light on any existent assymmetry between matter and antimatter. Any such knowledge gained might be applicable to manned interstellar travel.
Anyhow, I won’t monopolize the website anymore this morning. I will be back on site this evening. I will comment on some more down to Earth ideas regarding travel within our solar system and perhaps manned travel into the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud as good initial steps for mankinds outreach into the cosmos.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
jim and all others who may care to have a look: in so far as i understand it,if we where willing to do it orion could be built today.nonetheless however i am sure for the crew quarters etc it would indeed take afew years of research design etc! so that “today” would not be quite as “today” as we would like!? and YES jim…nuclear weapons as a fuel for starships would be maybe the ONLY good use !!! further of coarse i wanted to say that yes there are probably alot of things that could give us considerable bang for our buck visavie space craft propulsion! good news. and …yes keeping radioactives as far from the crew as possible is a great idea! i applaud that. i will turn around in a minute to adress a couple more things that i saw posted that i liked too!!! your friend one and all – george
jim and everybody…one more time about the above : i read your comments about potential bazaar effects with great interest,very fine ideas.but my question is bazaar effects of what kind to do what? and in so far as power derived from the zero point field…well,that…is a “drum” i have been beating for quite awhile now! was glad to see you mention it. again,some more “down to earth ideas”about exploration of the solar system might be just the thing since that is what we will have to do first anyhow! i look forward to everybodies comments about any or all of the above postings,and hope as always to get a good discussion going! respectfully all your friend george
Hi George. Thanks for the critical review of my two previous postings.
Now that the Airbus A-380 has proven its flight worthiness, perhaps it can be used as a platform to launch scramjets specifically designed to mate with the super-jumbo-jet wherein the scramjets would be drop released at 40,000 feet or so and then take off and where they could then carry humans and/or cargo into low Earth orbit. I am sure this idea has almost certainly already been considered regarding the A-380, but since it is such a big plane and since presumably, a large number of units are going to be produced, I just thought that I would bring the idea to any reader’s mind this afternoon. Personally, I think this idea is rather neat.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
before i say anything else this week : a tank of gas $18,a meal at a nice restaurant $80,having a group of like minded guys to talk about space with Priceless!!! thank each and every one of you. your friend george scaglione
very neat indeed jim,the perfect idea which is less than a starship and highly practical!! the sort of thing they should pay more attention to because such “baby steps” have just got to come first anyhow!! thank you george
Hi George;
Thanks for the encouragement. It occurred to me to mention the concept of a National Spaceflight Donation Day wherein donations of 1/2, 1, 5, 10, and 20 dollars would be collected by commercial interests and used to futher research into manned spaceflight. I know if there was a viable large scale effort as such that could do some real good, I would be happy to donate over $100.00 for the cause.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
Hi George;
I could not stay off site for even 2 hours.
A few potentially practical chemical rocket propulsion infrastructure concepts I thought that the general readership of this site have probably heard of but which I think they can well identify with are summarized as follows.
1) The first idea was simmilar to one I mentioned previously and involves the use of a mass driver to fire metric ton projectiles from the lunar polar regions where large deposits of ice are expected to exist. The mass driver could be electromagnetic or it could be powered by explosive combination of liquid hydrogen and Lox. The approximately 2.4 km/sec escape velocity should be easilly attainable by a large bore lunar based gun. Naval guns have been used frequently in WWII and later with projectile masses of about 1 metric ton and muzzle velocities of about 1.2 km/sec. Although gun powder was used here, it should not be too big of an engineering effort to design, build, and field a hydrogen-oxygen powered gun once easier access to the moon is achieved. The issue of air resistance within the barrel of the gun by air located in front of the speeding projectile as it travels down the barrel should not be a problem since there is no atmosphere on the Moon. The gun could be used to fire containers of liquid hydrogen, Lox, and the like for fueling manned missions to the further reaches of our solar system. Other supplies could also be lifted from the lunar surface by this method.
2) The second idea involves large fuel up stations on Mars once we begin to establish permanent outposts there. The idea would be to once again, use an electromagnetic mass driver or perhaps a hydrogen-oxygen powered gun to launch fuel containing projectiles into Martian orbit. Athought the escape velocity of Mars is a bit greater than that of the Moon, at about 5 km/sec, the use of explosive combustion of hydrogen and oxygen should still be doable on Mars especially when considering that the surface atmospheric pressure on Mars is only about 1% of that at sea-level on Earth. Note that the velocity of ICBM nuclear warheads upon reentry and travel most of the way downward towards the Earth surface would be about 6km/sec. As a result, the potentially damaging ablative effects of a 5 km/sec projectile launch through the Martian atmosphere are probably surmountable with currently existing high temperature resistant materials. If not, than perhaps the projectiles can be fitted with small rocket motors that kick in after the projectile reaches a few dozen miles above the Martian surface after being fired from the cannon at about 2-3 km/sec. In either case, the projectile casings should be returnable to the martian surface by parachute provided that parachutes that are large enough and perhaps temperature resistant can be installed on the casings before they are de-orbited. The parachutes and any rocket motors could, in theory, be resuable.
3) The third concept I will discuss involves extracting the liquified hydrogenic gases that have all but been proven to exist on Saturn’s moon Titan. It now seems that there are vast oceans of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan, perhaps in the form of liquid methane and liquid ethane, both of which could make excellent rocket fuel when oxidized with Lox. The potentially vast reserves of methane, ethane, and perhaps other hydrocarbons could be useful in chemical-rocket-based deep solar system manned travel and for industrial processes for facilities located on planetary bodies within our solar system as well as free orbiting space stations and other manned outposts.
4) The fourth concept I will briefly summarize involves the use of refuelable solar thermal rockets and refuelable nuclear thermal rockets. For such craft, material from the Moon, Mars, cometary bodies, asteriods, etc., could be used as reaction mass for refillable solar thermal and/or nuclear thermal rockets, both of which show promise of being able to reliably achieve Isp values above 1,000 seconds;- in the case of nuclear thermal rockets, well above 1,000 seconds. Such propulsion systems could dramatically cut the manned flight time to Mars and into the outer solar system thus opening up new vistas for manned exploration, colonization, industry, and research outposts within the outer Solar System.
Anyhow, I will stop here. I expect to be back on site late tomorrow.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
jim,NATIONAL SPACEFLIGHT DONATION DAY sounds like a great idea and i would happily contribute to it! i’ll bet alot of money could be raised.hope this idea can indeed get started.also…mass drivers on the moon and mars sound really good too. what you are basically saying in general in your blogs above is that we should “mine” the solar system in alot of ways that could very much help us to explore it.i’ll buy that too my friend thank you george
And where would this money be donated and to whom?
Who would we be asking to donate the money and how much
could one realistically expect to get?
Would something like the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon
be a realistic comparison in terms of raising efforts and
money received?
Hi George and ljk;
Thanks for the critique and comments. I am not quite sure how National Spaceflight Donation Day could get started let alone how much money it could generate etc., but I am willing to entertain the idea of actually trying to start such an effort if anyone is interested in “going along” with the idea. Something like the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon seems to be an intriguing model to consider.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
ljk,first thing that comes to mind is developing the research arm of tau zero.but,might be a hard sell.pretty sure people would go for the idea but it would need to be sold to them.i’m pretty sure the average guy does not walk around saying….:) gosh i wish i could give some money to space research! jim it would have to be approached in a subtle way! anybody wants to help sick kids not as many think about starships that much.maybe something along the lines of a national advertising campaign…but lol, having said that,where would all the money for something like that come from? as i said elsewhere last week – people will not enthusiastically support space until they see good commercial reasons by which they themselveswould benefit. then it will,pardon the pun,really take off!!! commercials like spacex so far are leading the way big time! thank you george
Hi George;
Thanks for the critique. You are absolutely right that any such approach would have to be very subtle:- and well crafted by marketing and advertisement folks. Given the seeming general lack of interest in space in itself by the general population, it would be a hard sell. At some point, such an idea might make sense, but as for now, thanks for the reality check.
I will be back on site, if not tonight, then later tomorrow.
Your Friend Jim
Hi George;
Another manned planetary concept dawned on me early yesterday morning which involves storing substantial amounts of kinetic energy for powering efficient ion and electron rockets. The idea would involve storing energy in counter rotatiing flywheels made of full strength carbon nanotube materials which theoretically can be 60 times as strong as steel. I would imagine that properly designed carbon nanotube flywheels could store enough energy to compete with or atleast complement chemical rocket technologies. It is also possible that perhaps the flywheels can be recharged with kinetic energy from the Sun when they are not engaged for powering rockets such as propulsionless inertial travel in deep solar system travel or when the craft is parked in orbit around a planet such as Mars or other planetary bodies.
A simmilar concept involves the production of some very exotic materials far into the future wherein large macroscopic bulk materials of extraordinary strength and density would be used to store very large amounts of kinetic energy. Counter rotating flywheels composed of stable materials as such, for example, neutronium, quarkonium. etc., that are set rotating at velocities near C could be an excellent power source for ion, electron, and/or photon rockets, MPHDD, EPHDD, and EMPHDD systems etc. Note that neutron stars exist which are known to have rotational velocities as high as 1/3 C although the self gravitational contraction of such high speed neutron stars plays a role in their stability.
Note that using relativistic kinetic energy as such may be important ecologically and environmentally for space propulsion in very far distant future time scales because such techniques might not involve the transmutation or nucleonic species or the fermi-dirac annihilation of matter/antimatter particles for transportation and industrial infrastructure. If such propulsion systems can be recharged with star light, CMBR, dark energy, or zero point vacuum energy, the need to use nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and antimatter production might not be necessary. Thus sustainable massive interstellar/intergalactic propulsion methods might be achieved.
I will have more to say on this topic tonight.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
Hi Again George and other readers of this site;
Regarding the concept of using extremely dense rotating masses for storage of kinetic energy, one can go a step further and imagine using a (small) blackhole which theoretically have a limiting rotation velocity of C. Perhaps small spinning blackholes with masses on the order of 10 EXP 15 metric tons can be spun up inorder to store tremendous kinetic energies to drive huge stars ships that mantain the blackholes onboard, safely, somehow or safely outboard but in the vacinity of the starship.
If the space in which the blackhole is stored can have the value of the speed of light artificially increased within by, for example, changing the value of 1/{[(Mu naught)(Epsilon naught)]^(1/2)} = C, then perhaps additional sublight speed rotational energy can be stored within the blackhole. Note that a 10 EXP 15 metric ton black hole has a radius of about 1 nanometer. Obviously, if the blackhole is spun up to manytimes its rest mass in kinetic energy, its radius will increase dramatically although it may still be of microscopic spatial dimensions. Increasing the value of C in a manner as descibed abouve might be accomplished by some how enclosing the blackhole in a superconducting enclosure to limit the frequencies of zero point electromagnetic energy fluctuations to values of wavelegths that permit standing wave nodes on the superconductive cavity’s walls. Perhaps other and more effective means can be utilized to increase the speed of light within the region containing the blackhole(s).
The blackhole may have its translational motion coupled to the star ship, or vis versa for the case when the rotating blakhole is much more massive than the ship, by using a blackhole with an electric charge and therefore with an magnetic field and suitably magnetized containment bay or other electromagnetic linkage with the spacecraft. For rapid ship accellerations, the electric and magnetic fields would obviously need to be very strong.
Before the start of a jouney, the blackhole(s) may have their rotational energy level increased via directing the infall of mass into the blackhole inorder to cause gravitational mass spinup, adding concentrated star light and/or CMBR to the blackhole, or perhaps even with the use of zeropont vacuum energy or energies drawn from other hidden and/or higher dimensions at a massive kinetic energy recharging station. Note that rotational energy can be extracted from magetized blackholes in a manner simmillar to that of an electric dynamo or generator. The energy can then be used to power propulsion systems such as electron, ion, or photon rockets, MPHDD, EPHDD. EMPHDD, or other exotic yet to be developed systems such as warp drive, antigravity, or other nonreactionary propulsion systems. In addition, charged blackholes can be spun up using their magnetic fields in a manner simmilar to the spin up of an electric motor, at large scale spin-up stations.
It would be interesting if a blackhole could be restocked with rotational energy while the ship is in route, or perhaps, even spun-up while the blackhole is supplying energy to the spacecraft propulsion systems in such a manner that the ship can achieve a net excelleration even at highly relativistic velocities. Note that an increase in a blackholes relativistic kinetic energy comes at a price with an increase in its inertia thus making it more diffiecult to accellerate.
Perhaps even more interesting, would be the specific case of blackhole mass increase and rotational kinetic energy increase using, somehow, a sort of reverse Hawking Radiation process wherein zero point vacuum energy fluctuations would some how cause the mass and/or rotational energy of the blackhole to increae. I am not sure how this could be accomplished but the ranifications of such could be enourmous, not only for near term theorectical physics, but, also for future star flight.
Anyhow, that’s all for now.
Thanks;
Jim
Hi all;
Sorry for the duplicate posting. I seem to have encountered a internet based software error message that I was not sure how to deal with.
Will be back in a day or so.
Thanks;
Jim
jim maybe i missunderstood,are the on board black holes above artificially generated by the ship or something? if so give me some idea as to how please!?we have seen alot of daring ideas here and this is one of them. also: i could use ideas in this ballpark because as you know i told you a couple of weeks ago i am trying to come up with something as to how to generate the warp field.well, i am stuck.your idea and mine seem to be in the same ballpark though – i know in order to generate the warp field you need to be able to alter the structure of space. einstein seems to allow this but how.(?) i just did’nt want to post anything until i could come up with something that would seem possible or reasonable or at least plausable.all the more so since i just read something yesterday by marc millis where he says we must work with the universe rather than asking it to work to suit us!!! :) anyhow i will continue to think about it. thank you your friend george ps would not mind getting an answer from any of the readers who may have a thought on the questions i have posed above either. thank you and i’ll check back soon george
How does one create a black hole without causing the device
that creates it from getting pulled in and effectively destroyed,
to say nothing of anything else in the vicinity?
How do you expect to use this on a starship without the
starship being destroyed?
As much as I like speculating, perhaps we should focus on
more plausible methods of interstellar travel that can be
attained within the next few decades using both current
and near-future technology. At least if we are going to
discuss seeing an actual star probe in our lifetimes.
Hi George and ljk;
Thanks for the critique.
George, the blackhole would be produced artificially perhaps via a very dense aggregation of Bose Einstien Condensate or by the explosive compression of a large bulk of matter such as by way of a very spherically symmetrical explosion of a 10 EXP 18 metric ton thermonuclear device. Keep up your work on your space warp concept. I will be happy to hear more about it when you are ready to post about it.
ljk, a 10 EXP 15 metric ton blackhole would not exert any more gravitational pull on a spaceship component located 10 km away than would a 10km wide 10 EXP 15 metric ton aggregate of matter with only 1000 times the density of water just as a solar mass blackhole located in the vacinity of the Sun would not exert any more gravitational force on the Earth than would the Sun itself provided that the Earth was located 93 million miles from Earth in both cases (the same distance in both cases). A large technical problem would be how to hold the blackhole in a stable position with respect to the ship and to keep it in a safe location, becuase as you pointed out, if it gets too close to ship or components therein, it will swallow them up. The amount of energy released from swallowing up only a portion of the ship would most certainly produce an electrmagnetic thermal radiation blast and a mechanical energy blast wave of ionized matter traveling perhaps as high as near C throughout the remainder of the ship thus totally annihilating it.
On a more down to Earth concept, I thought that using cooking oil (essentially vegitable oil) or perhaps lard combusted with LOX for chemical rocket propulsion into Earth orbit and further out into our solar system might be practical. Given that one gram of fat metabolized within the human body yields about 9.1 kCal whereas the detonation of one gram of TNT yields only 1 kCal, perhaps some method can be devised to efficiently combust vegitable oil or lard and yield effective rocket propulsion systems for tooling around the solar system. Note that the explosion of one Kilogram of TNT yields an energy release equal to kinetic energy of one kilogram of matter traveling at about 2.8 kilometers per second. For the sudden and complete release of energy in one kilogram of vegitable oil, the equivalent kinetic energy of a one kilogram slug would be that for the slug traveling at about 9 km/sec. No doubt, however, that the need to carry oxidizer(s) would result in less efficiency than if, somehow, the energy in vegitable oil could somehow be released without the need for an oxidizing agent.
Once again George and ljk, thanks for the critical review of my previous posting. I will be back on site late tonight or tomorrow morning
Anyhow, that’s all for know.
Jim
Hi George and ljk;
Some additional concepts (under the unifying theme of fission powered starships) regarding near term interstellar manned spacetravel and interstellar space probes are as follows. Note that all of these concepts have been thought of before by others, but I feel that they are worth summarizing becuase of their potential short term usefulness.
1) The first concept is that of a space ark type nuclear fission powered vessel that would act as a ramjet in which an electric field generator would be used to pull in and repel interstellar ions for thrust. The level of accelleration would be relatively low, however, even at 0.01 G, a speed of roughly 10 % of C could be reached within a year thus opening up our nearest stellar nieghbors for manned travel to and exploration during a normal useful working human lifetime.
1a) For added reaction mass, the craft could be directed to travel through regions of interstellar space with greater concentrations of inroute interstellar gas, if such can be found along travel routes to the nearest stars to be visited.
1b) For more effective use of fission power, isotopal fuels could be chosen that result in the greatest mass specific energy release for nuclear fission reactions. Also, isotopes could be chosen wherein a substantial amount of additional energy release from the decay of the fission fragments so generated could be used to power ion drive systems that obtain their reaction mass from interstellar space. Note that studies have been conducted that envolve the production of power generating nuclear reactors that can burn their own radioactive waste products and achieve useful amounts of energy in the process.
2) The second concept involves the deployment of a very large solar sail to augment the above mentioned propulsion system. The solar sail might optionally take the form of a large net or mesh with very low area specific mass for efficiency and utilize ambient sunlight without the need for artificially beamed energy.
Note that terawatt and petawatt continuous wave lasers are probably still a long way off in terms of their development. Also note that nuclear fission reactors are technologies that we understand very well and that small scale inflatable membranous reflectors have already been test deployed in space. Thus, these technologies, some versions of which I commented on in previous postings, are good candidates for near future interstellar probes and manned starship flights to the nearest stars. Even in the cases wherein the level of accelleration would be rather low, the craft or its crew quarters could be rotated to simulate gravity artificially.
If we are lucky enough to be able to medically extend the human life expectancy to 1,000 years, and utilize the above propulsion techniques, then potentially, all of the stars within a hundred light year radius of Earth, of which there are many thousands, are potential destinations for exploration.
Note that I am not denying the usefulness and need to continue research on the various forms of beamed electromagnetic energy, beamed nuclear fuel, and/or beamed kinetic energy for interstellar probes and manned starships. Such efforts are well worth the effort spent and might end up being excellent utilized means for manned space travel to highly relativistic velocities thus opening up vast regions of the Milky Way to manned exploration and perhaps colonization of uninhabited planets or extrasolar planetary moons. However, in the short term, I believe fission powered starships might be well worth the effort. Perhaps several to dozens of manned space arks could be launched this century that use the above mentioned or simillar fission powered propulsion methods. Nuclear reactors are safe! The nuclear Navy has deployed them for decades on submarines and surface ships and they work very reliably and very well.
Anyhow, that’s all for now. I will be back on site tomorrow.
Thanks;
Jim
Hi all;
I apologize for the error in the preceeding posting. It would take roughly 10 years of accelleration at 0.01 G to achieve 10 % of C.
Thanks;
Jim
Hi Jim
Vegetable oil isn’t much different from kerosene really (for example RP-1 rocket fuel) and it’s already as efficiently used as a chemical rocket can get – the best rockets get ~ 90% efficiency. That’s still only about ~ 3.8 km/s exhaust velocity. Oxidation reactions get, at most 5 km/s, but to do so just isn’t practical and so high efficiency rockets settle for ~ 4.7 km/s or so at most.
Alternatively we try atomic fuels – I don’t mean nuclear, but non-molecular elements – which have huge recombination energies. But, of course, keeping them from reacting in the tank is rather hard…
ljk and jim i too believe that we should concentrate more on things that may be doable short term! i know that i myself many times go off the deep end but having said that lol i will continue to think about that warp field problem and continue also to welcome helpful ideas from my friends here! also adam – thank you for trying to point out alternate ways of doing things! that is what all of this is really about. your friend george ps this topic is now up to a fantastic 190 answers!! best discussion ever!! best before was one i had on the old posting boards about ideas for worm holes and that one only went about 135!!! great respects to all george
Hi George and Adam;
Thanks for yor responses.
Adam, thanks for the comments on chemical rocket fuels. RP-1, no doubt, has an excellent prospect of allowing us low cost access to Earth orbit. We have been using it for quite awhile and understand it well.
I have heard of concepts envolving using atomic hydrogen as an oxidant wherein such would yield several times more combustion energy then molecular hydrogen. In addition, I wonder if somehow ozone could be safely and stably stored in liquid form and used in some sort of chemical reaction sequence to yield large reaction energies.
George, as I said before, keep cranking away on your warp drive concept. I, too, sometimes get carried away on far out concepts. A 190 postings is excellent and encouraging.
Thanks;
Jim
Hi George and Adam;
Another spaceflight concept that has been available in aerospace literature that I thought would be useful to mention is the concept of launching manned ships into orbit via mass driver. For this method, a thousands of miles long launch tube that is evacuated would be used to accellerate a craft along Earth’s surface or underground to above orbital insertion velocity. The end of the tube would be angled up from the tangent plane (horizontal plane) of the Earth’s surface. The exiting craft would deploy wings, fins, or other aerodynamic surfaces to direct its path on a trajectory above the Earth’s surface. The craft can optionally have a rocket propulsion system and/or scramjet system to aid its ascent into Earth orbit.
There is no doubt that such a mass driver tube would need to be very long to permit safe accelleration for passengers and would need to be evacuated. This is a costly prospect, probably on the order of that of a coast to coast expressway with overpasses, exits, signage, and illumination included. Also, the spacecraft would need to have an outer surface made of a very friction resistant/heat resistant material. If the spacecraft took the form of a train like craft, with no open seperations between “cars”, then the requirements for temperature resistant materials might be more readily met since the mass and volume of the spacecraft could be increased with respect to its coefficient of friction as well as with its overall effective cross-section.
Once the mass driver is built, it could be powered through the electrical utility grid and/or special dedicated generators and/or electrical energy storage systems. No doubt, safety considerations would include the need to slow the craft down in the event of mass driver power source failure or other emergency and/or to redirect the craft to another mass driver tube should the initial launch tube become obstructed.
The craft could be designed such that if it left the tube with suborbital velocity, onboard rocket engines and/or scramjets could carry it into orbit. Such a configuration could reduce the the temperature resistant material(s) performance requirements for the outer shell of the spacecraft.
The tube would need to have some sort of door or series of doors, wherein one door would be located near the end of the tube and opened to let the transiting craft exit the tube.
Even though such a system would be very costly to build and would require a massive civil engineering R&D effort, it would permit rapid turn around time and could even allow one space craft after another to be launched down the tube in a manner analogous to a modern subway system. This system and its economy scale might make access to Earth orbit relatively very low in cost, both for passengers and freight.
Thanks;
Jim
thank you jim i too am encouraged and certainly will keep cranking away! also yes launch by mass driver is not a bad idea at all. in my opinion we have to start considering better manned space craft ideas than we are currently considering!! thank you one and all your friend george
Hi George;
I just thought I would mention that I will not do any substantial postings on site until late Thursday evening. I will be very busy over the next two days attending other matters and so I will not have time to formulate my next comments on space flight. However, I look foward to resuming my postings late Thursday.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
hear from you then! look forward to it but i think i will say something now as long as i am on line.about that idea to make the warp field work : i don’t really know i admit it, i do not but i will venture an opinion,it will when it comes take the manipulation of space time which means that whoever comes up with the answer will have to look to the theory of general relativity. that is where we find discussions of warping space. i’ll even take the opportunnity to plug a great book i have been reading -warped passages “unravelling the mysteries of the universes hidden dimensions” by lisa randall,she has been a tenured professor at princeton,MIT and harvard !!!i am really enjoying her book and recommend it to everyone here.the very kind of information in which the seed for something like the warp field might “easily” be found! respectfully to all your friend george
Hi George;
Thanks for your latest posting. I will have to check that book out.
A variety of concepts occurred to me regarding interstellar transport via photon drive. Regarding news of BAE systems’ multi laser beam reflection cycles experiment wherein a laser beam is reflected repeatedly between 2 mirrors with each successive bounce adding repulsive pressure between the mirrors, I will note that the scientists involved with this technology state that velocities of just under C are possible with this type of technology.
1) One way to efficiently use this technology would be to perhaps beam a laser from Earth to a transiting spacecraft wherein the laser would impinge on the underside of a stack of nanometer scale thickness reflective membranes. The first membrane would allow light to largely pass through it, and afterward, the first sheet would be electromechanically or otherwise separated from the next sheet in the stack. The outer surface of the second sheet would somehow be made extremely reflective to the laser frequency used in the beam by some mechanism involving adjusting the reflectance of the sheet with electric current, electric fields, magnetic fields, electromagnetic fields, thermal energy, mechanical forces, nanoscale chemistry etc. An intensely powerful laser beam would bounce back and forth in the inner region enclosed by the first two sheets. Note that the inner side of the first sheet would be highly reflective to laser energy with respect to light impinging on the inner surface of the sheet, either permanently, or by some means used to make the outer surface of the second sheet reflective.
The process would repeat is self for sheet after sheet for a series of billions if not trillions of nanometer scale thick sheets. The sheets may optionally be porous with grid spacings a little smaller that the wavelength of the impinging laser light and be composed of some permanently or adjustably highly reflective surface wherein the ratio of open space to reflective material for the sheets approaches and perhaps surpasses 1,000,000/1 for greatly reduced weight. The sheets could be designed such that they explode after release wherein the explosion is chemical, nuclear isomeric energy released based, nuclear fission based, nuclear fusion based, or as a result of matter/antimatter annihilation (wherein successive sheet are sequentially composed of matter then antimatter in the case of matter/antimatter annihilation reactions). The energy derived from the explosions could be used to help propel the craft by imparting momentum to the craft with each explosion.
If nuclear fission is the source of explosive energy, then some how supercritical mass has to be achieved within the thin membranous fissionable material. Perhaps antimatter supplied by the craft, and/or some how beamed to the craft from Earth or from locations closer to the craft can enable enough fission fragments to be induced within the membrane such that is undergoes complete nuclear fission. If nuclear fusion is used as the destructive mechanism for destroying the discarded sheets, then perhaps antimatter catalyzed fusion, some sort of muon-like catalyzed fusion, or point wise laser detonated fusion fuel could be utilized to destroy the discarded sheets. For matter/antimatter based sheet destruction, the particle conjugates can be beamed from Earth, from stations along the route of the ship, or from the ship itself. Note that the sequence of sheet releases can be timed with periodically variable incoming laser light such that the effects of non-optimized; sheet surface reflectance, sheet transmissivity, sheet material light diffusivity, sheet index of refraction, and any other relevant optical properties can be mitigated thus permitting reduced obstruction of the laser light and increasing the number of useful bounces between the sheets.
Perhaps a method of increasing the effective masses of the outer reflective sheets would be to electrically attract the sheet with the spacecraft while the sheet is in outer reflective sheet mode thus increasing its apparent inertia and allowing more effective laser beam bounces to occur before the sheet reaches to far of a distance from the ship to permit effectively short inter cavity laser energy transit times or before doppler induced inefficiencies would occur in the case that the sheet would quickly reach relativistic velocities after release from the ship sheet stack. Magnetic fields may perhaps optionally be used to accomplish the same effect. Perhaps additional means can be used to increase the apparent mass of the outer sheets. Either way, the effect would be to increase the apparent reaction mass of the sheets and; also, of the effective momentum of the laser light imparted to the ship.
2) The source of laser energy may optionally be provided from onboard laser generators. For efficiency, the light would be generated by nuclear fission powered generators, nuclear fusion powered generators, or from matter/antimatter reaction powered generators. Any of these energetic materials may optionally be stored onboard the ship or in locations outside the ship but coupled to the ship’s translational motion and acceleration.
3) The source of laser energy may optionally be directed onto the outer sheet by a source(s) located in front of the ship, such as beaming stations located in interstellar space along the travel route of the ship. Special kinematic configurations would need to be worked out to ensure that the light would end up in the cavity between two sheets acting in cavity laser beam resonator mode.
4) Another option would utilize massive charged particles that are set bouncing between two sheets wherein an electric field would be set up between each pair of sheets with the same polarity as the charge particles bouncing between each resonator cavity so formed. The sheets could have some sort of mechanism for inducing an electric field as well as for the termination of the electric field as appropriate for the circumstances such as for example, a means for selectively acquiring an electric charge and losing the electric charge. Optionally, the sheets can be destroyed by explosive means in the form of chemical energy release, nuclear isomer energy release, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or matter/antimatter annihilation energy release. The methods for doing such may optionally be the same or similar to those methods mentioned under item 1) above.
In order to provide energy for generating the bouncing laser beams and/or for generating the bouncing massive electrically charged particle beams, fuel in the form of nuclear fusion fuel may be scooped up from the interstellar medium in much the same way as that proposed for the various forms of interstellar ramjets. Interstellar hydrogen, deuterium, helium-3, and helium-4 would make highly exothermic fuel with which to power the beam systems via onboard fusion reactors thus negating the need to beam electromagnetic energy, kinetic energy and/or fuel over long distances.
One can well imagine the effectiveness of these propulsion methods that utilize laser pulses and/or or massive particle pulses with time averaged power levels up to and perhaps surpassing 10 EXP 17 watts, and with the possible future invention of very exotic extraordinarily reflective materials, perhaps several to many orders of magnitude higher. However, if we can just get the technique to work, I will settle for 10 EXP 13.5 watts for mankinds first interstellar mission. Wouldn’t that be great!!
Note that some such exotic materials that are very electromagnetic radiation resistant and perhaps highly reflective might include membranous neutronium and/or quarkonium, in the form of either monolithic or porous sheets for greater mass specific power reflection. I would imagine that appropriately designed neutronium and quarkonium sheets would make excellent x-ray and medium energy gamma ray reflectors, especially since at least some forms of neutronium are theoretically superconducting thus perhaps being highly reflective and perhaps having a very thin skin depth for medium energy gamma rays, or at least for x-rays. Because the sheets could be made very thin (e.g., on the order of 10 EXP -15 meters or less in thickness), the reflective sheets could start effectively reflecting gamma rays while they are only roughly 10 EXP -15 meters apart, thus allowing many more bounces than molecular matter or bonded atom sheets. However, the trade off is that neutronium and quarkonium (which is much denser than neutronium) are super dense and thus heavy and have not been produced yet. In fact neutonium is expected to have a mass of about 10 EXP 15 metric tons per cubic meter, or about 1 billion metric tons per cubic centimeter.
That’s all for now I will be back on site by no later that late tomorrow night or early Friday morning at the latest.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
thanks jim good ideas but why did i think as i read…must be a simpler way to do all of this.i am still a fan of warp drive and or wormholes.not to call those “simple” lol ! your friend george again…comments from everyone and anyone very welcome as well thanks g
Hi George;
Thanks for the critical review of my latest posting.
I definately think there must be a simpler way to do all of this also. I will post some more ideas regarding wormholes late tomorrow night. There are probably a huge number of methods to do interstellar travel, even for those methods that no one has yet thought about or developed, but which would be very difficult with current technologies or yet to be developed near term technologies. Regarding wormholes and space warps, it may turn out that they are infact the very best methods to tool around the cosmos that mankind has studied so far.
It turns out that I need to attend to other matters tonight and tomorrow and so I will not have the oportuinity to fomulate my wordage on these ideas until late tomorrow. However, I look forward to posting more ideas tomorrow including some near term concepts as well as looking forward to hearing more of your ideas and those that anyone else wishes to share.
Thanks;
Your Friend Jim
jim, yes there probably are a great number of interstellar travel methods! and yes with what we know now,lol,NONE of them too easy! however i cannot help but think that warp drive and wormholes are the best we have so far thought about. so how far in the future might they be? well,as a buddy of mine once put it so well…”the future is never as far away as you think.” strides will probably be made faster than we think. don’t forget one more thing either.this is a BIG universe,multiverse etc. – however you wish to phrase it.maybe right now as i type there are starships ( obviously not ours) tooling around and yes,using means of propulsion we have not yet guessed about!! that’s all i can say for now except to once again invite every body who may be reading here to join in too!! respectfully to all your friend george