265 Comments

1. forrest noble on November 10, 2007 at 14:57

   Oh I get it now!! everything about them is different, alien aleins. Anything could happen with those guys!!

2. James M. Essig on November 10, 2007 at 17:16

   Hi George and Forrest;

   Thanks for the wise council expressed within your previous postings. I would not be surprised if we find some artifact of alien technology on the Moon, under the Lunar surface, on Mars, under the Martian surface, or in a Martian cave as we go out and explore our solar system. I would have to say that in the event of such, I would have to go out and buy an outdoor turkey smoker and throw one hell of a party to celebrate.

   I had a few more comment to elaborate on regarding manned interstellar concepts that are rather far out and would probably only be realized much further into the future.

   1) The first concept involves the directional explosion of blackholes to provide energy for propulsion of manned interstellar or a manned intergalactic spacecraft.

   Basically, the idea involves setting up a Hawking Radiation release pattern on one side or hemisphere of a blackhole or perhaps a within a much smaller spherical angle for such wherein the radiation release would be directed into an energy intake mechanism or a reactionary thrust mechanism to power a space craft optionally nearly instantly to C – e where e can approach a vansihingly small positive value.

   The concept involves minipulation of the zero point fields along the spherical angle of the surface of a blackhole such that the Hawking Radiation release would be sudden and complete all within a fraction to a tiny fraction of a second wherein the production of zero point energy particle pair production would be artificially enhanced to such a degree that the virtual particles would become real just outside the event horizon of the blackhole at a tremendous rate.

   Perhaps the minipulalation of the zero point energy fields could be accomplished through the minipulation of the various proposed Higg’s Fields which exist in accordance with the Standard Model of particles and fields. Note that the Higg’s fields are related to the concept of mass gneration within particles that have rest masses, but are also related, to the existence and production of zero point vacuum energy fluctuations and virtual particle pair production. A proposed Higg’s Boson may have been observed in particle accellerator experiments within the past half decade or so but so far the evidence for their existence is not yet complete since relatively few candidate events have been flagged and analysed. The lower mass/energy range of the Higgs Bosons is 114.4 GeV at 95% confidence level or about the mass of a U-235 atomic nucleus or Uranium atom. It is hoped that the upgrades to CERN and FERMILAB will lead to their discovery.

   The detailed experimental study of the Higgs Bosons, their future production, and theoretical applied physics models based on such study and ability to produce HIggs Bosons may offer future theoretical physicists and engineers such a way of minipulation the Higgs Fields and through such, the minipulation of the zero point vacuum fields within the vacinity of a blackhole in such a way that eventually blackholes of any size could be prematurely detonated for energy release, even blackholes with 10 billion solar masses which have lifetimes on the rough order of magnitude of 10 EXP 100 years.

   The huge energy releases from any macroscopically stable massed blackholes as such might be used to power reactionary powered space craft such as interstellar sailing craft, ion and/or electron rockets, photon rockets, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, or electromagnetohydrodynamic plasma drives, and also, warp drives, antigravity propulsion systems, electrogravatic propulsion systems, and gravitational field and/or electromagnetic field based teleportation systems if these later nonreactionary propulsions systems are possible, and even macroscopic wormhole generation systems. The extreme energy densities of blackhole explosions might even entail new physical phenomenon that could be studied and utilized to produce copious amounts of negative mass and/or imaginary mass which may be useful in lining the mouths and throats of macroscopic wormholes to hold them open against titanic forces that would otherwise cause them to collapse in an instant. Note that an ordinary macroscopic blackhole that one could walk through would have an inward pressure about of 10 EXP 37 pounds per square inch without a lining of such very exotic yet to be discovered or produced forms of matter or bulk materials.

   2) The second concept involves the production of hugely powerful gravitational energy waves from such sudden blackhole decays as mentioned above. An assymetrical blackhole explosion would produce such an intense single or series of gravity waves that the gravity waves might be usefel in temporarilly producing a space time warpage or curvature so intense within the regions where they are produced that a space craft within such a region might utilize such an intense gravity wave pulse as a mechanism to be teleported over interstellar, intergalactic, or even cosmic distances. Perhaps a temporary macroscopic wormhole could be opened up to allow travel over simmilar distance scales by the intense distortion of space time produced by such a gravity wave pulse. Time travel into the distant past or future might also be facilitated by such space time distortion with or without significant travel over large spatial intervals.

   Note that the gravity wave pulse produced by an appropriately tailored and rapid enough blackhole decay might be made to propagate in the form of a collinear or coherent gravity wave beam analogous to that of a laser beam. Such a gravity wave beam might have enhanced space time warpage effects over a much greater distance from the detonated blackhole then a spherically propagating gravitational wave front and might lead to other forms of space time distortion or space time geometry distortion properties that have not yet been considered and or explored mathematically by contempory General Relativists and as such may have yet to be imagined properties and/or applications for space travel including that over cosmic distances of space and/or time and perhaps as such into other universes or big bangs or even parallel universes as well. Travel into higher dimensional space, spacetime, and/or time in our universe, other universes, and/or parallel universes or into alternate histories within our universe such as those proposed by certain interpretations of quantum theory (commonly referred to as “the many worlds interpretations”) might be possible utilizing such technologies.

   That’s all for now.

   Thanks;

   Your Friend Jim

3. James M. Essig on November 11, 2007 at 1:18

   Hi Folks;

   I could not resist posting some more interstellar travel related ideas as follows.

   1) The first idea involves somehow producing a universe in the form of a big bang with the potential for growth and development like our own except that instead of the entire child universe becomming entirely seperated from ours as far as casuality is concerned, some of the newly created spacetime and/or energy is allowed to or made to enter our universe through some sort of casual link.

   Such a casual link might be established by some sort of multiple connectedness between our universe and the newly born spacetime of the child or baby universe in a simmilar manner that multiply connected spacetime regions within our universe are conjectured about. The raw essence of space-time-energy from the newly emerging universe might perhaps take the form of undifferentiated primeval space-time foam as was the subject of debate in quantum field theories in the 1950’s and 1960’s before string theory began to take hold and later on, followed by lattice quantum loop gravity, brane theory, etc. The matter at the very center of blackholes may take on such a form according to blackhole theorists even if string theory, brane theory, and/or lattice quantum loop gravity theory and/or the like are eventually shown to be valid. The theoretical appearent breakdown of currrent mathematical formulations in consideration of the dynamics of the singularity within a black hole or the tiny smeared out scambled mess, within, of fluctuating spacetime, casaulity, and the complete distruction of laws of nature, force constants and other physical structure as they exists out side of an event horizon may be equivalent to the state of spacetime/mattergy during the very instant of the birth of a child universe.

   Such spacetime fluctuating foam may actually be useful to somehow collect, contain, or otherwise secure for its potential to produce unheard of exotic types of material, matter, energy, and/or spacetime as it freezes or cools from the superhot state associated with big bang birth. Since the laws of physics within our universe supposedly resulted from such a freeze out or other forms of random phase changes based on random purely probabalistic quantum events, such quantum events, if they could somehow be controlled might be used to develope regions of spacetime with completely different laws of physics, dimensionally including degrees and form of spacetime curvature, forces, constants of nature for which exotic forms of life might arise, some perhaps more intellegent then we are as a species in such a manner that these more intellegent lifeforms could then reciprocate our kind acts of leading to their creation with sharing of their more advanced science, technology, philosophy, developments in mathematics and logic, and any religious or theological insights with us. At the very least, such spacetime foam might enable us to produce entirely new types of particles, forces, and fields that would be so exotic, that the production of imaginary mass materials, negative mass materials, and materials such as solid neutronium and quarkonium might seem like child’s play in comparison.

   The required spacetime casual link between our universe and the child universe might be facilitated by some sort of quantum mechanical entanglement analogue by which the effects or changes in the new born universe or sub-portions thereof could be made to interact with or interface with our universe in a simmilar manner that particles can be entangled within our universe and within a laboratory set up apparatus such as in photonics research labs and the like.

   The interface of such a baby universe and our universe might be a source of unlimited, perhaps even infinite, energy with which to power interstellar travel, intergalactic travel, and travel over cosmic distances, in space and/or time, perhaps even into higher dimensional space and/or parallel spatial-temporal histories in our universe and other pre-existing universes. I would imagine that more than enough energy would be made available for ubiquitous wormhole travel within our universe or other universes as such, perhaps for the rest of physical eternity within our universe. Even reactionary propulsion to velocities so close to C might be doable for craft utilizing such an energy source such that even over cosmic distance scales, the speed of such craft might be indistinguishable from C in an pure vacuum. Such craft might even travel faster than C in interstellar space or intergalactic space as a result of the presence of tiny densities of matter in the form of gas, plasma, and dust existing within the vacuum of space that might perhaps imbue interstellar and/or intergalactic space with a refractive index ever so slightly greater than one.

   If one child universe can be produced with artificially tailored properties as such, then perhaps any finite number of such universes could be produced and utilized in the above fashions.

   Now, if such child universes can indeed be fashioned artificially and casually linked with our universe, utterly extreme caution would need to be exercised in planning and doing such so that the laws of physics of the new space time regions produced and those of the new forms of matter and energy produced would not interact with our universe in such a casual way that our universe and its laws of physics, fundemental particle structure, constants of nature and all macroscopic structures would not be disolved and destroyed in a simmilar or perhaps different manner than the production of a socalled naked singularity or an uncloaked blackhole singularity might be able to do.

   2) The second idea involves speculation as to what characteristics the core or any inner layers of a blackhole singularity, or smeared out region in accordanace with many quantum gravity theories, would have. If the region inside a blackhole, but far in from the event horizon and close to or just outside of its singulaity would be a scambled mess of spacetime and casual law fluctuations, what would exist within the singularity itself underneath its outer surface. Could there be a layered structure wherein each layer would have sucessively even more bazaar properties than the external scrambled space time foam outside the singularity but relatively far in from the event horizon? I wonder, what sort of entity could survive such. Perhaps only pure mathematical forms. elements, or objects could survive such. I wonder how any such forms could be incarnate in the physical word and yet still be eternal truths or abstract forms. Perhaps some sort of weird abstract principles of logic which underwrite the existence of our universe could be located “within” whatever the word ‘within” would means in such a case. Perhaps the very “center” of the singularity at the very begiining of our universe logically and mathematically underwrites the existence of our universe by allowing it to be maintained in existance. If such is the case, I wonder what, if any, even more sublime and bazaar existential or ontological entities exist apart from GOD that may be used by GOD to create by his free chosing to do such. Might there be an infinite number and infinite variety of such entities.

   There is just so much that we do not understand and probably so much that any and all intellegent extraterrestrial races do not understand that it is just mind boggling. We as the Human Race sit purched on a little ledge at the edge of forever just waiting to leave our Earthen cradle and venture out into the eternal depths of space, time, and perhaps at some point beyond. Will we have the courage to jump off an explore?

   That’s all for now;

   Thanks;

   Your Friend Jim

4. george scaglione on November 11, 2007 at 13:50

   forrest,lol, yeah.anything could indeed happen!!! but if they exist as much as it pains me to say so the point may be moot,because say they live 2 trillion light years away or something! would render us effectively segregated to a fairthee well!!! sometimes it seems to me that some of the distances that certainly exist in space might as well be INFINITE FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES!!!! but lol you know me,i never say die.now we should figure ways of traversing,THAT distance in a practical manner in a reasonable time.whew a big problem indeed! thank you…….and…….jim,can i come to that party! outdoor turkey smoker, cool!!! because of your comments above i recall a book i read years ago that i wish i still owned! we go to the moon a find a dead astronaut there in a spacesuit and everything! so who?what?where? when?wow! i think the answer for purposes of the book was that yes we had been to the moon before.but a looong time ago in some forgotten part of pre history!! just thought,what if god forbid we destroy ourselves and in afew thousand years the survivors build back up and go to the moon and find the remnants of apollo!!?? same thing.and,using a black hole in conjunction with a manipulation of the zero point field for propulsion? cool!!!! wonderful idea!!! yes it might take awhile to figure out .but well,then again,who knows! part of the fun is that the next great breakthrough might be tomorrow morning!! we are indeed lucky guys to think this way! lucky guys.also toward the end of idea one above you seem to be talking about something like traversable worm holes! what a rich set of ideas!!!! fantastic!and,my god,part two was just as good! and we do think alike,i knew you where getting along to time travel at some point…and there it was!! also,forrest,you know how i just said something about ways to cover ginormas distances!! well jim must be physicic!! we may have the ways and means above! sure hope i am right about the possibilities of breakthroughs comming sooner than expected! good good stuff,and thank you both! your friend george incredible.

5. forrest noble on November 11, 2007 at 16:11

   Hi Jim and George,

   Hey Jim, you might not be surprised about alien technology found as we go out and about, but I would be nearly flabbergasted (if I’m still alive). I would “talk” to you regarding my immediate flight and rental car to your house where George and I would joint you in your “Turkey Smoke-out”. I would bring the booze, lots of it. I’d gobble down that turkey, get drunk, even if it wasn’t Thanksgiving—and I’ve been a Vegetarian for more than 40 years now. Maybe if we don’t find that evidence of that alien technology in the next 15 years but instead find something else space-worthy to celebrate, I’ll be there. Maybe we might just find simple alien life—some microbe or something, Smoke-out with Jim here I come. Or if we find alien Aliens, as George put it, I would bring a lot of tranquilizers with me. Maybe if no aliens, we could find another good reason to do all of the above at your place. lol

   As both of you get into my theory you will see that I believe that Black Holes are not vacuous points but instead a very condensed form of dark matter. Even the smallest ones, if they exist in the observable universe could be maybe the size of a grape and might accordingly have a gravitational field of let’s say the Earth. To ever “contain it”, or use it for a propulsion system, wow—it seems to me now as something for the distant, unforeseeable future—would be nice though.

   Saw Mike Minovitch last night. That’s the third time in the last 40 years. At this rate pretty soon we could be close friends, lol. Remember I told you he’s the guy who invented the gravity-whip system that NASA uses. I reminded him that the satellite Rosetta was “whipped” by the Earth, I think yesterday. He didn’t know the exact date either. He explained to me the mechanics of the gravity whip.

   He said it’s a 3 body (the planet, the sun, the satellite) 3 dimensional mathematical problem. He told me the computers in ‘63’ that he programmed were running his program for months, and the paper weight produced was literally tons of data. He explained that the whip comes from the planet’s orbital velocity around the sun as well as the close approach of the satellite to the planet, different from the way I understood it.

   I saw him for the purpose of getting his opinions concerning the oxygen-beam to an aircraft/ spacecraft idea which I discussed “here”. He said he thought the idea was “very interesting” and that I should pursue it. He discussed potential problems (similar to my own concerns) but discussed “rough numbers” that I should investigate/ calculate. He hinted that if this system was feasible in the near future maybe another particle accelerator just for that purpose might have to be built—expensive!

   I even reminded him of my Theory of Relativity which I discussed with him maybe 30 years ago, as well as last night. He listened for maybe 10 minutes. He’s so busy with many of his own unbelievably cool futuristic projects/ inventions it seems that he’d probably never have time to look at my theories—but maybe. I hope to see him again through our mutual friend in a few months. I’m considering, possibly, the idea of working with my friend to promote some of Mike’s projects/ Inventions. If any of these big-money projects get going (and I’m part of it) there would be ample funds to work on my beam-propulsion system and “other things”.

   all for now, your friend forrest

6. forrest noble on November 11, 2007 at 17:38

   George,

   Your comments weren’t on the board when I submitted mine. Probably both were being moderated. Yeh we’d all love to find that an easier/ better way to go out and about exists. But I’d have to change my theories,lol– all for the better.

   your friend forrest

7. James M. Essig on November 11, 2007 at 18:23

   Hi George and Forrest;

   George;

   I think somewhere, someday someone or some organization is going to bring your wormhole travel ideas and/or zpf propulsion concepts to reality. I have a good deal of confidence about such given the ever accellerating pace of theoretical and experimental physics.

   Forrest;

   I got through the first 20 pages of the manuscript you sent me. I find your ideas very original, intriging, and fascinating. I plan on reading 20 more pages tonight. I am still digesting the first 20 pages. Very interesting indeed!

   To both of you, thanks very much for the great comments, encouraging words, insights, and enthusiasm. If we even discover microbial life on Mars or alien fish under the ice sheet covering Europa, I will happilly send out the first invitations to my turkey smoker party to both of you if not much sooner. Heck, our return and landing on the Moon in itself will be more than enough grounds for such a party and invitations if not much much sooner.

   Another interstellar travel idea occured to me which was already thought of by others years ago but which I thought would be of interest to bring up.

   The idea involves taking a comet with a mass of say a billion tons or a volume on the order of 1 to 3 cubic kilometers and building a 10,000 metric ton crew habitation and very effiecient fusion rocket within. A simmilar idea for which some one had written a paper involved a mass of frozen fusion fuel with concentric low mass protective layers contained within and on the initial surface of the mass wherein the fusion mass would act as a five stage fusion rocket mass wherein 10 percent of each equivalent stage would be a non-fusionable dry mass or support structure such as the protective sheets.

   Such a fusion rocket could reach about 2/3 C if it was assummed that the mission would be a fly by without decelleration. I would have to say that the inclusion of a relatively low mass magnetic breaking coil or other electrodynamic breaking system that reacts against the interstellar magnetic fields could be used to slow the craft down to the point at which mild supplies of fusion and/or fission fuel for powering an onboard nuclear rocket could be used for final slow down and velocity vector correction once the velocity of the space craft dropped below a critical value at which the magnetic breaking mechanism would no longer be effective. I believe that such a craft with a 1/100,000 final payload to fully fueled starting mass could still achieve 2/3 C even with the above means for slow down at the target star system.

   If a large 12 kilometer diameter comet where used as the base for an initial fusion powered craft as such, then the comet mass would be about one trillion metric tons and the space craft, fusion rocket and crew quarters could have a mass of 10 million tons which would include the electrodynamic slow down mechanism. This might be very reasonable as a relatively near term space travel method to get to any of the nearby stars within a 30 lightyear radius of which there are many hundreds.

   The outer surface of each stage might have an optional highly refractive superconducting form of magnetic field generator composed of some what exotic forms of proposed superconducting metalic hydrogen, or even the actually observed super strong carbon nanotubes some of which are proposed to be highly conducting if not superconducting. The conducting or super conducting elements as such could be useful for producing a magnetic field as a means to divert interstellar plasma around the frozen mass inorder to prevent its premature heating and sublimation or vaporization as a result of interacting with the relative relativistic velocity of the interstellar medium. The hydrogen or carbon nanotube material could be scavenged and used for fusion fuel as it was no longer needed as its associated fuel stage was depleated.

   Perhaps a trillion ton frozen cometary mass with a final payload of just 100,000 tons or even 10,000 tons could reach a gamma factor of about 2 thus permitting travel to locations out to 60 or 70 lightyears from Earth even while assumming a modest acceleration of 1/10 G to 1/3 G. Note that there are thousands of stars within a 60 or 70 miles radius of Earth to visit. There are perhaps several trillion comets within the Oort cloud that could be incorporated into moderately highly relativistic space craft:- enough for trillions of missions as such.

   A cometary space ship as such utilizing a 1 trillion metric ton comet could in theory propell a huge interstellar manned space ark to mildy relativistic velocites for long duration manned missions to the nearest few dozen stars within the lifetime of a healthy peak conditioned human astronaut. Such a space habitation module and rocket system (or the final payload) would have a mass of between 1/2 trillion to one trillion metric tons:- A huge starship indeed.

   2) The next concept that I remember reading about was that of a space craft powered by the decay of a large Americium membrane 1/1,000 of a millimeter thick. Americium-242m (Am-242m), fashion into an extremely thin metallic film, is capable of sustaining nuclear fission wherein the fission products would provide momentum to the membrane and propulsive thrust which would be more effective at imparting kenetic energy to a craft pure unit of mass than would U-235 or Pu-239. The theoretical work done on this concept in Isreal suggests that a trip to Mars could be made in two weeks from Earth instead of 6 months minimum required with today’s best chemical rocket technologies.

   The thin film could be so fashiioned that nuclear fission products would be allowed to preferentially escape in one direction wherein they could be used as fission fragments that collectively could drive interplanetary space craft to very large interplanetary scale travel velocities relatively very quickly. Given that Americium 242 has a half life of about 141 years, such a propulsion system could in theory be used to propell an interstellar space craft using such a method for effectively its half life thus enabling the space craft to reach relativistic velocities to enable manned space travel to stars within a few dozen light year radius given a large enough starting mass of Am-242.

   As is the case for other nuclear powered interstellar manned space craft, magnetic breaking can be utilized to slow the craft down until other smalller scale propulsion systems could take over and provide final slow down and velocity vector corrections.

   That’s all for now.

   Thanks;

   Your Friend Jim.

8. forrest noble on November 12, 2007 at 1:24

   Hey Jim, George

   Cometary fuel (water) seems like a good fuel possibility for fusion propulsion as you indicated and also for conventional rockets. If we go that way, our initial supply sources for solar system travel could be from the moons of Jupiter and Saturn as well as the atmospheres of the planets themselves. Maybe convert the water to fuel on or near Io. Lots of electrical currents there, due to its interactions with Jupiter, for the electricity. Granted the Oort cloud is probably a very abundant source but it’s a long ways out and very spread out.

   There seems to be enumerable ways it might be done. As for stellar travel, cometary material would seem logical because we have to pass the Oort cloud anyway just to begin our journey. Also it seems likely that most other stars would have the same material in a similar type Oort cloud that we could “pick-up” on our way back. Braking I don’t think would be a problem, just reverse thrust not to exceed acceptable G forces. I don’t have a feel for magnetic breaking. As to the speeds I have reduced optimism beyond .1 C regardless of the propulsion system, for reasons of craft disintegration as I’ve previously mentioned—but that’s still theory so who knows—2/3 C sounds great. We could get there and come back maybe 5 times faster if it’s in the cards.

   Don’t know much about Americium accept what you have written Jim and what I read googling. Sounds like an interesting possibility.

   George, we may have the “ways and means” above, O.K. but we need the “Ways and Means” commitee to recommending funding more NASA projects, right?

   “Talk” to you later, your friend forrest

   Pretty soon I’ll stop using the quotes on the word “talk”—like new-wave rad web-talk

9. James M. Essig on November 12, 2007 at 19:09

   Hi Forrest and George and other Folks;

   Thanks for the responses and wise council.

   Even at 0.1C, with very large generation space arks, we could populate the Milky Way Galaxy in about a million years. I have always liked the idea of expanding the human race to extrasolar planets not already occupied for matters of personally psychologically appealing religious and spiritual reasons which may or may not be valid, but also on a more practical consideration that there would be as many as 10 EXP 20 beautiful female genotypes to look at and an equal or greater number of beautiful unique psychological profiles as such.

   Given a billion years, we could colonize our entire local galactic super cluster. Given 100 billion years, we could colonize out to a distance of 10 billion lightyears assumming the universe is not expanded although I believe it is indeed expanding at roughly the rate predicted and stated by the majority of contemporary cosmologists. Such expansion would allow even greater distances from Earth to be reached and ultimately, increadibly high superluminal recessional velocities from the Milky Way as a result of the expansion of spacetime supeposed on the much smaller velocity component of the craft through space.

   Any practically achievable velocities greater than 0.1C (for example the 2/3 C case I discussed in my previous blog, if possible) would only facilitate the rate of cosmic colonization. The notion that we can colonize the cosmos I hold as fact with improvement over current engineering and with or without improvements in currently excepted physical theories.

   1) A theory I had about space travel which I think I may have touched on a while back but which I thought would be interesting to revisit involves the notion of the rotation of a stationary space craft to a velocity so close to C such that every tangental distance segment along its direction of rotation in the angle Theta direction would be contracted many orders of magnitude with respect to the surrounding space. The craft would then somehow optionally be rotated within the orthogonal Phi direction for simmalar Lorentz spatial contraction until it reached the dimensions of a point, or atleast close in size to the Planck Volume of 10 EXP -105 cubic meters. In summary, the craft would be forced to roll up in one direction to essentially a line, then be forced to roll up in the orthogonal direction to a point or point like entity. The craft would then be accellerated by space warp, spacetime warp, antigravity field propulsion, or electrogravatic field propulsion, or be teleported gravatically, electrogravatically, or electromagnetically if any of these types of propulsion systems are possible. Alternatively, the craft might enter a artificially produced or naturally occuring wormhole with the mouth opening on the size scale of the Planck length and area of mouth on the scale of the Planck Length squared.

   The use of some sort of reactionary propulsion is also an option although continuously operating propulsion systems as such would require extreme thrust energy stream flux densities with exhaust streams near the space craft of sizes simmilar to the cross section of the space craft.

   How such a space craft could be spun up so fast without it being torn to atomic and/or subnuclear particles and without the contents of the space craft from being destroyed by the stresses induced by space time distortion induced by radially varying rotational speeds is anyones guess. Perhaps the ability to produce artificial gravitational energy fields, electrogravatic fields, or some sort of other specific and/or general spacetime distortion technology, super strong magnetic fields, and/or super strong electric fields could be used in onboard technologies to overcome the above mentioned difficulties. Note that static electric field strengths and magnetic field strengths have a theoretically proposed upper limit within a pure vacuum of roughly 10 EXP 50 Volts/Centimeter and roughly 10 EXP 50 Tesla respectively. An average of 10 EXP 50 Tesla throughout a cubic meter volume would be roughly 15 orders of magnitude greater than the entire mass energy content of the observable universe (or about 1,000 trillion times greater than the mass/energy of the entire currently observable universe!). The energy to power the spin up might be drawn from a huge supply of matter/antimatter fuel, fusion and/or fission fuel, and/or huge quantities of stored solar energy in the from of charged capacitance. Harnessing the various zero point energy fields might also be a viable technique for supplying the tremendous energy required.

   Note also that a method or means would be required to spin the craft at the required velocities in the Phi direction that would be able to counteract the huge rotational inertia caused by the rotation in the Theta direction.

   If such a space craft would actually be made to travel through ordinary Einstian 4-D spacetime, its cross section would be so small and its relativistic mass to cross section ratio would be so small that interstellar zero point energy virtual particles, real particles, and dust grains would probably pose absolutely no danger to the craft or its occupants even for translational velocities through space at speeds of C-e where e may be made vanishingly small. In short, there would be vary little area to interact with the interstellar or intergalactic medium. What area to interact provided by the space craft might effectively be shielded from the interstellar medium by some sort of force field such as an electric field, magnetic field, gravity and/or antigravity field, or some other form of space time warpage or distortion etc., or be some sort of matter shield such as might be constructed out of super dense super strong, yet super thin quarkonium.

   There is also the possibility that such a craft could enter a microscopic wormhole or other spacetime distortion or conduit into higher dimensional space within our universe, that for other universes and/or paralell histories within our universe and/or other universes, and/or into any dimensional subset of space-time in any universe in general.

   2) Another idea that occurred to me envolves a technology to imbue a lump of microscopic matter with human consciousness or entire personality (consciousness, unconsciousness, subconciosness to use outmoded Fruedian language and concepts), or perhaps from an ontological point of view, the entire human soul and its accidental properties or falculties along with any associated physcally based cognitive, volitional, and emotional energy used by the soul to interface with the human central nervous system. The lump of matter could be superdense neutronium, quarkonium, or some form of even much denser matter, perhaps in the rolled up form conjectured about under item 1) above. Afherward, the lump of matter could be accellerated to just under C by a particle accellerator or piped down long super thin tubes of length ranging from a few light years to distances greater than the radius of the currently or future observable universe.

   Note that such a tube made of superconducting nuetronium for extra strength and having a material crossectional area of only 10 EXP – 16 square meters might have a length of (10 EXP 16)(10 EXP 8) meters or 10 EXP 24 meters or 100 billion lightyears while only having a mass of 10 EXP 23 metric tons. The mere mass of the about 50 Earth’s at 2.1 x (10 EXP 21) metric tons could be used to produce a cosmic highway of such length. The mass of the Sun at roughly 10 EXP 27 metic tons could be used to produce about a 10,000 such tubular highways. The tubes might be made superconducting nuetronium and have an inner travel path on the dimensions of the atomic nucleous (about 10 EXP -15 meters across) wherein much of the zero point electromagnetic fluctuations could be filtered out thus allowing the matter pod to travel at C-e where e is made to effectively approach zero meters/sec. The neutronium tube walls could block out inter stellar dust, gas, and other debris.

   At the end ot the trip, the matter lump would be reconstructed into the person’s body through nano technology, pico technology, and femto technology (on the scale of 10 EXP – 9 meters, 10 EXP – 12 meters, and 10 EXP -15 meters respectively) and the consciousness, conceptualized Freudian personality, or the ontologically conceptualized human soul, its falculties and accidental properties and any interfacing cognitive, volitional, or emotional energy soul/body interface, etc., would be reintegrated into or within the reconstituted human body.

   Alternatively, the body lumps could simply be beamed through interstellar space or intergalactic space or beamed into other dimensions, universes, paralell histories within our universe or other universes or transported through microscopic wormholes to cosmically distant spatial-temporal locations within our universe or other universes as such.

   Now all of the above seems really far out and perhaps I am going out on the limb to suggest such, but remember we have gone from horse driven carriages and wind sailing ships to interplanetary space probes, modern airliner jets, and space shuttles, to stealthy nuclear powered submarines, huge nuclear powered aircraft carriers, and even larger commercial crude oil transport vessels in just 200 years. We have gone from crude excorcisms and other ignorant methods of treating and diagnosing mental disorders and other neurological disorders that are the result of abnormal functioning or defects within the seat of our Earth based consciousness, the human brain, to CAT scans, PET Scans, functional MRI scans, Magnetic Beam Encephlography, to the rather precise definitions of mental disorders in the DSM IV Revised Manual and pharmacological agents that can calm the most psychotic and agitated individuals into a state of completely normal functioning in many instances to such agents that can super energize the most catatonic of the clinically depressed in many cases, all in just 200 years.

   What dreams may come with another 100 years ?, 1,000 years?, million years?, or trillion + years ?, of technological development with ever progressing rates of technological, medical, and scientific and philosophical development. We would be short changing ourselves and our decendants to assume that technologies such as the ones mentioned under items 1) and 2), other simmilarly advances technologies, and/or technologies that have not ever been dreamed about or ponderd by all those who live or have lived on Earth could never be brought to fruition.

   At the very least, I am convinced that if we do not destroy ourselves in a grave yard of radioactive fallout and smoke based environmental destruction and atmospheric poisoning as a result of tens of thousand’s of simultaneously burning cities and metro areas resulting from using our vaste arsenals of modern scientific nuclear weapons, etc., we will get to the stars. I have every confidence that the theoretical underpinnings of such travel are sound. One has merely to search the internet on interstellar travel and see the huge number of relevant hits that accrue. These links are repleat with details of interstellar travel conferences and reports of research being conducted by various institutes, brilliant PhDs, Post Doctoral Researchers, and the like. This is no longer science fantasy and is on course to be science and culteral fact.

   So in the Spirit of Tau zero, I say once again “To The Stars!”. But in the mean time back to the Moon, onward to Mars and the asteriods, then to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and then out to the Kuiper Belt and then Oort Cloud. I believe and hope that many cool discoveries await us in such missions in the mean time.

   Thanks;

   That’s all for now;

   Your Friend Jim.

10. forrest noble on November 13, 2007 at 21:48

    Hi Jim, George,

    Yeh, if we’re ever going to exceed the speed of light– warp speeds– it seems that we would have to come up with seemingly far-out ideas, maybe unrecognizable to present-day technologists. We might have a better chance of doing it with robotic craft because human life would not have to be a consideration– but if not as you said it won’t take us forever to colonize the stars, even at .1C.

    To me it seems (right now) the easiest way would be a life suspension system that I think could be on the horizon within a hundred years or less. It seems that I’m always trying to think of ways of how the next step could come more quickly– what would be needed to expedite the next step?
    Usually the answer is funding.

    talk to you soon, your friend forrest

11. george scaglione on November 14, 2007 at 11:36

    well,the “leave a reply box” has re appeared ! cool thank you very much as usual for the great work paul ! i know we all appreciate it ! all of the above forrest and jim is really great but i am a little behind cause yesterday when this box was not around it was hard to keep up and i resorted to a couple of e mails rather than talking here as usual. but yes jim i sure hope that somebody will get on board with the concept of using energy from the zpf!!! any ideas who ? how or when? !!! love to hear such concepts if you have any! thank you very much one and all,your friend george ps this would be a GREAT place for anyone at all who reads these words to jump in with there 2 cents! sure hope so and see you next time! g

12. James M. Essig on November 15, 2007 at 0:03

    Hi George and Forrest;

    Thanks for the comments and wise council.

    I had a few interstellar travel ideas involving various forms of shielding for mildly relativistic through highly relativistic reactionary propulsion powered manned spacecraft.

    The first concept involves some sort of carbon shield in the form of completely pure super strength diamond or the strongest forms of carbon nanotubes wherein the shield would have a means of repairing itself upon repeated contact with small interstellar dust particles, perhaps a nanotechnological self assembly type of mechanism.

    The shield could have an optionally superconductive material based current carrying element to provide a strong magnetic field to divert incomming ionized gas and free electrons away from and around the space craft. Certain electrical field patterns set up around the ship could also be used to divert the heavy atomic nuclei away from the outer surface of the ship’s hull. By heavy, I am refering to the much greater mass of even the lightest nuclie of hydrogen (i.e., protons) relative to the electron.

    Note that pure Carbon -12 diamond conducts heat 50% better than pure natural diamond which contains small but significant amounts of Carbon-13. Carbon-12 diamond also resists laser light of 10 times the intensity than the best natural diamonds can. Pure Carbon-13 diamonds are expected to be somwhat harder then pure Carbon-12 diamond which are no harder then pure natural diamonds. Since diamond has the greatest heat conductivity of any known material on Earth, the Carbon-12 diamond may be the material of choice in lining the outside hull of a relativistic starship. Carbon-13 diamond being harder and having a higher bulk modulus than either natural or man made Carbon-12 diamond could be a material of choice in resisting microscopic dust particles striking the shield at relativistic velocities.

    Perhaps a composite shield made of alternating layers of Carbon 12 and Carbon 13 diamond would be the most effective material to use in shielding especially if nanotechnological self repair mechanisms could be incorporated within the diamond layers to reconfigure the diamond as holes where blasted in or trails blasted through the diamond by impinging microscopic dust particles. Alternatively, a composite diamond mesh or weave material could be used to construct the shield wherein one or both forms of diamond take the form of a knit or weave composite material in order for the shield to have more of the best properties of both types od diamond.

    Note that an interstellar dust particle with the mass of a red blood cell traveling at 0.86C relative to the craft and impinging normally on a shield would have the kinetic energy about 25 grams of TNT which is on the rough order of the explosive power of a hand gernade. The impact of one such dust particle could no doubt blast a trail right through most practical diamond shield, however, if the shield was thick enough and/or contained within layers of very dense, hard materials such as U-238, Tungsten, and certain very dense alloys with very high heat capacities, perhaps the denser materials could absorb some of the energy and diffuse the plasma jet produced by the impacting dust particle as the jet pierced the outer layers of the shield. For effective shielding against the one one nanogram range particles as such, the shield would probably need to be several to dozens of meters thick. Note that pebbles with the mass of gram hitting the shield normally at 0.86 C would produce an explosive reaction equal to about 2.5 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Thus, such shielding would be completely non-effective at stopping such particles.

    For particles within the mass range above one nanogram, some sort of magnetic and/or electric field based diversionary mechanism, and/or some sort of laser beam and/or particle beam based particle blasting and ionization mechanism would probably be required. The resulting plasma if formed close to the ship could be diverted around the ships hull by magnetic and/or electric fields or perhaps be absorbed into the ships composite shield as such if the total plasma mass and density upon impacting the ship was sufficiently low.

    For large object like rocks, bolders, and the like, collision avoidance mechanisms would be required, or atleast small nuclear weapons might be required to blast and ionize these objects while they were a ways off in front of the ship. Electric and/or magnetic fields could then be used to channel away the hot plasma formed by the vaporized rock and ionized nuclear bomb debris . Small explosive antimatter charges and/or matter/antimatter charges could also be stored on board the craft and used to ionize large space rocks and bolders.

    For very large objects like small asteriods, comets, etc., long range detection and collision avoidance would be required unless complete ionization of the asteriod or comet by a nuclear or matter/antimatter blast could be achieved while the object was still safely away from the ship, thus still requiring long range detection apparatus.

    Note that layers of dielectric material within the shield that have uniform of microscopically randomly oriented polarization and thus uniform and/or randomly oriented electrical field domains respectively may be of help in scattering and diffusing the plasma jets traveling through the thick shield via electrodynamic diffusive reactions with the plasma jets. Alternatively, there might be vacuous regions between layered portions of the shield wherein very large magnetic and/or electric fields are set up within these vacant regions for purposes of diffusing and or deflecting the plasma jets. If the vacuous regions are thick enough and/or the magnetic and/or electric fields within are strong enough, perhaps the plasma can be completely redirected in a cyclotronic type fashion thus avoiding the penetration of more interior layers of the shield. The plasma could then be safely redirected or even used by an energy recapture and recycling mechanism by way of the extraction of kinetic energy from the plasma via electrodynamic means and/or via a radiation absorbing material mechanism used to collect the resulting heat of absortion. Note that one or more uniformly magnetized or randomly magnetized layers of material could be used instead of or in conjuction with the diffusive polarized dielectric materials used to diffuse the plasma jets.

    Note that the shield could be a very long relatively narrow shield with a long sharp point so that the angle of incidence of the interstellar microscopic dust particles would be greatly reduced thus potentially reducing the destructive effects of impact and/or allowing for a thinner composite shield to be used. Such a shield may also have a magnetic field based or electric field based diversion mechanism to deflect incident interstellar ions, electrons, and the like charged particles.

    Another option would entail the use of bulk highly electrically conducting
    electrified cables wherein the potential set up along the cathode and the anode of the very massive cables would interact with the incomming penetrating plasma jets via electromotive force and cause the plasma to diverge or spread out. Such cables might optionally be made of superconducting material, or highly conducting conventional conductors with very high mechanical strength, hardness, and/or heat capacities. This electrical current conducting mechanism could be utilized optionally in conjunction with any combination of the diversionay apparatus mentioned above.

    Other materials that might be used in the construction of the bulk of the shield include super strong, high heat capacity carbon nanotubes, high heat capacity super strong and very dense modern alloys etc.

    For craft traveling at extremely or ultra relativistic velocities, perhaps shields made of or having thin layers of superconducting neutronium or quarkonium could be utilized. Note that such shields might completey block real photons and other real particles formed from the interaction of the outer surface of the space craft with the zero point energy fields in interstellar and intergalactic space thus reducing the risk of craft disintigration and/or radiation based damage to the craft as the craft continues to approach C ever more closely.

    At very mildly relativistic velocities of around 0.1C to 0.15C, the shielding requirements may be greatly reduced relative to the higher gamma factors mentioned above and are probably doable within 50 or 60 years if NASA, the U.S. Airforce, the European Space Agency (ESA), Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Technologies-Pratt and Whitney, Airbus, and the like would together pony up the money and manpower for the research and development and manufacture required to send of Humanities first manned interstellar mildly relativistic starship to Alpha-Centauri, Bernard’s Star and the like near by stars by the year 2060. I am almost entirely positive that such a mission could be launched shortly after mid century. Remember the old phrase, Where there is a will, there is a way.

    That’s for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

13. forrest noble on November 15, 2007 at 0:08

    OK George, here’s my 2 cents on the zero-point-field (zpf) energy generation. The zpf is believed to be, by most theorists today, the lowest energy level that everything else flows into. Something like the ocean whereby many rivers flow into it. When a wave of light dissipates to the point where it can no longer be detected the energy of it supposedly becomes a part of this field. Many theorists today think that the zpf is just pure energy, others believe it’s both particles and energy, a few like myself believe it is dark matter which consists of many varying sized strings of fundamental particles (much smaller than electrons), but no extra dimensions like most other string theories. They could be called elementary particles which collectively have a lot of energy because they are constantly being stirred up by matter, light, neutrinos, as well as interacting with each other.

    In my theories the zpf is the cause of gravity, meaning whenever we use gravity for our advantage we would be using the energy of the zpf. Other than causing gravity I can’t conceive of any other way to use this field’s energy because it is like the random molecular movement of stagnant air only much less powerful. I believe Virtual particles are only temporary vortices in this field which are stirred up by matter, EM radiation, or neutrinos.

    According to this theory the only low pressure areas where this field is forced to flow is into all matter. Hence the larger and the more massive the body the greater the inflow will be. Again, according to this theory, this is the source of gravity. This inflow eventually will be radiated away by the matter in the form of EM radiation, in the forms of photons and waves. Any form of matter or EM radiation would seem to have more energy potential than the zpf– in the form of fission, fusion, solar cells, solar sails, etc. The best advantage of using this field’s energy, I believe, is in the form of gravity. Not only gravity whips but also hydro-electric power, ocean waves and tides, etc. are also caused in part by gravity. Without gravity what kind of universe would this be?

    Anybody else?

    your friend forrest

14. george scaglione on November 15, 2007 at 10:37

    jim and forrest, thank you jim for that idea above,i suspect that it is highly futuristic but as i implied to someone else afew minutes ago.the “future” is coming on faster and faster!!!…..forrest…..thank you i rather got that idea after reading the first 20 pages of the document you recently e mailed me! but if the zpf does have so much energy as you imply above,then i still have very high hopes for it!! heck i get the idea by what you say that maybe the zpf could tie in somehow very nicely to gravity drives for space craft,why not? what do you think of that forrest and jim? thank you very much your friend george ps please be patient all it will take me awhile to finish all 56 great pages of forrests document which he recently sent! also lol just yesterday i began a little project of my own too about 5 minutes after i printed out what forrest sent! ;) g

15. forrest noble on November 15, 2007 at 16:11

    Jim, I think these shielding ideas in general will play a major role in space travel. We will have to protect the craft with these kinds of systems to even give us hope of traveling say .1C. This shielding as you point out may not be an easy task or one that present technology could handle. To go faster than say .1C I believe we also would need to move much of the material in front of the craft out of the way, even the smallest particles. To exceed the speed of light, according to my theory, you’d have to also move all material and the zpf in front of you out of the way. If we ever learn how that could be done, according to my theories, there would seem thereafter to be no limits. I’ll also volunteer to be one of those Astronauts to Bernard’s Star in 2060, I’ll only be 117– maybe with the right breakthoughs in medicine? lol

    George & Jim, I have never been able to conceive of a gravity-type (or anti-gravity) propulsion system. I’m very skeptical concerning this technology in general but this is what we all would hope for. I think a lot of wild and great things will be done some day (hopefully like this concept) using superconductors.

    These systems also don’t have to be solely single-power-source propulsion; they could be a hybrid system as long as it gets the job done. I also understand that Boeing is working on a gravity-drive system (also found it on Google), but after reviewing their concepts it seems ill-conceived to me. But who knows, maybe in the next couple of centuries or less? But if any of these systems becomes practical within my lifetime and also has substantial lift capability, I would become many steps higher than elated. You would find me in a mental institution with the diagnosis of euphorically insane. After being commited to the institution for an “indefinite period”, I’d also have plenty of time to change or add to some of my related theories. lol

    your friend forrest

16. george scaglione on November 16, 2007 at 10:48

    forrest, clearing out the space in the front of the ship!? on star trek they had such a device and no kidding we will probably need one too! your right. also forrest i almost feel off my chair when you said that you could not think of a way to realize a gravity drive propulsion system was just talking about that 15 minutes ago.YOU ARE IN GOOD COMPANY,carl sagan once told me the same thing!!!!! and yes we are all looking for those advances in medicine,i’d love to go into space at an “advanced age” too! also i will try to google that information you just mentioned about boeings gravity drive system…sounds very interesting! all the very best,your friend george

17. ljk on November 16, 2007 at 14:45

    The Daedalus star probe design by the BIS envisioned a dust bug craft
    ahead of the main vessel spraying fine dust into space. If memory serves,
    any object up to half a ton would be vaporized by the impact with the dust.

    The Daedalus probe itself had a big metal shield attached to its front for
    extra protection.

    While I am here and talking about this particular craft, I recall that the BIS
    never considered what to do with Daedalus after it flew by Barnard’s Star,
    other than to say it would just head off into the galaxy and that would be
    all she wrote.

    Presumably the ship’s systems would still be functioning and it would
    have several very large telescopes onboard. Plus, the computers running
    the ship were designed to be semi-intelligent. If they were made intelligent
    enough to be aware, what then? Some might consider this to be a
    suicide mission, if we sent out an aware, intelligent being on a mission
    never to return. Then again, if such a being had the ability to visit other
    star systems, it might consider that a more interesting option than going
    back to Earth.

    Maybe the Daedalus probe will never be that smart/aware, but I know
    the BIS designers from 1978 did not really anticipate just how smart
    and aware such computers might be by the time any such interstellar
    mission is finally launched. It would not surprise me if the AI decided
    it would go where and when it wanted to, rather than listen to those
    inferior organic creatures back on Sol 3.

    So if we want to see an actula interstellar mission happen, how do we
    make a system smart enough to act independently over vast distances
    for many years yet not so smart that it decides to declare its independence
    from those who sent it aloft?

18. James M. Essig on November 16, 2007 at 18:47

    Hi Folks;

    The potential forms or types of zero point energy ifields nclude the production of the following fundamental or supposedly fundamental bosons and fermions among other unknown types of particles: The photon, the three types of gluon, (red, green, and blue gluons), weak force bosons, and graviton; The up, down, charmed, strange, top, and bottom quarks; The electron, muon, and tau particle; The electron neutrino, muon neutrino, and tau neutrino,and the Higgs Bosons.

    From supersymmetry theories, the zero point fields involve: The photino, gluinos, weak force fermions, and gravitino and the Higgsinos as fermionic particles or supersymmetric particles with odd integer integer multiples of the fundamental spin unit of 1/2; The selections (supersymmetric bosonic [or even multiple of spin 1/2 particles] counterparts to the electron, muon, and tau particles); The snuetrinos (sypersymmetric bosonic counterparts to the electron neutrino, muon neutrino, and tau neutrino); and The squarks (sypersymmetric bosonic counterparts to the up, down, charmed, strange, top, and bottom quarks).

    The point being, that even with known and currently widely proposed forms of particles, the variety of zero point energy and particle fields are numerous. If we can learn to harness any one or subset of these fields, there might be plenty to work with in terms of how to figure out interstellar, intergalactic, and spacetime distortion based propulsions techniques including perhaps travel through space at or greater than C, warp drives, and wormole travel: all through our universe over cosmic distance scales in space and/or time, travel as such in other universes including but not limited to parallel histories if such exist, travel into higher dimensional space in our universe, in other universes, in parallel universes or alternate histories in our universe, or as such in alternate histories of other universes.

    And this just envolves the known and commonly proposed yet to be discovered particles. Other not thought of particles and any other fundamental undiscovered bosonic based forces may also have counterparts in the form of zero point energy virtual particles. There is indeed much territory here to be researched theoretically, computationally, and experimentally. The fun is only just beginning.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

19. forrest noble on November 16, 2007 at 23:53

    ljk sounds reasonable about the “dust bug craft”, but it seems like it might need a huge supply of dust or would be able to pick up dust along the way. As for the “too intelligent” computer– shades of 2001, a Space Odyssey (1968), hopefully we’ll be able to build them to be obedient to mission objectives and have back-up over-ride systems that also would exclusively follow mission objectives. We also might be able to continuously send signals to a backup system saying that it is X time and the craft should be here and doing this or that and if not look at this and that and do this–even though for most of the journey there could be no direct communications with such a long lead time.

    Guys,

    I like the idea of a robotic craft in front clearing the way to the stars– maybe with particle beams. It might stay busy working after lets say speeds above 200,000 mph., below that speed the craft seemingly would still need shield(s). Small atomic and molecular matter of various types also might be “pre-selected” via some type of filter system and drawn into a propulsion system for fission or fusion purposes.

    all for now, your friend forrest

20. James M. Essig on November 17, 2007 at 14:17

    Hi George, Forrest, and ljk;

    Thanks for the wise and insightful comments. I honestly have never before previously heard about the dust cloud based destruction on intervening objects in the path of a relativistic space craft. This is a really cool concept.

    An interesting concept occurred to me regarding interstellar manned space travel which I am sure was thought about by others before it dawned on me a few minutes ago.

    Basically, the concept involves mixing fusionable fuel with fissionanable fuel for use in composite fission fragment/fusion fragment drive materials. The idea involves using U-235, Plutonium 239, Americium 241, Americium 242, Thorium 233, Neptunium and the like optionally mixed with less fissionable materials such as Uranium-238 as a buffer against critical or super critical mass/densities from forming wherein this bulk material would be mixed with highly exothermic fusionable materials such as Hydrogen-1, Deuterium, Tritium, Helium-3, Helium-4, Lithium Deuteride, Carbon, and the like wherein the fusionable materials could take the form of discreet “nano fusion pods” of diameters on the order of a nanometer or less. The result would be nuclear fragment fuel with significantly greater Isp than nuclear fission fragment fuel alone.

    The reason for including the fusion fuel in discreet seperated small nanopods is to prevent the propagation of one or more fusion reaction wave fronts from taking hold and causing the whole bulk mass of the nuclear fission/fusion fuel from becomming a huge thermal nuclear bomb which would destroy the ship. I read the introduction to some guy’s patent in which it was stated that the maximum Isp theoretically possible with nuclear fission fragment drives is about 1,200,000. A combined fission/fusion fragment drive should be able to best this value and provide a means for large manned space craft to reach any of the stars within a 100 light year radius of Earth in less than half a millenia Earth time using huge multigeneration space arks. With very high initial fuel mass to ship dry wieght, perhaps the drive could obtain a terminal craft velocity of up to 0.3 to 0.35 C which would allow manned space travel to any stars within a 10 to 12 light year radius of Earth in one familial generation of contemporary American lifestyle and slightly less ship time thus making the voyage potentially palitable for the the U.S. voters and policy makers.

    The reason for including U-238 which is a very poor candidate material for nuclear weapons is that its critical mass is very very large compared to U-235 or other weapons grade isotopal compositions. However, the energy yield per fission of a U-238 nuclei is almost the same as that produced by the fission of a U-235 nuclei and the like weapons grade primary fissionable isotopes. Thus the risk of runaway fission and/or fusion is reduced in the above stated composite nuclear fragment materials.

    Using short half life fissionable material such as Americium 242 with a half life of about 131 years might be ideal because the formation of critical mass/densities would be largely unnecessary in order to draw most of fission energy derivable from the fuel for purposes of powering multigeneration space arks; because, by definition, the fuel will release half of its total fission derivable energy release in 131 years thus more appropiately matching the mission time frame for the transport of huge multi generation space arks to moderately nearby stars, all without the necessity and risk of producing critical or even supercritical mass/density fissionable material concentrations.

    Thanks;

    That’s all for now.

    Your Friend Jim

21. James M. Essig on November 17, 2007 at 17:14

    Hi Forrest;

    I like the idea of life suspension on long duration interstellar mission space craft. If human beings could have their matabolism slowed to a snail pace wherein the human body would be preserved from decay, bacteria, fungi, viruses, and general oxidation by nanotechnological means, then perhaps 1,000 year long missions at the limits of 0.15 C that you have stated could still get us out to 150 lighyears. Within this radius, their are tens of thousands or stars, probably even several to numerous lower mass limit red dwarfs which have yet to be discovered due to optical emmission light path obstruction by interstellar dust and gas, but also perhaps even based on these stars shear relative dimness with integrated spectral emmissions of 1/10,000 or less than that of the Sun. 10,000 year missions would get us out to 1,500 light years from Earth at a radius from Earth within which hundreds of thousands of stars exist.

    Such missions, in the case where better and faster technology is not available within the next few centuries, might be launched not only from an economic, commercial, scientific, and practical points of few, but also from a spiritual, religious, and cultural perspective that would probably involve motives to contact and associate with our fellow galactic inhabitants or ETI civilizations. In the event that such civilizations are mainly more advanced technologically then we are, perhaps they will welcome us with open arms, patting us on the back saying, “Well done! You have finally made it here to visit us”. One can imagine the magnitude of economic, cultural, scientific, and technological exchange with such ETI civilizations and how the geo-political paradymns of how we conduct our selves on Earth might be altered for the better.

    If we make contact with ETI sometime this century, perhaps by 2062 when I will be 100 years old, depending on what the ETI can eat and digest, I will offer them invitations, as well, to a turkey smoker party with plenty of brocolli caseroll, sweet potatoes, mash potatoes and gravy, and the rest of the works perhaps with the effect of the gathering contributing to a new meaning for the Holiday of Thanksgiving.

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

22. forrest noble on November 17, 2007 at 19:38

    Jim, George, and ljk (if you’re still there)

    Thought of some “possibilities” , Jim, concerning your fission-fusion propulsion system. Fuel can be encapsulated into small pellets like in the pellet runway idea–maybe the size of a marble. These “pellets” would be released into a propulsion chamber very slowly one at a time. This material wouldn’t have to be very dense like uranium, many neutron depleted (low-isotope) elements would work. This pellet would contain both the isotope material compounded with hydrogen. It could be fissioned in the combustion chamber by gamma rays possibly from a positron/ electron interactions. The heat from the fission reaction might also be used to fuse some of the hydrogen in the compound into helium. It might be considered a “putt putt” of sorts with steady acceleration, but with speeds of up to maybe .1C.

    Multi-generation craft are cool for bigger ships but otherwise life-suspension systems would be easier when they are invented. Maybe the mission manager would also be suspended here on earth so that he could brief the passenger/ scientists when they returned in a couple hundred years more or less.

    all for now, your friend forrest

23. george scaglione on November 18, 2007 at 14:14

    ljk,thank you very much for adding your good ideas! please consider doing that more often.and yes,seems like a waste of a star ship! with NO DOUBT alot more that could be done! to say the very least. …..jim…….i can not agree more with your idea that the zpf possibilities are indeed very GREAT ! and also thanks for the good fuel ideas which i see are already beginning more discussion ! yes indeed the fun IS just beginning! ……..forrest……… again,buddy,can not agree more! we had indeed better be careful of “hal like” computers!!! all the very best to all of you and i look forward to more discussion in the new week before us! would say happy thanksgiving except it goes without saying,and lol, i’ll probably talk to you 5 more times before then! all the best,george

24. forrest noble on November 18, 2007 at 17:33

    Hi Jim, your last reply was not on the board when I posted my last.

    Re– Life suspension: The system you discussed is a form of hibernation, which would be great and will probably be perfected first, but even better, I think, would be a life suspension system (suspended animation). This technology I don’t think is very far away. Right now there is relatively little money being spent on it, but maybe within our lifetime it will be realized. The process may work like this: Both animals and humans can breathe liquid instead of air (gases). The most common liquid group used for this purpose is the Perfluorocarbon group.

    Before the process begins, a heart defibrillator, an electrical stimulator (shock) device, and temperature probes would be implanted into the animal/ human as well as a catheter to the heart. The body would then be immersed in this liquid. It may take up to 20 minutes after first breathing this liquid for the animals/ humans breathing rate and blood pressure to stabilize. Within this bath are antibiotics, anti-virals, and anti-fungals for the skin and lungs. An IV is injected which contains an anti-freeze compound (several have been tested on animals) as well as a wetting agent such as DMSO (that is non-poisonous) that greatly increases the rate of total soft cell saturation . The process can take up to 10 days for a human size animal. Within the IV besides glucose, salts, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal drugs, would be a strong sedative that reduces the rate of cell metabolism as well as greatly reduced oxygen requirements especially for brain cells.

    Soon after this drug(s) takes effect the temperature of the bath is slowly reduced to about the freezing point of water. At this time the pressure in the tank is also slowly decreased to about 4 lbs. per sq. in. The temperature concurrently of the bath is also reduced slowly. At this time more sedatives and muscle relaxors would be pumped into the heart causing it to slowly decrease its beat rate and finally stop. The temperature would continue to decrease in the bath/ tank to about -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Mico-waves could be used to assist in an even reduction in body temperature. At this temperature the animal/ human is suspended. No metabolism, No proliferation of bacteria, viral or fungal agents. In theory this state could continue for ever as long as the temperature and pressure were maintained.

    To revive the animal/ human in the future, the process would be reversed. At the prescribed moment adrenaline would be pumped into the heart and the shock/ defibrillator would be activated. When the heart starts beating stimulation drugs would be injected into the blood to help re-activate metabolism. The same thing would need to happen automatically in case of system failure. (Saw a sci-fi flick something like that) Possibly within just a few hours the animal/ human could emerge from the bath. Within a week or so he/ she might begin to feel normal.

    This technology, I believe, is less than a few decades away or possibly sooner, who knows, after that maybe the stars–

    As far as your ETI—it would be better if they weren’t alien Aliens so they could enjoy all your great Thanksgiving offerings above.—“welcome us with open arms” would be great also as long as it’s a “loving embrace”. Lol—also remember George and me when you send out those invitations; maybe we’ll all have to be brought out of suspended animation for the event in 2062.

    your friend forrest

25. James M. Essig on November 18, 2007 at 22:07

    Hi George and Forrest;

    Thanks for the above postings.

    George;

    Precautions will definately need to be taken as AI computers and robots get more sophisticated as you said.

    Forrest;

    Thanks for the detailed introduction on suspended animation. Very interesting concepts and ideas. Both you and George will definately be invited to my turkey smoker party for any aliens.

    I thought it would be interesting to elaborate on a proposed technology involving the storage and release of energy from the nuclear isomer hafnium 178m2. Nuclear isomers of Os187, Yt186, Ta180, and Zn66 are also under consideration.

    Basically there are two forms of nuclear isomers, shape isomers and spin isomers for which the potential energy storage density is a couple to several orders of magnitude greater than the most energy dense conventional chemical materials. One metric ton of Hf 178 m2 could store as much energy as the yield of 4 atomic bombs of yield equal to the one dropped on Hiroshima for a total yield of about 50 Kt.

    I have commented on site regarding nuclear isomers before however I thought that revisiting the subject might be useful and/or interesting to the general Tau Zero readership.

    The newest rendition of the general concept I have to offer involves laying out a long series of fully charged pods of nuclear isomer materials that are gradually charged to capacity by solar powered X-ray generation machines. Note that supposedly, the first evidence of experimental Hf 128 m2 sudden energy release occured after a very small sample of the isomer was charged by a dental x-ray machine and then alledgedly stimulated to release a sudden burst of gamma rays in a chain reaction type of event. The nuclear isomer pods would then be suddenly or gradually discharged in a directed energy like fashion with beams incident on a passing massive ship board piece of dense, highly refrective, high heat capacity material wherein the momentum of the gamma rays would be transmitted to the ship in a manner simmilar to that of a photon drive and/or the heat generated would be used to power thermoelectic and/or turbo electric power generation systems for ion or electron rocket propulsion, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drive, electrohydrodynamicplasma drive, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasma, optical frequency photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems.

    Department of Defense studies ultimately aimed at studying the feasability of producing isomeric energy devices for sudden energy releases in the form of super deadly gamma ray bombs to gradual energy release mechanisms for energy supplies including propulsion systems for space craft are rumoured to currently being undertaken.

    For a sudden and complete energy release, the nuclear isomer would vaporize itself into a several million degree plasma and thus could not be reused. This form of nuclear isomer distribution would be simmilar to the fusion runway discussed in our previous posting over the past few weeks.

    A more gradual release in the form of a continous directed energy beam directed onto a ship-based pusher plate or radiative heat absorbing material for electrical power generation for electrically powered propulsion systems might be the best method to use since the various proposed isomeric materials are expected to be very expensive at least initially. The use of gradual energy release propulsion beams could be counterbalanced by beam releases in the opposing direction for attaining zero or near zero net momentum changes for the activated pods thus permiting stable positioning of the isomer pods. When the pods have been discharged, they could be recharged using sun light powered x ray generators.

    The nuclear isomer(s) pods could be distributed over a distance of billions if not up to a trillion or more kilometers in order to provide a one G to several G accelleration for terminal gamma factors as high as 5 to 10 or perhaps even greater for effective manned interstellar missions to moderately distant stars within the Milky Way Galaxy, perhaps as far away as 1,000 light years in one normal human familial generation ship time.

    The accelleration rate and/or length of the runway could be greatly reduced to attain the limiting value of 0.1 C proposed by Forrest thus greatly reducing the logistics of manufacturing, distribution, and maintenance of the disposed pods and yet still allowing manned travel to other star systems.

    An advantage to using predisposed nuclear isomer pods is such that the fuel would not need to be carried on board the spece craft thus allowing much greater terminal velocities over systems that would carry their entire isomer supply on board as fuel and thus be required to accellerate the entire unused fuel mass as well as the space craft resulting in greatly reducing efficiency.

    Perhaps Hf 178 can be mined from other planetary bodies and/or asteroids thus promoting cost effective attainment of usable supplies.

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

26. george scaglione on November 19, 2007 at 13:32

    forrest,yes suspended animation might easily be developed within the next few years,why not? but lol i think i should take back the word “easily”. might be a big help to space flight in ways only limited by imagination! heck not too long ago suspended animation was ONLY imagination from say a sf story! …..jim…..thank you too for the above comments and ideas! your friend george

27. James M. Essig on November 19, 2007 at 17:50

    Hi George and Forrest;

    George thanks for the above response.

    Another set of ideas occurred to me gradually over the past few months.

    1) The first idea involves the notion of what I will refer to as a fusion wick. Basically, the idea involves laying out a long string, line, or rop made of fusionable material wherein the linear burn rate of the wick would very from a few hundred kilometers per second to near C wherein a space craft would travel along the wick as it burns at the location of a given burning differential length segment and draw energy from the ongoing linearly propagating fusion reaction to power ion or electron rocket propulsion systems, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasmas, optical frequency photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems.

    The energy derived per unit length of wick could be relatively small as a result of the wick being thin or much greater in the case where the wick would have a thickness easily visible to the unaided human eye. Alternatively, multiple colinear or parallel wicks could be utilized at the same time.

    The length of the wicks could vary between a few billion kilometers in length to perhaps millions or even billions of light years long although this extreme upper range of length might not be practical from a logistics point of view interms of manufacturing and placement in space.

    For slow speed fusion propagation down the wick, the heat of the fusion reaction might be all that is required to sustain the burn. To help control the rate of burn including its increase in linear progression rate, the fusionable isotopic and elemental composition of the string can be made to vary along its length so that the progression rate of the burn increases with time and distance as a result of the composition of the wick becomming; more mass specific exothermic, more dense, and/or thicker. Optionally non fusionable isotopes and/or elements could be included in the wicks composition in varying concentrations, relative concentrations, and/or in varying conbinations to modify or modulate the rate of wick fusion progression.

    For wick burning front progression at or near C, for extremely or ultra relativistic space craft, the wick burning mechanism could be propagationally initiated by some sort of lasing or directed gamma ray energy feature whereby this directed energy would be directed along the length of the wick in the direction of burn propagation. The elemental or isotopic composition of the lasing material could be simmilar to the proposed isotopes and/or elements for use in directed energy nuclear weapons studied under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or socalled Star Wars research and development effort within the U.S. DOD wherein concepts such as the nuclear bomb pulse x-ray or gamma ray laser were researched. Another concept would involve the distributiion of nuclear isomeric material with optionally long half lives such as the 31 year half life Hf 178 m2 isomer wherein upon stimulation by intense fusion energy, the isomer would be made to discharge along the length of the wick inside the wick, thus combining its directed energy release with that of the general progressing fusion reaction’s heat and radiation for maintenance of a near C propagating wick fusion reaction. The nuclear isomers could be periodically recharged with starlight or CMBR powered x ray generators located periodically along the length of the wick, perhaps in a configuration wherein these x-ray generators would rove back and forth along a given length of the wick to recharge the nuclear isomeric materials as they decayed.

    Another option envolves some how producing the wick portions further out from solid stable matter/antimatter fuel wherein the fuel would be detonated in a propagating linear front along the length of the wick at or near C. If some sort of solid stable form of positronium could be produced, perhaps such material could be used in the composition of the wick so that that the positronium would progressly annihilate into gamma rays as unburnt portions of the wick were perturbed by adjacent reacting portions thus resulting in progressive destabilization of the positronium or the like matter/antimatter composite material and subsequent matter/antimatter annihilation.

    Another option would entail parallel wicks wherein one or more wicks is made of matter and the other wick(s) is (are) made of charge conjugate antimatter particle species. Perhaps, such matter could take the form of super strong metallic hydrogen for the matter wick and super strong metallic anti-hydrogen for the other wick. Alternatively, other materials could be used such as super strong carbon nanotubes and superstrong anticarbon nanotubes. In these configurations, the matter and antimatter wicks would be progressivly squeezed together or somehow progressively linearly combined thus resulting in very large energy releases per unit of reacting matter. Perhaps the antimatter wick could be contained within a hollow matter wick and suspended centrally along the axis of the hollow wick via electric field, magnetic field, or some other seperation and spacing mechanism. The two components would be progressively recombined as required to keep the burn front of the wick propagating down the length of this co-axial like cable configuration at the appropriate speed.

    Note that whatever the material composition of the wicks used or their geometic cross sectional configuration, the wicks could optionally come in linearly seperated discreet sections and/or subsections so that if one wick burned out prematurely, burned to slowly, or burned to rapidly, the ship could wait until it reached the next portion of the train of disposed wicks wherein a timed, optionally remote signal activated wick burn initiator would start the next wick segment burning after the craft reached that segment at the appropriate time. Such wicks could exist as completely seperated and detached linear elements or a linearly series of connected exothermic elements seperated by inert linear spacing segments. The signal to activate the successive linear wicks burn initiators could be transmitted down the length of the inert portion especially if the portion took the form of a electrical conductor (perhaps even superconductor) or fiber optic cable or line or included such as a subset of the inert portions compositions.

    Now, the wick could either be made to travel down the center of a spacecraft within a central cylindrically shaped reaction chamber runing the whole length of the craft or the wick out be made to thread through an offset reaction chamber that is either cylindrically open or cylindrically closed. For such offset configurations, multiple diamaterically, or rotationally symmetrically diposed reaction chambers migth be the preferred configuration in order to balance the thrust loading on the craft by its propulsion systems and/or balance the radiation and/or explosive plasma induced pressure loading on the craft by the adjacent burning portions of the wicks.

    The wicks could optionally be laid out in space wherein they would be processed for their energy content by active reaction means based on board the space craft in stead of having seperate mechanism for initiating and maintaining the burning of the wicks incorporated within or adjacent to the wicks themselves.

    Now, if a 10 micrometer diameter fusionable wick could continuously burn within a ship’s reaction and energy catchment chamber and wherein 50 pecent of the wick energy release could be captured and converted into ship based kinetic energy, then a one trillion kilometer long wick as such could impart as much as the equivalent of 500 metric tons of mass converted into ship based kinetic energy thus allowing a 500 metric ton ship to reach a gamma factor of 2 after traveling 0.1 light years. A 100 light year long wick as such would allow the ship to reach a gamma factor of 1,000. A fusion wick with a diameter of a one millimeter and the same energy conversion effeciency and the same lengths would allow a ship with a mass of 5,000,000 metirc tons to reach a gamma factor 2 and 1,000 respectively. The mass of the 10 micrometer diameter fusion wick with a length of 0.1 light years would only be about 100,000 metric tons or the wieght of a modern nuclear powered aircraft carrier. A 100 light year long wick as such would have a mass of 100 million metric tons. For the 1 millimeter diameter wick, the masses would be 10,000 times greater respectively. For matter/antimatter wicks given the same efficiencies, the respective masses would be about 100 times less. Thus, a 500 metric ton space craft could be brought to a gamma factor of about two or about 0.86 C with only 1,000 metric tons of matter/antimatter wick. Theoretically, the terminal gamma factors of a craft with arbitrary mass could be increased by several to many orders of magnitude above the examples of gamma values provided above simply by scaling up the diameter and/or length of the wicks.

    To reach the proposed speed limit set by Forrest of 0.1 C for a 500 metric ton ship, and utilizing the same efficiency, a 10 micrometer diameter fusion wick would only need to have a mass of roughly 1,000 metric tons and a length of only 10 billion kilometers. A matter/antimatter wick as such would only need to have a mass of about 10 metric tons and a length of only about 100 million kilometers to do the same job. Therefor, for local interstellar travel at 0.1C to 0.15 C as proposed by Forrest, we could set up large numbers of such wicks within the boundaries of the planetary volume of our solar system and launch very large numbers of missions in virtually all directions to our stellar nieghbors. That would be lots of fun!

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

28. forrest noble on November 19, 2007 at 23:42

    Hi Jim, George,

    As to your ideas, Jim, on nuclear isomers—it seems to me that their greatest energy potential is in their relative ease of fissionability. It also seems reasonable that they could be ideal as rocket fuel constituents where a large chain reaction is not desirable. These isomers are what are speculated to be the ingredients for a suitcase-size A-bomb where the critical mass would need to be small.

    As to the wick idea, current theory holds that interstellar space is pretty empty. But remember that most stars are believed to have started out as a large stellar nebula. Ours had the material originally of let’s say 400 “local” stars within lets say up to say 30 light years from us now (some have been smeared out over even greater distances). Most of the material in this original nebulae/ cloud of mostly hydrogen (also some heavier elements) went into making up the stars and their planets but some of this material, I believe, is still out there and not necessarily spread out evenly. A continuous wick material might be perturbed from the linear path in which it was laid out and even possibly broken. Gravity I believe also has currents that could also perturb a continuous wick. To use this idea it seems to me that at first you would need to test your pellet runway idea to see for how long of a time the pellets would remain in a linear configuration. The answer, I believe, would be different between one star and another (and even could be different from time to time). Also that would tell you where it might be better to lay down future pellets or wicks for maybe a transportation highway.

    all for now, your friend forrest

29. george scaglione on November 20, 2007 at 10:39

    jim fantastic idea and not at all bad!!probably not doable by nasa in the 08 budget however!! lol. but…one never knows the future and technology seem to be gaining on us when we least expect it! so…2082? maybe!!! forrest as i just said jim has a good idea (alot of good ideas) and one never knows how fast things may develop! i myself have been waiting a long time for alot of things,right now i’d settle for mars by 2030!! all the very best,your friend george

30. James M. Essig on November 20, 2007 at 15:48

    Hi George and Forrest;

    Forrest;

    Thanks for the insight on the wick idea. There are definately ways that such wicks could be peturbed or broken. Your idea of selectively laying out pellet streams seams to be a practical way to test the idea to see where and when if any such wicks could ever be deployed.

    George;

    Thanks for your comments also. I hope to celebrate a 2030 time frame arrival of men and women on Mars. I would have to through a huge party to celebrate such an event and no doubt you and Forrest would have some of the very first invitations sent out to.

    I am really looking forward to the renewed operations of the CERN facility next year and the up grade of the FERMILab accellerator. I think we will discover some fascinating new and fundamental physics with such experimental studies. I reviewed a picture on some website about a 10,000 pound or so thrust methane/LOX rocket. I can just imagine how cool that blue flamed thrust would look exiting the rocket nozzles of the CEV which is being designed to run on methane/LOX because methane, it is believed, can be manufactured fairly easilly from within the Martian environment and thus a methane powered modified CEV based Mars ship could be facilitated by such.

31. James M. Essig on November 20, 2007 at 20:40

    Hi George and Forrest;

    An additional interstellar travel concept has occurred to me over the past several hours.

    The concept is a modification of the wick idea as mentioned above and involves the concept of producing such wicks out of matter/antimatter composite materials or seperate wicks such as parallel charge congugate material wicks or coaxial cable wicks made out of matter/antimatter solid neutronium, quarkonium, or some even denser matter antimatter combination. The wicks could be seperately progressively annihilated along their lengths by independent mechanisms as the space craft passed by or processed by upon being gradually threaded through a central or symmetrically diposed set of reaction energy collection chambers as discribed in my previous posting on this subject.

    The reason for using such materials in wick composition is such that they (wicks) might not be disruptable or cut by interstellar debris because of their extreme density and tensile strength. They might simply pass through and/or cut through interstellar debris incident on them. Imagine a material having a tensile strength many many orders of magnitude greater than the strongest carbon nanotubes but 10 trillion to 1000 trillion + times thinner than a Japanese Sumari Sorde. This wick should be able to cut through just about anyting except a blackhole or perhaps a neutron star.

    Now comes the problem of actually constructing wicks out of such matter. A 10 EXP -15 meter thick neutronium wick having a mass of 10 EXP 15 metric tons would have a length of 10 EXP 30 meters, 10 EXP 27 Kilometers, or 10 EXP 14 light years. A 10 EXP -9 meter thick wick of such a length would have a mass of 10 EXP 27 metric tons. A wick of solid neutronium having a diameter of 10 EXP – 6 meters or one micron of the same length would have a mass of 10 EXP 33 metric tons or one million solar masses.

    However, these wicks would provide huge supplies of energy for space craft utilizing them. Thicker wicks then those decribed above would provide for velocities even more closely approaching C.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

32. forrest noble on November 20, 2007 at 23:45

    George, now that we have more players in the “race” we might have a chance at Mars 2030 if no other wars get in our (funding) path. The methane/ oxygen rocket mentioned below may be our first mission to mars propulsion system– as simple as it seems.

    Jim, frankly I think that particle physics accelerator research is very exciting but so far I believe they’ve come to generally wrong conclusions– although I feel certain that most of their collective data will be useful to figure it all out eventually. Maybe some of the information also will become useful in practical ways that are unforeseeable right now– such is the history of basic research.

    Saw the web sites you discussed concerning the new methane rocket. New info to me. Guess I missed out on the concept stage of this development. I also saw a video on the web thanks to your “heads-up” — and that “braded” blue flame you discussed, very beautiful indeed.

    your friend forrest

33. James M. Essig on November 21, 2007 at 2:06

    Hi Goerge and Forrest;

    I must say that it occurred to me to comment on other manned interstellar travel ideas that gradually came to a conscious explanation over the past few years. The first idea is extremely far out and would probably involve the abilities of a civilization capable of galactic scale or even cosmic scale engineering.

    1) The first idea involves harnessing the mass energy of cosmic strings which are expected to have a mass of more than 10 EXP 16 tons per centimeter while being less than 10 EXP – 31 meters thick. This matter density is greater than the squeezing of a billion neutron stars into a volume the size of an electron. A cosmic string as such with a length of roughly the radius of the observable universe would have a mass of (10 EXP 16)(10 EXP 2)(10 EXP 3)(10 EXP 13)(10 EXP 10) metric tons, or 10 EXP 44 Metric tons, or about 10 EXP 17 solar masses which is roughly 0.001 percent of the mass of the baryonic matter within the observable universe. Thus, there is enough mass within the observable universe such that if one tenth of this mass could be artificially incorporated into artificially produced cosmic strings, than 10,000 such cosmic strings could be produced as a dense mass/energy storage and supply depository for use by transiting space craft. Optionally, a near ensemble of smaller strings, perhaps even as short as a centimeter long or less could be produced and utilized for their mattergy content.

    Imagine if this mass concentration for a 10 billion light year long cosmic string could be destabilized and converted into ship based kinetic energy, perhaps optionally in an analogous manner described in the wick idea I proposed in my previous posting. A 10 EXP 3 metric ton rest mass ship could attain a gamma factor of 10 EXP 41, a 10 EXP 6 metric ton ship a gamma factor of 10 EXP 38, a space ship with the mass of the Earth a gamma factor of 5 x 10 EXP 22, a space ship with the mass of the Sun a gamma factor of roughly 10 EXP 17, a space ship with the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy a gamma factor of one million!!

    Even if we are able to harness only a tiny fraction of any existing cosmic strings within our universe for space craft propulsion, that would represent a tremendous power source for ultrarelativistic large starships. The latent energy of cosmic strings might even be used to open up wormholes and produce copious amounts of negative mass or imaginary mass inorder to hold the wormholes open by lining their mouths and throats with these exotic proposed forms of matter.

    Even relativistic spacecraft traveling inertially through space might be able to travel faster than light as light travels through the depths of interstellar or intergalactic space because the speed of light in these media might be ever so slightly slower than the speed of light in an absolutely pure vacuum deviod of all real bosons and all real fermions as a result of the particulate matter in the interstellar medium and intergalactic medium increasing the index of refraction of these media ever so slightly greater than unity. This fact might introduce some bazaar physical translational based motion effects with regard the the space that the craft passes through through due to some as yet to be identified defect in special relativity however subtle such defects might be. Any such effects just might be harnessable by the space craft to facilitate travel through space and/or time, perhaps even into the past thus permitting the space craft to reach its destination at a time before it left for its journey thus effectively resulting in quicker than instantaneous transport for the crew relative to Earth.

    Superstrings may in theory carry currents, based on fermions with masses of the Grand Unification Energy Scale, of 10 EXP 20 Amperes. This is an enormous current and if this current could some how be tapped into or utilized to power electomagnets based on these current carrying fermions wherein the electromagnets would be composed of some type of super dense superconducting quarkonium, or even much denser cosmic string material itself, wherein in either case the electromagnet would have thousands to billions of loop windings, one can imagine the tremendous intensity of the magnetic fields that would result. If a winding of 10 EXP 35 loops of super thin superconducting quarkonium was utilized wherein the total coil or selenoid thus formed was on the order of 1 meter accoss and one meter thick, a magnetic field of perhaps 10 EXP 50 Tesla would be formed within and just outside the coil. This would have the bazaar property of containing many more orders of magnitude more energy in the volume of one cubic meter than the entire energy content of the observable universe thus leading to inconsistancies with regard to the energy conservation principle. However, perhaps by approaching such extremes only remotely, we may uncover new physics, perhaps even a method to produce energy out of less energy or essentially nothing. If pure energy is an accidental property that subsists in some more primitive substance, to use the Scholastic Theology language of Saint Thomas Aquinas, then perhaps such creation of additional mattergy is possible. One must admit however that some sort of unnaturally strong form of even the material quarkomium would need to be found which could handle the 10 EXP 50 Tesla magnetic fields without instantly being torn to pieces based on the titanic magnetic forces that the coil would exert on itself.

    Alternatively, the production of such extensive and strong magnetic fields might entail or imply extracting energy from other dimensions, other universes, parallel histories, higher dimensional space etc. or even the conversion of zero point energy field particles, boson and/or fermions alike, into real particles whether or not such zero point energy fields exist in ordinary 4-D Einstienian space time, higher dimensional space time, other universes, parallel histories and the like.

    2) The second concept is a much more down to earth concept that occurred to me involving the powering of an ion or electron rocket, magnetohydrodynamicplasma drives, electrohydrodynamicplasma drives, electromagnetohydrodynamicplasmas, optical frequency photon rockets, and the like propulsion systems. The concept essentially involves the notion of powering such a space craft via a long unwindable electric cord. A one micron thick, one million metric ton cord of superconducting material capable of carrying very high currents and total power might be usable to power the above types of propulsion systems in very large manned interstellar multigeneration low accelleration rate space arks or perhaps even highly relativistic Milky Way Galaxy limit travel capable manned space craft.

    I have no idea what sort of suitable material could be suitably lightwieght and this thin yet still be able to carry the 10 EXP 12 to 10 EXP 15 Watts of electrical power as might be required. Perhaps a one metric ton, billion kilometer long cable as such able to carry a thousand watts to as much as 100 million watts could be utilizable for powering small manned space craft out to the outer reaches of the planetary portion of our solar system. A one hundred million watt output ion or electron rocket operating for 1/3 of a year would result in a ship based energy gain of (10 EXP 8)(10 EXP 6) Joules or 10 EXP 15 Joules. This would allow a 2,000 metric ton space craft to reach a velocity of about 30 kilometer/sec assumming near 100% effeciency. A 20 metric ton space craft powered by the 100 million watt system for 1/3 year would obtain a velocity of 300 kilometers per second which would allow timely manned travel deep into the Oort Cloud. Even a 200 metric ton, CEV based mars travel sized craft could reach about 100 kilometers per second thus allowing manned travel out deep into the Kuiper Belt during a 10 to 20 year mission.

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

34. george scaglione on November 21, 2007 at 10:57

    jim, i like that pellet stream concept to,chalk one up for forrest! 2030 for mars would indeed be great for a “manned” mars landing.but i fear that that will take alot of luck! and boy oh boy yes do i look forward to finding out more from the cern accelerator next year!!! …..forrest….. yes 2030 for mars if no funding issues etc,thats what i mean above by”will take alot of luck!” when you mentioned the collective data from cern helping down the road to help us figure things out for some reason projects like your book came to mind too! whatever makes our community think can in the end only help!thanks all see you soon or even if not have a great holiday!! your friend george

35. James M. Essig on November 21, 2007 at 13:32

    Hi George and Forrest;

    Talk to both of you soon. Have a great Holiday.

    George;

    I only hope that in the case that Hillary gets elected, and it seems quite probable that she will get the Democratic Nomination, she will reinvigorate the NASA manned space program. Either way, I feel that more funding for a manned Mars mission should be one of our national priorities. It would be awesome if we found fossilized animal remains on Mars.

    Forrest;

    I plan on getting back to you regarding comments on my third review of the manuscript by sometime in the next couple of days for sure. I will need to take a leave from further posting as I clean up the house and yard for Thankgiving day company. My sister Mary is planning a big dinner at her place tomorrow and so I will need to do some of my share of the cooking. However, I look forward to futher analysis of the 48 page document and look farward to reading subsequent sections.

    To all other reader’s of this site who have commented and all those who have never posted on site, I wish you all a very Happy Holiday.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

36. forrest noble on November 21, 2007 at 18:48

    Hey Jim,

    Yeh, there’s one of a number of String Theories that propose very large cosmic strings, supposedly left over remnants from the Big Bang. The best of these theories’ as far as future space propulsion systems are concerned, as I recall involves very large galaxy-size ribbons of anti-matter. Your right, if there was such a thing out there it would be great to tap into that fuel depot. Another theory involves huge continuous stings that carry very powerful electric currents. Also could be great as a fuel source if they existed. Several others involve huge connected strings of quark antiquark material. Don’t know what we could do with them since according to mainstream theory they cannot interact like matter and antimatter. But if we ever find something new out there, I think we would eventually be able to figure out how to use it to our advantage.

    Your second idea will be used a lot sooner I’m sure. Photon rockets with an exhaust of gamma-rays have been already discussed here with many types of photon generation systems possible such as electron, positron interactions. Superconducting materials will most likely also be part of new propulsion systems as you have suggested.

    Yeh, out into the Cuppier belt, the Oort cloud, up up and away to the stars!!!!!!!!! but let’s start with that old red planet and Terri form it.

    Adam, one of our Tau Zero buddies, just pointed out to me (by e-mail, he lives in Australia) a new science release, Nov.12, 07’ concerning tainted data concerning the micro-wave background. Adam said he thought it could be a paradigm buster, or a least another nail in the coffin of the Big Bang Theory. Have a similar prediction in my book and so does Eric Lerner in his published book “The Big Bang Never Happened”. http://www.dsri.dk/~mykal/tmp/tycho/Verschuur.doc

    your friend forrest

37. James M. Essig on November 22, 2007 at 6:32

    Hi Forrest;

    Thanks for the above comments.

    Terraforming Mars would be ccol. As a second near term planetary home for humanity, it would be nice if our descendents could take a breath of Martian fresh air while eating Pizza or even a turkey grown on Mars. In fact, the idea of envirnmentally friendly or green renewable energy production and other infrastructure on Mars would be neat as well.

    Terraforming Venus might also be an option according to some planetary science models. Such a process would involve introducing biological agents in the Venusian atmosphere to produce gases that would reflect much of the incident sunlight. From this point, other processes would be utilized to gradually cool and make habitable the Venusian atmosphere and make fertile farm land for agriculteral purposes.

    Its been suggested that some of the polar regions on the planet Mercury might also support closed hab settlements because in theory, the area within the very large crater that exists at one of the poles of Mercury might be perpetually shadowed and thus frozen thus avoiding the need for refrigerated habitats. In fact, such habitats would need to be heated.

    On Earth’s moon, as we are all well aware, Bush and NASA have plans for a permanemt out post to be established by the early 2020s. From its humble beginning, the Lunar efforts could be ramped up for permenant large scale settlement of the Moon.

    The asteriods could be mined for iron, nickel, and other materials with which to build numerous huge rotating interplanetary space stations or space habitats. The only limit to the number of such space stations would be imposed by the amount of material available within the Asteriod Belt.

    Regarding manned interstellar travel ideas, it occured to me to mention the concept of setting up permenantly faceted regions of space that are multiply connected with other regions of space that are located at a cosmic distance from Earth in space and/or time. In this concept, such regions of space would have permenant doorways wherein one could simply walk through and enter a region of space that is normally located billions if not trillions of light years +
    away from Earth, our local interstellar neigborhood, or the Milky Way Galaxy. Note that such multiply connected regions as I envision them would not rely on any form of Einstienian space warpage or curved space time, but would simply entail discreet faceting of the boundaries of one region of space time wherein these facets would include discreet boundary connections or attachments from one region of space to another.

    Many of the elementary properties of topological characteristics of multiply connected abstract mathematical spaces have been worked out and involve rather simple if not very simple mathematical concepts.

    The other concept of interstellar travel that has often intrigued me involves the contraction of the distance in space and/or time between regions of spacetime that are located a cosmic distance apart without using conventionally proposed space time curvature or spacetime warpage or even wormholes. Somehow, the distance along one direction or vector field would simply be greatly shortened perhaps allowing one to simply take a walk on a path to the boundary of the obsevable universe relative to Earth.

    Regarding the Big Bang Theory, I think any alledged tainted data concerning the CMBR measurement data will be resolved and the Big Bang Theory vindicated. I believe there is just too much data, theory, and philosophical support for the Big Bang Theory as it now stands for this theory to be swept under the rug.

    Regarding some upcomming Thanksgiving fun, in a couple of hours, I am scheduled to start baking desserts for dinner tonight. I had this idea of melting semi sweet chocolate chips in a double boiler configuration and then mixing roasted peanuts and cocoanut flakes into the chocolate along with some vinilla extract. I will then place this mixture in a lightly greased and slightly floured brownie pan to cool. I have never before tried this, but I think it will be tasty. I am the kind of person who dreams up tasty meals and desserts almost intuitively with the result being that many people really like the end product. Who knows, maybe at some point, we can develop the Tau Zero bar in commemoration and in support of Tau Zero and related endevours.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

38. george scaglione on November 22, 2007 at 13:51

    jim in so far as hillary reinvigorating the manned space program…well i kinda wonder.funding would for sure be a big political football and the mars mission we all so dearly would like to see,well that might be just that much more difficult! don’t forget there will be other jobs in space like getting the cev off the ground,going back to the moon,a base on the moon.ergo other political funding footballs! …..forrest….. about there being no big bang!? well,yes, that could sure be possible because in my humble opinion ALL the best theories today,what are they? our best GUESSES to date!! afew more facts might knock any or all of them into a cocked hat!! i know jim said that he tends to believe,and truth be known so do i,but i also believe what i just said too.no way around the possibility that that may be the case.no offense to anyone is meant! …..back to jim if i may…… yes to terraform mars would be cool,to make it a second home for our sprcies? that would be cool too! but venus? there i think we have a loooong wait! mercury? well there i think we are just getting way ahead of ourselves!! as to the moon base.yes i am with you all 101% use of asteroids! the same. as to your above ideas regarding interstellar flight: yes good ideas but one that will take a long time to develop no doubt still good to know it is at least currently being thought of if lol only here!!! lastly,yes,that recipe sounds promising lol ! heck it is thankgiving! and time to think about such things,wonder what they will eat on the iss or for that matter what our advanced alien friends may eat? although naturally they probably have no idea at all that we have this holiday here on earth!!anyway good talking to you both and have a good day! i too hope that the people who may stop by but who do not comment soon will! best to all, george

39. forrest noble on November 23, 2007 at 2:37

    Hey guys,

    Saw a long article in Life magazine maybe 10 years ago or so, about terraforming Mars. I thought it was well thought out with cool pictures and I thought, also very well done. Should have kept a copy of it. It had some technical info but not too deep. The idea was to vaporize the co^2 at the poles. This would increase the atmospheric pressure spreading more co^2 around the planet. This increased co^2 should increase the greenhouse effect, slowly warming up the planet. Next dig channels from the poles toward lowlands near the equator. During these constructions projects man would live in pressurized/ heated homes underground. Electricity would come from beamed microwaves from Earth or Venus satellites or from power systems from the space craft.

    After water is available genetically engineered pine trees (conifers) could be planted as well as plants for food, and eventually crops. As they would grow they would begin to release oxygen into the atmosphere. Other greenhouse gases would be manufactured from soil materials such as ozone and nitrous oxide, nitrogen compounds for fertilizer, etc. Ozone also protects against cosmic radiation.

    After several hundred years, the growing colony (according to this scenario) could live like he could here on Earth at the top of a mountain, in an open atmosphere with warm clothes and an oxygen mask. After five hundred years supposedly there would be cities both below and above ground and man could breathe the air for the first time—maybe something like living in Greenland (still pretty cold though). We could bring in additional water from the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter or possibly Saturn, as well as other elements for manufacturing on Mars—we also could introduce genetically engineered animals and grasses to proliferate life. We could mine for sulfur-less volcanic “soil” to darken the surface and add to the planet’s global warming. From that point, there seemingly would be unlimited possibilities. We seem to be experts at global warming it seems. lol.

    For Venus, from what I’ve read, one approach would be to first get rid of most of the co^2 atmosphere by genetically engineering several types of bacteria that would float in the dense atmosphere and gobble up a lot of co^2 and some water eventually dieing and ending up on the surface providing many feet of surface soil around the planet before the process is complete. In the meantime the sun would be mostly blocked off from the surface and the planet should slowly cool down. We could hasten this process by bringing in large quantities of ice such as asteroids, comets, small moons, etc., distributing this material around the atmosphere of the planet. Since the planet rotates very slowly and will remain hot for probably a very long time, the best chance for initial colonization would seemingly be eventually at the poles and underground.

    And yes, a thriving Moon-based colony would be a great start for any further endeavor.

    Sounds like you’re a good a creative cook Jim. I’m also a creative cook but not very good. Hey, how many ways can you microwave tofu? lol.

    George, just as long as these aliens don’t make us their Thanksgiving Turkey, I’m all for them.

    your friend forrest

40. george scaglione on November 23, 2007 at 15:40

    forrest,thanks for the reply.and yes i’ll bet i saw that article in life 10 years ago too…used to “eat articles like that with a spoon” !! still save good articles like that when i find them! not 10 years ago though.you know forrest it is funny in a sad kind of way that we talk and talk about colonizing the solar system and flying to the stars etc (the human race that is) but we still are trying to “get back to” the moon! have a friend who told me that going to the moon was a part of the “space race” and when we had clearly won,we just walked away…kinda stupid on our part.we could have been to mars already and back in those days thought that we would be soon! anyway,thanks one and all,your friend george

41. James M. Essig on November 23, 2007 at 18:54

    Hi George and Forrest;

    Thanks for the previous postings.

    George;

    I read an article within the Washington Post in which the author stated that Hillary supports a vogorous manned space program. Who ever gets elected, I hope will do such.

    Forrest;

    Thanks for the info on terraforming. Very interesting prospects indeed.

    Another interstellar transport idea occurred to me over the past few days which I commented on previously to some degree.

    The idea involves very high yield nuclear shaped charge explosives to propell space craft almost immeadiately to near C. The idea would envolve using very large shaped charge nuclear devices wherein the maximum energy flux concentration near the device would be four to six orders of magnitude greater than that for the surface of a spherically symmetrically exploding traditional nuclear device. Since the pressure at the surface of a nuclear device as it explodes is generally believed to be tens of millions of atmospheres or in excess of a few hundred million pounds per square inch, and temperatures in excess of 100,000,000 K, and black body photon energies in the range of soft gamma rays and hard x-rays, a six order magnitude concentration of explosive energy flux would produce in theory peak pressures of a few hundred trilllion PSI, peak temperatures in excess of 100 trillion K, and peak gamma ray energies in the TeV range. In short, the plasma jet emmitted by the shaped charge nuclear device should have a gamma factor of perhaps as high as or surpassing 1,000. This could be used in theory to propell a space craft to a gamma factor of 1,000 via plasma alone. The gamma radiation in the absolute extreme bounding limit could propel the craft to C – e where e becomes vanishingly small for abitrarilly large nuclear devices.

    Perhaps a 100 kilometer diameter nuclear device could launch a million metric ton space craft to a gamma factor of between 1,000 to one million depending on the primary radiation form used for accelleration assumming that 0.001 of the total yeild of the device is harnesses for propulsion in the form of a shaped charge jet.

    Note that a 100 kilometer very effecient hydrogen bomb would have a mass of about 10 EXP 15 metric tons and convert as much as about 1 % of its rest mass to energy. This energy release is enough energy to completely vaporize about 50 completely cooled, hardened through the core, planets with the mass of the Earth. Therefore, the space craft would need to be constructed of materials of unheard of mechanical strengths, heat capacities, and/or refractivity, etc. Also, some means of preventing the contents of the space craft from being utterly crushed into oblivion would be needed. Perhaps some sort of energy field such as artificial gravity, antigravity, magnetic, and/or electric field could be utilized for such although such a field or fields would have to be very intense to counteract the acceleration but applied in such a manner such that they would not destroy the contents of the space craft. For electric fields as such, perhaps the contents could be uniformly or selectively charged vai nanotech means.

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your friend Jim

42. James M. Essig on November 23, 2007 at 21:52

    High Folks;

    Some additional comments regarding shapped charge devices I thought would be good to consider.

    1) The first one involves SCED that utilize matter/antimatter reactions that produce charged paticles as part of their reaction products such as in proton/antiproton pair annihilation reactions. The idea here would be to some how produce a stable matrix material made from equal amount of hydrogen and antihydrogen in the form of a dense hydrogenic compound. A 100 kilometer wide device utilizing such material in the form of a shaped charge device that focuses .01 percent of its total yield in the form of a concentrated jet of particles wherein the energy flux density is a million times greater than that for the surface of a spherically symmetric device might be capable of yielding jet plasma gamma factors in excess of one million. Such a jet would have the equivalent of 10 EXP 13 metric tons of mass converted to energy. If some how utilized with near 100% effeciency to propell a spacecraft, a 10 million metric ton space craft could reach a gamma factor of one million, a billion metric ton space craft a gamma factor of 10,000. and a trillion metric ton space craft a gamma factor of ten. Perhaps if the gamma rays produced could be done so in the form of a directed beam incident onto a reaction plate of a much smaller craft, say perhaps with a mass of 1,000 metric tons, then perhaps gamma factors of few orders of magnitude greater could be reached. However, their is one very large problem. How and/or out of what sort of materials could one construct such a space craft and its reaction plate like mechanism or chamber.

    Once again, the space craft would need to be constructed of materials of unheard of mechanical strengths, heat capacities, and/or refractivity, etc. Also, as mentioned in my previous posting, some means of preventing the contents of the space craft from being utterly crushed into oblivion would be needed. Perhaps some sort of energy field such as an artificial gravity, antigravity, magnetic, and/or electric field could be utilized for such although such a field or fields would have to be very intense to counteract the acceleration but applied in such a manner such that they would not destroy the contents of the space craft. For electric fields as such, perhaps the spacecraft contents could be uniformly or selectively charged via nanotech means.

    2) The second concept involves the notion of staged shaped charge nuclear or matter/antimatter explosives wherein one shaped charge nuclear or matter/antimatter explosive is judiciously nested within a cylindrically disposed set of one or more external shaped charge nuclear or matter/antimatter explosives, which optionally may be nested within one or more additional cylindrically disposed shaped charge nuclear or matter/antimatter explosives an so on for a arbitrarilly high degree of peak explosive energy flux concentration perhaps many orders of magnitude greater than that of a single stage shaped charge nuclear or matter/antimatter explosive. Such a configuration might be useful for accellerating a relatively smaller massed spacecraft relative to the mass of the explosive device but yet allow for much greater space craft gamma factors relative to that producable from a single stage shaped charge nuclear or matter/antimatter explosive device.

    For additional total mattergy density flux for explosion, in the far distant future, perhaps some sort of a fusionable white dwarf density material, or matter/antimatter composite nuetronium or quarkonium type material might be utilized within a shaped charge nuclear type or matter/antimatter explosive device for space vehicle propulsion. Note that neutronium is expected to have a mass of about 10 EXP 15 metric tons per cubic meter while quarkonium may have a mass as high as 10 EXP 18 metric tons per cubic meter.

    One a more down to Earth note, a couple of days ago I remember reading about rocket propellents composed in part by nanometer scale solid particles
    of metal such as aluminum, titanium, magnesium and other flamable metals wherein the specific impulse of fuels based on these nanoparticles could be much higher than that of conventional solid rockets fuels thus potentially facilitating more rapid chemical rocket based manned space craft transport within the solar system over traditional chemical propellents. This is an interesting field of research and it will be neat if anything practical comes of it.

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

43. george scaglione on November 24, 2007 at 13:49

    jim- forrest, well jim i hope you are right about what you say about hillary being big on the manned spacefligt program!! especially if she wins that would be good!and boy oh boy are you talking about some LARGE nukes!! i’ll bet even they not to mention the advanced spacecraft you mentioned would really present some engineering challanges!! again as i mentioned recently,not to throw cold water,but there is another project for the distant,but who knows? maybe not too distant future!! and forrest,the same for the terraforming projects! anyway,thanks one and all – your friend george

44. forrest noble on November 24, 2007 at 18:05

    Hey Jim and George,

    We’ve spent so much money on the war that our currency has dropped 40% since the war began, and it will continue to drop without limit until our government stops spending money in general. The price of oil, corn, and etc., inflation will continue to rise. First we have to get out of the war; second, we have to stop trying to be the international police force. We need to work closely with the U.N.. Third, we can’t afford any further tax cuts. Fourth, I think we need to solicit international partners/ help for our space ventures because we can’t presently afford them. We need more technology sales like the 20 billion dollar satellite missile system to Saudi Arabia to help recover some of our loses. Unfortunately we have to stop spending money and let the dollar recover a little to lessen the severity of a necessary recession. Of course the Democrats can’t do that because it would be against there platform– so the dollar will probably continue to fall until a conservative (generally a no-spending) administration comes back into power, that would also provide additional business incentives to boost the GNP—and that will probably be after we have a major recession. The circumstances for us space enthusiasts, as far as NASA and federal funding prospects are concerned, will seemingly have to continue on a shoe-string budget, unfortunately.

    Jim, fast acceleration will seemingly always be limited to the ability of the crew and the ship to handle the G forces. So it would seem that simple propulsion systems would work as well as sophisticated ones. As we have discussed the big problems may start at speeds above .1 C where continuous acceleration would be needed to maintain your speed. This is where some of your systems might come to play.

    Easier systems to handle anti-matter would also be a big plus. Although a positron propulsion system is a here-and-now technology, anti-protons and anti-matter technology I believe is in the more distant future, maybe not within the next 50 years I would bet.

    This nana-technology concerning rocket propellants/ systems seems like a good idea that will also probably be developed, also maybe for hybrid propulsion systems.

    all for now, your friend forrest

45. James M. Essig on November 24, 2007 at 19:07

    Hi George, Forrest, and other Folks;

    I just thought I’d mention that the latest issue of Popular Science has a few brief articles on new telescopes. Two of these telescopes are ESA space telescopes already launched or about to be lauched. One of these is designed to look for Earth like planets as they transit their parent stars during their orbit thus dimming the starlight received by the telescope ever so slightly. They should be able to detect planets of only 1.5 times the size of Earth in stead of only the gas giant extrasolar planets that have been detected thus far. The other ESA telescope has a whopping 11.5 foot diameter mirror making it the largest apetured telescope ever launched and is designed to look for the tell tale infrared signs of galaxy formation near the edge of the observable universe thus effectively looking back in time over 12 to 13 billion + years.

    Yet another telescope of which is of U.S. design and origin is designed to look out of a specially designed 747 flying at 45,000 feet with vibration damping technology and supposedly will have a resolution greater than any current land based telescopes and will be able to fly anywhere around the planet for doing imaging. This telescope will operate above most of the atmosphere and above the light pollution that now exists over much of the Earth’s surface.

    The other telescope is now the largest on land and I think, but I am not sure, is located in South America. This telescope has several hexagonal mirror segments that adjust rapidly by actuation means to compensate for atmospheric blurring as a result of atmospheric refraction and diffraction as light travels through the atmosphere and ultimately into the telescopic aperture.

    This is a very good issue and I recommend any space enthusiast to pick up a copy and check it out.

    Any other readers of this site, please feel free to join in also. No idea is too far out, to trivial, too far out into the future, or too nearterm to discuss.

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

46. James M. Essig on November 24, 2007 at 19:49

    Hi Forrest;

    I just noticed your previous posting as I sent out the one above. I agree with 100 % on just about all of the points you made. I think unfortunately, you are absolutely right about our having to operate on a shoe string space mission budget. This war has gone on way to long and some projections suggest that to maintain our efforts in Iraq over the next ten years, would require funding in excess of two trillion dollars. We just cannot afford to continue being the worlds policemen. I am concerned, althought not overly so at the moment, that in the worst case scenario, our economy could somehow undergo an economic collapse, if not, then at least one serious recession.

    I think antimatter propulsion is a ways off into the future as well. It just takes so much energy to produce the little amounts of antimatter we have been able to produce so far. Perhaps many decades into the future, we will have huge orbiting solar energy collecting reflectors to power very large scale photovoltaic, or turboelectric antimatter generation and collection stations. That would of course require a much more extensive and robust Earth orbit industry than we now envision for the next 20 years.

    I think, as George likes to mention, that we need to do more work on nuclear propulsion to get us around the solar system and into the Oort Cloud. Some such systems obviously could include nuclear thermal rockets, nuclear fission reactor powered ion and/or electron propulsion, fission fragment drive, direct nuclear fusion reaction produced plasma to thrust production, and perhaps even some sort of Orion like craft such as might utliize nuclear devices with yields on the order of 1 kiloton to 10 kilotons. If these technologies could be ramped up, then perhaps they could provide us with 0.1C manned space ark missions to the nearest stars starting at sometime in the late 21st Century. Nuclear propulsion seems like a likely first candidate becuase such systems would be highly self contained. To achieve higher velocities, beamed energy and/or mass, matter/antimatter drive, interstellar ramjets and the like may be required.

    I must say that I am intrigued by the numerous studies now being conducted on better forms of chemical rocket fuels. Perhaps these will enable us to sport about the solar system before practical nuclear propulsion hardware are finally relized.

    That’s all for now.

    Your Friend Jim

47. forrest noble on November 24, 2007 at 23:12

    Hey Jim and George,

    Thanks very much Jim for the info. I’m very much looking forward to the time when these telecopes start producing data including the 11.5 foot reflector. If this Reflector starts seeing images beyond the supposed age of the universe, and if they find heavy metals in their spectum– meaning that they are probably middle age galaxies like the milky Way then, I believe, the BS interpretations will begin in earnest, because this would be another BB paradigm buster if it happens that way. And, as you know, I have theoretical reasons to suspect/ expect this will happen.

    Yeah Jim, I’ll get a copy of the current Popular Science issue. Sounds great to me.

    all the best to you both, your friend forrest

48. george scaglione on November 25, 2007 at 13:36

    jim yes sir those telescpes seem like a great idea a better view will always be useful ! really earth like planets would be GOOD to find! would REALLY stoke some interest in the manned space flight area! people would be in a hurry to go have a look see,forgetting for the moment that – these places will be many light years away! still buddy…if alot more people got interested in flight to the stars it could only help the cause !! also ,could not agree more that finding out more about galaxy formation 12 to 13 plus light years away just has to be facinating and useful!lol sorry! meant 12 to 13 plus BILLION LIGHT YEARS!!! now that is a challange to get to! would require traversable worm holes probably at the very least! matter anti matter,warp drive ,space arks,even my pet project of using energy from the zpf might not be enough!! lol how about a really large space ark powered by the above mentioned energy from the zero point field!! but,even that,would take,well errr ahhh…”alot of time” would be an understatement! this seems a very appropriate time to mention jims above point…you know everybody you really should jump in ! no idea is too far out,as i myself think that i have just proven. …….forrest……. yes,the low money available for space will surely be what did they used to say? “a bummer”…wow did i just date myself!!! but also i must agree with what you said above,”simple” propulsion systems might be of very great use for many goals! think i’ve said all that i have to say for now look forward to answers! thank you one and all your friend george

49. James M. Essig on November 25, 2007 at 16:40

    Hi George and Forrest;

    Thanks for the above postings and respective comments.

    Another interstellar travel type idea occurred to me today about 20 minutes ago.

    Basically, the idea involves fabrication of a huge spherical geodezic truss with the mass of perhaps millions to billions, perhaps even trillions of solar masses wherein the radius of the truss would be such that the inward pull of self gravitation would be minimized and thus the inward directed gravitational forces that might otherwise cause the truss to collapse under its own wieght would be minimized. The truss would be held stable by judicious construction out of compression and tension members and might utilize any of the following types of materials as non limiting examples: carbon nanotubes; super strong metalic solid hydrogen, super high strength iron, aluminum, titanium and the like alloys; white dwarf dense material, solid neutronium, solid quarkonium. Other exotic materials out of which the truss might be constructed are matter/antimatter composite materials or antimatter versions of the above types of materials and/or members constructed of negative or imaginary mass.

    The reason why such a huge truss might be constructed is such that the latent energy available from its massive composition might be used to power huge space craft. For instance. if the truss was composed of matter/antimatter composite material and made to suddening undergo matter/antimatter annihilation, a trillion solar mass truss could in the theoretically ultimate extreme bounding conditon provide enough energy release in the form of gamma rays and/ or any other long lived particulate species to propel a million metric ton space craft to a gamma factor of 10 EXP 33, a trillion metic tons space craft to a gamma factor of 10 EXP 27, an Earth massed space craft to a gamma factor of roughly 10 EXP 18, a solar massed space craft to a gamma factor of one trillion, and a Milky Way Galaxy massed space craft to a gamma factor of roughly 10.

    Perhaps much greater levels of mass could be incorprated into the truss for a given volumetric density if negative or imaginary mass could some how be used to hold it up against self gravitational collapse in a manner analogous to the use of such exotic materials to hold open the mouth and throats of wormholes against collapse. Note that the inward directed pressure for a human sized diameter wormhole is expected to be about 10 EXP 37 metric tons per square inch.

    Perhaps the inclusion of negative or imaginary mass in the entire or partial composition of such a huge truss might introduce novel space time effects such as curvature, other forms of distortion, or some form of door in space and/or time simmilar to but not necessarilly identical with that produced by a wormhole.

    The truss could optionally be composed in the form of a ring or other symmetrically shaped circular structure and optionall held open against gravitational collapse by negative of imaginary mass.

    If negative or imaginary mass is included in part or all of the truss construction, other truss shapes might be producable such as a cube, rectangle, pyramid, tetrahedron, cylindar, or other arbitrary shapes in order to induce space time distortion patterns that might faciliate space time distortion based space and/or time warps, teleportation, wormhole production, artificially produced multply connected regions of space and/or time etc.. These spacetime distortion patterns might be effective because of their potential assymetry, abrupt variations, and/or discontinuities.

    For very slow interstellar transport at or below the limit of 0.1 C that Forrest suggests, the whole truss could be moved or accelerated via numerous attached ion, electron, photon, fission fragment, and/or fusion based plasma propulsion mechanisms among others. Such a huge truss could have very large numbers of human and/or ETI habitational pods or living quarters and slowly rove the cosnos picking up extra material for increasing its mass and size and/or for energy supplies. The truss might be an excellent idea for cosmically long term life support for humanity and/or ETI while we develope even more far out and larger scale cosmic engineering projects while we wait and see if GOD reveals himself to our collective civilization in a completely visible and open manner.

    A cosmic civilization might choose to build several to numerous such trusses: however this would be a very very long term construction project even for just one such truss.

    The truss could optionally be composed in part of fusionable materials as an energy source for unboard dailly living and/or for propulsion.

    That’s all for now.

    Thanks;

    Your Friend Jim

50. forrest noble on November 26, 2007 at 0:46

    Hi Guys,

    Yeh, nuclear propulsion technology will be great. So far only fission is available for rocket power. Fusion power technology is still in the offing– but not for long I hope. One trick for funding this stuff is finding a military use/ “necessity” for something and congress will more readily come up with the money.

    Right now it appears, if we have the funding, that we will find some interesting planetary system around a star not too far away– and send out a probe, looking at a potentially habitable planet– maybe by the end of this century as Jim suggested. Before that we’ll have to find out what maximum speeds are feasible for such an endeavor. And as we previously mentioned, the US may not be the first to do it.

    We also can hope for better, less expensive anti-matter production system(s), storage and handling capabilities.

    your friend forrest