MolaKule
Staff member
Warp Drives? Or just poor science journalism?
- Thread starter MolaKule
- Start date
Owen Lucas
$100 Site Donor 2023
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2021
- Messages
- 3,700
The difference is there fusion reactor prototypes being built and already running, albeit for a few seconds. Hopefully these work eventually:
https://www.iter.org/
This whole "Warp Speed" deal is, and always was, a lot of B.S. The human body can only be accelerated and decelerated just so quickly without physical damage. The speed of light, (or anything remotely near it), is astronomical, if not incomprehensible.
I read somewhere where a guy figured it out longhand, that if you took the 0-100 MPH time of a Z-06 Corvette, and could somehow maintain that same level of acceleration indefinitely, it would take you 13 MONTHS to reach the speed of light. That's over 2 years just to get to that speed, and get back down.
Yes, the human body can take more G's than a Z-06 can provide. But imagine trying to live, work, eat, drink, sleep, crap, and pee while doing it. Not going to happen..... Assuming we could even build a vehicle, that could remotely provide that kind of all but unlimited acceleration and deceleration. Which of course we can't.
I read somewhere where a guy figured it out longhand, that if you took the 0-100 MPH time of a Z-06 Corvette, and could somehow maintain that same level of acceleration indefinitely, it would take you 13 MONTHS to reach the speed of light. That's over 2 years just to get to that speed, and get back down.
Yes, the human body can take more G's than a Z-06 can provide. But imagine trying to live, work, eat, drink, sleep, crap, and pee while doing it. Not going to happen..... Assuming we could even build a vehicle, that could remotely provide that kind of all but unlimited acceleration and deceleration. Which of course we can't.
inertial dampeners...
The thing is we're not talking Disneyland here.
UFO's might temporarily store the crew in a file by using the transporter during acceleration and deceleration events.
"Beam me up Scotty".
One of cheapest ways to subject your body to 5 G’s is the price of admission at Disney World and take the Rock N Roll roller coaster.
Lois Lane was able to fly pretty quickly with Superman without being ripped apart. She also didn't freeze to death at high altitude portions of the flight. The human can take a lot more than most people think.
Most of the modern science fiction movies have taken the approach of having a suspended animation technique to keep people alive while travelling to another planet. In the movie “ Don’t Look Up”, the space vehicle took 22,000 years to travel to another inhabitable planet. Generally, the closest accepted “ inhabitable planet” is Proxima b which is 4.24 light years away. Feel free to correct this as it was just a quick Google search.
Last edited:
One light year is approximately 5.9 x 10^12 miles or 5.9 trillion miles. Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977. After 45 years Voyager 1 is 14.5 x 10^9 miles (14.5 billion miles) away. This was done with “ slingshotting” using the gravitational force of planets within our solar system. Voyager 1 is travelling at 35,000 mph or about 0.005% of the speed of light.
Last edited:
I don't think you're accounting for the gravity of earth. In space you wouldn't have that so it's not the same. One project to approach some decent fraction of light speed is Breakthrough starshot. Just no way to stop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
Sure you would. Issac Newton's laws still apply in space. Accelerating a mass to light speed is going to involve massive G loads for an amount of time humans cannot tolerate.
You also forget about time slowing down as you approach the speed of light. I think it's pretty much a moot point as the problem is that you can't carry enough fuel to get you to light speed. You would normally just accelerate at 1 g. The acceleration in a corvette is less than 1 g after you subtract the effect of earth's gravity.
Which ever comes first:
Humans will evolve into some entity that can survive the G's either that or we will develop a Gravitic space ship that cancels out the G's.
It's only a matter of time.
Humans will evolve into some entity that can survive the G's either that or we will develop a Gravitic space ship that cancels out the G's.
It's only a matter of time.
Probably neither. There are actually limits that you can't exceed. We haven't even figured out gravity yet. There's been no discovery of a graviton particle yet. Probably unlikely. What do you think would happen if you could cancel gravity on a black hole?
You don't have to evolve if you can just create von Neumann machines to make whatever you need at the other end. You can either store the genetic sequence of the humans you want to create or just carry the embryos although that would require more shielding. Breakthrough starshot anticipates getting up to 15-20% light speed, but if you want to stop, probably the most you could do is a couple percentage points of light speed so it would take decades or centuries have humans on another planet in a different solar system.
The Gs aren't really a concern, main issue is just to have enough fuel to maintain 1 g for any length of time. Even a fusion drive would only get you between planets in the solar system, you'd need too much fuel/supplies to go to different star systems.
No, you didn't subtract it. That level of acceleration includes earth's gravity. In space there's no gravity.
Here's a space travel calculator. The main problem is that no matter how big your space ship, it needs to be several times bigger to carry enough fuel if you want to do 1g.
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/space-travel
