Well, we have found numerous planets around numerous stars beyond our own and now Voyager I has less that a decade before it passes into interstellar space.
Now, new ways must be developed to travel as quickly as possible so we might get to other stars to investigate these planets.
I have seen a few things on National Geographic but I was wondering if anyone who just scuffles about the internet has any personal (logical) ideas for space travel, manned and unmanned.
The best way to travel out of our solar system is to create mobile space colonies. Regardless of the propulsion system or the speed, it takes incredibly long amounts of time to travel to anything in space.
The trick is to form a crew who is motivated, dedicated, and large enough for a multi-generational journey. This means the people who arrive will be ancestors of the people who set off.
Some of the major obstacles include fuel, food, water, morale, resources, and redundancy.
Fuel:
This isn't that impossible. With space having very little resistance, friction isn't that much of a problem. Therefore with careful navigation (avoiding strong gravitational fields), you really won't need that much fuel. However, every bit of power you use to accelerate, you will again need to use to slow down. The trick is that you will have to bring all your fuel with you. Even before you leave our solar system, the sun's energy will have already become nearly useless. Nuclear energy will probably be the only option (dark matter might be another solution).
Food:
Not impossible. The crew will most likely use some sort of food recycling. This will include crop rotation, waste to fertilizer systems, and possibly even some livestock. The crew should most definitely carry reserves as well.
Water:
Some homes today have closed loop water systems. This should be cake.
Morale:
Sure you thought it was neat to travel through space before the mission, but 40 years into the trip, it may lose some of it's sparkle. What about your kids, grandchildren, and great grandchildren? They never chose to be a part of this mission, how do you keep everyone happy and most importantly everyone working? The crew will be required to have all the social programs we have on earth including entertainment, adjusting legal systems, law enforcement, education, and so on.
Resources:
This is where I see a major problem! Have you ever seen a 200 year old car? What about a 100, or even 20 year old car? All things need to be repaired, and all machines have parts that will break down over time and need to be replaced. Some smart engineering will help reduce moving parts, but you can only engineer so far.
Furthermore, the crew will need supplies such as basic necessities like toilet paper to tooth paste for basic hygiene maintenance. Not to mention entire wardrobes for multiple generations! The crew will also need grease, paint, and all sorts of supplies for repair and daily life. Think how much paper you use in class, now imagine you need to figure out exactly how much paper you will need for your entire school career. There are just so many unknowns, it will be almost impossible to plan for everything.
A big help would be to use self repairing biological resources. Imagine a ship that could heal itself very much like our own body! If the ship could metabolize energy into usable parts, this could greatly reduce the amount of materials needed for such a journey.
Redundancy:
Redundancy is a factor of safety to prevent a catastrophic event. Think of it as the safety net under a circus act. In redundancy, you can have many levels. In the example above, you have 2 levels of redundancy because you need two SEPERATE systems to fail in order for the unwanted event (injury of the performer) from happening. If the guy was working without a net, he would only have a single level of redundancy (not actually redundancy). But look at this little tricky part if he added a cable attached to the trapeeze the performer now has a redundancy of 3 for staying off the ground, but still only a level of two for equipment failure (if the trapeeze itself breaks, his harness attached to the trapeeze will also fail).
For activities with known dangers, low factors of redundancy are acceptible. Let's look at the trapeeze artist again. The danger is from falling, so a safety net should do the trick every time, and you will notice most performers only have a redundancy of 2.
Now compare this to driving in a car. In a car, there are hundreds of thousands of individual events which could cause you to die. Each one of those events must be foreseen, and prevented each with their own redundancy factors. For example, a tire falling off could easily kill you, therefore you have multiple lug nuts, and multiplied factors of safety in the strength of materials used in the tire to make sure they stay on. Then to prevent a death from a collision, you have multiple safety functions like crumple zones, air bags, and safety belts all increasing your safety by not only working in unison, but also independently in case the other systems do not work.
Imagine all the potential problems you could face in something as complex as space travel. Your crops could fail, your fuel source could leak, you could hit something, your crew could become sterile... The amount of brain power it would take to predict all these possible problems, then provide enough materials to ensure survival through these incidents is just mind boggling. I see this as the true limiting factor in safe space travel. Because with the inability to create new resources (you only have what you bring with you), you must be prepared for everything, which is by definition impossible.
well the first unmanned way is to hope that alien life forms exist and are among us so that one day the public will have their advance technology using this technology we can travel just like they are.
Maned made objects could be finding a way to convert our bodies to energy. Once we can do that it should be easy to teleport them to different places. The famous E=MC^2 might help in aiding that.
I personally believe that if Albert E lived a little longer he would of came up with time and space travel. However, there are some profound intellectual individuals living today so one can expect a physics breakthrough.
NASA is building new motors, new ways of transportation, like a solar veil, impulsed by photons, a motor that works with plasma.
Nuclear pulse engine.
I recall the orion project. a nuclear pulsed explosion driven rocket. its supposed to be able to year a light year in something like 300 years or so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
use of the technology became illegal after a combination of countries created a no nuclear testing contract, even in space
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Test_Ban_Treaty
so far its the fastest way to travel, and was actually working in space for testing. its unfortunate we can't use it anymore.
now were trying to come up with an antimatter nuclear pulsed explosion rocket to reach a light year in something like 8 years, but thats dependent on controlling anti matter
if you ask me. even using nuclear pulsed rockets to get 1 light year away, set up with an array of equipment would help out a hell of a lot better than what we have now.
I also find quantum tunneling or teleportation interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
Its already been observed and recreated in lab tests.
with a little more focus and we could set it up to relay the information the array could collect all the way to earth instantly. faster than the speed of light!
I believe the best way to leave our solar system is the M2P2 drive which stands for mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion. It is a solenoid that generates a magnetic field that holds plasma, atoms stripped of their electrons. When the solar wind, which are ionized gases from the sun, hits the field, it pushes the space craft away from the sun. And the speed of the solar winds is about 300 km/s. Meaning so fast it can reach the moon in about 30 minutes. Of course it would still take a fair amount of time to reach the out reaches of our solar system, but it is a worth endeavour.
Use the stargate man. A worm hole.
i am betting that in the next few years someone smart will come up with the Heim-Dröscher space drive.
that's just a guess. no time-travel (ha ha) or anything involved.
of course the sad news is that there really isnt anything much out there.
I mean, after the drive and all that exploring that... uh, might happen. soon. if it happens, i mean.
just forget i said anything, ok?
You need reaction mass, and a way to accelerate it to high speed.
Reaction mass isn't difficult to come by: you can use water, hydrogen, bricks, whatever. Ion thrusters have been built using things like cesium. Just as long as you can shoot stuff out your exhaust at very high speed.
The power supply is the problem. We have used chemical reactions up to now, but they won't carry us much further. We need a more concentrated energy source: fission reactors will do, even if they're messy. I'd like to find a way to make practical fusion reactors.
Solve the propulsion problem and you can go anywhere. You are invited to work out how long it would take to get to Jupiter, Saturn, or even Pluto at, say 0.1g constant boost.
Interstellar travel is still problematic. Imagine trying to get funding for a project that couldn't produce any results for 500 years...
Before we can travel to other stars extensive colonisation and industrialization of our solar system will have to take place.
Building a vehicle on earth would be prohibitively expensive. What we need is a cheap reliable surface to orbit system, rockets do not fit the description.
As John records in the Book of Revelation, when he was translated to the third heaven, we shall all eventually stand before the Throne of God and, by our *own* personal choices, either enter the eternal presence of God or be condemned to spend eternity, away from God, our loved ones and all of our friends. The first heaven is the earth's atmosphere; the second heaven is the rest of the physical universe; God, who is outside of the physical universe is in the third heaven, which is, of course, outside of our solar system! Thus either physical death or the Rapture will be the *best* way to travel out of the solar system and even the physical universe - to spend eternity in (as we commonly refer to them) either Heaven or Hell!