Photonic Propulsion: Mars in 3 Days?
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- čas přidán 7. 03. 2016
- We can get to Mars in 3 days, . . .sort of, maybe. In this episode of SciShow Space Reid Reimers explains the possibilities of photonic propulsion in use with space travel.
Hosted by: Reid Reimers
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Videos
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• Going Interstellar
Websites
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Papers
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Because when you have enormous thrusting power, you might find yourself DEEP-IN.
*sigh
I new this would happen
+Kevin Pranoto Some of us will. But not you.
+Kevin Pranoto XD
+Kevin Pranoto *Deep inside dem sugar walls!*
Getting to 25% the speed of light is impressive, but that also means that you would zoom by the target destination before your sensors would be able to give you much data. Also, it means that when your spacecraft hits the tiniest amount of space debris, you are going to have a very bad day.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky or youve created a laser powered space canon
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky yeah but the plan is to not get hit xD the sensors would travel the signal back in a reason able amount of time (the whole stopping issue was mentioned already in the video) however I doubt the signal would be strong enough, what would be cool is if we could carry a second laser to launch it back after it somehow stops.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky just set up a network of these things within our solar system. have one at earth propelling, one at mars decelerating.
+Lord lima bean sure, but it sounds pretty hard to see a rock the size of a dust mote while moving at 1% the speed of light and still be able to change course and avoid it. Especially if your ship in question is a huge square
I think it would be easier and safer to build a warp drive instead.
I just want sharks with freakin laser beams attached to their heads!
lmao
That was a great movie😂
Dodge This! Start playing Ark dude. There are Sharks with Lasers on their heads
Lysander do you even get the joke? *facepalm*
Yeah no you dont....
there is a 100% chance we will use them to vaporize each other
Tarek Chamas good ol’ humanity
If you're familiar with the Kzinti Rule of reaction drives: "A reaction drive is a weapon with an effectiveness directly proportional to its efficiency as a drive." Compliments of Larry Niven
Or each others satellites while troops attack.
@@francisdavis1271 We could have gigawatt microwave generators in earth orbit, beaming down free power to stations on earth! No more need for fossil fuel! Also, I want to be the country with these stations, as our enemies armies would look like overcooked popcorn.
That's pretty true
Its like they desperately wanted to come up with an acronym for Death Star but just couldn't think of enough words.
+beayn Isn't it just!
+beayn shhh, do not expose the plans of the empire
Damn , a trip to another star in only 15 years :o even if it's a probe I WANT to see this happens during my lifetime
+Hurleur de foudre
My thoughts exactly.
+evilcam sorry, but that profile pic doe
+Hurleur de foudre I know, right? That'd be a huge advancement in space travel! One that would make it into the history books and being able to witness it happen would definitely be a huge privilege!
I'm hungry of photos of exoplanetes (even unhabitable) and distant star ^^
Sadly, you have to also factor in the time it would take for any data recorded from these trips to actually reach it back to us...but it's still cool.
It's always a pleasure seeing old sci-fi ideas slowly become science reality (or science possibility)
Possibility is right, since it's not reality at all. The investment in space exploration is absolutely miniscule even though the rewards could be astronomical (pardon the pun). Even though it could be possible to build a fleet of these mini spaceprobes and send them out to every star close to us, they just won't invest the money into it. That's how a 15 year travel time turns into 30 turns into 60 turns into 120...
You my friend are a self consumed idiot. This the dumbest bunch of. Can't say it. If pigs flew out of my ass that could be an alternative fuel source. Will you patent that for me? Junk science followed with BS. Good luck with that.
The future is bright
Your jokes are very punny.
I just thought It would be a bright idea to make a pun but I never knew it would propel the joke this far usually I am lazier -_-
+TWNST LBC2 I think you gone too far, that was a pun on interstellar travel.
+Archious P *you've
Yeah bright really.
The mini spacecraft to other star system thing is awesome
+fejfo's games If it works, it's probably our best chance at figuring out if there's any life in alpha centauri
but how are we suppose to get the info once it gets there?
If you are advanced enough to go to a lightyears away star system in 15 years, you are advanced enough to be able to send signals.
Thanks! i searched it, radio waves travel in speed of light in vacum.
Am I the only one that thought the thumbnail was a light saber?
Can not unsee
yes
No I thought it was mace windu's
+George pana HA! Mace Windu's Grape Flavored Lightsaber!
+Walter White
Mace Windu's Grape Flavored Dilsaber!
Mace Windu's Grape Flavored Lightdo!
"This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence,
so we may experience some slight turbulence and then - explode. "
Brown Quotes
Oh God oh God we're all gonna die...
197 chemical propellant vendors disliked this video
and 203 Flat Earthers lol
Why would a Christian dislike this video. Lots of Christians love science and the advancement of humanity, such as me and all of my friends.
Colin McCrory Yeah I agree Colin, where is this mystical 11th commandment that says "thou shalt not advance society into thy stars" ?
Tyson King I don't agree with Norm T, but though I'm not very educated on the Bible and everything, because I'm atheist, I'm pretty sure there is something about the sun, moon and stars rotating around the Earth, and not to mention the dome that's supposed to be there. And it seems like heaven would be shattered right now. I know that I'm being ignorant, but I don't really want to read a Bible to make sure I write the right thing on a CZcams comment. Sorry
Jorgan Morgan™ respectfully my friend, I have to ask, then why ask the question at all? A discussion without being informed is just an argument. However, in the spirit of ending misinformation; the bible does not talk about the Geocentric model (the earth being the centre of the solar system) in fact the bible does not touch on astrology to any great extent at all. As for the other things you said, dome? Heaven shattered? I'm not sure what you are talking about. Maybe you are thinking of a different religion, I'm not sure.
25%?!?!! THATS CRAZY! Even for one gram ships.
- scientist: So, we have a giant death ray, that is pushing a overly frail solar sail zooming through space at 1.5% c, with no idea how to slow down.
- engineer: Yeah! 8-D
- scientist: ... LET'S DO THIS ! O_O
just have another sail ins the opposite direction with a few thrusters to help slow down
+Njumkiy Lets Play (njumkiy) This requires thrusters to already be placed at the destination, no? If we're talking action-counteraction, putting the thrusters on the ship itself should mean that it doesn't move at all.
70 gigawatts!?! You could power, like, a buttload of Deloreans with that!
(stumbles out of room, hand to forehead)
+Len Arends 57.85 Deloreans to be exact!
+EsparzaA5 57.8512, to be more exact.
thats Jigawatts not Gigawatts
blockhead134
zhaigawatts
18 gigawatts!! 88mph
Immediately made me think of the book "The Mote in God's Eye" (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1974) which begins with a spacecraft pushed by lasers exactly as described.
DE-STAR
DEath-STAR
Coincidence? I think not
"Teeny-tiny thrusters." It's a technical term.
Scishow makes me so excited about life. Sometimes when I'm sad I'll imagine all the future science and discoveries and innovations and it makes me feel better.
Oh yeah, in order to decelerate, an equivalent laser array could be set up on mars and take over at the half way point.
That would only solve decelerating on a trip to mars and mars alone. Not a trip beyond that. And it wouldn't at that either. You couldn't get the same effect shooting the lasers at the other side of the solar sails.
Turn it around???
Bloodmoon How are you planning on turning something around going 25% the speed of light if you can't decelerate it. Think before you type..
Turning around in space has no dependence on how fast you're going. Did you skip physics?? How do you think they aim satellites -_-'
Bloodmoon I think you missed the point. If they don't have the ability to slow down, they obviously aren't able to apply any sort of forces to it. Other wise instead of turning it. THEY'D JUST SLOW IT DOWN.
look how humanity developed, we made it from exploring the seas to exploring the space, but we still using sails.
+Paul Sirota meaning space pirates could actually/eventually be true..
Mark Watney was a space pirate
Science exploration has come so far in the last 100 years alone, imagine where we'll be by the time Earth is uninhabitable.
+Genuine I was thinking the same!
At the same place
+Genuine next year?
+Genuine Probably not on earth anymore.
+Genuine when trump gets elected ?
Troll Physics. Put a flashlight on the solar panel ;D
Psychis.....
Yeah I noticed that fail Peusterokos1
Let's pretend it never happend
+Elven Loool
Peusterokos1 XD
But what happens when you hit a small space rock while you are going "really really fast"?
f=ma.
probably the equivalent of setting off a 300 lb. bomb
at 1.5% the speed of light
Sooooo... Don't hit a rock. Got it.
You turn into a rapidly expanding ball of metallic dust.
this is the hidden problem no one talks about! ;) What we do right now is we scan the solar system and try to plot paths that won't coincide with anything. But we can't really see tiny things out beyond the solar system so yes, many of those tiny little wafer probes will probably be smashed to dust as we start to map the debris hiding out beyond our inner solar system. ;)
Now they´ll have to work on shields
This guy won the vocal lottery, he sounds like a cross between Penn from Penn and Teller and Neil deGrasse Tyson
+Garrett R To me that seems like signs of a fine single malt appreciation. ;)
Getting a probe to another star system in 15 years sounds more exciting, never thought i'd hear any modern method to get there in under the span of my lifetime!
The biggest problem is funding.
Marc zukerberg and an other billionaire fonded that project
tommysil So true
tommysil Well we can't go to space if we're having terrist blowing shit up.
No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
+TheMoezilla you deserve a million likes just for that
It's settled. 'Laser Sails' is the official name of my synthwave project. Thx SciShow!!!
This was covered much better on this channel then any other outlet.
I'm cooking pasta while watching this video! For science!
K
I swear I came up with photonic propulsion first!
+Weapon Valhalla You absolute madman
As a pastafarian, i salute you!
+Weapon Valhalla Did you cook them with lasers?
Dude so cool! I remember how excited I was to see the Saturn photos come back from Voyager when I was a kid, and to think we might see the same from Alpha Centauri or another distant source in our lifetimes, it's just amazing.
exploRation
really?
REALLY science?
if you just had to have an acronym, could you not have used the word, i dont know, Reconnaissance?
Ikr that felt a little cheaty. One does not simply make an acronym with a letter in the middle of the word.
They'll do ANYTHING to get an acronym that sounds nice. Besides, there are no rules for acronyms. :^)
kchen075
Still feels wrong lol
Because that would be an initialism, and who would want that?
Research ?
De-star + A Thorough Hacking (ATH) = Death-star.
Yes... Thank you
DE(ath)-STAR confirmed
William Spence yeah they weren't even subtle about it haha
Where is your icon from?
@@robinhyperlord9053 She is Lum from the Urusei Yatsura anime :
uruseiyatsura.fandom.com/wiki/Lum
Very nice video, will definitely help me for my essay!
THIS IS SO EXITING!!!!!
THIS IS WHY I HAVE MY IMPORTANT VIDEO PLAYLIST!!!!!
De-star sounds suspiciously close to Death Star
+Neighdan McHorse that's what I thought too lol
15 years to go to another star system!? Sci-fi age will start!
Cowboy Bebop IRL.
this is the best subscription ive ever made!
I had to check the publish date half through the video. I thought it was an April fools joke. This is incredible!
i know exactly what this is i only came here to say that not only is this an awesome idea its also beautiful. From small transfers of momentum provided over the course of a long time it builds to tremendous speed! like slowly building a mountain out of sand or integrating summing up infinitely small points to form a massive whole! beautiful.
That tiny space ship going to other solar systems makes me wonder if any tiny space ships have come through here. Maybe one is travelling around the universe making very very simple measurements of key factors indicating civilization then slingshoting to the next target or burning up after transmission.
+bossmanham RIP
+bossmanham Savage.
I just imagine 343 Guilty Spark roaming around in the universe! :)
This is so cool humans are beginning to unlock the science of interstellar travel. Sooooo coool
Photonic propulsion seems like a viable solution to our interspace planetary travel and protection. Thank you SciShow!
So a huge powerful laser, like the DeathStar. This sounds so freaking awesome.
They could send a laser shooter thing to orbit mars before they launch the mission and slow it down the same way they sped it up
is it that easy?
+Mr SoloDolo Well of course sending anything to mars is not easy, but i'd say the idea works
+Adrian T There's alot less sunlight on Mars, so you're going to have to either send a whole lot more laser equipment to orbit the planet, or you're going to have to slow down the ship much sooner. Also, it totally defeats the purpose, unless you're planning on a large colony on the planet with regular spaceship commuting happening between Earth and Mars.
Last I heard, the Martian government's economy just isn't strong enough to undergo such a massive public works project. That, and their society has alot of other, more pressing problems, like lack of population growth, uncontrolled unemployment, and severe environmental issues.
I love the future tecnologi, like this.
They make it look so easy
Seems a lot like an idea that scientist and SF author Robert Forward suggested 30 or 40 years ago. I notice that the Lubin paper cites him, so good for him giving credit where it's due, but other than that Forward's priority in this is being ignored.
Forward suggested a way of slowing the craft as it approaches its destination. Basically, detach the solar sail as you near the destination. It continues forward but reflects light backwards, which the craft intercepts with a smaller sail, thus slowing itself.
If only we had a space elevator already...
Looking at you, Elon!
+RunItsTheCat Elon's wont fund a space elevator until he's got a mean personal exo-suit. We all know it, let's be real. Who wouldn't?
Wouldn't emitting the laser from a satellite alter the orbit of said satellite according to Newton's third law of motion.
I scrolled down wondering the same thing. if it's pushing a 100kg craft whats stopping it from being pushed back?
Or I'm just understanding photons...
For it to have a reaction on the emitting satellite, the reaction would need to travel backwards through the entire length of laser itself, which I don't think is possible. The force will get dissipated in the incoming laser.
+Basil36 it would affect the satellite, but the the satellite is has a lot more mass so it won't move as much as the ship. The satellite can be as big as we want it to be so there is no problem with slapping rockets on it to counter act the opposing force.
Prinygod
That is the correct answer, thanks!
Sci_Ant my pleasure
love this
"But, it probably is possible." That is all I and I hope the rest of humanity needs to get something going and create a future among the stars.
Nuclear. Powered. Lasers.
This will make the Orion drive look like a V6 powered Mustang.
+rock3tcat (ⵙⴰⵔⵓⵅ) *I4 underpowered Mustangs. Although it does make more power than a V6.
Yeh! but with some drag pipes it would be a real bad-ass,... and the ladies are going to love it.
It's called nuclear pulse detonation gamma ray lasers. You can also use chirped pulse amplification for HPL/MASER platforms powered by SP-100 or Kilopower Reactor variants.
Wow! This what I have been talking about on social media! Forget the hydrogen fuel rockets to travel to Mars etc and focus on travelling at greater the speed of light
I've been watching this video 3times for the 3rd time now
KSP logic kicks in: MOAR BOOSTARS!
Oh my god, plese get to alpha centaury withing my lifespan D:
I say the same thing. But the problem is that research is not well funded, or at least funded enough to develop such technologies. But have faith in humanity, although not all perfect, we may eventually reach the stars with our lifetime. IDK, it's just my young imagination taking over my thoughts...
+about80ninjas Or the Russians want to get there first.
FUCK THIS SHIT LET'S DO COLD WAR 2
+ThermaVelocity
_Call of Duty: Cold War 2_
KSP mod for this where are you?!?!
Idontknow
The concept being pushed in this video has other serious problems not mentioned. The station firing the laser could impart momentum on a target craft, but the laser station itself would have to maintain its position. The laser station would have an equal and opposite momentum imparted on it and require propulsion to maintain it's position. This will require double the energy you'd need to push the craft itself. As the distance increased to the craft, the energy that could be delivered would decrease rapidly, but the momentum imparted on the station would hold steady. The receiver for the light beam would have more effect from solar radiation at some point. The losses from the apparent photovoltaic panels powering lasers would also be a waste. Plain mirrors reflecting sunlight would almost certainly be more efficient but would still need to have their position maintained due to the push from solar radiation. Finally, how exactly do you decelerate a craft once it was half way there when all you can do is push??? There are at least two space propulsion concepts that have never been covered by SciShow space vastly more capable than this one. I'm not talking about the fictitious Alcubierre drive but real concepts championed by the likes of Carl Sagan, Freeman Dyson, and Robert Bussard.
50 -70 gigawatts! 50 - 70 gigawatts. Great Scott!
What-what the hell is a gigawatt?
10^9 Watts
+seahawk124 Watts are a measure of power, which is the amount of energy moving from point A to point B at any given time. One watt is equal to one joule per second. So a 100 watt lightbulb consumes 100 joules per second.
+unematrix 50 -70 gigawatts! Tom, how are we going to generate that kind of power? It can't be done, can it?!
+ninjafruitchilled Well, if my calculations are correct, when that baby hits 88 miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious sh!t.
+seahawk124 lol
I'm all for going " deep-in "
We need lots of lubrication for it though. We can't go too deep without it.
As a kid I used to think of this. Wonder if I can see it in action during my life.
there are videos of it being tested on tiny planes, not a spacecraft but still pretty cool
Do you point the laser forward to the sail, or backwards to give direct propulsion? Get half way then start slowing down.
In other words, its going to be a LONG time before we actually do this.....
LAAAAAAAAAAAAAASERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!
I love how the last thing you say is, it “probably” is possible
Nice! A one-way trip into the depths of space with no stopping in sight. What could possibly go wrong?
Wouldn't time dialation be a problem when travelling with extremely high speeds to other solar systems?
+FifthGear TD would actually be a benefit for the crew, since there perceived travel time would be much lower. But at 1,5% lightspeed, you don't really get a huge dilation effect, since that starts to really kick in noticeably above ~60% or higher.
Get another laser on mars in order to stop the spacecraft. Think building a road. Let's do this shit.
+DoktahArk That's the first thing I thought about when I head about this in an other yt video.
Or just try aerobraking, but the ship could tear appart
+Gam Bon I considered that too but I imagine airbraking at up to 1.5 percent the speed of light for a 100kg ship heading into an atmosphere that is, at sea level, 0.6% the pressure of our own is probably gonna present some major issues... I hope they figure it out! This field of propulsion research has a lot of potential!
George Davies For interstellar travel, they could probably slow themselves down by detonating an H-bomb, but then they would need a material that could withstand the explosion. They would only need to do it once. The first ship they would send would be mounted with a laser, making the travel there much easier/ making the travel back possible.
+Gam Bon Hmmm, that H-bomb idea is interesting but there would still be problems, considering the fragility of the sail equipment, the inefficient energy displacement of such a blast and I guess, potentially, the EM disruption of ship systems caused by the resultant radiation decay. The slow down laser; that would be ideal, I agree. Perhaps there is something to it but for now, the difficulty of assembling a laser array that powerful and massive in orbit of Mars or any other planet is likely inconceivable.
Perhaps there's a way we could 'airbrake' using polarised EM sails in tandem with the laser sail tech to gain drag from the remaining polar magnetic field of a planet like Mars? Just a thought, it's probably a dud idea XD
George Davies Well, I just hope people try to build this in my lifetime ^^
there are plenty of things to discover that could help this technology become a reality.
You might not even need to put a laser in orbit around mars, just a very reflective mirror.
Need elaboration: 1 Solar power is directed radially, while laser power is parallel. 2 If a laser emitter is orbital, it is low mass, so it would need a chemical reaction engine to counteract the photon recoil force in the other direction. If stationed on the moon, you have a massive backup, but need to have pivoting supports for laser projectors because lunar motion is always redirecting the surface (no fixed position like Arecibo PR).
Question is, how do we get reception from little hyper-speed space sats 4.4 light years away if I can't get service 20 miles from the city?
Fire the photon torpedoes!
Send a probe with laser on it to land on mars, then shoot your ship toward mars with laser from earth, and slow it down later using a laser you landed on mars.
+Dorian Tomašinec Probably be better to have it in Martian orbit. It'd need less fuel to get there, have better access to sunlight, less loss of laser energy to the Martian atmosphere, and easier design constraints due to not having to survive atmospheric entry and landing.
+Adrian Todd That is even better idea.. :)
If you fire a laser on orbit, it'll fly away
So exciting
If the wafer satellites are inexpensive enough; I think that they should send many of them to each extra-solar location, to account for the inevitable accidents that will happen to them. Perhaps they could be made to communicate with eachother, and share processing power, as well as have redundant data storage. Or any other neat ideas that take advantage of there being multiple small pieces in the 'swarm', like acting as an rough array telescope.
de-star
death-star
de-star
death-star
coincidence i think not lol
I know I'm a bit late, but it uses a massive laser too! Definitely not a coincidence
and so it begins...
Starkiller Base: the Last Red Planet.
It isn't.
Can't wait to go for a coffee on Mars.
see u there soon! 😎
+Phone no you won't
+skittlebeezy who do u think you're talking to m8
Hopefully someone can answer this: Would a photonic propulsion-tech laser have to be pointed at the laser sail for the entire voyage?
I would assume that... (using the 1 gram wafersat at 25% speed of light) the laser array would have to be pointed at the wafer sat for 1/4 of the voyage because its traveling at 25% the speed of light, but would it have to be constant? or just a fourth of the time? could a system of mirrors make it possible for several wafersats to be propelled at the same time? would a mirror array slow them down?
I GOT SO MANY QUESTIONS
Yes we do have a way to slow such a sail ship. Dr Forward had it one of his novels. A two part sail, the large outer section would detach and then reflect the laser back onto the section still attached to the ship.
This does take a huge sail but the whole concept requires a huge sail.
Good luck getting a 1 gram probe to send back a signal from Alpha Centauri.
+Cruzer not really a problem, just a 4.367 year delay in getting the signal back. They use a very quiet channel, utilize the amazing signal processing technology that will be even more amazing then what we have now (which is pretty spectacular already) by then and focus the beam in our direction to be received by the Deep Space Network. I have personally received a 1 Watt signal from the Mars Global Surveyor at about 6 Million km please see using home made antennas and amateur radio technology and it was EASY. If I had the equivalent receptive capacity of the Deep Space Network the signal would have deafened me. We can do it, it just takes money and the desire. Please see for details:
mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/sci/mr/mr_home/mrfaq.html
We can make it two grams if you really want to splurge.
Does this mean we could potentially bring back the Voyagers and Pioneers?
Yep! scientists in the 70's already thought that one day humanity would advance far enough to bring back the space probes. It's a pretty cool idea if you think about it
No, not realistically. This sort of machine can only be used to push things away from itself (which means, away from the planet where it was built).
And even if we used it to send out a "tugboat" to catch up to Voyager 1, that tugboat would be moving far too fast, and would just zoom past the thing we wanted back. And if it did somehow slow down, it would then need to also push the relatively massive Voyager 1 back, which takes a ton of fuel, and would take many decades of waiting.
Basically, Voyager 1 (and friends) all have the same kinetic energy they got from the massive rockets used to launch them. Which means you need to get an even bigger rocket out to them, if you wanted to slow them down, and then give them momentum for a return trip.
+Death Rhino That would be legit as shit, but leaving them out there and keeping track of their progress as we advance beyond them would be a rather nice way to measure how far we've come since the 70's.
Isn't the golden record sort of like a time capsule?
Ready the Photonic Canon!
Did a paper and model of this for high school science fair. The teacher said it was impossible and a guy from NASA said he could not follow my train of thought. So, I shelved the whole thing and went out and got a job. IN 1965 !!!!!
So let me get straight... They're making a deathstar?
+Anarchy91 but square shaped : P
+StopGooN so a borg cube?
+Anarchy91
*Puts on Pedantic Hat*
I mean... kinda? The wavelength they'd pick for this kind of application probably wouldn't go through an atmosphere too well. Waste too much energy heating up the upper atmo and you don't have quite enough punch to melt that city block you're aiming at.
That's right, city block, though it may be 10km x 10km, the power of such a system is only about equal to that of the space shuttle at liftoff. So... dangerous sure, but not planet or even city-busting.
*Takes off Pedantic hat*
That's a much cooler way of putting it.
so they'd make a square shaped deathstar that doesnt work as intended >.
StopGooN
No, it would work exactly as intended. It's just intended to point at asteroids millions of miles away in hard vacuum, instead of the planet circling below it.
Alpha Centauri in 15 years thats mind boggling awesome!!!
+Richard Driskill such a party pooper
+Richard Driskill actually no. odds are the spacecraft won't hit anything. take a look at the voyager crafts, new horizons, especially dawn. All travelled through the asteroid belt and hit nothing. that's because space is mostly empty when it comes to matter. it isn't, "just theoretical" to move an object at relativistic speeds, we do that all the time with atomic particles. it's proven science, we know it works, we can predict what will happen. and we know how much energy is needed to accelerate something the size of the space shuttle to 10% the speed of light. it's about the same as it takes to get the same craft from the ground to escape velocity, according to NASA.
+Richard Driskill So we sent lots of them out there... After all the tech required to build the local infrastructure is basically Von Neumann Probe replication level kind of thing that can harvest and process materials in orbit, so once the array is constructed and ready to start flinging stuff out that far, then the costs of building the probes 'locally' is next to nothing. Even if the odds are 99.99% that the probes will fail en-route, then that still means that building enough of them and eventually one gets all the way there.
Plus, 'comm-array-chain' probes make some of the most sense. Keeping up a steady stream of new small probes where each probe gather's its data and collects data from the probes in front of it to push back down the line. Each probe becomes a relay and backup for the probes ahead of it, and as they close in on the system they start to split up and target flybys of different objects. Getting a probe that has the on board power to get a clear signal all the way back to earth in one shot is, well, kind of a large and heavy thing, which would make it far harder to accelerate.
And while you're sending out that never ending steam of probes? Well what if each one also had a small laser on it? The 'first wave' of probes would pass through the system, but they would also be working to slow down those coming behind. Eventually you have enough probes going slow enough that they can join up with each other and build a laser array in the target system... Then they can start catching stuff that is on its way in...
+RealLuckless I love that last part with the probes slowing each other down and forming a new giant laser :D
Richard Driskill I don't think you understand the scope of your own argument
Thanks for the video about photonic propulsion! Here is an electron/ion thruster that lifts its power supply from the ground. It is just a prototype but it is working and some of the math of what could be done with it is really amazing. If you want to see video you can click the purple icon.
1:26 nice happy to see that at least some one tries to prevent that humans end like dinosours :D
i wonder how many people here played kerbal space program yet. i am sure it's a nerdy crowd here anyways
+TaoriUTS I have :D
My favourite game :D
+TaoriUTS Awesome game.
+TaoriUTS Dammit! I was telling myself that I am not going to play ksp today, but then I read your comment! Are there addiction control centers for this?
haha. the feedback amuses me so much. at least all fellow players are aware then that the problem is not accelerating to 0,25 planck but braking down the speed when you reached your destination because quite obviously aero braking will not be an option.
I feel you failed to stress just how infeasible this tech is atm.
+Niki Herl Large, Moon-bound rockets were horrendously unfeasible using technology from a century ago. Sure, we could create tiny rockets that thrusted for a few seconds, and the math behind larger rocketry worked out, but we didn't have anywhere near enough industrial capacity to build the real thing yet.
+Jordan Shank Problem here is the physics just doesn't work out. Not even close. Absolutely any material known would easily be vaporized by the laser ( yet alone just melted or reduced structural integrity ), the acceleration force would be in the thousands of G ( which would easily destroy anything )...it's just absolutely ludicrous as proposed. It makes the nuclear bomb powered idea sound down right good.
+zemerick13 thousands of Gs are survivable for many electronic system, for example the electronics inside a artillary shell are rated at over 15,000 g, even some watches can survive 5000g
Comic B Studios I did miss that. While it would take some very careful engineering, the basic electronics could survive it. It would greatly limit anything that could be sent in this method, but it's possible as far as just the G force goes.
The laser energy was the bigger concern though, since it's in the vaporize massive amounts of aluminum in a fraction of a second levels.
Awesome
My question is, what do we do about communication once we're able to launch probes so far? Don't we have probes that we're no longer able to communicate with due to it's distance? How will we tackle the problem of retrieving any information gathered?
Would the platforms shooting the lasers move as well? Just like catching a ball in space moves you backwards so does throwing it... Right?
+KK G. I don't think so because photons have no mass. Newtons Third Law states: "When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in
direction on the first body." And you can't exert a force on it if it doesn't have mass.
+KK G. There's a counter-action to every action. so technically yes, the laser array would thrust the Earth backwards (a very little bit). However, when talking about probes weighting grams, it probably won't mean much. Propelling lots of space ships into space, however... There's probably going to be some long-term effects. But then again, simply stripping resources from our planet and putting them into space also has long-term effects on the orbit of our planet.
I must've missed something, are the laser platforms in orbit or on the earth? I was trying to make the point that if they put the lasers in orbit, according to conservation of momentum, the laser platforms will end up altering their own orbits as they propel the little satellites away from earth... right?
Yzov +Yes light has no mass, but it somehow has momentum. It's one of those things Einstein discovered. If light didn't have momentum the whole solar sail thing wouldn't work.
+Yzov Momentum in relativity is defined by the Energy-momentum equivalence E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2, where _E_ is energy, _p_ is momentum, _m_ is mass, and _c_ is the speed of light. For an object at rest (v=0), we see this simplifies to E=mc^2, which we expect. For a massless (m=0) particle, though, we find that E=pc, or that the momentum of an object is directly proportional to its energy, without paving to invoke a mass term.
50-70 gigawatt laser? Not happening anytime soon, the largest laser we have ever managed to build and successfully test is the MIRACL which at about 1 megawatt but it can only operate for about one minute at a time before it overheats.... this is a chemical laser too which means it needs fuel to operate from and does not work on electricity alone, to get 70 gigawatts worth of laser using this technology you would need about 70,000 MIRACL sized lasers, each with their own fuel supply and in space, but of course this laser and many other large scale lasers have duty cycles of somewhere around 20%, basically this means that you need 5x as many lasers to get that 100% duty cycle you need, so you really need 350,000 MIRACL sized lasers to start with, and remember now that for each and every one of these lasers you are going to need to fuel them, they burn fuel just like rocket engines do although they use typically ethylene, nitrogen triflouride and deuterium. So figure that you'll need about a million tonnes of each substance per laser array (of 5 so it can have a 100% duty cycle) so every lasers of the 350,000 lasers you have will have about a million tonnes of fuel which will be about what you'll need for a 48 hour runtime.
Oh, did I mention that each one of these lasers will require a beam director that can properly align and focus the beam, the relitively lightweight one they are using with the MIRACL laser currently is the sealite beam director which "only" adds about 30,000 pounds of mass to each laser.
So yeah, it's a great idea but it could never happen, it would be FAR too expensive just to get the stuff up there for one space probe but with the way those lasers work you would have to send up 350 million tonnes or so of fuel for each propulsion attempt and that is being rather conservative and not counting the vehicles and their fuel required to get them into orbit.
Also about this special material this giant sail is supposed to be made from, it can't be conductive or the induced currents from the sun's magnetic field will vaporize it just like what happened in nasa's tethered sattelite experiment, so it has to be non conductive, it also has to be a micron thick? that's 0.00003937 inches thick, that's the size of the thinnest portion of a human red blood cell, it's also about 5 times smaller an object than a visible light microscope can discern due to the diffraction limit of light, so you have to have this sail that weighs as much as your craft, is strong enough to take a giant push from gigawatts of concentrated laser energy, likely be 100 or so square kilometers but not rip during deployment or during pushing operations , non conductive, thermally disapative in a vaccum so it won't get blasted into it's constituent atoms when it really heats up and those atoms start wanting to jump off the surface and into the thin plasma of space, and it has to be able to survive a launch, decelleration, and any of the many space debris such a massive object is likely to encounter as well as to be able to be steered out of plane with our sun to maintain a course in a direction we choose... I'm sure lots of people will say "oh carbon nanotubes will do that" well... it turns out those carbon nanotubes ARE conductive, no where near as strong as we thought, and next to impossible to produce with any uniformity and are easily broken with very little shear force.... While you could possibly build such a sattelite array over only a few thousand years, or a few hundred if every man woman and child on the planet were to drop what they are doing and go right to work on these lasers for the rest of their lives without taking time to do anything else, you simply can't make the sail required to make the whole thing viable, there is no material that will do what they need it to do to make this work and there never will be, it would be nice if the universe worked in a way that it were possible, but it's not. They need to round file this idea and come up with something that is actually practical and wouldn't take millenia to build even if it were possible.
I salute you.. 👏
Nitish Jain for what?
+Peter “Crackpot Pete” Carlson thanks, Buzz Killington.....
And it looked so easy on the animation above... Thanks for the sobering up :)
+Peter “Crackpot Pete” Carlson terminating the lie.. I suppose..
This reminds of how when humanity first took to the oceans, the first ships used sails to propel them, looks like history repeating itself in a good way, this helps me see that there is hope for us getting to the stars, can't wait to see what we come up
With as time passes
I just hope that a new religion decides to show up and destroy the modern society and forget all the knowledge we now have because it's against their religions teachings.
+FinlanderSane doesn't decide to show up* fuck i'm tired
+FinlanderSane dude, I will commit mass genocide on the members of that religion if it shows up, I'm not sorry
+Cyanakrli good luck making a paddle powered spacecraft :P
+Philip Shrimpton ?v=TXFhL1xF_G8
I suspect the spinning of many disks amplified by each other to maybe reach faster than the speed of light can create its own focused gravitational pull similar to creating a black hole.
De(ath)-Star laser array? ...sure why not
God, I have been reading about 'breakthroughs' in space travel for 20 years - sooner or later you realize that all the ideas require resources and investment that just simply would never happen in our botched X factor justin Beiber culture.
+Adam -亚当- So are you doing something to make this happen or are you just going to complain?
+Ban Ki-moon epic lol
+Ban Ki-moon wow - utterly trolled.Helping raise awareness that the current approach isn't working IS a contribution. And yes I am - a couple, one is a more realistic but resource intensive proposal with simulations the other is an investigative methodology - it's on my home page. but I don't know why I'm wasting my time telling you.
+Adam -亚当- That's Ban Ki-moon you're talking to, dude.
DoktahArk heh, that would be pretty awesome if it was the real Ki-moon trolling peeps on youtube. A: Sir!, we are late for peace treaty talks with Syria. B:"fuck em, I've got to school this dude first".
Question : if photons transfer their momentum, how can they always be moving at speed C? Isn't that new energy being created or is their something I'm missing
There's some new theories about how light slows down, but they're very unpopular because they'd require the whole of cosmology to be rethought
How do you decelerate the craft when you reach the target? Do you use the gravity of the target or something similar?