To the stars!

Patrick Bishop, Caldwell, NJ — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:26:12 GMT

The best way to ensure that some technological feat is accomplished is to predict that it is impossible - such as "man will never break the sound barrier." That being the case, I predict that we will never develop any kind of faster-than-light propulsion system.

There, now it HAS to happen.

To the stars!

Arun.V.G. — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 15:16:21 GMT

ALl the best for all the scientists working for this cause. Man should overtake the speed of light.
Why? The man who conquered Mt.Everest have the answer "As it exists"

To the stars!

Byron Raum, Beverly Hills, CA — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:36:44 GMT

There is very little chance that FTL flight is possible. However, if we consider the possible payoffs, it would be irresponsible to not explore some of the possible avenues. Even the minute chance is worth trying. A hundred years ago, the nuclear technology we now possess would be as magical as FTL flight seems to us now. Many of the more exotic by-products of string theory might show some promise, such as taking shortcuts through other space or time dimensions. Without question, they should all be explored.

To the stars!

Gary M. Gregory; Linden: New Jersey — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:56:24 GMT

If there is no way to travel the universe and we are fated to be confined to just this miniscule immediate area, then the existance of mankind becomes a cosmic joke serving no purpose and having no future.

To the stars!

Charles Ligon, Goodlettsville, TN — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 19:28:30 GMT

Any advanced propulsion system that is submitted for patent will be confiscatd by the US Government and used solely as a propulsion system for military craft. I dropped the link to the article describing this in the "Your Website" part. Here's a few quotes from that article:

"Most Western governments can prevent the granting (and therefore publishing) of patents on inventions deemed to contain sensitive information of use to an enemy or terrorists. They do so by issuing a secrecy order barring publication and even discussion of certain inventions."

"Experts at the US Patent and Trademark Office perform an initial security screening of all patent applications and then army, air force and navy staff at the Pentagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) makes the final decision on what is classified and what is not."

"However, at another level, the Pentagon appears to be relaxing slightly: it seems to be loosening its post 9/11 grip on the ideas of private inventors, with the number having patents barred on the grounds of national security halving in the last year."

"In the financial year to 2004, DTSA imposed 61 secrecy orders on private inventors, a number that had been climbing inexorably since 9/11. But up to the end of financial 2005, only 32 inventors had “secrecy orders” imposed on their inventions."

"Overall, the figures obtained by the FAS reveal 106 new secrecy orders were imposed on US inventions to March 2005, while 76 others were rescinded. So there are now 4915 secrecy orders in effect - some of which have been in effect since the 1930s."

FYI, I sent a letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy concerning this, but as yet haven't received a reply. The reason I sent this letter is I have a propulsion idea that I'm 99.999% sure will not work, but I won't even try to figure out if it will if the government will only confiscate it and use it exclusively for military purposes. If there is a more self-defeating policy than this that the US Congress has implemented it, I'd like to see it.

If you would like to get an answer out of the White House on all this, fell free to try.

To the stars!

Jody Green, San Antonio, Tx — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 03:41:33 GMT

It is possible that Einstien's theories were no better than previous scientist's theories but there is a chance that his theories will be looked at by history the same way that all others are now understood as relics of times past. Just in case his theories turn out to be hard core truth, the only option is to change the time part of the equation where humans, or cyber humans, can withstand millions of years travel to the inner and then outer regions of our universe only to return to a world or worlds that still exist. This is a sad but achievable goal if we can insure that the sick whackos on this planet do not take control and stop all progress.

Cheers

To the stars!

greg richards new york, ny — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:01:05 GMT

All this project has to do is find Zefram Cochran and support him while he invents the warp drive! No problemo.

To the stars!

Jack Sarfatti — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:03:38 GMT

For more details on how the above physics for advanced propulsion works see my book "Super Cosmos" on Amazon et-al

To the stars!

Paul, Centreville VA — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:06:53 GMT

Why not skip ahead of FTL flight and just move straight to folding space? Or at least finding worm holes, if they exist. Of course, either one of those would in the end be faster than light, so FTL it is. Funny how it all seems relative somehow.

To the stars!

Dan Lovejoy, Edmond, OK — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:21:33 GMT

FTL travel isn't absolutely necessary for space exploration. Some sort of propulsion system that can push a ship almost to the speed of light is. Time dilation will allow the crew to remain awake, except for very, very long trips. Those would require some sort of cryogenics. On the scale of the life of our species, it would take a blink of an eye to reach every corner of the galaxy.

It is indeed very likely that will will never break the "light barrier" which isn't so much a barrier as a function of the way our universe is constructed. But space travel seems inevitable.

To the stars!

Toog, San Jose, CA — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:25:42 GMT

Faster than light travel may actually be possible by 2075, even just projecting current trends. Here is why :

http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/02/exponential_gro.html

To the stars!

Nicole Tedesco, Seattle, WA — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:30:56 GMT

An often overlooked method of traveling the Universe in a useful manner is to transform the human from a dense, clumsy, fragile physical being into something faster and perhaps distributed in nature. Mutating ourselves into something as close as possible to pure information can do a lot for letting us see the Universe in a glance! Don't forget, to the traveler moving at or near the speed of light the Universe looks infinitely thin and travel would seem darned near instantaneous.

To the stars!

Mike Walsh, Chicago IL — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:46:53 GMT

In one of Robert Heinlien's books he mentioned the Longshot Foundation, a heavily endowed institution that supported research and exploration at the fringes of known science. In the story they send a fleet of NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light)ships to explore likely worlds for colonization, while conducting long-baseline research on a possible FTL drive. At the end the explorers, who have hardly aged at all in their 60 year trip (due to time contraction of NAFAL speeds) are recovered by the first FTL ships.

The point is that Longshot takes a very long view on reasearch, projects that might take more than a lifetime before fruition. Do we have the persistance to pursue such a course.

To the stars!

David Evans, Cardiff, UK — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 15:29:30 GMT

Projecting current trends doesn't necessarily work if you are up against the laws of physics. There have been trends in human population which would quite soon leave standing room only in the Galaxy, let alone the Earth.

To the stars!

Chris — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 17:50:13 GMT

For all intents and purposes, our own solar system might as well be the universe. I'm sure (and would recommend) sending plenty of robotic probes to the stars, but mega space stations with millions of inhabitants around Jupitor etc. would be just fine with me.

If we did go, I’d wonder why we’d want to mutate ourselves when we could just send genetic samples? A robotic mother ship can traverse the great distances and then mix the genetic material upon arrival.

In the interim, we should build several large space telescopes so powerful that they could see the cloud tops and mountain ranges of other Earth-like planets around other stars. Such abilities already exist with interferometry!

As for the next X-Prize how about this: "Whomever can get to the international space station first, can keep it."

To the stars!

GreenCloak,London,United Kingdom — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 13:03:18 GMT

I hate it when people say. FTL is impossible. It should be impossible for scientists to say that word. During WW2 the a british post officer was developing the first proper working computer (i am not talking about the on made in the 18th century. That was just a big calculator). The military said that his computer would be a waste of time and by a year's end (how long he said it would take to build it) the war will be over. He made it with his own money and created the colossus. This helped UK in war by decypring German messages. But has Charles Ligon mentioned early the Goverment classified it and it wasn't known by the public for a long time.

Anyway back to topic. The colossus filled and entire room and the best computer availbe at that time. Today you can get a CPU that is about 50 thousand times more powerful and can fit in your palm. THATS HOW FAST technology evolves if private enterprise and alot of money in R&D is spent.

Who knows. If the USA/UK/EU government stop restricting propulsion and other things that involve with space because of their crazy paranoid fears (simple security measures could be taken to stop terrorists). Then we maybe we could see a battle for supremacy in space. In the CPU market we have Intel vs AMD with AMD winning because of their innovitave designs and Intel getting lazy. In graphics card market we have a Nvidia vs ATI. Thanks to these kind of battle we could see private spacecraft that can go FTL by the beginning of next century. If pray we don't have a catastrophic war.

To the stars!

Joko Imananto (Trekkie) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:01:15 GMT

I think FTL is possible simply BEYOND "Special Theory of Relativity". It must be in the frame of "General Theory of Relativity" or EVEN BEYOND.. Don't think in "Special Theory of Relativity" mind-set. In "Special Theory of Relativity" the FTL will resulted in enormous energy need and "imaginary" mass. It shouldn't be like that.. "Special Theory of Relativity" cannot work for FTL. Even Einstein himself must develop the successsor teory ("General Theory of Relativity") to "break" the "limitation" of "Special Theory of Relativity". FTL needs out-side-the-box thinking; new paradigm; new mind-set.. Thanks.

To the stars!

Ilya, Boston, MA — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 01:10:56 GMT

There are two ways to travel a very long distance (such as between stars) in a reasonable fraction of one's lifetime:

1. Travel very very fast

2. Live a very long time

I find defeat of aging far more likely than FTL (or even relativistic) travel within foreseeable future. And for people who do not age a trip of 10,000 years at, say, modest 0.5% c may not be such a big deal.

To the stars!

Michael Savuto, Oklahoma City, OK — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:52:52 GMT

I think two trains of thought will be the long term answer to spaceflight.

The first is the extension of the human life span which will be dramatic (IMHO) over the next hundred years.

Second will be the stated abandonment of chemical fuels for some other source of power and work on that full time.

Interstellar travel (my make-a-wish dream) has to be driven by economics. It is going to be very expensive and we have shown a lack of will to fund this kind of pure research over the long term unless there is a $$$ carrot at the end of the stick. The real answer to the monetary problem would be for the Gates/Buffet foundation to stick a big chunk of their dollars into it. If they backed this kind of research with their cold hard billions, it would give the project cache thus bringing others into it, as well as give it some pretty good technical and financial oversight outside of government oversight.

To the stars!

Jennifer Brewer, Randolph, MA — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:35:42 GMT

I agree that economics can be the drive towards future flight technology if the government allows it. I don't belive that the latter will occur until nuclear or environmental devestation seems more of a possibility.The government, any government, needs some motivation to allow for progression, ie the Sputnik crisis and the push to advance American Science/Technology.

To the stars!

Johnny Salami, Syracuse NY — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:41:46 GMT

As soon as Faster Than Light propulsion is developed, some nitwits will plaster their ships with ads and start racing around oval tracks in the Deep South while blaring country music.

To the stars!

IMustBeARedneckCauseI'mFromThePlaceYankeesHate, The, South — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:35:02 GMT

Just wait till we "Deep South" folks have "Deep South Space"! Planet Waffle House! Goody goody!

And keep you're FTL! We'll just develop some time-travelling' tech and go back to the good ole days-- you know, when Elvis and Johnny Cash were still gracin' the world! Don't make me bring Johnny back to the future to whoop ye!

Ye haw! Got my Ford pick-up rocket! I'm off for some REAL moon shine and some truly stellar grits!

To the stars!

Derek Meche Lafayette La — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:08:19 GMT

Europeans colonized the entire Western Hemisphere of our planet in less than 500 years. It is reasonable to assume that IF we commit the resources to this project it can be achieved. Interstellar exploration will bring untold economic opportunities and growth. We have but to really commit to the project to get it done.

To the stars!

Fast T. Light, Lincoln, NE — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:28:28 GMT

If we are to travel faster than light we must do two things.
One: Allow economics to drive the issue.
Two: Educate people on the benefits of space exploration.

I have heard people say in this country,"Why go to space when we have so much trouble here?" Well, that's a great point. But, I have it on good authority that every penny spent in space comes back to us as dollars. FTL is just the end of the beginning. Power(Microwave, H3), metals, manufacturing, vacations, extra-governmental activities(who owns space?) the list continues. Most of our economic problems could be solved by cheap, effective space travel. That would drive investment in eventual FTL. It will happen.

To the stars!

Angel, Omaha, NE — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:22:25 GMT

Don't forget about good ol' competition. Besides economics as a driving factor, competition was what got us to the moon in the early 60's - on technology no greater than what drives my MP3 player. The problem though, is we(U.S.) are far more interested in cooperation than competing with anyone. To actually get the project accomplished, I'm afraid that huge support and excitement toward the common goal will have to be generated. It's sad to say, but I don't think that George W. Bush (or any other president we are about to elect for that matter) can spawn that kind of enthusiasm that was created by J.F.K. in the rush for the moon.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to achieve interstellar flight, I mean I really really do. But in order to do it we must thoroughly understand and be able to harness the properties that govern over several things: Photons first, being the only particle (if you will) that can travel at c. Then, other subatomic particles that have been observed to travel “faster” than c. The problem however, is that these are all massless objects and therein lies what I see as one of the biggest feasibility problems with FTL travel – duh, special relativity. As an object with mass approaches the speed of light, its mass increases exponentially until c. is reached at which point the object has infinite mass – and would also require infinite energy to propel it. Seems kind of like an unreasonable task. Me and my space ship don’t want to be hurling through space at %99.9 of c. being squished into a tiny little atom sized ball of almost infinite mass and for an entire 5 years of travel time to only arrive at, where? – Alfa centauri!?! Which is only surrounded by like nothing at all. And have to then just turn around and come back to earth on another cramped 5 year trip only to find out that my 10 year round trip actually spanned like I don’t know 20-30 on earth. Special relativity here too you know, as you approach c. time slows down for you as compared to all of your buddies back on earth. So, the only thing we can do is like really wild things like open up a hole in space and instantaneously pop through it to a distant point in space. Neat, let me know when it works… the universe is huge, and I’m sure there are a lot of cool places to go. This is a very interesting subject matter and I’m glad someone has the courage to actually do real research into it.

To the stars!

Ed Sauble Taneytown, MD — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:51:05 GMT

I believe the best hope for the Human Race is to establish an "offworld" colony or SLT spaceship ( perhaps a mined out asteroid as some SF novels have suggested), aim it toward a know terrestial planet (when discovered) and allow 5 to 10 thousand generations for the trip. This could probably be accomplished within the next 200 to 300 years before we or a rogue comet destroys this planet. Unfortunately the Human Race is still fighting its petty wars over such assinine things as religion (didn't we get over that during the crusades???), national pride, natural resources and such instead of learning to cooperate to save our species. If we don't get with any long term (millenia) planning I'm sure nature will take care of it for us, probably something similar to what occured with the dinosaurs.

To the stars!

Robert Southwick, Washington State — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:36:35 GMT

Space travel does not have to be two way between the stars. That is needed to make science fiction story lines work. Just keep going and sending back reports should work just fine. Accelerate enough and your travelers can get to lots of places in an extended life time. Einstein did not hold you back even without FTL.

To the stars!

Mr. Faith-in-Humankind, Las Vegas, Nv. — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:20:36 GMT

Speed of light is hardly the biggest hurdle we will have to overcome in the hopes of a better future. The first things we will have to overcome are our own sense of being the center of the universe, and our general stupidity. Once we realize that we are not all that is, was, and will be, we might just allow ourselves to progress towards a better future. Maybe, Just Maybe, if we were to put more effort into getting into space (where I believe we truely need to be), I wouldn't have people at work claiming we never actually went to the moon; that it was just another trick of hollywood or our ever-loving government. 'Course for an "Advanced and intelligent" species, we have a way of being stupid and limiting ourselves, so this is all probably very pointless speculation.

To the stars!

Chris — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:04:29 GMT

One way to boost speed in space is to have an out-bound probe "ingest" fuel along a set course as it progressively goes faster. In other words, position small balloons filled with fuel in a long line (tens of thousands of miles long) and have a probe (which would basically only be an engine and just a little initial fuel to save weight) just race down the line "gobbling up" just enough fuel to feed its rocket engine as it goes. This way you are not fighting against all the mass of the fuel and can build speed rapidly...

To the stars!

Charles W. Amann III — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:26:15 GMT

Investigation and study into the nature and composition of space should be foremost.

Space is the road, when we learn how to navigate the road we will develop the vehicle.

Charles W. Amann III New York City

To the stars!

Damedini, toronto, ON — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 02:14:48 GMT

IMO, Michael Flynn outlines a very do-able approach to re-embracing space in his Firestar fictional series. First a private corporation develops a SSTO (single stage to orbit) craft, then builds a space station and harnesses solar power in space and beams it back to Earth. All in pursuit of a dream, granted, but making a profit along the way.
The only hope for the space program is private industry. Moon or satellite based industry, the efficient harnessing of solar radiation from orbit, low-G manufacturing.
We can do this (whether ultimately FTL or Near-light is irrelevant atthis point, let's just get back into space and onto the moon), but cannot rely on government.

To the stars!

Rich Nagel — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 05:25:14 GMT

It's not FTL, but it's a step in the right direction: Solar Sailing! Take a leap over to The Planetary Society's page and read about it: http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/solar_sailing/

To the stars!

Dave, Anaheim CA — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 22:35:23 GMT

I do believe that private investment and competition will be the fastest, if not the only, way to achieve any real progress into space. Proof of this is obvious when observing how the competition for the X Prize led Richard Branson to create Virgin Galactic using the design SpaceShipOne, the winner. Even though experiencing the zero-gravity phenomenon is costly and short at this time, consumers would not have the ability to enter space without this competition.

In my opinion, one of the most inexpensive and available methods to help promote competition among corporations would be for NASA to sell research time to corporations; this would allow for companies that want to have experiments conducted in zero-gravity environments to have access to such a labratory, and due to the fact that space flights are costly, infrequent and short, paying for an astronout's time can generate a very short supply of researching time available. I don't know if any credible analysis has been done in determining if there are consumers in such a "space labratory," but with the abundance of pharmaceutical, chemical, aerospace, engineering, etc. companies out there, I can't imagine that there would be no demand for something like this. Let's put the International Space Station to some good use.

Although, it is too bad that NASA has had setbacks in the shuttle program, since I can't imagine the big whigs there would even entertain this idea without making shuttle flight safer. Perhaps Russia would be interested....

To the stars!

Brian Smith, Cuddebackville, New York — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 00:06:40 GMT

even though this says that antigrav is not the way to go, i feel it is. It would provide for all methods of travel, not merely interstellar. And since the vast gulf of our galaxy is so incredible and even with Lightspeed travel, it would still take along the lines of 10,000 years to cross our galaxy, not really a run to the store and back trip. So in exchange for this, why not first look to our nearest neighbors for expanding our civilization. The time is too premature for talk of galactic crossings, but on a scale of 10-20 years at lightspeed, heading to another solar system is not remotely out of the question

To the stars!

Justin Huff, Clinton, Illinios — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 05:18:25 GMT

If you want to generate the enough power to push a spacecraft to the speed of light. Do it the same way the sun does if any one wants to know how this might be done (and I'm about 75% sure it would work) email me and if i can find the time i'll tell you about it you might just like it all my friends do.

To the stars!

Joko Imananto (Trekkie) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:10:05 GMT

I'm sorry of beeing not academical...
I'm not financial/economical literate..
I'm a Trekkie ;)

Think about "dark matters". What "animals" are those?
Scientists have been realized that the universe
should contain "dark matters" to build the complete
figure of "stable" universe we've seen up to now.
"Dark matters" contribute as "linkage" of stars,
galaxies, clusters, super-clusters, ...

Dark matters have never been directly probed cause
those are the matters beeing "interchaged" between
observable matters by FTL (I think..).
Hence, dark matters also bend space-time sensed
by us also as a gravity...

The "dark matter" should be the "FTL agent"!
The "dark matter" is the "FTL agent"!
Is it?! Or, maybe I'm idiot with this idea.. :(

To the stars!

John, Murrieta, CA — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:13:45 GMT

The biggest problem will be money. No matter what approach is taken,(Cryogenics, FTL or a Slow Boat)it will be expensive.How much chance do we have of getting the country to buy off on this? What chance of getting international cooperation.
Will The rich see it as an investment?
Not likely if these will be one way trips.

To the stars!

chris oroville ca — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:09:52 GMT

if faster than light travel was possible then wouldnt that be a form of time travel? and in that case wouldnt people be coming from the future to our time? so it seems that either its impossible and will never happen... or no one is interested in us in the future....

To the stars!

Peter, Hacienda Heights, Ca — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 02:38:08 GMT

This article mentions the Woodward Effect. Below is a link to my website (an unofficial one) which has links, PPT Presentations, pictures, and papers dealing with W.E.

http://www.woodwardeffect.org

As far as I know, the W.E. is not a FTL device but MAY have the potential of creating wormholes, as well as means of cheap space propulsion.

To the stars!

James M. Essig, Fairfax, Virginia — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 02:24:59 GMT

This is a very interesting website. I am intrigued about the possibility of using known and/or otherwise reasonably well documented physical principles to produce interstellar propulsion systems that at first might seem counter-intuitive

One concept among several that I am curious about is whether the harnessing of the zero point vacuum energy that appears to have been detected and measured by experiments first conducted during the last half of the 20th century in which two highly conductive metal plates seperated by a very short distance experience an effectively attractive force by virtue of the fact that only zero point electromagnetic energy fluctuations in the form of standing waves that have nodes at the conductive plate assemblage's inner surfaces can fit between the plates. As noted from publicly available literature on this effect, the much larger set of unconstrained frequencies that impinge on the outer surfaces of the plates impart a greater magnitude of inward directed force than the outwardly directed (weaker) force resulting from the more limited set of frequencies available between the plates. The net force from these added components is therefore inwardly directed.

What if a sheet or membranous structure could be produced wherein two highly conductive boundaries are held in a fixed relation but wherein one boundary is more transparant to the inner standing waves than the opposing boundary thus allowing the wave components impinging on the less conductive boundary to "leak out" more than the wave components incident on the more conductive boundary, thus resulting in a net force being directed from the direction of the less conductive boundary to that of the more conductive boundary.

Potential methods of seperating the conductive layers might include low mass rigid mechanical seperators, or perhaps a nonconductive material that is largely tranmsissive to the standing wave frequencies.

One method might even include composite membranes or other structures having more than two conductive layers with atleast two seperations of simillar or dissimilar distances, wherein these separations combined with membranes of differing spectral reflectivites allow for a broader range of standing waves to be produced resulting in a larger directed force relative to the surface area of the composite sheet.

Perhaps, a structure composed of two or more conductive meshes of dissimillar conductivities which allow for the "passage" of all wavelengths effectively smaller than the mesh's grid spacing but wherein the larger set of filtered out wavelenghts available to impinge on the external surfaces of the mesh assemblage allow for net directed force in a manner simmilar to that for the monolithic sheets described above. Such a mesh-like assemblage might achieve a larger mass specific propulsion power output than the monolithic conductive sheets can, with less drag induced by motion through the interstellar medium.

As nanotechnology and material science progresses, perhaps the spacing between conductive sheets of any type can be reduced thus resulting in a greater disparity between the set of frequencies between the sheets and the set frequenices externally impinging on the conductive sheets.

Other interstellar travel options that I find intreguing involve using current technologies that are greatly scaled up on terms of power output and/or apacial extention. One example might envolve a massive spacebased engineering and construction project to produce a huge accellerator or mass driver to rapidly accellerate space probes or manned spacecraft to relativistic velocites. A manned ship, wherein the crew members breath oxygenated liquid in a sealed liquid containing chamber, might allow for accelleration values of 100's or perhaps 1000's of G's for the analogous reason that scuba divers routinely can dive deep enough to have a column of water with the same foot print as their body having a couple of hundred times their body weight located above them. One can imagine that judicious applications of magnetic and/or electric fields of an intensity great enough to polarize the atoms and molecules that make up a crew members body to in effect magnetize his/her body and also for the purpose of counteracting the force exerted be very rapid accelleartion may even allow for much greater accellerations especially when combined with the sealed liquid chamber configuration described above.

Such a mass driver, accellerator, or whatever may be either composed of a continuous linear or curvilinear (e.g., circular arcuate) structure or a disceetized linear series of driving magnetic rings or soleniodal coils that are activated only when the craft approaches to conserve power. If such a system could be built (and it obviously would be a huge engineering and construction effort!), a 100 A.U. long accelleration path at a constant accellaration of 1000's of G's would result highly relativistic terminal or "muzzle" velocities.

Even though the concepts that I described above have both almost certainly been addressed by multiple sources prior to any thought of my own on these subjects and in much more detail, I feel that they may be worthy of atleast further and much more detailed analysis than can be provided here. Other concepts such as: beam energy powered craft including beamed massive and/or massless particle momentum transfer schemes, as well as beamed energy photovoltaic and/or turbo electric powered ion and/or electron drives; fusion rockets; matter/antimatter annihilation powered rockets; the more efficient typss of interstellar ramjets; and perhaps even very large multi-generation, nuclear fission powered, space "arcs" that reach a teminal velocity of perhaps only a few percent of C may be what practical manned flight to stars requires if manned missions to the nearest stars are going to be launched during the 21st Century.

Concepts such as or related to; space warp drives, wormholes, quantum mechanical tunneling somehow induced on macroscopic scales. teleportation, etc. are good for further theoretical and perhaps at somepoint fruitful experimental research. However, before any such transport method can be developed, we might need to additionally put a lot more effort into propulsiom methods that we know reaonably well can probably result in human kind arriving at Proxima Centuri, Bernard's Star, and the like within the latter half of the 21st Century if adequate funding presents itself. This, in and of itself, would be great scientific, techical and cultural achievment.

To the stars!

Hopeful, Rancho, CA — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:46:53 GMT

With the right ideas we can achieve interstellar flight sooner than later.

Today, about 4 terawatts of power is produced on Earth. It could be beamed to the moon, received and rebeamed to other bodies in the solar system, received again and used to power masers or particle accelerators which could be arranged along a path.

Multiple small (< 1kg) craft could be accelerated using solar sails or M2P2 at 100G for 2 wks across our solar system to achieve about .1c. These could join to form several larger craft.

Early craft would identify a good landing site. Later craft would decelerate using a magnetic field. They would land on a mars-like planet and use CO2, water ice, & soil to prepare for the final craft.

The final craft would have stem cells that could grow blood and other organs such as a uterus which would be implanted by a frozen embryo. A human would later be born and raised in an automated way through robots or virtual reality. The programs to do this would be transmitted by Earth decades after the ship left the solar system so we wouldn't have to know how to do this all initially. With a viable human in another solar system additional steps would be taken to reproduce, colonize, industrialize and paraform the planet.

Much of the technology could be dual use:
- Power for lunar & other colonies,
- acceleration of probes throughout the solar system,
- stem cell research for medical purposes,
- automated oxygen, water, fuel production to establish colonies on other solar system bodies,
- magnetic field craft for solar system travel, and
- virtual reality for the fun of it

No questionable physics is needed.

To the stars!

James M. Essig — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:26:56 GMT

Hi Hopeful;

Very interesting ideas. I could see using such a system to gradually colonize the Milky Way over a period of a few million years. Such a huge increase in human population could have the additional benefit of providing more brilliant minds to develop new propulsion systems and new physics perhaps paving the way for manned travel to other galaxies and perhaps throughout the observable universe and beyond.

To the stars!

Mohammad Mansouryar, Karaj, Iran — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:54:07 GMT

Going to the stars, maybe I could realize it at Iran.

To the stars!

Trex for Out-A-Earth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:55:50 GMT

there is one theory I saw recently (I think it appeared in late 2008 judging by the dates on web site..).

It's called "FTL theory" and is not published, as far as I can tell. So I don't know if it's worthy or not.

But it appears interesting because it postulates that time dilation is related to probability to detect time of random events. It goes on about nature of time, and then arrives to the result that relativistic effects (for both Special and General Relativity) diminish with distance. There is no direct dispute of Einstein's stuff, in fact it claims Einstein is right, but that nature of time is such that above turns to be true.

So it says that we were wrong all along to think that simple acceleration will prevent us from reaching and exceeding speed of light.

It says that time dilation, mass increase etc will appear initially, but then will diminish as we move away from large masses (i.e. go into deep space).

It would be very very funny if this (or some other theory like it) is actually true.

It would mean we're sitting on this bucket of water (called Earth) and in our heads we think it's impossible to exceed speed of light.

While all the time it was essentially within our reach. All we had to do was to go out and push. Maybe. Maybe not. But can't keep but wondering because nobody really tried it.

Anyway, the web site for theory is

http://www.ftl-theory.org

I saw text there change in the past week, so it seems to be work in progress..