[Lore]

Speaking of which, The Moody Blues singing The Best Way To Travel in 1968, brief musical interlude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqOiZjwQKaU

[sparky]

.
Agent11 has a point
the aristotelian system took the Earth as the fixed point ,
the agument of a Solar centric system was refuted by observation
if it was the case there should have been an observable paralax shift of the stars between summer and winter
none could be observed , the ancients went for a Earthcentric system
during the Middle ages the debate kept going , with some pretty cogent arguments

the star parallax was observed in the twentieth century , it's so small

[dissident]

So we will know where to go on this one way inter-stellar trip?

These pellet nuke propulsion designs are 1950s crap. There is no material that will stand up to this type of cycled stress for 50 years. They will only understand all of the resonances in the space ship when they build it and they will have to build several prototypes. A rather big expense for trial and error. Better not to go down the wrong design path to start with.

This bread and circuses project will take more than 100 years just to get started. Things evolve rapidly only in sci-fi. By 2100 there may be no global civilization after the agricultural collapse due to AGW. I am going to pretend we will find an alternative energy utopia, but that is not likely to happen either.

[sparky]

Another factor is loss of gases and water by diffusion , it would take a un-existing technology to keep the gases from leaking out taking huge mozza of reserves only delay depletion beside increasing the original payload

there is good factual evidence that human in Zero gravity become mush after a year
and that boxing people in small space for years would make them psychotic

[dissident]

Yes, indeed. They would need a rotating environment to create a fake gravity from centrifugal forces. But the leakage issue is not something that can be addressed. Especially if the fuel is supposed to be hydrogen. It will have to be ammonia or methane. But 50 years is too long for gas-tight conditions and leakage of air and fuel will get worse and worse as the seals and materials age.

They also pretend they can survive impacts with various space debris including micro-meteorites. It's an interesting catch 22: the faster you go the more damage you get which could lead to mission failure and the slower you go the longer the exposure time to breakdown of materials and bombardment by anything from gamma rays to galactic cosmic rays (GCR). GCR maximizes outside the solar system. The magnetic field of the Sun shields us from these high energy (GeV range) nucleons much like the Earth's magnetic field shields us from the solar wind and CMEs.

[sparky]

.
We need a space warp technology , pity it doesn't exist ( I know , wormholes )
not even as a science , not even as a theoretical framework

If you want to straddle the cosmos , don't go there , make it come to you
it's simpler

[dbruning]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-575 ... e1.channel

I'd be ok with Warp 10.... Of course this is only theory, but they are working on a tiny tiny tiny proof of concept. Here's hoping

[vaseline2008]

Researchers working on Star Trek-style fusion impulse engines

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he drive should/would/will be based on the principle of Z-pinch fusion. A Z-pinch, for you physics fans, is when you run a huge jolt of electricity through an array of tiny wires, turning them into a plasma and generating a massive magnetic field at the same time. The field "pinches" the plasma, collapsing it down onto a core of deuterium and lithium, causing those atoms to fuse and releasing a big burst of fusion energy- more than it took to set the Z-pinch off in the first place.