[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')It is also a fact, that humans had newer tried to live in alien planetary system.
Even if not constructed or evolved to live there, they may ADAPT easily should conditions there sufficiently remain ours.
Look on rabbits in Australia for precedence.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seldom_seen', 'A')hh...space. The ultimate techno-fix fantasy...To think that we can manage critical resources on some space station light years away is just ludicrous when we can't even manage the abundant resources we have here on earth...Hawking is just expressing the ancient and primordial urge to expand carrying capacity through the conquest of new habitat when population pressure increases. He's trying to address the problem of overpopulation, but never mentioning it.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', 'W')ould you send even one person to alpha centauri not knowing if it is habitable, and knowing there is no return?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', 'W')ould you send even one person to alpha centauri not knowing if it is habitable, and knowing there is no return?

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')Any scientific evidence for that?

[lateStarter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seldom_seen', 'A')hh...space. The ultimate techno-fix fantasy...To think that we can manage critical resources on some space station light years away is just ludicrous when we can't even manage the abundant resources we have here on earth...Hawking is just expressing the ancient and primordial urge to expand carrying capacity through the conquest of new habitat when population pressure increases. He's trying to address the problem of overpopulation, but never mentioning it.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')Any scientific evidence for that?

[mercury121]

I believe humanity will make it into space but most definitely not in our lifetimes. The energy to get into space will have to come from renewable energy resources like wind and solar. Colonizing space will be done by ordinary people not elites. The ticket into space will be very expensive -- maybe about 10 years of saved up energy to hitch a ride in a cramped spaceship that is laser propelled from the ground. Then from there a person will link up with a spaceship that is propelled by the sun using sails that catch the solar wind. Forget rockets, they are way too inefficient because less than 5% of the mass of the rocket is payload.

I believe the world will make a transition to renewable power sources. And because renewable energy sources are well spread out, society will be decentralized and democractic. While experts say that renewable energy will not meet our energy needs -- it will only provide a fraction, but that is because they only count the most economic solutions. Sure there are relatively few places where wind blows strongly, but wind does blow nearly everywhere and that power can be harvested. So it will the ordinary people who for example homebuild their own windmills that will fill in the gaps.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mercury121', 'I') believe the world will make a transition to renewable power sources. And because renewable energy sources are well spread out, society will be decentralized and democractic. While experts say that renewable energy will not meet our energy needs -- it will only provide a fraction, but that is because they only count the most economic solutions. Sure there are relatively few places where wind blows strongly, but wind does blow nearly everywhere and that power can be harvested. So it will the ordinary people who for example homebuild their own windmills that will fill in the gaps.

[eric_b]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', 'W')ould you send even one person to alpha centauri not knowing if it is habitable, and knowing there is no return?

[grabby]

Well there it is then.nice wrapup.

BUT

Fusion is not sufficient EVEN IF WE HAD a MR.FUSION to go to the closest star.

Fusion requires throwing mass out the back for three years. No MSB\scss contained space ship has enough mass to throw out the back for three years.

We also dont have enough ethanol to run all the cars in the US even though it is a nice Idea. - had to throw that in)

A selfcontained spaceship with cows and chickens probably cannot accelerates at 1 G for any length of time without running out of cow waste products and you would have to chop up furniture to feed the rockets... Eventually just the motor would arrive. Not enough chicken poo to feed the fusion rocket.

Even lower acceleration like 1/2 G or 1/10 g or 1/111 G or 1/3,333 G or whatever NOT ENOUGH ROCKET FUEL (toothpicks sand gravel whatever to throw out the back) Using a LIGHT TORCH still not enough mass...

you run out of mass before you hit a star.

this is the problem with fusions rocket, not enough base product for conversion to mass ejection.

Same problem with ethanol, not enough biomass to make ethanol and not enougnh electricity.

Now if you could capture a black holw and tie it to the back, and through in matter, the hawking radiation would be 50% efficient and nearly as good as antimatter, and if it were fed from the back, the maass ejection would also push the black hole in the opposite direction.
then all you need is a mass/annuler to take the weight off the black hole and we are set to go!
Probably won't happen while Bush is in office.

Yes I grew up with all that heinlen stuff, and thought it could be done and would be very soon. I saw 2001: A space Odessey. And you know what?
It is 2006, The top of the peak, and looking over the cliff, hold your breath.

No jetsons, no Dick tracy mganetic flying buckets.

And then I realized. We gave up real science to a hallucinatory pipe-dream. We don't have the tehcnology, or power to build a second earth in space, and I realized mankind is not going to space in my lifetime, why waste time with this, live your life, go hiking, get a bike be with the family, space is a no-brainer snake oil gimmick. We were fed a bunch of hokey so that the technology could be developed to put up GPS and spy sattelites, and to make it possible to attack anyone anything and any city in under thirty minutes. Nice going. My tax dollars at work again.
Thats what they really wanted, power and my money..
sheesh.

So why thesudden PUSH FOR THE MOON?
well you need a space station good excuse.(no reasoon to go there exept take pictures of aldrins footy prints.
well, Inachay is going to space and who knows WHAT theya re doing, they need to get up there, cloak the satellite, open it up and evaluate their technolgy and disable them secretly so when they are needed they wont work.

Spcae is our achillies heel, Russia has told us already WE CAN NEUTRALIZE YOUR COUNTRY IN 30 MINUTES!
HIGH PULSE EMP. everything goes down incuding our rediculous digitized medical systema nd banking system. all kaput.

[grabby]

Don't fall for this going to the moon hot air. Call your congressman and tell him if he votes for a moon project you will never vote for him again, it is stupidity tospend another dollar on it.
Its all for military and thats it. The nail in our coffins when peak oil ticks everyone off.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', '
')Fusion requires throwing mass out the back for three years. No MSB\scss contained space ship has enough mass to throw out the back for three years.

[grabby]

I guess you missed my statement that even a "light torch" would not make it

a light torch fusion rocket is the kind you descripbe above.

for three years of fusion "LIGHT TORCH"
not enough mass again. go calculate it out.

[grabby]

Ok I'll do it for you for a antimatter rocket wihich is 20 times MORE POWERFUL than any fusion torch motor.

In an antimatter rocket, a dose of antihydrogen would mix with an equal amount of hydrogen in a combustion chamber. The mutual annihilation of a half pound of each, for instance, would unleash more energy than a 10-megaton hydrogen bomb, along with a shower of subatomic particles called pions and muons. These particles, confined within a magnetic nozzle similar to the type necessary for a fission rocket, would fly out the back at one-third of the speed of light. That fast exhaust would translate to a top speed of 66 percent of the speed of light.
"This is by far the most powerful rocket we can make," Frisbee says.
A two-stage antimatter rocket to Alpha Centauri would need some 900,000 tons of fuel and would arrive in about 41 years. A four-stage version (two to speed up, two to slow down) on a longer voyage would show the advantages of antimatter to better effect. According to Frisbee's calculations, it would need 38 million tons of antimatter fuel, but it would cut the trip to 55 Cancri, 41 light-years away, to an almost manageable 130 Earth years. The same trip would take 400 years using a fusion engine.

Ok we dont have 38 million tons of antimatter,

but since the FUSION TORCH ENGINE is about 20 times less efficient than antimatter.
The same motor in a fusion rocket with ONE PERSON ON BOARD reaching 10% C
woudl take 760 million tons of hydrogen deuterium tritium.

YOU
DONT
HAVE
ENOUGH
MASS
TO
THROW
OUT
THE BACK
even for a light torch rocket.

IT IS NOT GOING TO EVER HAPPEN ahny more than 85%ethanol is ever going to replace gasoline in Amrica.

alos the cost of 38 million tons of antimatter at 1 billion dollars a gram is only. 34,504,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

34.5 septillion dollars. putting them end to end
That twood be 17,252,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 inches
That twood be 14,376,666,666,666,667,000,000,000
feet of dollar bills laid end to end.

That twood be 272,285,353,535,353,550,000 miles
of dollar bills laid end to end.

Now, it is only
70,541,997,720,000 miles to alpha ceti
(12 light years away)

the dollar bills used to buy the antimatter would stretch, if laid end to end 3859904 times farther than alpha ceti.

so you couls use 4 million dollar bills laid end to end one every six inches to alpha ceti and that would be your cost to fly antimatter.

THE COST OF ANTIMATTER FLIGH TODAY IS
4 million dollars every six inches travelled..

Captain Kirk was a wealthy man!



TPIOOS TPIOOS TPIOOS
THE PROBLEM IS ONE OF SCALE - TPIOOS.
It can't be done in the real world, only in fantasy.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')Any scientific evidence for that?

[Jogger]

I wonder what Carl Sagan would say about our future if he were alive today. He mentioned in his book Cosmos that the nearest space civilization might be about 200 light years from Earth, and if their spaceships were headed towards Earth, they would be arriving in our solar system now. Maybe a spaceship and Peak Oil will arrive at the same time. Now that would make life interesting.

Most people probably don't realize that if our solar system had evolved in a different way we would not be here. Without our moon the Earth would be too unstable for intelligent life. Without Jupiter and the other gas planets the Earth would have been bombarded with so many comets that intelligent life probably would not have evolved. So finding a stable planet similar to Earth orbiting another star is going to be challenging.

[grabby]

Oh by the way a stack of dollar bills 4 million bills thick is about the sizze of a redwood tree diameter of 40 feet diameter by six inches thich.

so you could glue all the dollar bills together and make a redood tree 40 feet in diameter that stretches from earth to ALPHA CETI

this would be a TWO LANE BRIDGE stong enough FOR A CAR TO DRIVE ON that reaches from earth to alpha ceti cheaper than flying there with an antimatter powered rocket.
IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

[grabby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jogger', 'I') wonder what Carl Sagan would say about our future if he were alive today. He mentioned in his book Cosmos that the nearest space civilization might be about 200 light years from Earth, and if their spaceships were headed towards Earth, they would be arriving in our solar system now. Maybe a spaceship and Peak Oil will arrive at the same time. Now that would make life interesting.

Most people probably don't realize that if our solar system had evolved in a different way we would not be here. Without our moon the Earth would be too unstable for intelligent life. Without Jupiter and the other gas planets the Earth would have been bombarded with so many comets that intelligent life probably would not have evolved. So finding a stable planet similar to Earth orbiting another star is going to be challenging.

[grabby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '
') we had produced GM microorganisms capable to decompose TEFLON. .

[grabby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jogger', ' ')

Most people probably don't realize that if our solar system had evolved in a different way we would not be here. Without our moon the Earth would be too unstable for intelligent life. Without Jupiter and the other gas planets the Earth would have been bombarded with so many comets that intelligent life probably would not have evolved. So finding a stable planet similar to Earth orbiting another star is going to be challenging.