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Re:Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86 by gpm on Sunday May 27, 2018 @12:34AM (#17165446)
Interplanetary travel is pretty clearly possible, so I assume you mean single solar system cultures.

It doesn't seem likely to me that that is the case. The energy/time requirements to go the closest neighbouring star aren't really that high in the grand scheme of things. Accelerating one ton to c/10 takes 125 terrawatt hours, less than 0.1% of our current annual energy usage. We could then reach the nearest star/expolanet in ~40 years (taking a similar amount of energy to decelerate).

Obviously we aren't putting that much energy into a rocket tomorrow, but give it a few hundred years of technology development and it seems pretty reasonable.

Re:Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86 by simonh on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:04AM (#17165999)
As an exercise, work out how much energy it would take to transport a capsule with three people in it to the moon orbit, send a 2 person capsule to the surface and bring them back. Just raw theoretical energy. Then work out how much actual energy the Apollo program took to build an entire Saturn V rocket and all associated infrastructure. Bear in mind most of the time you’re not just accelerating th capsules, you’re also accelerating the rest of the rocket at various stages. The rocket equation is a harsh mistress. I think you’ll find you are many orders of magnitude off.
Re:Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86 by gpm on Sunday May 27, 2018 @09:14AM (#17166764)
There are various ways to cheat the rocket equation that weren't possible during Apollo because of our level of technology, and to some extent the constraints of a mission where a substantial portion of the energy is consumed getting to LEO. I don't want to suggest I know how to build an interplanetary spaceship accelerator, but here are some common basic ideas

- Accelerate the ship be pointing lasers (or something that accelerates matter) at it from the launch point. Now one doesn't need to carry fuel and the rocket equation no longer applies.

- Use some form of ion engine where we accelerate particles to very high speed relative to chemical rockets. This makes the rocket equation very tame since so little of the mass (relatively speaking) is in propellant.

- Combine the above ion engine with some form of "ramjet" that takes hydrogen we collide with and turns it into fuel. This makes the rocket equation irrelevant since we don't carry our fuel (to the extent that we can get our fuel via the ramjet anyways).

Also as laumars says the 0.1% of annual energy usage was just a point of comparison because terwatts is such a foreign unit to most of us (including me) that it doesn't mean anything by itself.

Re:Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86 by gus_massa on Sunday May 27, 2018 @04:17PM (#17168901)
You forgot the option of the one-way trip. It's not possible for the Moon, but it may be acceptable for Mars.
Re:Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86 by laumars on Sunday May 27, 2018 @05:10AM (#17166148)
The annual energy point is a point of comparison. Obviously we don't have the means of delivering the enegery required yet, and when we do I like to assume many of the issues you raised would also be possible to work around. Such as not requiring as much weight (samples plus autonomous ship and AI means we might not even need to send humans out there in the first shipment).
Re:Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86 by zaarn on Monday May 28, 2018 @02:48AM (#17170935)
>Accelerating one ton to c/10 takes 125 terrawatt hours, less than 0.1% of our current annual energy usage. We could then reach the nearest star/expolanet in ~40 years (taking a similar amount of energy to decelerate).

The first rule of rocketry: For every ton you fire up add 10 tons to what you fire up.

There is a reason space is hard and that is that every ton you launch will require fuel to get into orbit. And now you have to accelerate the fuel for the majority of the way too so you need more fuel. But that also needs fuel ... etc.

Shooting up 0.1% of our annual energy usage will require an exponential amount of energy to get up.

The biggest rocket I ever build in KSP weighed in at 500'000 tons. With a 1 ton payload it only achieves about 250km/s acceleration. That's less than c/1000.

The Saturn V weighs 3'000 tons and has significantly less thrust (though NASA engines outperform KSP engines).

It's simply not realistic to achieve unless you manage to fire up the mentioned 0.1% of our current annual energy production PER ton of weight.