Re:Project Longshot: 100 Year probe mission to Alpha Centauri
by sown on Monday September 08, 2008 @01:18PM
(#298534)
I dunno.
Cars still travel more or less the same speed for the purpose of personal transport, etc. Getting to Alpha Centauri is going to take a fundamental change in space travel technology.
Also,
a) we had diesel/electric/gas motors a century ago,
b) would you believe that we had FWD/AWD a century ago? We did!
c) we've always had engines with insane number of cylinders d) i'll admit turbos are newer -- 1930's planes first used them
e) i still don't want to be in them and they're not foolproof as we as having different engineering goals than a normal car.
g) no comment. :)
h) so could the original jeep (GP)
i) have you seen the inside of a chevy recently?
Our current space travel tech needs a couple of orders of magnitude in improvement before we can just travel to distant stars at will. Your examples are incremental improvements to practical problems. In the mean time, I say we send a probe! :)
Cars still travel more or less the same speed for the purpose of personal transport, etc. Getting to Alpha Centauri is going to take a fundamental change in space travel technology.
Also, a) we had diesel/electric/gas motors a century ago, b) would you believe that we had FWD/AWD a century ago? We did! c) we've always had engines with insane number of cylinders d) i'll admit turbos are newer -- 1930's planes first used them e) i still don't want to be in them and they're not foolproof as we as having different engineering goals than a normal car. g) no comment. :) h) so could the original jeep (GP) i) have you seen the inside of a chevy recently?
Our current space travel tech needs a couple of orders of magnitude in improvement before we can just travel to distant stars at will. Your examples are incremental improvements to practical problems. In the mean time, I say we send a probe! :)