Tau Ceti's planets nearest around single, Sun-like star

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20770103

by morphics • 14 years ago

43 32 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

Tichy3• 14 years ago

Just looked on Wikipedia, it is 12 light years away. So how long to get there with conventional technology? I suspect speed isn't even the worst problem, harder to deal will radiation?

Also I suppose any such mission would have to be fully automated, remote debugging would be too frustrating with a 24 year round trip for information.

Have there been any spacecraft besides Voyager even launched beyond the boundaries of our solar system?

simfoo2• 14 years ago

> Have there been any spacecraft besides Voyager even launched beyond the boundaries of our solar system?

No.

> So how long to get there with conventional technology?

I don't have any precise numbers but I guess it would be in the neighborhood of 100000 years one-way with today's technology (if even possible)

Tichy3• 14 years ago

I just looked it up on Wolfram Alpha, apparently the speed of Voyager is 17km/s, or ~1/18000th the speed of light? So it would take Voyager 216000 years to make the journey? Bummer :-( We probably couldn't even build a probe that would last long enough?

etfb2• 14 years ago

We'll need either three or four quantum leaps in technology, or a sudden discovery that invalidates much of what we know about physics and/or cosmology, before even the Alpha Centauri planets become reachable. "Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand."

EliRivers• 14 years ago

A quantum leap is (on the order of, if you skip a level) the smallest possible increment. We're going to need much bigger leaps than that to do it in four or five leaps. :)

randallsquared3• 14 years ago

Using 1960s engineering (and many, many nuclear bombs), an Orion-powered starship could make it there in less than 150 years, one-way. And no slowing down; it would be a flyby.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...

tocomment2• 14 years ago

I don't see why it can't use atompsheric braking, or reverse slingshot effect amount the planets to slow down?

rdl3• 14 years ago

Can't you just turn around midway and start throwing bombs out in front of your path of travel to slow down?

eloisius• 14 years ago

A pretty interesting read that addresses these questions is

Deep Space Propulsion: A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight

http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Space-Propulsion-Interstellar-Ast...

TorKlingberg• 14 years ago

Radiation can be handled, just put shielding around the astronauts. That adds weight of course, which makes the spacecraft harder to accelerate.

Btw, even Voyager 1 is only 0.002 light years from earth.

ndonnellan• 14 years ago

I remember playing Outpost as a kid. Tau Ceti was definitely the best bet. I loved/hated the fact that you could send your colonists to a solar system that wasn't habitable and then the game would just be over in 5mins; your creepy AI giving you the bad news.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_(video_game)

martinkallstrom• 14 years ago

Perhaps Tau Ceti is even close enough to not be trapped to the paradox of interstellar travel: "No matter when you launch a voyage somewhere, some one else will build a better spaceship and get there before you."

Is there a sci-fi novel about this? (an interstellar space voyage for a remote planet discovers humans launching after them already have colonized it when they get there)

wazoox• 14 years ago

"The forever war" uses the time dilation of relativistic travel, which is a related concept.

Tau Ceti's planets nearest around single, Sun-like star

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