To create a spacefaring civilization

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11 Aug 2011, 1:44 pm

ruveyn wrote:

androbot2084 wrote:

But with a Helium 3 bomb there would be no radiation if it were a pure fusion device.

Wrong. H-bombs are triggered by A-bombs. It is the only way to get the hydrogen to a high enough temperature to fuse.

ruveyn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon

But yeah, that is far away from current technology.

ValentineWiggin
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11 Aug 2011, 3:30 pm

Antimatter.

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11 Aug 2011, 3:50 pm

I think Helium 3 bombs are the best method of propulsion with today's technology. They give off very little radiation or even zero radiation with laser ignition and can lift thousands of tons of payloads into space as well as having interstellar capability.

Of course anti-matter is a hundred times more powerful but we currently lack the infrastructure and technology to create and store sufficient amounts for space travel. The amounts of anti-matter produced by our greatest atom smashers would barely power a light bulb.

ruveyn
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11 Aug 2011, 3:51 pm

androbot2084 wrote:

that is probably less than 10 kg of anti-matter created on on the planet earth in the last 40 years and it is all man made. It is fantastically expensive. Forget about anti-matter as a propulsion fuel.

ruveyn

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11 Aug 2011, 3:54 pm

androbot2084 wrote:

We don't have the technology for either of those. The biggest complete project that tried to fuse Deuterium/Tritium with the use of lasers (called the Shiva reactor, I think) failed completely. They couldn't get enough energy to start the reaction.

Edit: Although I think we might be able to use antimatter in the future. It's just too hard to make and store right now.

ruveyn
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11 Aug 2011, 4:06 pm

Scandium wrote:

Edit: Although I think we might be able to use antimatter in the future. It's just too hard to make and store right now.

It is also hard to make. The cost per unit of weight of anti-matter is tens of thousands of times the cost of gold.

ruveyn

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11 Aug 2011, 4:19 pm

How about this: an incredibly voluminous spacecraft, taking advantage of the cube square law and buoyancy for the first stage of assent, non orbital but still gaining potential energy. A valve system would allow for the shedding of helium so as to maintain equalized pressure. It will only go so high via buoyancy, but after that stage of assent is reached, then chemical thrusters would be activated to reach orbit. How does that sound conceptually?

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11 Aug 2011, 4:22 pm

It might be more practical to make smaller fission triggers to ignite fusion bombs in order to reduce the radiation to insignificant amounts rather than make a pure fusion bomb.

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11 Aug 2011, 4:25 pm

androbot2084 wrote:

It might be more practical to make smaller fission triggers to ignite fusion bombs in order to reduce the radiation to insignificant amounts rather than make a pure fusion bomb.

NPP would use tactical nukes, not strategic nukes. The magnitude of device employed would be around 0.1 kiloton, not 50 megatons.

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11 Aug 2011, 4:42 pm

How about sending robots out with ion engines for now? I read that a ship with ion engines could reach half of the speed of light within four years. So maybe we can send automated robots (pretested in our solar system, of course) to Alpha Centauri with ion engines, then start slowing down halfway and have the robots do stuff on their own for a while. It's a long shot, but maybe if they reach the system in fifteen years, we can start receiving updates from them after about 20 years. Then once we find a viable solution to long-distance space travel, we can send manned missions (actually, I don't think that will ever work) to the star system and the robots would have already harvested materials and built some stuff for the colonists.

On second thought, I don't think that will ever work until we invent teleportation, which is being worked on right now. I think the most that has been teleported was a few hundred Rubidium atoms.

ruveyn wrote:

Scandium wrote:

Edit: Although I think we might be able to use antimatter in the future. It's just too hard to make and store right now.

It is also hard to make. The cost per unit of weight of anti-matter is tens of thousands of times the cost of gold.

And it takes too long.

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11 Aug 2011, 5:15 pm

A nuclear pulse propulsion drive has been designed to use 300,000 H-bombs each with a one megaton blast. However the pusher plate would have to be 1300 feet wide.

ruveyn
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11 Aug 2011, 5:30 pm

androbot2084 wrote:

A nuclear pulse propulsion drive has been designed to use 300,000 H-bombs each with a one megaton blast. However the pusher plate would have to be 1300 feet wide.

Yoda says: do not your breath hold until a nuclear rocket have we else blue turn you will.

ruveyn

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11 Aug 2011, 5:38 pm

ruveyn wrote:

androbot2084 wrote:

A nuclear pulse propulsion drive has been designed to use 300,000 H-bombs each with a one megaton blast. However the pusher plate would have to be 1300 feet wide.

Yoda says: do not your breath hold until a nuclear rocket have we else blue turn you will.

ruveyn

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11 Aug 2011, 5:48 pm

Since nuclear rockets are the only way we can get rid of nuclear weapons they will have to be built.

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11 Aug 2011, 6:27 pm

androbot2084 wrote:

Since nuclear rockets are the only way we can get rid of nuclear weapons they will have to be built.

Or we can let nuclear weapons expire. Or build a power plant fueled by nuclear weapons.

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11 Aug 2011, 6:33 pm

The US at it's peak had 30,000 nuclear warheads. Today we have 5,000.

They dismantle them all the time. Not a big deal.

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