[Jay-qu]

well then i would also like to 'pick a nit'. wont most of the higher orbit stuff falling just burn up in the atmosphere...

[TheFaithfulStone]

Still, I'm wondering how Han Solo walked around the Millenium Falcon?? Is there a way to induce Earth like-Gravity??
Gravity Inducer..??

Sure - just accelerate at 9.8 m/s/s straight UP, relative to your head.

Voila! Earth normal gravity.



But seriously, walk around on the deck like that? Nope. Gravity control is essential to reasonable interstellar travel - if you have gravity control you're a hop skip and a jump from effective FTL (maybe) or failing that, Firefly type travel (mass control). Gravity control is a "holy grail" technology. If you find it, (and you can convince everyone it works) you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

TFS

[Jay-qu]

Originally Posted by TheFaithfulStone

Sure - just accelerate at 9.8 m/s/s straight UP, relative to your head.

Voila! Earth normal gravity.



But seriously, walk around on the deck like that? Nope. Gravity control is essential to reasonable interstellar travel - if you have gravity control you're a hop skip and a jump from effective FTL (maybe) or failing that, Firefly type travel (mass control). Gravity control is a "holy grail" technology. If you find it, (and you can convince everyone it works) you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

TFS

or live inside a spinning cylinder thats rotating at the speed needed for its diameter to produce a 9.8m/s/s acceleration towards the middle.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Skywyze

I agree that colonization is possible without these technologies, and in fact I think colonization is possible NOW. However, I believe you are underestimating the rate of technological advancement, which is proceeding at an exponential rate itself. A few centuries is a VERY long time for technological growth, just look at the last century...

I hope I am – space elevators are beautiful technologies I’d love to live to see. I’m far from certain they will ever exist, though, as the engineering challenges they present are, to repeat myself truly daunting.

Consider this scenario: Advanced semi-autonomous unmanned vehicles, launched using 20th century technology, arrive after the usual multi-year trip in the Jovian moon/ring system. There, some drop electricity-generating tethers onto the surfaces of suitable minor moons, using the power to extract silicates and metals to construct large solar-power panels, more vehicles, and special-purpose particle accelerator/collector/refrigerators. Others collect hydrogen and oxygen from the atmospheres of Jupiter and Europa for use in conventional rocket motors. After decades of mining and assembly, immense solar-powered particle accelerators are boosted out of Jovian orbit into long, low-energy transfer orbits, ending in solar orbits closer than that of Mercury. There, they generate and expend hundreds of thousands of times the current artificial electrical output of Earth to, at very low efficiency, create, cool, and store at near absolute zero hundreds of kilograms of anti-hydrogen. This anti-hydrogen is used to fuel human passenger capable spacecraft capable of sustained multi-g acceleration and repeated Earth landings and launches.

Once started, the industry-like process can expand, though not to unlimited size, to a great enough size that, after 50 to 75 years, transportation from Earth to other locations in the solar system is as available as 20th century air travel. Limiting acceleration to a human-comfortable 1 g, inner-planet destinations require 1-2 day flights, Jupiter 3-4 days, Neptune, the outermost great planet, 7-8, Pluto and other Kuiper objects 9+.

Here is a highly energy-inefficient technological system that completely opens the solar system to human colonization, yet requires no material unavailable in the 20th century. The great virtue of space elevators are their energy efficiency. In a technological system with abundant energy, elegant as they are, space-elevators might be as irrelevant as super-efficient light-emitting panels are in present day, modestly electric energy-rich, incandescent light-bulb-loving 1st world countries.

This is, or course, clearly just on of many speculative scenarios, no more necessarily likely than a low-energy, high-efficiency solar system-colonizing civilization with super-strong materials and space elevators. But it’s no less necessarily likely, either.

[Skywyze]

Originally Posted by TheFaithfulStone

Not exactly true. The outer end flys off into space (beginning at GEO I think, and the rest comes down, but it has to fall for such a long distance, and nanotubes are so light that it would be more like a world wide ticker tape parade than anything, plus, it would fall right around the equator, which of course, is a spot on earth where there just aren't that many people.

A space elevator collapse would be more of a disaster because it took a long time to build that damn thing than it would for stuff falling to earth.

TFS
[just picking a nit.]

Good point!

[Skywyze]

Originally Posted by TheFaithfulStone

Gravity control is a "holy grail" technology. If you find it, (and you can convince everyone it works) you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Heim Quantum Theory proposes a test that would prove or disprove it, I say we try it. If it works it would give us greater understanding and control of gravity, and would even allow for anti-grav and "Gravity-Inducers." If Burkard Heim is right, Star Wars won't be all that far off...

[TheFaithfulStone]

Add your thoughts.

http://hypography.com/forums/physics...im-theory.html

I've done some more research into this and have come to the conclusions that its BS. BUT, I do think that Heim has some pretty profound insights. It's his math that seems iffy. (You know, according to people who understand math.)

TFS

[Skywyze]

Could you explain to me why you came to such a conclusion, or have you, like so many others, outright rejected Heim's theory based solely on the fact that you dont understand it?

[Racoon]

This is still brainstorming.

Colonizing the Solar system and beyond,,

Maybe a feed tube might not be the best idea.
Maybe start a feed/nano tube after you got it off of Earth.
No re-entry repurcussions..

Meanwhile you tap The Solar Energy at Moon Stations. Build a moon Base. Moon base would be easier to blast off from!
Gonna need Oxygen..
Other things..

Send the tube from there like a Railroad system. Establish contact..
And spread like Pioneers!!

[TheFaithfulStone]

If you'll post your thoughts in the Heim Theory thread, we can talk about it there. I don't want to hijack this thread though.

TFS