So I have been on my project for about one week now and have done some research that I think was beneficial but not extremely useful. So far I have browsed the web for some answers, but most of what I read about, I already knew from my PLN. I also encountered an unexpected source that I think was incredibly convenient. Tonight, my little sister was at her friends house across the street playing, and they came over to see if I wanted to go over to eat some of the leftovers from dinner, and being the teenage boy that I am, I excitedly accepted. Well I am happy to report that the food was insanely tasty and the cheesecake after was even better! But that's not the point. The father of my little sisters friend happens to be an engineer for a private launch company, and always provides me with provocative ideas in addition to good food (In fact, I have actually used Mr. Young to help me with previous projects). Well tonight while I was eating, a trailer for the new movie "Interstellar" began playing, which happens to be the entry event for my project (I'm going to see it tomorrow night with my parents), so, in my knowledge that Mr Young is a space engineer, I began talking to him about my outtake on what I've read about the movie. Our conversation rapidly escalated into me telling him about my project in Lights Academy, and upon which he began speculating his thoughts about the possibilities and limitations of humans going interstellar. One thing he said that really stuck with me was his theory on the speed of light. He explained it like this; If you have your eyes closed and a jet flies by you travelling at mach 1, and you are asked to point out where you think it is, you are going to point at a position in the sky based off where the sound is coming from. But, since the jet is travelling faster than sound, where you perceive the jet to be is actually behind its position in reality. "Well..." Mr Young said "I think that the same thing could happen with something travelling faster than the speed of light. Because light is what regulates our visual observation, something could theoretically travel faster than light, but the position that we observe it to be at is really behind its position in reality". Of course there are still physical limitations such as the fact that dust particles in the air would tear a ship apart if it is travelling at such a high speed, but the theoretical parts of what Mr Young was telling me was incredibly valuable.
Going back to the research I did on interstellar flight, I found many of the setbacks and impediments that are currently hindering interstellar flights with probes, rovers, satellites, etc. Some of the physical setbacks include;
In certain theories, scientist have proposed that we could possibly create giant spaceships that would carry entire societies and ecosystems in them, while travelling very slowly to an exo-planet, but there are many things wrong with these ideas, and it is still a very long way off, if it is at all possible. I hope to do more research on the different aspects of what interstellar travel would entice such as what long-term space travel would mean for humans (going into stasis, special relativity, etc.), but right now, the technology just isn't there for being able to go interstellar in the physical aspect.
Going back to the research I did on interstellar flight, I found many of the setbacks and impediments that are currently hindering interstellar flights with probes, rovers, satellites, etc. Some of the physical setbacks include;
- Travelling at high speeds (in proportion to the speed of light) is dangerous because tiny dust particles in space will tear apart the ship.
- We have no ship that is capable of travelling at even fractions of light speed.
- Even if we could travel at the speed of light, it would take hundreds of years at the least to get to a possibly habitable planet.
- We do not know enough about exo-planets to colonize them. We would have to send probes, rovers, and satellites to the planet before we could know enough to colonize, which provides us with huge limitations.
- We do not have fuel that is both efficient enough and has a powerful enough thrust to travel long distances at high speeds.
In certain theories, scientist have proposed that we could possibly create giant spaceships that would carry entire societies and ecosystems in them, while travelling very slowly to an exo-planet, but there are many things wrong with these ideas, and it is still a very long way off, if it is at all possible. I hope to do more research on the different aspects of what interstellar travel would entice such as what long-term space travel would mean for humans (going into stasis, special relativity, etc.), but right now, the technology just isn't there for being able to go interstellar in the physical aspect.