For my third project checkpoint, I wanted to get at least one interview with an expert in Astrophysics or a related field. As the checkpoint came up, I began working on trying to get a phone interview with Dr. Jason Lisle from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). Dr. Jason Lisle is a firm believer in God, and debates well-known secularist scientist such as Hugh Ross on subjects like the origin or age of the earth, evolution, and other highly controversial subjects in the modern scientific community. I wanted to interview Dr. Lisle in addition to another rather well-known scientist with opposite beliefs, so that I could see if scientists who believe different things have varying viewpoints on the possibility of going interstellar.
As time went on, I kept trying to set up an interview with Jason Lisle, but it did not end up working out. As for getting an interview with a secularist scientist, I didn't even know where to start because all my connections were with creationists, so I kind of gave up there. By the time I realized I wouldn't be able to set up an interview with a prestigious scientist from either side of the scientific community, it was too late. My project was coming to an end, but I still had to talk to someone despite this problem. One thing I thought I could use as a fill-in for my interview was a talk with my neighbor who is a space engineer.
As you may recall, back in the beginning of my project, I coincidentally had quite a long and insightful talk with my neighbor, Mr. Young who is a space engineer at ULA (United Launch Alliance), while having dinner at their house. Basically I just told Mr. Young about my project on the possibility of human-kind going interstellar, and he sort of began giving me his assessment of this rather abstract idea, while backing it up with information about current space exploration technology. He gave me info on things in space tourism such as a not so far off sub-orbital tour spacecraft, or a space hotel in orbit around the world. Although the things he talked about seem infinitesimal compared to the extremities of travelling to another galaxy or even solar system.
One thing that caught my attention while we were talking, and I'm sure it will make you perk up too if I explain it right, was a concept that he explained to me about the speed of light. What he said was that we have misinterpreted Einstein's limitation on the speed of light, and rather than nothing being able to travel faster than the speed of light at nearly 300 million meters per second, it is possible to travel faster than that, but you just would not be able to see it. An example he used to explain it was sound. With sound, if something is travelling faster than the speed of sound and you can only observe the position of this object through sound, the position where you observe it to be, and the position where it actually is, is going to be different. So what Mr. Young said, was that maybe it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light, but since light essentially allows us to use the sense of sight, if something theoretically was travelling faster than 300 million meters per second, the position we observed it to be at, through sight, and the position where it actually was, would be different. This is very interesting to think about because if this was actually the case, it would have incredible repercussions on space exploration.
I also talked briefly to one of Mr. Young's co-worker's, Mr Sievers from the United Launch Alliance, who is the propulsion system design manager for all the rockets they build. Todd Sievers came in to speak to my class about what he does and what his company does. While he was speaking to us, he showed us the near future of space exploration, of which, going interstellar was not in the picture. After Todd spoke to the class, I talked to him briefly about going interstellar. Essentially Todd told me that right now, we just don't have the technology to go interstellar in a reasonable, timely way. Of course there are some possibilities of going interstellar, but none of them are very realistic or good ideas.
As time went on, I kept trying to set up an interview with Jason Lisle, but it did not end up working out. As for getting an interview with a secularist scientist, I didn't even know where to start because all my connections were with creationists, so I kind of gave up there. By the time I realized I wouldn't be able to set up an interview with a prestigious scientist from either side of the scientific community, it was too late. My project was coming to an end, but I still had to talk to someone despite this problem. One thing I thought I could use as a fill-in for my interview was a talk with my neighbor who is a space engineer.
As you may recall, back in the beginning of my project, I coincidentally had quite a long and insightful talk with my neighbor, Mr. Young who is a space engineer at ULA (United Launch Alliance), while having dinner at their house. Basically I just told Mr. Young about my project on the possibility of human-kind going interstellar, and he sort of began giving me his assessment of this rather abstract idea, while backing it up with information about current space exploration technology. He gave me info on things in space tourism such as a not so far off sub-orbital tour spacecraft, or a space hotel in orbit around the world. Although the things he talked about seem infinitesimal compared to the extremities of travelling to another galaxy or even solar system.
One thing that caught my attention while we were talking, and I'm sure it will make you perk up too if I explain it right, was a concept that he explained to me about the speed of light. What he said was that we have misinterpreted Einstein's limitation on the speed of light, and rather than nothing being able to travel faster than the speed of light at nearly 300 million meters per second, it is possible to travel faster than that, but you just would not be able to see it. An example he used to explain it was sound. With sound, if something is travelling faster than the speed of sound and you can only observe the position of this object through sound, the position where you observe it to be, and the position where it actually is, is going to be different. So what Mr. Young said, was that maybe it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light, but since light essentially allows us to use the sense of sight, if something theoretically was travelling faster than 300 million meters per second, the position we observed it to be at, through sight, and the position where it actually was, would be different. This is very interesting to think about because if this was actually the case, it would have incredible repercussions on space exploration.
I also talked briefly to one of Mr. Young's co-worker's, Mr Sievers from the United Launch Alliance, who is the propulsion system design manager for all the rockets they build. Todd Sievers came in to speak to my class about what he does and what his company does. While he was speaking to us, he showed us the near future of space exploration, of which, going interstellar was not in the picture. After Todd spoke to the class, I talked to him briefly about going interstellar. Essentially Todd told me that right now, we just don't have the technology to go interstellar in a reasonable, timely way. Of course there are some possibilities of going interstellar, but none of them are very realistic or good ideas.