Ok so we have the technology to reach the nearest star right now, so why don't we cut through the red tape...?

Question

and get things moving, sure the spaceship would take about 50 years to get there and cost trillions of dollars and we would have to make a law letting nuclear rockets into space, but we have the technology now to do it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

Answer 1

It would cost everybody in the US working on almost nothing else, for several years.  If you think you can make every man, woman, and child in the US a slave to such an idea, then you are a dangerous person.

On the other hand, if we wait 2000 years, the cost will go down dramatically. It will cost only 1 million dollars (todays dollars), and a rich person could do it on her own.

Answer 2

We really don't have the technology to get to Mars.  There are significant problems with radiation, even if you aren't exploding nuclear bombs at close range for propulsion.

This video is really good.   Check it out.

Answer 3

we don't have such technology. it's a long way from design studies to a workable space ship.

how are you going to maintain stable funding for that long? funding from one year to the next is problematic at most levels of government. to put it in perspective, this is a project that was begun in 1955 and could not produce any results, even in theory, until now. it only took 6 months for ppl to lose interest in teh moon after apollo 11.

how do you propose keeping the crew alive and healthy for that long?

the u.s. federal government budget is about $2.75 trillion, of which nasa get about $17 billion, and ppl complain about excessive spending. how do you propose swinging this?

Answer 4

I don't think that the technology exists to send a probe to Alpha Centauri in 50 years. The project would use those nuclear powered ion drives, accelerating halfway (using up most of the fuel) and decelerating the other half. It might piggyback on a specially designed interplanetary probe until it was past Saturn's orbit and on a hyperbolic asymptote to its destination. Then the ion drive would start. But I don't think this is doable as yet, not only because the project's expense is not justified by the expected return, but also because there have been no tested prototypes for "fast" interstellar probes.

Think about this, too. Over the years there have been more than a hundred space shuttle launches. Every single one of them has resulted in the jettisoning of a large external tank that, for a small addition of boost energy, could have been put into Earth orbit for conversion into a habitat, subsequently linked together for a much better space station than the one that presently exists. But was the money for the needed extra energy forthcoming? No. Why not? Politicians like to grandstand and posture. They claim to "trim the fat," and the gullible voters believe them, though what they cut are the best uses of money, while the corrupt and worthless expenditures remain fully funded.

In other words, if a worthy project needs the support of a vacillating "popular" government, on a sustained basis for a long time, then you might as well forget it.

Answer 5

Baby steps King, baby steps. We got to the moon, but we never went back because we were pushing the limit bak in the 60s. Now we are going back and staying and hopefully from there we will go to Mars... maybe even put a base there.

I once saw a documentery when I was 12 or so about space travel in the future. If we sent large space slow spaceships to other stars by the time they get there newer faster ships would have been created, sent, arrived, and began building cities.

And technology isn't there yet either. I don't even think getting there in 50 years is an option right now. Nuclear powered ion drives (not nuclear rockets) which fire small amounts of ions at very high speeds are very efficient with the mass of fuel they take and can get up to speed no rocket could, but it takes quite awhile to speed up. This hypothetical ship would be constantly running its engines until the half-way point where it would turn them around to begin deccelerating... so the ship would only be at its maximum speed for a little while. But you are right about the price. A few trillion dollars should cover it... are you willing to sacrifice 90% of your paycheck to the Uncle Sam? I'm not.

And did you mean manned or unmanned?

If you meant unmanned we would need to create a probe that could think and decide for itself. It would take several years for any signal it transmits to get to us so it cannot be remotely controlled. That kind of computing power and software isn't available today and even if it was, that is trillions of dollars and probably 100 years of time to just take pictures of any planets that might be around said star.

If you meant manned than either you put a couple of todlars in a capsule, train them during the journey, and let them die in another solar system or build a generation ship. A generation ship is a spaceship that people live and have kids on. It would have to have hundreds of people to mantain genetetic diversity and would have to be massive to sustain them for the long journey. The original astronauts' children and grandchildren would probably be the ones exploring the star, the originals would have died of old age en route. To build a ship capable of sustaining a small community and accelerate it to another solar system and back would probably take all of mankinds ingenuity and knowhow over the next hundred years to build and cost tens of trillions of dollars at least.

The first ship isn't very morale and the second is not feesable, but if human cryo-stasis is worked out than maybe people could be sent to other solar system aboard large (but not impossibly big) ships and put to sleep for most of the journey. They would wake up, do there experiments, go back to sleep, and return. This journey would take hundreds of years, but the explorers would only experience a few years worth. However, as we both know one cannot freeze humans (yet) and there is still a lot to learn about our own solar system. Heres a good analogy "Why try learning calculus when you don't know how to add?"... babysteps.

Answer 6

I'm familiar with Project Orion, but as with many such things, the devil is in the details.  As Suitti says, with respect to a Mars voyage, part of the problem is not just getting there, but delivering a live crew and/or intelligent machinery to yield useful results.  The trip to alpha Centauri is long enough and expensive enough that a mere proof-of-concept trip is not likely to entice anyone to spend the required money.

So, although we have the technology to supply enough propulsion to get to the stars, we also have to have guidance systems beyond what we currently have (in my opinion), fault-tolerant systems much more robust than we currently have, and perhaps most importantly, a compelling scientific problem that will convince people to spend "trillions of dollars."  I'm all for space exploration, but this doesn't seem like something to do "just because."  Maybe private space exploration will supply a way, but this project seems too large.

Answer 7

Simply because there is not a great enough incentive to reach Alpha A or Alpha B.

Sure, we probably could do it, but the effort involved is much better spent doing other things, we haven't even gotten to another planet, why try another star?

Also, we don't even know whether Alpha A or Alpha B have planets suitable for colonization.

Answer 8

That’s a probe, not a manned expedition.  

What few people can’t understand is the difference between manned and unmanned missions.  It is dangerous enough getting humans into orbit.  The trip to Mars will cause untold stresses on humans, and there are thousands of obstacles to overcome before that can happen.  

Now let’s get this straight – the nearest stars are hundreds of thousands to millions of times further than Mars.  Get that in your mind.  

So, the 50 year trip in this nuclear ship is just going to be a bunch of instruments.  It will only be able to go to one star in a lifetime.  Earth based instruments can study millions of stars on any night.  

Sorry, but if you were a little more worldly, you would understand that any project is based on a feasibility study.  Spending trillions to get a few instruments to one star (that may of may not have interesting planets) is just totally totally infeasible.  You need some kind of payback.  

The world can’t afford spending that kind of money on whimsy, or do you not read the news.