Firecrackers and warp drive
- May 8, 2009 3:54 PM |
- By Quirks
By Bob McDonald, host of the CBC science radio program Quirks & Quarks
While Trekkies around the world line up this weekend for the launch of the latest Star Trek movie, astronauts in Florida are preparing to launch Space Shuttle Atlantis to the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday.
It’s interesting to compare how far we have and have not come, considering the space program and the Hollywood series have been in existence almost the same length of time.
When the intrepid crew of the Starship Enterprise began their five-year mission in 1966, NASA was less than 10 years old and the space race to the moon, between Americans and Russians, was in full swing. Star Trek captured the spirit of the times, where humans were leaving planet Earth for the first time with visions of space hotels, colonies on the moon and trips to the planets well within the realm of possibility - which in technical terms they were.
40 years later, the fictional spacefarers have expanded across the galaxy, use wormholes as shortcuts and can even travel through time. Real astronauts, meanwhile, are strapping themselves into dangerous firecrackers that blast them into low orbits and cannot even reach the moon.
In fact, the plan to return to the moon involves going back to sixties-style technology with small, four-person capsules atop ballistic missiles that splash down in the ocean at the end of a mission. That’s a long way from a 642-metre-long Galaxy Class Starship with a crew of a thousand, a holodeck, and a lounge on the forward deck serving Romulan Ale.
In all fairness, our space program is still 200 years behind the fictional trail. And while Captain Kirk’s communicator has become a cellphone and phasers set to stun have become tasers (crude comparisons), we are a long, long way from freely hopping between the stars, meeting interesting aliens who all happen to be fluent in English.
The one thing that could really allow us to go anywhere in space, the one technical revolution that sent the Federation to the stars, the one we desperately need today, is warp drive. If there was only one fictional technology from Star Trek that we could have today that would change everything, warp drive is it. Sure, beam transporters would be handy, but we’d still be late for appointments. Food replicators would be convenient but we’d probably just eat more. With warp drive, spaceships could travel faster than light and astronauts wouldn’t need seatbelts.
And speaking of seatbelts, have you ever wondered why crew members aren’t flattened against the back wall, or why glasses don’t fly off tables when the Enterprise accelerates from a standing start to warp 9 in half a second?
The reason, according to the Starfleet Manuals, is because the ship warps space around itself, creating a bubble that compresses space-time in front and expands it behind. Within the bubble, everything remains normal, so no one feels the acceleration. Meanwhile, the bubble itself slips through space-time like a wet watermelon seed between your fingers. Nice idea. Too bad no one knows how to do it.
While Einstein described warped space around black holes and quantum physicists talk about tiny tubes of space-time rolled into sub-atomic strings, no one is anywhere near being able to manipulate the fabric of space itself. We can’t even figure out the most fundamental force in the universe, gravity, let alone surf on a gravitational wave.
So today we’re stuck with our explosive rockets that can barely make it out of the atmosphere because they run out of fuel in less than 10 minutes. As long as we stay with that crude technology, we’ll be confined to visiting the moon and nearby planets. Traveling to the nearest stars, at the moment, would take longer than a human lifetime.
In a way, our primitive space technology makes our current astronauts braver than the fictional crew of a starship. Climbing into a space shuttle carries a high risk of death, both on the way up and on the way down. Space walkers are exposed to the increasing hazard of space junk, where a space suit could be punctured by a small screw traveling at hypersonic speeds. Here in the 21st century, space travel is still very difficult, expensive and dangerous.
But while we may not be able to journey very far with our bodies, we can certainly see a lot farther. After this fourth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, the big eye in the sky will be more powerful than ever. And the discoveries it makes are stranger than any science fiction. Hubble can see out to the edge of the universe and back towards the beginning of time, much farther than any starship can go. It finds black holes hiding in the centers of galaxies, giant clouds giving birth to new stars, cosmic collisions on a scale that dwarfs Federation Space.
So let’s celebrate both, a flight of fancy to the limits of our imagination and a look out to the true mysteries of the universe that we may one day reach. After all, science fiction would be nowhere without the real science leading the way.
(And take a listen to our documentary tribute to Hubble on this week’s show.)
Bob McDonald
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Comments (14)
If you look at maned flight technology nothing much has happened in since the 70s ( private exploration the recent exception) But what a amazing bunch of things came out from the 50 - 70s and why? Funding must be part of it. What would happen if for the last 20 years the world had spent the money on expanding the technology rather than expanding conflicts? But sadly even taking a portion of that to spend & solve poverty and starvation.
Here's a couple of questions I've wondered about: 1) Why do we need to Blast into space? What about using jet engines, since many jet aircraft can already reach the edges of the atmosphere? Does it take more energy (fuel) to reach the outer atmosphere via jet engines then switch to rocket engines? and 2) Why do spacecraft need to race into the atmosphere? Again, would it require too much fuel to "brake" and simply fall into the atmosphere, thus reducing the risky burn entry and then again (or not) use jet engines to fly back to earth?
I'm sure there are obvious reasons for this, but I thought I'd ask.
Bob, you really need to get with it. There are really two kinds of science. The one you always talk about, let's call it science fiction, and the real science that we never hear about because it is supposedly too advanced for our society to handle without causing major financial impact. If I were you, I would immediately check out the works of Joseph Cater and his book "The Ultimate Reality." He will explain the advanced propulsion systems NASA has been using since around 1958 that are definitely not just firecrackers. I find it mind boggling that there are so many huge holes in our scientific theories and they are just ignored and our supposed best minds can't see them...even if they are pointed out to them.
According to Cater, the big problem with science came when James Maxwell came out with his "Maxwell's equations" and failed to show people his mechanical models that he used to derive the equations. From then on it was a free for all of bad math as everyone thought that by throwing down an equation, one had actually solved something without the understanding of what qualitatively was going on. Enough for now.
Excellent article that just shows how our imagination is capable of eclipsing our ability in such a short period of time.
Of course some of our inability to grow is not due to our environment or cost but our own foolish lack of intelligence from what I've seen. Our inability to understand the fundamentals of our universe better is just as simply caused by time as by our embracing lame ideas that no one wants to admit they don't understand.
For example, computer programmers are essentially getting lazier and lazier. Hardware makers make better hardware to make software run faster and better. Then programmers use these resources to add options and abilities that would have taken a tenth of the resources at 90% of the effect a decade ago.
What we need is the codebreakers from WWII and the creators of the Avro Arrow back. Only then we wouldn't have to consider astronauts to be the greatest of daredevils.
It is truly regrettable that the thrill of the space race ended in 1972. We now have the absurd reality that soon only grandparents will be able to say "I remember when men walked on the moon". It only goes to prove, that our belief in the exponential advance of technologies has a galaxy wide gaping hole in it.
Brian
Chad, I thought I would comment on your questions.
1) Someone has done something similar to what you suggested in your first question. Burt Rutan piggy-backed a rocketship on the bottom of a plane and when the two reached high enough, he released himself from the jet plane and rocketed into space.
The reason why this isn't done by NASA is that even though this method reduced the amount of weight taken up by the rocketship, the plane can only carry a certain amount of weight and that is many times less than what the space shuttle can carry. Also, the space shuttle can acheive a much higher orbit. Burt Rutan's ShaceShipOne can carry passengers, into low orbit, but very little else.
2) The Space Shuttle basically drops from space using the Earth's gravity to pull it back to the ground. The shuttle has used up most of it's fuel getting into orbit, so it basically becomes the world's fastest glider on re-entry. Other capsules, like the Russians use, also haven't got much fuel and this fuel is used to make sure they are in the correct flight path for re-entry.
In order to "brake" like you suggested Chad, ships would have to bring much more fuel and this would lower what they could carry. However, since you couldn't possibly bring enough fuel to "brake" properly for the 100 or so kilometre drop, then it would be a waste and could possibly be dangerous.
Brian Rahilly, I don't know if you have been paying attention to world events, the space race is not over by far.
The US has decided to go back to the moon, China has announced it will be going to the moon, India has said it wants to go to the moon and I think Russia is even considering it. There is also an International Competition that started a while ago where people who can send an object to the moon and return it safely to Earth will win a prize.
However, the space race does not mean just going to the moon. The X Prize got people other than the governments of the rich and powerful to build ships capable of reaching low Earth orbit. New visions of putting people into space have come up the last few years from using a mag-lev catapult to throw object into space, to using a "space elevator" made up of light-weight materials. In fact, back in the eighties and nineties, one Canadian even proposed to shoot objects into space by using a specially designed cannon. All of these approaches might sound silly, but have a strong scientific foundation and could all work.
So, is the space race dead because the US doesn't send men to the moon on a regular basis? No.
Just to let all of you know, it is impossible to travel faster the the speed of light. According to albert einstein as the speed increases the mass increases. Hence when a particle approaches near speed of light its mass becomes infinity which is not possible hence the speed of light is not attainable.
I agree we have to stop throwing away all the stuff we launch into orbit. It cost so much money to launch Skylab and the Russian space stations and now the International space station. Since the material was already in orbit why couldn't these have been retrofitted and placed into lunar orbit as a lunar space station or used as trans lunar transport facilities. It seems a waste to launch such expensive space facilities simply to de-orbit tons of manufactured material. The pioneers wasted nothing on their trecks across the country. We don't need an Enterprise to start with. We need a boat that floats.
Jim Flattet, thanks for "letting us know" about the theory of relativity. If you'll re-read the article, you'll see that Warp Drive overcomes this little limitation by ensuring that the spaceship itself does not, in fact, move faster than the speed of light. In fact, it doesn't move at all - hence no one feels any acceleration. It sits perfectly still inside a bubble of massless space. The space itself is what moves.
Think of someone walking on a carpet as the equivalent newtonian motion. As they walk faster and faster, their feet bunch up the carpet behind them, resulting in them creating almost a "tread-mill" of space and they don't get very far (no matter how much energy they put into walking faster) relative to anyone who is stationary: they have moved out of the realm of newtonian motion and into einsteinian motion. But imagine if they built a device which could pull the carpet in any direction they wanted to go. Strictly speaking, they would not be moving relative to the carpet (their local space) but they would still get where they were going.
This is not a perfect analogy, but it works well enough to explain a piece of science-fiction. For more details and the "physics" behihnd Warp Drive, please consult the Star Trek technical manual - if nothing else, it's an entertaining read.
Also, for any fans out there: we're T - 54 years until Zephram Cochrane invents this device for us.
Imagine if Project Orion, as messy as it would have been, would have proceeded. I think we'd be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are now. The downside is that many more of us would have cancer.
Re speed of light comments:
For the record, the science that most of you have been studying is fiction and not reality.
Yes, we can travel faster than the speed of light and I am sure that we have...many times.
Allow me to explain the confusion.
In labs, particles are accelerated in particle accelerators by powerful magnetic fields. However, particles can only be accelerated by such fields if they have an electrostatic charge.
The problem is that as a particle accelerates, it starts to generate a magnetic field of its own at the expense of its electrostatic field. At the speed of light, all of its charge has been transformed into a magnetic field. Hence, we erroneously think that the speed of light is the fastest we can travel.
(Note: this also explains how particles supposedly gain in mass as they travel faster and faster. With less and less electrostatic potential to keep them apart, particles come together. Simple.)
To explain the mechanical model of how this works:
There is an ether contrary to what Einstein proposed and it is made of a small extremely fast moving particles similar to the way a perfect gas operates. Now at any given time, a particle such as an electron is being randomly bombarded by ether particles such that a constant pressure is exerted on it from all sides. Now if we put two electrons close enough, some of the ether particles get caught between the electrons and bounce back and forth similar to an old fashioned pin ball machine. This produces more force between them than from the other side of them. Hence electrostatic repulsion.
Now, for the magnetic field: as an electron moves it starts spinning (due to a corkscrew groove or shape on one end) and it creates a vortex of ether particles around it. Hence the magnetic field. However, as the magnetic field gets bigger and bigger, it acts more or less like a shield so that a particle can no longer get bombarded by ether particles. Hence as the magnetic field increases, the electrostatic field decreases and vice versa. Who ever created this universe was brilliant. No offence to Einstein, but even he in heaven is looking down on us and shaking his head and probably telling us to wake up and no longer accept these dead theories.
Bob,
I for one would love to read more about whether physics believes there is any possibility of faster than light travel that doesn't violate relativity?
I'm aware of a couple possibilities:
1) One physicist proposed a theory called "variable speed of light" (VSL) which postulated a mechanism where the speed of light wasn't actually constant, but could be altered. This theory was born as an alternate theory to inflation, the period of rapid growth of the universe shortly after the BB.
2) There is also the theoretical particle called the "tachyon" which has the property of travelling faster than light (though it is massless I believe).
Are there other still plausible theoretical ideas? On a philisophical level, I have never been satisfied that Einstein's speed limit was absolute. It's such a big universe, it really would be a waste if there is no feasible way to traverse it.
@Paul Morris: "Burt Rutan's ShaceShipOne can carry passengers, into low orbit, but very little else."
Small quibble about an otherwise good response: SpaceshipOne never did make low orbit, it was suborbital and reached an altitude of a little over 100 km. To reach orbital velocity would have required a much larger craft with much more fuel.
Cheers!