For many years I imagined that space faring future humans would depend on hydrogen gas clouds as the source of their energy. Think: intergalactic highways with gas-stations at such formations. But this brings another resource to mind: In the future, we might view planets, not merely for their mineral resources, but also for the heat that may be trapped within them (AFAIK not all planets have a hot, molten core).
Autonomous planetary settlement bots; colonizers of planets. Harnessing the energy trapped within the planet to refine minerals on the surface or terraform the surface.
Sufficiently large planets are dual gravitational + fission plants. There's pretty good reason to believe there may be active natural sustained chain reaction fission reactors within the Earth's inner mantel / outer core (for reasons the geologists / geophysicists are better able to explain, apparently not in the core itself). There's also considerable latent heat from formation -- even after 4.5 billion years (rock is a good insulator).
But not all planets have molten interiors (Mars doesn't). And many aren't particularly accessible: Venus has that little atmosphere problem, Mercury's a tad toasty, and gas giants don't give your legs a leg to stand on. Plus gravity.
Visions of spacefaring humans are, I suspect, mostly strongly fantastical:
I don't buy it. Those articles just make it sound like any truly future craft needs to include a biome and fission reactor; in short, an aircraft carrier with Wisconsin fast plants. But sci-fi has been pointing us in this direction for ages. The Apollo missions were amazing, Space-X is amazing, but they are very much more like knarrs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr) than the caravels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel) that came later and found the new world.
Oceans are capable of being crossed by little more than someone clinging to or sitting on a log (not with a particularly high survival rate, mind). Or bundles of papyrus reeds or balsawood rafts, as Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated. I personally know several people who've rowed across oceans. Some of them multiple times and/or multiple oceans.
The odds of rowing to Ceres or Alpha Centauri, let alone the Andromeda Galaxy, on a log raft, are rather slim.
Tom Murphy has an ax to grind. He fancies himself a modern day Paul Revere shouting the urgent message "Peak Oil is coming! Peak Oil is coming!". Anything that might lead us to complacency he attempts to debunk. So of course he will slam the possibility of space resources. But his "math" is wrong. See http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-his-blog-strande...
Outer space clouds and/or nebulas would have extremely low density I think. Imagine the vastness of sail collectors (or similar) needed to yield significant amounts!
It's not clear the magnetic ramscoop arrangement is particularly viable from the calculations, nor particularly efficient.
Given the absurd amounts of power available from stars when you start thinking about building such a ship, a lot of other options start to make more sense.
Antimatter synthesis isn't so unreasonable then you can magnetically divert the solar window to setup the brightest luminosity particle accelerator ever to make anti-hydrogen.
Comments
For many years I imagined that space faring future humans would depend on hydrogen gas clouds as the source of their energy. Think: intergalactic highways with gas-stations at such formations. But this brings another resource to mind: In the future, we might view planets, not merely for their mineral resources, but also for the heat that may be trapped within them (AFAIK not all planets have a hot, molten core).
Autonomous planetary settlement bots; colonizers of planets. Harnessing the energy trapped within the planet to refine minerals on the surface or terraform the surface.
Stars are fusion plants.
Sufficiently large planets are dual gravitational + fission plants. There's pretty good reason to believe there may be active natural sustained chain reaction fission reactors within the Earth's inner mantel / outer core (for reasons the geologists / geophysicists are better able to explain, apparently not in the core itself). There's also considerable latent heat from formation -- even after 4.5 billion years (rock is a good insulator).
But not all planets have molten interiors (Mars doesn't). And many aren't particularly accessible: Venus has that little atmosphere problem, Mercury's a tad toasty, and gas giants don't give your legs a leg to stand on. Plus gravity.
Visions of spacefaring humans are, I suspect, mostly strongly fantastical:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/
I don't buy it. Those articles just make it sound like any truly future craft needs to include a biome and fission reactor; in short, an aircraft carrier with Wisconsin fast plants. But sci-fi has been pointing us in this direction for ages. The Apollo missions were amazing, Space-X is amazing, but they are very much more like knarrs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr) than the caravels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel) that came later and found the new world.
Um. What exactly are you suggesting.
Oceans are capable of being crossed by little more than someone clinging to or sitting on a log (not with a particularly high survival rate, mind). Or bundles of papyrus reeds or balsawood rafts, as Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated. I personally know several people who've rowed across oceans. Some of them multiple times and/or multiple oceans.
The odds of rowing to Ceres or Alpha Centauri, let alone the Andromeda Galaxy, on a log raft, are rather slim.
Tom Murphy has an ax to grind. He fancies himself a modern day Paul Revere shouting the urgent message "Peak Oil is coming! Peak Oil is coming!". Anything that might lead us to complacency he attempts to debunk. So of course he will slam the possibility of space resources. But his "math" is wrong. See http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-his-blog-strande...
We could just hide in one of the lukewarm stars? Brown dwarf stars would be perfect to live inside.
Outer space clouds and/or nebulas would have extremely low density I think. Imagine the vastness of sail collectors (or similar) needed to yield significant amounts!
It's not clear the magnetic ramscoop arrangement is particularly viable from the calculations, nor particularly efficient.
Given the absurd amounts of power available from stars when you start thinking about building such a ship, a lot of other options start to make more sense.
Antimatter synthesis isn't so unreasonable then you can magnetically divert the solar window to setup the brightest luminosity particle accelerator ever to make anti-hydrogen.