{"id":1686,"date":"2007-12-15T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2007-12-15T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2007-12-16T12:03:59","modified_gmt":"2007-12-16T16:03:59","slug":"warped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1686","title":{"rendered":"Warped"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">V<\/span>ia <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metafilter.com\/67463\/Warp-Drive-When\">MetaFilter<\/a>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/centers\/glenn\/research\/warp\/warp.html\">A NASA article<\/a> about faster than light traveling, space colonization and science fiction. The article is an excellent overview of current propulsion techniques and what we&#8217;d need to travel to the nearest habitable planet. <\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re into SF, Star-Trek and that and you are slightly unfamiliar with the paradoxes that traveling at the speed of light brings, you&#8217;re in for a disappointment. <em>We don&#8217;t know enough about physics<\/em> and we need (at least) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/centers\/glenn\/research\/warp\/brakthru.html\">make breakthroughs really soon now<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>Charles Stross (author of Glasshouse and Halting State) has <a href=\"http:\/\/scalzi.com\/whatever\/?p=168\">more sobering thoughts<\/a>, highlighting the issues with sending a manned mission to (for example) Proxima Centauri: he notes that getting a vehicle at 10% of the speed of light requires the equivalent energy output of 400 megatons of nuclear missiles. Naturally, since we don&#8217;t want to overshoot Proxima Centauri, we need that same amount of energy to <em>decelerate<\/em>:\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">For a less explosive reference point, our entire planetary economy runs on roughly 4 terawatts of electricity (4 x 10<sup>12<\/sup> watts). So it would take our total planetary electricity production for a period of half a million seconds \u00e2\u20ac\u201d roughly 5 days \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to supply the necessary va-va-voom.\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2004\/01\/08\/sterling-ill-believe.html\">Bruce Sterling wrote in 2004<\/a> (on colonizing Mars) that it&#8217;s a lot cheaper to colonize the Gobi desert than Mars. The two places are literally much alike: &#8216;they&#8217;re both ugly, inhospitable and there&#8217;s no way to make it pay&#8217;:\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">On the other hand, there might really be some way to make living in the Gobi Desert pay. And if that were the case, and you really had communities making a nice cheerful go of daily life on arid, freezing, barren rock and sand, then a cultural transfer to Mars might make a certain sense.\n<\/p>\n<p>More on this I will discuss in 2416, but I&#8217;m in a rush now: I have to travel to the future and tell the descendants of my twin-brother that they&#8217;re about to discover a wormhole to Proxima Centauri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via MetaFilter: A NASA article about faster than light traveling, space colonization and science fiction. The article is an excellent overview of current propulsion techniques and what we&#8217;d need to travel to the nearest habitable planet. If you&#8217;re into SF, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1686\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[202,123,234],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}