- 3327 - SPACE TRAVEL - how practical is it? Send a space probe 63 lightyears away. Our Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 lightyears across. That seems like a short distance by comparison. Our current rockets travel 10 miles per second, that is 36,000 miles per hour. That’s fast. How long would it take to get there?
--------------------- 3327 - SPACE TRAVEL - how practical is it?
- Astronomy today has technology that is beyond the imagination. And, at the same time we have imagination far beyond our technology. Let me give you an example: Astronomers observed a planet that transits in front of its star. It is 63 lightyears away in the Constellation Vulpecula.
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- First, astronomers recorded the star’s light spectrum with out planet in front of it. Then, later, they obtained the light spectrum of the star with the planet and the planet’s atmosphere in front of it. Now, subtract the two spectrums. What you have left is the spectrum of light trough the planet’s atmosphere.
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- Analyzing that spectrum astronomers learned that the planet’s atmosphere was mostly sodium, that is salty air. The planet was too close to the star and too hot for life so knowing its atmosphere was no big excitement.
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- Astronomers found another gas giant planet with a methane and water molecule atmosphere. It is also 63 lightyears away. This was the first detection of an organic molecule on another planet ( HD189733b) This planet completes an orbit in 2 days and is too close and too hot to support life as we know it.
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- So the technique works and one of these days we are sure to discover a planet with water vapor and oxygen in its atmosphere, similar to our own. It there is liquid water and there is oxygen that means there is life there.
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- Free oxygen can only exist with life recreating it continuously. Oxygen binds with nearly everything, nearly everything oxidizes to some degree. So, if you find free oxygen in the atmosphere life must be creating it. On Earth free oxygen happened about 3,500,000,000 years ago. It was created by microbes and blue algae.
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- Ok, let’s say you found an Earth-like planet, now what?
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- Let’s get NASA to send a space probe to investigate. Right? This is only 63 lightyears away, close on cosmic terms. Our Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 lightyears across. That seems like a short distance by comparison. Our current rockets travel 10 miles per second, that is 36,000 miles per hour. That’s fast. How long would it take to get there?
---------------- 63 lightyears * 5.88*10^12 miles/lightyear = 370*10^12 miles / 36*10^3 miles/ hour = 10^10 hours which is 1,140,000 years.
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- Over one million years to get there and another 63 years to radio back to Earth that you made it. Tell the people living then, if any, what they found.
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- Say the technology improves 10 fold, and, we build a rocket that could pass the Moon in 30 minutes traveling at 360,000 miles per hour. It will still take 114,000 years to get to the planet.
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- This is just not working for me. We have found life on another planet. We have to learn more. Let’s invent a rocket that can travel 1000 miles in one second. Then it is traveling 3,600,000 miles per hour. Now we got the journey down to 11,700 years, one way.
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- This space travel to the planets is nonsense. What are we going to do freeze dry our astronauts before they take off then thaw them out when they get there. After 500 generations I hope people still remember they are out there. Or, they could just show up on a return trip 230 centuries from now.
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- The computers on board would have been obsoleted 50,000 times by then. Our language would have changed so much we could not even understand each other.
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- So, we find a new planet, so what? We better be worrying about the planet we have.
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- In 500,000 years our oceans will have evaporated due to the Sun turning into a Red Giant then a Planetary Nebulae. That is how much time we’ve got, if no other disaster hits us sooner. Whatever we figure out let’s hope they learned enough to do the math.
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- Time to each planet assuming we can double the speed of the Shuttle to 54,000 miles per hour. These are one way trips:
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---------------- Mercury -------- 27 days
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---------------- Venus -------- 52 days
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---------------- Mars -------- 109 days
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---------------- Jupiter -------- 365 days
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---------------- Saturn -------- 1.8 years
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---------------- Uranus -------- 3.8 years
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---------------- Neptune -------- 5.9 years
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---------------- Pluto ------------ 7.8 years
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- And, that is just in our Solar System. Space travel is easier in the movies.
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- November 4, 2021 SPACE TRAVEL - how practical is it? 919 3327
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--------------------- --- Thursday, November 4, 2021 ---------------------------
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