Are we using Alien Technology?

[AMD_Man]

Are we using alien technology? Is it just me or is technology moving too quickly? Are we really that intelligent? The people in this forum suggest otherwise. j/k Seriously,when was the supposed Roswell alien ship incident again? 1947? Well, look at the world before and after that period. The transistor, rocket technology, even the upcoming solar sails. Hmmm, I wonder. Why is technology moving so quickly the past 50 years as compared to human technology in the previous centuries? What do you guys think?

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[silverpig]

How many Universities were there in the 1500s? What percentage of people finished high school in 1850? The reason why we're progressing much faster is because the overall standard of living is going up, more people have better access to higher education. We have more people thinking and researching these things.

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[Atolsammeek]

frist off there was only school for the rich or kings in the 1500s. Most of the time it was the hillbillys in the 1850s. LOL The rest ture

 

[FatBurger]

even the upcoming solar sails.

What? This was proposed in the 60s (I think), and has never gotten off the ground since. What evidence do you have that they're "upcoming"?


Anyhow, there are lots of different theories. One is based on the Mayan calendar, and states that in 2012 (can't remember the exact date), mankind is supposed to reach an infinite speed of technological advancement.

That's BS of course, but it's kind of an interesting theory. I posted a link to someone explaining it more fully a while back. You can search for it if you want.



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[Matisaro]

They are actually launching a test solar sail powered probe next year believe it or not.

~Matisaro~
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[Guest]

Don't forget that computers themselves play a big part in research and design and even their own development now, so as computers get more powerful they can be used to research and create stuff thats even more powerful and so on and so on.

For example the guy designing stuff on the P4 had it easier then the guy who only had a 286 to design stuff on. Therefore as the computers improve so can the stuff they can be used to design and also this can be done more quickly which also helps. Technological development will probably be on an exponential curve...

The scary part of this though is that eventually computers will become powerful enough to design their own sucessor without any human input...


Of course though none of this would have happened if those bloody americans hadn't nicked my space ship leaving me stranded on this stupid lump of rock with you inferior carbon based life forms...

Your nice new PC might be faster then my 286, but my 286 makes a better door stop

 

[Grizely1]

Dont' forget about Ion Drive. (there is such a thing)

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[AMD_Man]

Actually, I never could fully understand the theory behind solar sails. How can such miniscule photonic force push a ship to 50% of the speed of light?

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[FatBurger]

Yeah, but it's the Twin Ion Engines that are the coolest



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[Bud]

Well of course it's alien technology driving it all.
Have we all forgotten that famous pic in the Star
of then pres. Bush Sr. shaking hands with an actuall
alien on the white house lawn??? That had to be real.

Oh and let us not forget about the Jerry Srpinger show,
ya know...the time he had actuall Venutions on his program.
(Those are people from Venus, not Venice.) Hehehe



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<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by bud on 08/23/01 11:32 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[phsstpok]

Large surface area and zero resistance.

 

[phsstpok]

I thought the ion drive was just science fiction then I saw a Discovery Channel program about the Deep Space 1 probe, with ion propulsion.

The probe completed its primary mission, an asteroid fly-by. Unfortunately the asteroid's surface was darker than expected, no pictures were taken.

The probe has been re-tasked to intercept a Comet, this year I think.

 

[Grizely1]

Yep, I've known about that for awhile. But I watched the show last night (they aired it last night). Although I didn't know Ion Drive was around since the 1950's..........

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[igottaknife]

...and patience. Thier acceleration is awful.

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[xxsk8er101xx]

ya just the name ION is cool!

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[pulse]

actually, having studied this very question myself I can probably pose a different hypothesis as to why technology is moving ever quicker.....


the simple answer is that technology advances are predetermined by a cultures social, political, and religious background....
what that means is that if I were to be living in the dark ages and I was a monk that had just invented a way of smelting iron into steel, then there would be no use for this discovery....
big deal....
but if we waited a couple of hundred years later until after the renasance then the very same invention would set off the industrial revolution.
This actually happened.

this sort of thing happens all of the time.
the egyptians had hand made gliders that were the size of small birds that they could throw (much like paper airplanes) but they lacked the other knowledge needed to take that one step further and develop a theory of aerodynamics.

when galileo (spelling?) said that the sun was the center of the universe the church spurned him, and his theories weren't put into good astronomical use until at least a hundred years later.

today in our society, we have a polotical/economic environment that creates incentives for avancing technology.

that's why....

we are making discoveries by standing on the backs of other scientists who have made discoveries, and so on, and so forth.....

another example of this is the solar sail idea that was posted earlier......
this isn't a new idea, folks. hell, I remember in the early eighties hearing about it, but science fiction has written about it even before that! however now we have the composite materiels necessary to make the sail feasable (spelling?).

so, no, we aren't using alien technology.....
our culture just loves to discover things.

the paper that I wrote was 20 pages long so excuse me if I miss some things in this post!

 

[phsstpok]

...and solar sails are only good going outbound. You can't tack with a solar sail.

 

[FatBurger]

Galileo
Feasible

And good point, phsstpok.



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[pulse]

we can't tack using a solar sail, no, but all we would need to do is retro fire to slow us down, and let the suns gravity do the rest, so.... bingo.... we got a round trip ticket, with a minimal use of fuel.

actually I doubt that the speeds attained from the sail are great enough to achieve solar escape velocity (without a planetary fling, of course) so, we wouldn't even eed to retro fire, just fall back in (we'dd have to be patient of course )

 

[FatBurger]

You don't think 50% of the speed of light (or more, according to some) is enough to escape the sun's gravity? You could be right, but I'm not so sure.



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[phsstpok]

I don't know about obtaining escape velocity but I want to point out that although simliar to light sails, solar sails also use the solar wind, ions and also sub-atomic particles being spewed outward from the sun. Only upcoming experimentation will determine how much thrust is provided by the solar wind

The problem with using gravity to return is you still need some way to decelerate from solar orbital velocity. Otherwise, you won't fall toward the sun you will simply orbit around it.

 

[pulse]

50% of the speed of light!?!?!?!?!??!!
I don't doubt that you've heard that, but
whoever told you that was not very realistic.
that may be the top speed of the ship, but we would never use it that way.....
because if someone went on that trip they'd never get back, and never get to their destination.

the distances involved are way to great (even at 50% light speed) to talk about visiting there.
we wouldn't be going that fast for any intrasolar travel.

if we wanted to go to jupiter then we wouldn't have time to accelerate to that speed anyway.

so for anything in this solar system we could just work it out so we fell back in, or carried some fuel for when we needed it to slow us down.

 

[phsstpok]

Of course, I know these things. I'm from one of the core worlds of the galaxy.

D*mn, the Bussard Ramjet Club doesn't service this area. I'm stuck here!

 

[pulse]

I'm not flamming you,

but I dissagree on two points:
> point out that although simliar to light sails, solar
> sails also use the solar wind, ions and also sub-atomic
> particles being spewed outward from the sun. Only
> upcoming experimentation will determine how much thrust
> is provided by the solar wind

actually, we can measure that right from earth....
we know how much radiation is coming from the sun (many satelites study that very thing) and therefore we can calulate the force it would exert on this sail of known dimensions.

> The problem with using gravity to return is you still
> need some way to decelerate from solar orbital velocity.

gravity will decelerate us from our velocity as long as we don't reach solar escape velocity (I don't know what this is, but it's the same principle as launching things into orbit.... if you don't go fast enough you'll come right back down). the son's gravity reaches out much furthur than pluto (note: comets exist out past pluto but aren't going fast enough to break solar escape velocity so they keep coming back). so it would still be able to slow us down.

> Otherwise, you won't fall toward the sun you will simply > orbit around it.

not really likely, more likely we would fall back INTO the sun....


last note:
the fastest man made object happens to be a PIONEER satelite which was launched in the 70's.
it achived solar escape velocity by executing a lunar fling on one of jupiter's moons then a planetary fling from jupiter, and finaly another fling using saturn this time.
it's going out there into the cold, never to return..... in the 90's it sent back (it's last transmission) a picture of the entire solar system back to earth....

go here for more information:
<A HREF="http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html" target="_new">http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNhome.html</A>

 

[phsstpok]

Actually we can <b>estimate</b> the force of the solar wind, and perhaps astronauts have already measured it. However, we are talking about a solar sail of yet unknown design. Ideally it would be huge and have almost zero mass. It is not known how much of the energy it will actually capture and how much will simply pass right through it. (It's really hard to capture sub-atomic particles traveling nearly the speed of light).

As for escape velocity, remember we are talking about continuous thrust, albeit small, with a solar sail. With a rocket escape velocity is only an issue if you cannot continue providing thrust. A rocket has limited fuel. At some point thrust stops. This is not the case with a solar sail. If at some distance from the sun, any distance, that you have enough thrust to begin to accelerate away from the sun then you can continue to do so. The solar wind's thrust decreases with the square of the distance from the sun but so does the gravitational force. The key is, would the solar thrust be greater than gravitaional force? Besides, if you give the craft initial acceleration via a rocket or any form of propulsion it be that much easier.

Any craft that starts from an earth orbit is already in solar orbit, as well, because the earth is. The craft is not just going to fall to the sun. You can't just fall out of a solar orbit. It takes deceleration, in which case you will fall into a more and more radically elliptical orbit or parabolic (like a comet) but you don't fall straight toward the sun.