How will humans reach the planets?

[Anathema]

Some would be bacteria, some would be semi intelligent organisms, and some would be smarter then us. But none of us will ever meet them (referring to the people that live today)

[exatreide]

unless they came to us...

then we could all paint some alient kill marks on are helmets.

cause the only good alien is one painted on your helemt for a kill...

[Anathema]

They came to me in a dream...

The aliens all have beards, and they wear kilts. They created us. The scottish are the missing link. It all makes sense now.

;D

[exatreide]

it dose......lol

[TMA_1]

hmm now I wonder. I have done studying and it wouldbe almost impossible to inhabit any of the moons of our 4 gas giants. The radiation that comes out of them is huge and even if terraformed somehow, it wouldnt work. the gamma radiation is too harsh.

[Acriku]

Read I, Robot, it's a great book and has a story where they colonize Mercury and let all the robots do the outside work.

[Edric O]

Gamma radiation? On the outer moons? From where? There is no gamma source anywhere near them.

[Digital Guerrilla]

Do you mean Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as the gas gaints?

[Edric O]

He probably means their major moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Oberon, Titania, Triton... that sort of thing.

[Caid Ivik]

Europa is full of water...

[Edric O]

Ice, not water. There *might* be water beneath the surface of ice, but we don't know for sure.

[Caid Ivik]

Ice is water too. Under ice can be liquid.

[NeoDevilbane]

I may not be the space travel expert, but barring things like gravity wells and such isn't there perpetual motion in the vacuum of space? I read all this bickering about it would take great big engines with tons of fuel... nonsense. Despite what you might have experienced playing games like Wing Commander or flying X-Wings in Star Wars games, all a ship would have to do is accelerate to the desired speed and then cut the engines... it would just continue going at that same speed until something stops it.

It would need some kind of retro-booster-type of deal to slow down upon its eventual arrival at its destination, but that's it.

- Neo

[Edric O]

Yes. But the problem is that it would take big engines with tons of fuel to reach that speed in the first place... and an equal amount of fuel to slow down.

[ken124578]

No, actually not, there is an way to generate unlimited energy, do you know something about nuclear energy? its ONLY waste product is uranium, this can be reused and turned in its normal status (when it was un-used) this is i think named nuclear fusion, the exact same thing happenes in our sun, thats one of the reasons that its still burning.

We only need to know that techniqeu.

As for money, we need to make colonies on the moon, gravity is lesser then that on earth, meaning that the aircrafts or whatever they'll be named launch easier.

[VigilVirus]

Normal fusion takes an enourmous temperature to achieve (temp of Sun).

But you prolly mean if we would know how to utilize cold fusion.

[Edric O]

There is no such thing as "unlimited energy". Energy is matter and matter is energy. In order to get useful energy, you must either convert existing energy to a usable form, or convert matter into energy.

There is no such thing as cold fusion either. Well, of course, that depends on how you define "cold". If "cold" means a few hundred thousand degrees, then yes, it might be possible. (hot fusion requires temperatures of millions of degrees)

[VigilVirus]

Actually, since energy is never destroyed, just changed in form, it is unlimited since it can then be reused.

[Edric O]

No, that is not the case. After energy is used, it is converted to a form which cannot be re-used, because "extracting" it would require more energy than the energy you "extract".

In other words, entropy increases.

[VigilVirus]

Ice is water too

Actually, if I am not mistaken, most of that ice is actually "dry ice", which is not frozen water, but frozen carbon dioxide.

[TMA_1]

"Yes. But the problem is that it would take big engines with tons of fuel to reach that speed in the first place... and an equal amount of fuel to slow down." you are right up to a point, but when and if "cold fusion" is found, all the requirements would need to be is water. Europa also is covered in ice. It has great subterrainian activity though because of the plate shifts thatare found on the surfice. the pressure underneeth makes liquid water a great possibility. One thing you guys dont bring up though is the deadly radiation that exists created by jupitor. The power is amazingly great and the gravity actually churns europa's surface. Even if wedid land there it would be so dangerous because of the powers at work around that area. There are great theories though because we know deep under our oceans, there are thermal vents that give off many chemicals that life could subsist on. The more pressure under the ice of europa makes liquid. If there are thermal vents in thewaters down there from the core's heat, than it could be quite hot down in thedeep waters of europa. I dont think there would be life there but I do think that it could be a great place to refuel ships with new water for fusion reaction in the far far far future.lol

[emprworm]

Ace, regarding perpetual motion- that would be true in a total vacuum. However, any object in motion will have varying forces of gravity acting upon it. Sometimes these forces may propel the object, other times it may slow it down. Additionally, space has an average density of about 1 hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter of space.

(please see this reference: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml)

Now that aint very much, I know, but still in theory it is a tiny tiny bit of friction that would slow you down over eons of time.

[VigilVirus]

TMA, just like in the caps of Mars, the ice on Europa is most likely frozen carbon dioxide and not hydrogen monoxide(water).

[Edric O]

The Galileo and Voyager probes confirmed that the ice on Europa is WATER ice, Vigil. There's no trace of dry ice.

[TMA_1]

space is not "nothing", there are molecules and atoms sparcely scattered all over the void of space. the way space travelworks is you burn the engines to a certain speed and cutthem off. letting them "glide" through space until a certain time when you use boosters to counteract the ship's momentum. newtonian physics of travel are really our only way of travel. We havent reached high enough speeds to go beyond the newtonian laws. so form what ace said, he is right.