Reaching Alien Worlds Will we ever get to a planet outside our solar system? That is a hard question to answer and it has to really be asked two different ways. First, will humans ever get to a planet outside the solar system and secondly, will a robotic mission from earth ever get to a planet outside our solar system? Let me take the second question first. If no disaster befalls the Voyager Mission, it could eventually make it to the next solar system Alpha Centauri but it would take 73,000 years from when it was launched. I tend to think so much could go wrong in all that time, there isn’t much of a chance of it making the complete trip. There might be a better chance of some alien ship detecting it on the way. This is an illustration of the great need for speed in space travel. What we thought was incredible speed before space travel has to now be thought of as far too slow for us to even reach some of the planets in our system in a reasonable amount of time. Speaking of human space flight that is far more complicated. At least with robotic flight we don’t have to worry about things like food, water, oxygen, heat and many other things essential for human like to continue during the flight. We have also found out we really need artificial gravity. Without it, we just atrophy and even all the exercise doesn’t prevent that entirely. Some of our physical attributes could be affected. Recently two astronauts were trapped on the space station, a man and a woman who arrived in a defective Boeing rocket. They were supposed to be there a few days, but they have been there for over two months as of the writing of this article, and NASA said they might be there until next year because the rocket they came in has serious problems. I am mentioning this because the lack of gravity has had an effect on the eyes of the female astronaut. It seems to me she might have to be removed much sooner than thought. Even though scientists are trying to figure out how warping space might be able to allow a spacecraft to get around the limit of light speed, we don’t hear much about how dangerous it might be. I have mentioned this once or twice and I think if perfected it could destroy areas of space. A space craft would travel in a bubble pushing all the energy ahead of it, and if it was not careful when it stops it might have such a huge buildup of energy, it could destroy the planet it went to. Another problem might be it would destroy objects in the space it passes through. It could turn out the entire of a warp drive is so dangerous it would only be good as a fearsome weapon, perish the thought. It could turn out that someday quantum physics will provide us with the key to space travel and it might entail something so unbelievable that speed will no longer be a problem thanks to quantum entanglement, the mysterious force we discovered which allows us to make instant contact between two entangled particles separated by any distance. That is the incredible discovery we made. We could make instant contact. If we could somehow adopt this to a spacecraft with a special quantum entanglement engine, all our space travels could become instant. Of course, if we ever figure this out it will probably be thousands of years from now, but one never knows. Also, it might be impossible to do. It does seem from careful observations of UAPs, that they may be traveling in some sort of plasma bubble. Scientists have been looking into this as a shield which could protect astronauts from radiation on long trips through space. According to what I have been reading, we haven’t figured this out yet, but there is hope and radiation can be a real danger to astronauts in a spacecraft. Another thought might be putting a plasma shield over a dwelling on Mars or on the moon. Maybe, there we will find another way to use a spacecraft traveling inside a bubble to somehow increase our speed. So far this seems to only work in water for us. Russia now has torpedoes that travel hundreds of miles per hour in a bubble. We might also have them, and I think we do, and they use something called supercavitation which makes the bubble around the torpedo allow for much greater speed. It has been said for years we might have figured out how to make an environment which permits us to be protected from the force of gravity and we have copied this from back engineering UAPs. This could be true because we know these UAPs can make maneuvers that would kill a human and supposedly that is how the crew of a UAP is protected. If we could be able to make a breakthrough in meaningful speed through space, think about what it would mean. Look at the breakthroughs in speed we made on earth. First, we walked and ran. Next, we rode animals, then we built boats, next we installed oars, then sails. Eventually steam took over. Then we built cars and a little while later airplanes, then jet planes and rockets. All the while increasing our travel speed. Even in rockets we have figured out ways to go faster. We made a breakthrough when the Ion engine was invented, which allowed spacecraft to achieve greater speeds. The reason was the impulse from the engine can be up to 10,000 seconds, while a chemical rocket’s impulse last up to 450 seconds. A longer pulse pushes the craft to higher speeds. It is the continuous thrust which gains the speed. NASA is working on a rotary detonation engine for a rocket which will make the rocket much more efficient. There is another concept which is a Swirl combustor. The swirl takes place in the combustion chamber to mix the fuel more efficiently. Some scientists want to use a nuclear reactor on a spacecraft to power an ion engine or Hall Effect thruster. The Hall Effect thruster is another type of ion engine. Lately nuclear rockets are actually being considered. As I have said many times, the last thing space, planets and moons need is to be polluted with nuclear rockets. Lastly, solar wind powered spacecraft are craft with sails that are pushed by the solar wind from the sun. None of the spacecraft options, except maybe warp drive could even get us past the light speed barrier. We need a scientific breakthrough. If we use the history on earth as an example of our position in space travel, we are at the point just before sails were invented.
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