Interstellar Travel Without Breaking Physics with Andrew Higgins

[@Surannhealz]

This guy gets it. Best way to get humans to do something, is to tell them they can’t do it. I like yer style dude.

[@ejtattersall156]

The only way humans "explore" is when they are refugees or invaders. The US went to the moon to show a big totem to the Soviets: We Are Strong! Don't Invade! Exploring is evolutionary dangerous, so it is only done out of greed or necessity.

[@Midg-td3ty]

Best way to get the most high quality info is to tell everybody they have no clue and tell your theories with absolute conviction. Sit back and wait for quality responses. Then tell everyone they are wrong and tell them why. Humans love to prove others wrong and do their best work to spite you.

[@bugsy742]

@@Midg-td3ty 😆 so true my friend 🙏🤝

[@1112viggo]

Why has no one told the medical researchers they can´t cure cancer yet? I can´t believe how much time iv wasted running marathons, wearing ribbons and making donations. I could have just wrote the doctors a mocking letter.

[@Surannhealz]

@@1112viggo you think there aren’t researchers and doctors trying to cure cancer for the fame of being the one who figured out the impossible? 🤔

[@JayPatelOrderOfCylzinAuthor]

Having had the privilege of having him as a professor, very inspirational to hear him speak on this topic!

[@realzachfluke1]

That's really cool, thanks for sharing!!

[@MaryAnnNytowl]

Oh, I bet it's _very_ cool, having learned from him yourself, to have him on here & seeing him teach the rest of us this one little bit, too. 😁

[@thatswhatithought6519]

Did he ever slap you?

[@SwissPGO]

Hmmm, as a physicist a lot of this seems quite impossible to build. one kg of antimatter... we cant't even create a few micrograms, et alone keep it contained in a space capsule

[@918_xDx]

@@SwissPGO the fact we can produce it is important. The rest seems to be a matter of having lots of energy available (and the ability to keep it flowing) for the capture/containment step. the ability to store it will be a game changer.

[@TheKivifreak]

Andrew Higgins seems a really down-to-earth guy for wanting to go interstellar. Good to see that someone like Andrew Higgins is running the Interstellar Symposium.

[@xeniyal7454]

There is a solution: a biological immortality. Is a breakthrough for an interstellar travel :D

[@milanstevic8424]

@@xeniyal7454 well, one can also tweak the passage of time, it's as simple as adding mass. then, once you pass through the Kerr's blackhole singularity you can probably be anywhere.

[@xeniyal7454]

@@milanstevic8424 still not good enough. If we achieve biological immortality soon, me and you have pretty good chances to step on Proxima Centaurus B. Without it, we die before even probe achieve it.

[@ModestestRUST]

@@milanstevic8424 lol you actually believe in an actual singularity? I’ve got news for you.

[@milanstevic8424]

@@ModestestRUST buddy, Kerr's blackhole singularity is a scientific name and stuff, it's not a belief system. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity#:~:text=While%20in%20a%20non%2Drotating,as%20a%20%22ring%20singularity%22. Share the news anyway, but keep in mind that no one has yet proved singularities to not exist, it's completely untestable at this point.

[@johnbash-on-ger]

46:26 on just a pure drag device like this can get you to the solar gravitational focus in in less than 10 years Wow, amazing.

[@GammaFields]

This was the video that ultimately urged me to pursue my dream of studying physics, now I start my journey next week. It was content like Fraser's that has kept my flame stoked through the rain. Thank you for this great interview and the months of inspiration I've received from your many videos.

[@prehistoricbody]

I was supposed to be falling asleep to the sweet sounds of science, and when this talk got going I bolted wide awake and my imagination just went wild. What a gorgeous idea!! This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard since I first learned about the solar gravitational lens about a year ago. I cannot wait to see where this goes!!

[@MaryAnnNytowl]

Glad I'm not the only one that plays science videos to fall asleep to, LOL! I have a few playlists of things like year one university-level geology lectures and such, with people with a pleasant voice that are nice to nod off to! I strongly suggest you find Journey To the Microcosmos, which is a fantastic channel with Hank Green using his soft voice; especially around 1-2 years ago his voice was top-calm - I LOVE falling asleep to that voice! (Edited to correct the channel name)

[@prehistoricbody]

Love journey to the microcosmos!!

[@Squirrel-zq6oe]

@Mary Ann the Nytowl I was putting this on to fall asleep too 😴 I love certain talks when falling asleep.

[@netizencapet]

DIAGRAMS would be a choice supplement!

[@revmsj]

@@MaryAnnNytowlI do the same. I love when I’m in the right sleep stage and the volume is just right and I literally begin to dream what’s being said on the video.

[@robinwinsor4392]

In all the years I’ve been watching science content on KZbin this is by far the most exciting one ever. I was glued to this interview from start to finish and am now trying to figure out if I can get to Montreal for the symposium. Thank you so much!

[@jckdnls9292]

Symposium sounds like a symphony of possums

[@eamonia]

A what!? Holy crap, take my money. That would be so freakin' cute! We could dress 'em up in little tuxedos and bowties and put a little cummerbund on the conductor. We're doin' it, dude. We're doin' it.

[@XionUnjust]

This interview was speechless this man has so much information that he just threw on to all of us that it just blows my mind. I had no idea that birds can sense that in the wind and there was an actual application for using it with a glider. This changes everything and I really hope that the people that are in this field working on this live a long life so they can give us as much knowledge as possible for us to go into interstellar space. Thank you so much for this interview

[@Peter_Trevor]

Speechless! It was full of speech.

[@mr.anonymous5856]

@@Peter_Trevor Ha,Ha!😆

[@gregkocher5352]

How birds can sense these conditions.... just recalled an article describing how birds use a quantum physics effect to percieve magnetic fields. I wonder what else they can see?

[@tukkajumala]

These are awesome ideas for steampunk sci-fi! Ships whizzing around the solar system, gathering speed for a journey and doing the opposite in the destination. Relativistic weaponry firing shots that seem absolutely ridiculous but catching the enemy on its next turn around a planet. I absolutely love how that kind of space travel resembles sailing more than modern rocketry.

[@cherylyoke4872]

I’m about a year late watching this. I’m really liking this guest. Explanations about the solar winds were easier to understand than I had previously thought. Thank you. Also I’d like to hear more about the coils that were mentioned.

[@das_it_mane]

Theoretical physicists are great but practical engineering is arguably more fascinating when discussing topics like this! Great convo!

[@crustyoldfart]

" practical engineering is arguably more fascinating ". YES, and it's much more difficult expensive and time consuming.

[@chuckschillingvideos]

Hilarious that you mention it when the practical engineering is entirely glossed over and taken as a given both by the interviewee and the guy presenting the video. And let's not forget the financials of such a venture. These things aren't built free of charge, you know.

[@VRnamek]

practical and realistic here meaning building a thousand kilometers long tube filled with tons of ice. Sorry if I'm not waiting for this to be a thing in our lifetime or our kids lifetimes. Perhaps eventually once there's an actual space-building industry mostly automated by bots and large scale 3D printing in a few centuries. But to get there we certainly need the dreamers and the pioneers with much smaller scales...

[@skateboardingjesus4006]

Nah, don't need 'em. Give me a garage full of decent tools, a roast beef and pickle sandwich, and I'll get you and your kids to Tau Ceti. My latent gravitational bridge drives are all the talk around Epsilon Eridani.

[@k4everut]

@@crustyoldfart I think you missed the point of "practical engineering." Practical engineering takes into account cost, especially whether or not the cost of building an apparatus is feasible based on what it needs to do. If it's difficult, expensive, and time consuming, then it's not practical.

[@mskellyrlv]

Good tp hear that Jeff Greason's talents are being utilized. Though we've lost touch, I always appreciated Jeff's intellect and vision.

[@victoroe454]

Testing those technologies in the solar system is very important in my opinion. The jump from chemical rockets to interstelar travel is huge. It would also be important to draw attention and funding to those projects.

[@Radrook353]

One major obstacle is living on a ship for years.

[@asandax6]

@@Radrook353 We are going to have to create a new species that can survive zero Gs and high Gs but also able to have the thinking capacity of a human. Or just use robots.

[@blackoak4978]

And maybe actually watching the video...

[@JamesScott-kg7rk]

It is mostly lies trying to get funding. Outside of our solar systems all their claims are simply made up. There is no way to prove any of it.

[@SirCharles12357]

Andrew Higgins needs to write a book for the general public. This is a really fascinating topic. I'd read it and it would likely inspire many people to pursue this goal.

[@dazingamaine4318]

really? so you are applauding someone who says it aint possible and is proud that his mind is limited by science dogma? well you guys aint scientists so it makes sense. like science fanboys. like the guy who couldnt play in a team but is an armchair coach. i salute your belief in the system. youtubers like this lower iq points. unless you are researching something you dont get to say its possible... i mean imagine a world where no one can lift over 100kg because everyone believed it to be impossible. in that world these guys would be talking about how no human has done it. this aint science. its a new form of religion. before we had electricity no one would have believed it. they are indoctrinated. anyone can recite doctrine.you only need memory and a belief that its true. true intelligence is discovering OR understanding a concept before its mainstream. why? because when its mainstream you just need to memorize. so please wake up science is just as sickening as religion was in the 90s. covid jabs was the best example. here is a prophecy this year its gonna be tried again in the winter. and the jab was doctrine. funny how 60-70 percent of white people took it out of fear. so many died. about 40 people died a week straight after that i know..... so please stop looking for someone with all the answers. every single human is a scientist. the so called scientists havent cured cancer or aids. havent found sustainable energy. and seem to be purely rhetoric based or making viruses that accidentally escape from a lab. so in a nutshell beat your fear of death and you see through their lies. stay afraid and they can make you change your gender or hate foreigners. the only time we can think like this is if we really understood everything. we dont. especially not a greed based culture. if you want some food for thought: biology chemistry physics ?????? - there is a fourth branch of science that no one knows about. however think about what these three study. if you get it it should be obvious what the fourth one does. however if you only have doctrine instead of critical thinking in you it shall never make sense. to those who get it... your welcome i dont think it has a name yet but that just means its brand new. however i strongly believe only those with a soul will see it. good luck. live strong namaste

[@rafaelgonzalez4175]

The goal of space travel is not far off. String theory states particles communicate at very far distances. That communication can be the start to jump points. Going from one particle in space to another same like partical. Then, energy conversion with quantum physics. Converting matter to energy, and back to matter. This, I am sure, would be sub quantum level reverse engineering. Then splitting atoms safely can be the power necessary to manipulate weak and strong forces. Implementing what we already know from the information available.

[@LaidBackApophis]

This guy is so endearing and honest. I'v paraphrased but - "what a beautiful thought to tread lightly on Earth, industry doesnt happen here any more " "Yeah we COULD do it that way but we must think of this, this and this" Really easy to understand, thoroughly enjoyed this video, gonna go check your other stuff now, subscribed!

[@jpgohard]

Every time I hear about using the solar winds for interstellar travel I think about that Deep Space 9 episode (Explorers, Season 3, Ep. 22). Commander Sisko built a sailing ship based off of an ancient Bajoran design and achieved warp speed. I loved that show!

[@A_J_Higgins]

Thanks for the recommendation. I watched that episode last night.

[@jengleheimerschmitt7941]

...I couldn't get over how over-the-top steampunk he made that ship. 😄 the hand crabks and manual tiller were too silly for me. If this concept pans out, the power is not going to be on the order of a small sailboat ffs.

[@jpgohard]

@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 he was way over the top...I agree. He insinuated as much when he gave Jake a tour of the craft if memory serves me correctly lol...

[@notlessgrossman163]

That waa my favorite episode by far. He even used wood in its construction and the whole story was very plausible.

[@copperstaterocketguy1640]

Zepharim Cochran would turn over in his grave!!

[@KenMac-ui2vb]

This was an excellent interview, thank you.

[@fascistpedant758]

Fantastic interview! Thanks. It's great to know we have people like Andrew Higgins right here at McGill.

[@JAYFULFILMZ]

I remember as a kid, I used to think stars were just little specs of light that you could touch in outer-space lol I remember the day in school that I found out that those specs were actually distant sun’s just like our sun but super far away & you could never touch them! I was mind blown 🤯 Even today when I explain to other people that don’t know about space that those specs of light you see in the sky are actually distant sun’s just like our sun! it’s always fun to see them be mind blown just as I was all those years ago ☀️💫🚀🌎

[@kirillsleptsov1680]

There are many people who still don't know that those are suns or have a vague idea

[@WizardClipAudio]

You didn’t learn that, until you were school-aged? 😂 Did your parents not read to you, from books?

[@SahilP2648]

@@kirillsleptsov1680 wait what? Which people do you know that don't know about stars being stars like the Sun? Anyone would know that much.

[@kirillsleptsov1680]

@@SahilP2648 just regular people around

[@hazyb511]

@@WizardClipAudio oh superior, are we?

[@richardloewen7177]

If antimatter is central to the space propulsion, lots of applications are now attractive, even if Proxima ends up not viable. 1. Get out there a ways, with a quantum entanglement component. Still simultaneity a light week out? A light month out? 2. Further inspection of a dismissed anomaly--to make sure it should stay dismissed--the Pioneer effect. With antimatter-level thrust, we might be able to get much bigger scope of inspection, within only a decade. (The wider question: Are we seeing things through any type of gradual-onset filter? One only detectable if we get far enough out, and send signal back, to double-check.) 3. Chase down Oumuamua and inspect it. 4. Get out to our own solar gravitational lens, and have a look around--within a generation. 5. Lots of non-exotic app, involving the human component: opening up the outer solar system--without huge accumulation of radiation, shrunken-to-feasibility life support systems, etc. 6. Thorough clarification of Kuiper Belt reality. 7. Does the Oort Cloud exist? (NOT proven yet.)

[@richard--s]

Wow, what a great interview with so many great ideas! I feel like a kid or teenager reading Carl Sagan's book "Our Universe" and finding all those great ideas in there, for propulsion for space exploration (and also the ideas about more or less balloons to explore gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn). But now here are fresh ideas, on some orders of magnitude even better... Wow! How could I have missed this for a year, but finally KZbin is persistently showing me the thumbnail of this interview in the recent days.. And it's worth every minute of watching it!

[@MeissnerEffect]

Some of the best topics and expert guests anywhere ✨🦋

[@Broken-Silencer]

This is the opposite of click bait. Thiskept appearing on my feed, I clicked on it, and really enjoyed it. I'm now going to get a lot of magnets from hard drives, a really strong motorcycle helmet and a very long snorkel and aim for Alpha C. I might need a really big mobile phone to let you all know what I find.

[@frasercain]

Awesome, let Andrew know once you've got a prototype

[@JeremyAndersonBoise]

That’s one hell of a snorkel!

[@glennmitchell9107]

@@JeremyAndersonBoise It's a quantum snorkel that is connected to a portal that provides air from the Bahamas.

[@dayan5402]

Thanks!

[@nicolasolton]

This is a great conversation Fraser. Props to you for this and everything else you do!

[@stuartcarter7053]

Catching up on all the space news and stories. Loved this interview...even though most of it blasted over my head at 10% the speed of light. Thanks Fraser for another great interview

[@jmyname8290]

This is such a great interview. Mr. Higgins is a great teacher!

[@mikemars5984]

😂😂😂

[@philochristos]

That was a fun interview. It makes me wish I were immortal to see what kind of technologies and discoveries are going to happen long after I would've died.

[@jeffparry2754]

Don't worry, humans won't make it to be interstellar species. The proof is the universe, if it was possible, the billion, trillions of stars would have coughed up at least one civilization.

[@mikejosef2470]

I must be about your age Andrew, cos I was too young for Jupiter, but I remember Saturn, and then remember thinking of the eternity that would have to pass until Uranus. That eternity did, of course, pass (in only 5 years!!). Then Neptune came around. I haven't thought of those events in the way you just made me think of them since they happened. Thanks for that, thank you sincerely.

[@mortophobegaming6454]

Well compare the evolution of space travel with nautical travel: at first we figured out how to row a boat, much later sails were added (also a drag device). With those we discovered new continents, had the VoC era, and much much later giant engines the size of houses were built to propel ships regardless of the elements

[@icaleinns6233]

Fascinating interview, thanks Frasier! Imagine getting up to 20 - 30% without a Jupiter massed quantity of negative energy! Didn't think I was going to watch the entire thing when I started it due to the length, but once he started talking I was hooked.

[@thatswhatithought6519]

My dream is to have a spacecraft moving at 30% the speed of light along with hookers and cocaine

[@ZeFroz3n0ne907]

You are a dream killer Fraser, but you're also a dream creator because when you put down a person that is really driven to get something to work, they will someday get it done, one way or another.

[@thatswhatithought6519]

Fraser is grinch period

[@Nehmo]

"Fantasy" is a better word than "dream". When people confuse fantasy with reality, they deserve to be corrected.

[@ZeFroz3n0ne907]

@@thatswhatithought6519 😆Rip.

[@daddyleon]

He’s not a dream-killer at all, he enables lucid dreaming.

[@glennhobden5565]

Best video of the year. Thank you Fraser you have given us something to get excited about.

[@kevincurnick]

watching this interview a year later and dropping a reminder we are closer to our nearest star today then when this interview posted 😂🤯

[@frasercain]

So we just wait for Proxima Centauri to come to us.

[@michaelclark5626]

Actually, all the Planets spiral away from the Sun over long periods of time like the Moon Spirals away from the Earth. This is a change in the magnitudes of each of the pair of forces since the larger orb always gains mass faster than the smaller orb of any of the orb pairs. The Sun Gains mass far faster than it looses mass converting Hydrogen to Helium, and getting rid of solar energy. The Sun spirals inward toward its Sun-Planet Barycenter, and the planets spiral away from the Sun-Planets Barycenter. The same is true of the Earth-Moon Barycenter. The Earth spirals inward toward the barycenter, while the Moon spirals away from the pair's barycenter. Currently the mass ratio is very close to 81.3 to 1.0 This number will gradually increase at an ever increasing rate. The Earth accelerates the moon to an ever higher orbit due to its increasing mass, and decelerates itself to a lower orbit. The Moon tries to do the same but looses the battle at a mass rate of 81.3 to 1.0 . The Earth wins at 81.3 / 82.3 ratio and the moon looses at a rate of 1 .0 / 82.3. The Earth spirals inward at an ever slower rate, while the Moon spirals away at an ever increasing rate. The absolute value of the distance between the two Orbs will continue to increase. The time for the Moon to complete one orbit around the Earth tends to increase. Since 1965, they people with powerful telescopes have been bouncing laser beams off the Moon, and one of the Apollo Missions put a corner reflector on the Moon so more of the Laser light gets back to the source telescopes. The out and back time keeps increasing by milliseconds per years, so the distance keeps increasing by around 38.1 mm per year ( If I remember correctly ), questionable. The Change in the distance, divided by the distance, is proportional to the change in the mass of the system divided by the summation of the mass of the system which is also proportion to the change in the time divide by 2 times the elapsed time of the oldest and biggest orb in the system. The change in distance is one part in 9.0888 E 9, so the age of the oldest member ( Earth ) is 4544.4 million years. Two partner systems are easy to calculate, but multiple partner systems are very difficult to calculate, and any change in any of the ratios, like mass, distances, ages, external material supplies changes everything else, and the results will never be the same. In short Chaos.

[@Hysteresis11]

​@@frasercain We will no longer be human by that time.

[@kevinkammueller7553]

lol....The Andromeda Galaxy might get here first.

[@andrejm77]

​@@Hysteresis11 Speak for yourself! 😅

[@steveb0503]

OMG! I know Joe Jackson! I used to work in the residential A/V feild out of a suite RIGHT NEXT DOOR to H-Bar Technologies, and actually got to tour their facility after asking him "Doesn't it require 'dammit' magnetic containment to store antimatter?", to which he responded "No, nothing nearly as extreme as you might imagine." He then showed me around and even showed me the containment vessels (two DIFFERENT types) which were only approximately the size of a large home deep freezer. Just thouht I'd share...

[@dougcoombes8497]

The Robert L. Forward book Rocheworld is still one of my favorites where a large laser in the Lagrange point behind Mercury and harnessing the power of the Sun - I forget the exact details - is used to power a large light sail propelling a large exploration vehicle. The sail is designed to break in segments part way through the journey with the outer sections being blown ahead of the craft where they then focus the laser from Earth back to the sail on the craft decelerating it for arrival at Barnard's Star. One question I do have is how do we protect sensitive components and eventually people for long range high speed travel through interstellar space. GCRs are likely a real threat to astronauts at even interplanetary ranges and at relativistic speeds the thin interstellar medium becomes high energy particles constantly bombarding the spacecraft. The faster you go the worse this becomes.

[@A_J_Higgins]

I read Robert L. Forward's book "Rocheworld" as a teenager in the mid-1980s and this book is what started me on the path to the research I describe in his video. Forward's work continues to be a huge inspiration for the community researching interstellar flight.

[@A_J_Higgins]

The concern about GCRs is very real, but note that GCRs are already highly relativistic (traveling at 99% the speed of light and faster with GeV to TeV energies). So, the effect that GCRs will have on a spacecraft traveling at 20-30% the speed of light is not any worse than what our spacecraft already experience today. We have figured out how to deal with GCRs on our present day spacecraft (mainly, always have backup computers on board and on the ready, so when the main computer experiences a bit-flip, you just switch to the backup). The other concern is the interstellar medium (the ISM) will now also be impacting the spacecraft at mega-electron-volt (MeV) energies-since the spacecraft is moving through it at a fraction of the speed of light-and this will result in gigarads of radiation exposure over the mission duration. However, these particle energies are (relative to GCRs) low and manageable. The protons and other particles of the ISM will impact and sputter away a fraction of a millimeter of the leading edge of the spacecraft, but this should be manageable with a modest amount of shielding.

[@gericbabcock7145]

There's other scify contemplating antimatter collection at Mercury.

[@peterbreis5407]

There is a 1 billionth scale model of the Solar System along the Melbourne foreshores with a 1.4m diameter Sun centred in St Kilda, a 12.5mm Earth 150m away and Pluto 5.8km away near Port Melbourne. When you walk the distance between 140mm Jupiter and 116mm Saturn (assuming they actually were in alignment, which they mostly aren't) you truly appreciate just how much nothing there is in space. I missed it the first time I was there, but a 215mm Proxima Centauri is near the Sun in this scale, based on having travelled the entire circumference of the Earth to reach it. The scale you mention of the Sun being the size of a grapefruit, the Earth would be much smaller than a peppercorn.

[@planetdisco4821]

Yes! I live in port melbourne and over the Covid lockdown made it my goal to walk the entire solar system with my Doberman. We finally did it but we were pretty tired afterward lol….

[@AndersWelander]

I enjoy the channel Meatball studios here on KZbin. One of the videos begins with a quark and goes to the end of the universe. It is all just a whole bunch of nothingness. My favorite theory for the shape of the universe is a giant 5D donut with a Big Bang in the center. If that is true then there are probably many such donuts (and other baked goods) sparsely distributed in something even bigger and mostly empty something.

[@alfredoperez2499]

@@planetdisco4821 o

[@DrDeuteron]

If you heat that model sun to 5,778K, it would look just like the real sun from 150m.

[@planetdisco4821]

@@DrDeuteron plus it would be great for a bbq

[@johngriffiths118]

Real privilege to hear this man . Surprised he had the spare time . His brains so big it’s cauterised his hair cells. Excellent vid

[@egillis214]

Like all sails and sailors, the solar winds blow and doldrums. We will have to add thrust on our own and find the pattern interstellar seas...

[@Scutum-ky2fx]

I when the realities are told, it is not something to be disheartened, it is actually teaching us what cant work, making us realise we must re-think on how to do the impossible. I very much think certain things are possible but we live in an age like when we were trying to figure out powered flight. By learning what doesn't work, we learn what can work and eventually, will get there.

[@palfers1]

We need a lot more interviews like this!

[@NonBinary_Star]

one of the most insightful and informative interviews I've heard in a long time. thanks

[@thailandretromods]

1:00:48 "tread lightly". Beautifully spoken.

[@spock00021]

Dynamic Soaring Glider - mind blown!

[@WI_Wanderer]

Awesome content. Thanks for the time.

[@CyberSystemOverload]

Amazing talk thank you very much! So glad I subbed to this channel. Future generations are going to witness these Interstellar missions and they are in for a real treat! I'm glad the rest of us are around to see the first small steps taken!

[@veggiet2009]

If we could achieve 2% of the speed of light in the solar system means that we could get to Pluto in 10 days! I had to do the calculation in Wolfram alpha, before the end of the episode, so I have no idea if they address this in the video

[@thatswhatithought6519]

I would take a piss on Pluto

[@thatswhatithought6519]

And smoke a blunt

[@PeloquinDavid]

What assumption did you make about acceleration and deceleration time? (If you ignored it entirely, you're dramatically underestimating the time to travel short-ish distances like those within the solar system or even to reach the nearest stars.

[@blazer666del]

Yes but you would just zoom past it.. you would have to accelerate half the distance then decelerate the other half. So still looking at months or years together there

[@motomono]

On many stages of human development people were convinced that this or that was impossible. And it wasn’t that they did know nothing about the world. They had science and technology on some level. But then after some time it turned out that people discovered the whole level of rules of the world and suddenly everybody can fly - just the way our ancestors couldn’t imagine. Today we know it’s impossible to travel to other stars or galaxies in human lifespan but who knows what we discover in the future? Maybe it becomes possible in ways we can’t even comprehend.

[@alperenozturk9235]

I believe its fundamentally different. We are watching birde fly since we are humans. Say we found out its about wings in 1500 BC in the mithos of Icarus. First flight 1903. We never seen a body doing interstellar travel except maybe astroids. And math will always be same, unless we just tear up reality(space-time) .

[@motomono]

@@alperenozturk9235 Not at all. Yes we imagined we fly like birds which even now is impossible. But we do fly today. Just different way that our ancestors could think. The same can be with traveling between stars. Now we think about star ships and warp drives because our imagination is a projection of our world. We know that faster than light travel through space is imposible for us just like flying like a bird. But we know that the space itself can expand faster than light. We certainly do not know everything, what is possible and even less what is impossible. So I'd say maybe one day we, or what we'll become, will be able to travel between stars in ways we humans can't even imagine.

[@alperenozturk9235]

@@motomono I see where you coming from but you missed one point. We haven't seen any body doing what you have, or other hopefull thinkers describe. I believe we as humans are pretty much stuck in our near space. And we will have our minions(small or big machinery dedicated in simple operations) will scatter near star systems for information and resources.

[@motomono]

@@alperenozturk9235 What I want to say is that we don't know what we don't know. Do you agree with that?

[@alperenozturk9235]

@@motomono of course, its why its worth to keep studying.

[@gandalfgreyhame3425]

I wish people would stop talking about Proxima Centauri as an example of a possible Earth 2.0. Proxima Centauri is, like the vast majority of these so-called "habitable zone" exoplanets, a red dward system where the exoplanets are spinning very close and rapidly around the star and so are probably tidally locked and being blasted by the numerous solar flares typical of red dwarves. In other words, a not so habitable exoplanetary system. The big problem is that right now, our main method of detecting exoplanets, the transit method, is heavily skewed towards finding planets with a very short periodicity around their stars, which means that they are located very close to their stars and have periods of several Earth days or weeks. This means that only those around red dwarves, with their low light output, would be in a habitable zone at these close orbits. This means that these red dwarf habitable zone planets will be tidally locked and will be blasted constantly by the solar flares of these red dwarves. The other two stars of the Alpha Centauri triple star system are a type G and type K star - and neither have exoplanets that we have so far detected, which does not mean that they do not have exoplanets, just that the piss poor transit method that we have is not able to detect them. The theories of star formation that we have would indicated that almost certainly, many other solid bodies would coalesce around a forming young star. If the plane of the planetary system does not cross the star in the same plane as our line of sight to that star, we will simply not be able to see these exoplanets using the transit method. The sun is a type G star, and I would be more excited if the Alpha Centauri A type G star was found to have exoplanets in the habitable zone.

[@russell_szabados]

I would *love* it if we went back to Neptune in my lifetime! I've loved Neptune since I was a kid - a long time ago - and even wrote a short sci-fi story about Neptune in middle school. Really enjoyed this conversation!

[@SeattlePioneer]

What's stopping you? Oh ----you mean you want ME to send you. Don't hold your breath. Scientists have thousands of bright ideas that they yearn to have taxpayers pay for their fantasies.

[@fsmoura]

0:01 _"I feel like I am a dream killer"_ Heck yeah! Back then I showed up on the channel, and started dreaming of visiting a place with such lush vegetation as Fraser's backgrounds, only to later learn it's just very advanced green screen CGI! ( ;-;)

[@realzachfluke1]

lol ʕ⁠´⁠•⁠ᴥ⁠•⁠`⁠ʔ

[@peterb9038]

Great Interview! I've always been a fan for the solar wind ;-) and for a second age of sail, looking forward to it, Thank you Fraser and Andrew.

[@Matthew...1979]

What an awesome guest! He really spoke in Layman's terms so a schlep like me could understand. Great stuff. Extremely informative.

[@BethBarany]

I really loved this conversation! Need to listen again! So inspiring!

[@134StormShadow]

Only just found this video. Wish I'd seen it when it was first aired. ... I've got a LOT of catching up to do - so I'm going to be up all night watching videos, crunching numbers and generally giving my grey matter a much needed hell of a work out. Thank you 🥰🥰😊😊

[@dougcoombes8497]

My interest in the last decade has been in nuclear power and molten salt reactors specifically. The initial interest was in slow spectrum molten salt reactors using a fluoride/lithium/beryllium salt modeled on the Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor Experiment which ran for four year in the 1960s. Recent interest has shifted to fast spectrum molten salt reactors that use chloride salts which are safer, have better understood chemistry and are much cheaper. Sodium chloride is table salt. The advantage of fast spectrum reactors is at over 1 MeV U-238 and Th-232 become weakly fissile and add to the neutron budget. These reactors will run on spent nuclear fuel and plutonium from decommissioned weapons. They can also include depleted uranium as part of the fuel cycle. All this means there are very large stockpiles of fuel for these reactors currently being stored at considerable cost as high level waste. This could be the ample energy source needed to power an anti-matter production facility. Also molten salt reactors run much hotter than water moderated and cooled nuclear reactors making them far more practical for use in space. A cold water source is not needed to produce the thermal efficiency to draw the required amount of heat out of the reactor core. A molten salt reactor on a spaceship or a Moon base would use radiator fins for cooling. Hook one of these up to a Hall thruster and you have a much more efficient way to accelerate at least at interplanetary distances.

[@stupidburp]

Moving to HALEU at about 18% enrichment as the new standard fuel for civilian use would be a good first step and is achievable in the near term with commercial ready reactors. TRISO packaging as standard could be an added bonus for a new standard. Dramatic advantages can be obtained just by updating the standard fuel.

[@GrantTregellas]

This was the interview that got me into following this channel a year ago

[@christophermeyer5986]

How might the intersecting solar winds at Alpha Centauri (3 stars interacting) allow a greater ability to generate dynamic lift than our single sun allows? Has this been considered? I'm picturing 3 soap bubbles connected together vs. our single soap bubble.

[@A_J_Higgins]

Definitely worth thinking about!

[@sjoer]

@16:57 but these birds do use thermals to gain more potential energy by soaring between two or more thermals to go up... these thermals are not stationary they move, appear and disappear like stirring ink into water they are just waves.

[@sjoer]

Could we smash two space craft into each other? One on a prograde and the other on a retrograde orbit?

[@A_J_Higgins]

Use of thermals is something different than dynamic soaring: Dynamic soaring uses wind shear. It is true that dynamic soaring can be used to gain altitude, but it can also be used to gain velocity while maintaining a near constant altitude. It is this latter technique--to gain velocity--that we are proposing to use.

[@A_J_Higgins]

@@sjoer Yes, although not recommended! The 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision was not prograde and retrograde, but closer to 90 degrees, and generated a huge amount of orbital debris that will stay in orbit for decades. Statistically, most collisions in LEO will occur near perpendicular, but retrograde collisions could happen as well. The concept I mentioned with Fraser would use the relative velocity between natural objects in our solar system that orbit prograde and retrograde in similar orbits, so they cross each other at great velocity. There might exist techniques that could be used to extract energy from this relative motion. A intriguing object is 343158 Marsyas, an asteroid that crosses Earth's orbit at nearly 80 km/s.

[@sjoer]

@@A_J_Higgins no it is not, because the difference in wind speed to create the sheer are driven by temperature (pressure) changes. I fly RC planes myself.

[@A_J_Higgins]

​@@sjoer Wind shear used for dynamic soaring can also occur, for example, at the peak of a mountain top. Just search on "transonic dynamic soaring" and you will see videos of RC gliders going 550 mph/880 kph, which is ten times faster than the wind speed, by performing dynamic soaring on shear over a hilltop. For our application of space propulsion, we would exploit the shear in the solar wind between the slow (equatorial) and fast (polar) solar wind.

[@JohnBoen]

New topic for John: Dynamic soaring. THANK YOU! I see applications in particle acceleration. I see applications in plasma control. I see applications in 30 story building air flow processes. I see thermodynamic applications akin to sonic refrigeration. You have just given me months of things to think about. I will never get any work done.

[@frasercain]

It's an absolutely mind-blowing concept. I can see why it's got your brain racing.

[@user-ol2mr4bx7c]

16:50 I'm picturing a skateboarder on a half pipe "pumping" with his legs on each transition 🤘 I'm sorry if this analogy is bad

[@jefferiestubeladd3261]

35:19. The ship's cargo should be at the back in a bay area as in a cargo bay door emergency air pressure release. 💭

[@mariohnyc]

I just watched a video of one of the dynamic soaring gliders they spoke about, and saw speeds in excess of 500mph.

[@Validole]

So. The interstellar medium is practically stationary (we will consider that our frame of reference). We (and our stored reaction mass) are moving at v. To concentrate the kinetic energy in our remaining mass after expelling the reaction mass, we would have to accelerate said reaction mass to -v (relative to ourselves). 1. We can't seem to do that even with conventional energy supply, and 2. RATs trade the kinetic and potential energy of the plane for the electric or hydraulic power they provide. Wouldn't the same be true here? No matter which way I look at it, this looks like Perpetuum Mobile. Or are we still talking about extracting energy from the shear layers in solar wind?

[@A_J_Higgins]

"To concentrate the kinetic energy in our remaining mass after expelling the reaction mass, we would have to accelerate said reaction mass to -v (relative to ourselves). We can't seem to do that even with conventional energy supply" Yes we can: They are called particle accelerators. We have the ability to accelerate mass to nearly any velocity we want using particle accelerator technology. The reason why we don't do this on spacecraft today is (1) it consumes a lot of power and (2) we don't want rocket exhaust to go that fast, because it would not be using the power available effectively. As you point out, we want the exhaust velocity ideally matched to the spacecraft velocity, so for missions in the solar system, we don't desire such a large rocket engine exhaust velocity. For going interstellar, we would like a greater exhaust velocity, but in the past, particle accelerators were not considered viable because they require a lot of power. This is *not* because they are inefficient: linear accelerators used in medicine can be greater than 90% efficient. Rather, it just takes a lot of power to accelerate things to those great speeds. But with the Q-drive concept, you extract the power from the apparent wind blowing over the vehicle, which at 10% the speed of light, contains a lot of available power.

[@A_J_Higgins]

"RATs trade the kinetic and potential energy of the plane for the electric or hydraulic power they provide. Wouldn't the same be true here?" You are correct that ram air turbines on aircraft get power from both kinetic and potential energy. Conceptually, however, they can get power from just the kinetic energy of the vehicle, and this is what the Q-drive would do: It would convert the spacecraft's initial kinetic energy (starting at, say, 5% the speed of light) and concentrate it into the smaller mass of just the payload, leaving a trail of propellant at rest (as viewed by a stationary observer). "No matter which way I look at it, this looks like Perpetuum Mobile." As I discussed with Fraser, that was my initial thought as well, but after going through the math, it all holds up. The conservation of energy and momentum is the basis of the entire analysis, so it is consistent with the First Law of Thermodynamics. It is not a perpetual motion machine. You can get Jeff Greason's paper on the Q-drive for free from the link in the video description above. See: "Jeff Greason’s idea for a “Reaction Drive powered by External Pressure” (the so-called q-drive)." I can't share the link here (they are blocked in KZbin comments), but Fraser has provided the link above.

[@Sq7Arno]

The greatest specific impulse I can currently conceive of without having to go into things like antimatter: Strap a powerful ion drive, to a thin film radio active solar sail, lined on the side facing away from the sun with a composite material wired to harvest electrical energy from the radio active decay to feed the ion thruster. Or several lightweight but powerful ion thrusters such as the EAPS. A thin film solar panel solar sail will also be pretty good, but the radio active one is better. Heck. Maybe it would be possible to make a thin film radio active solar panel material that also harvest the radioactive decay similar to the first scheme.

[@A_J_Higgins]

Those are all good ideas, and they have all been examined in some detail. Related to your thinking, the idea of using a radioactive sail that gets thrust from the fragments (alpha particles) it shoots out has also been explored. While all these ideas would work, they are all still rockets (ion thrusters, radioisotope sails, etc.) that obey the rocket equation, and as such, are not going to get to above about 1% the speed of light. Their exhaust velocities are limited (3-4% of c) and using a radioactive source results in carrying a lot of dead mass (because not all the fissile material ends up being used). If you are willing to wait 500 years for your probe to get to the nearest stars, these technologies will work. But if you want to get data back from a mission within the lifetime of the people who launched it, we are going to need to develop technologies that permit us to go faster.

[@Sq7Arno]

@@A_J_Higgins Yeah. I was just talking big ISP. I'm mostly interested in colonizing our own solar system. Practical interstellar travel will happen when it happens.

[@elirothblatt5602]

This topic always gets my attention, thank you. Listening now!

[@Frazec_Atsjenkov]

Dreams are there to inspire us. They don't have to be practical or realistic, they can just be fantastic dreams.

[@A_J_Higgins]

Agreed. Although, I would add that it is helpful if your dreams are consistent with the laws of the conservation of energy and the conservation of momentum.

[@Frazec_Atsjenkov]

@@A_J_Higgins I'd say it's helpful to know the difference between fiction and reality. They are very different, but both have their part to play. Staying within the realm of the possible is eminently practical. But dreaming the impossible can be fun, and provides us with mental energy. And sometimes, just sometimes, imagining the impossible may lead to breakthroughs. That being said, I also don't think anyone will break the laws you just mentioned. Some pursuits are foolhardy. Unfortunately, we don't know beforehand how fruitful an approach may be.

[@mbj__]

Love these interviews! So informative and captivating. Thanks to both of you 🙏😃

[@Skunk106]

The idea he finishes describing around 29 minutes in makes me think of a non mechanical gyroscope with layers of counteropposing spinning fields creating opposing perpendicular forces. I've no clue how you could redirect one of the opposing vectors 180° to act in sync with the other one, but such a rotating field might also be part of what would allow and control steering and bouncing off the differential winds.

[@ylette]

Very interesting discussion. Fingers crossed for a launch this century. 🤞

[@toby9999]

Unlike many commenters below who seemingly take all ideas total literally and then bash them... I really enjoyed the tossing of ideas around. I enjoy the process of speculation and thinking outside of the box.

[@frasercain]

Exactly. It doesn't hurt to brainstorm within the laws of physics as we understand them. I think some people just don't like to speculate.

[@AndersWelander]

I have always dreamt about space travel myself but now that I'm approaching 60 I've finally realized that it's a pretty good idea to stay here for me. I've also been telling dreamers the sobering facts about the challenges with space travel. They weren't happy. This video was great. I'm about to listen again. I'm not sure if you asked about the risk associated with colliding with some dust particle when traveling at insane speeds. Do we know the probability distribution for dust particles of various sizes in interstellar space? If we did we could calculate a probability distribution for arriving at the star as swiss cheese or as a cloud of atoms. Or still be alive.

[@UKnowIfUKnow]

Exactly. The amount of energy imparted from a tiny particle at even 5% the speed of light would obliterate the vehicle. the shielding materials needed ruins the laser based propulsion entirely.

[@cdreid9999]

Dont forget we know nothing about intrrstellar space. We know theres a "lot" of hydrogen out there. And scientists seem to assume it is evenly distributed. But that is unlikely due to gravity..more likely clouds of hydrogen andpossibly other things. Sp youre happily zipping along at .1 c and...your entire vessel hits a cloud of hydrogen and incinerates in a millisecond

[@AndersWelander]

@@cdreid9999 Yep. Be careful what you wish for. Especially if you wish to go crazy crazy fast.

[@A_J_Higgins]

@@UKnowIfUKnow Interstellar dust grains are a significant concern, as I discussed with Fraser, but this issue is not a complete show-stopper: Interstellar dust grains are micron-sized and smaller. Alas, we cannot test these kinds of impacts (at 30% the speed of light) in the lab, but we can calculate how much energy they could explosively release on impact: At 30% the speed of light, it is about 10 J of energy. (This is just ½ mass * velocity^2, so you can check the numbers yourself.) This energy is the equivalent of a firecracker going off. It will certainly do some local damage, but the spacecraft can be designed with this in mind, including shielding and self-healing materials. Such an impact will not vaporize the spacecraft.

[@kingwillie206]

Now that your concerns have been addressed, how soon are you planning on leaving?

[@stellarpod]

Absolutely riveting segment, Fraser. Andrew is quite a visionary. Gives me hope. As always, thanks much for sharing. Steve

[@mayflowerlash11]

This sounds a great way to get relativistic speeds. Have you considered the effect of larger particles in the path of the vehicle which cannot be moved aside by the propulsion unit. Particle the size of a grain of sand would be highly destructive at 10% speed of light. How is the vehicle protected from the stationary objects in the path of travel?

[@A_J_Higgins]

At present, we do not believe there are that many sand-sized grains in interstellar space. The interstellar medium (ISM) is incredibly empty: There is only one molecule of hydrogen per 10 cubic centimeters. The ISM is mostly just gas (99%). Dust particles are only 1% of the ISM and are mostly 1 micron in size and smaller. If you collected all the dust between us and the center of the galaxy and collapsed it onto a flat plane, it would be as thin as the coating of dust on a dusty chalkboard. There is no evidence that sand-size grains in interstellar space, but the safest answer is: "We aren't sure." It would not be possible to deflect the spacecraft around the dust grains at these speeds, but it might be possible to deflect the dust grains out of the path of the spacecraft. For a large spacecraft with sufficient power, it is possible an onboard laser could identify (via LIDAR) and deflect (via pulsed laser) larger grains. A 1-mm size grain could easily be identified by LIDAR, and you would only need to search a very small area ahead of the spacecraft. We will likely need to send precursor missions to determine the composition of the interstellar medium. Fortunately, just such a mission (the Interstellar Probe) is under development at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

[@mayflowerlash11]

Thank you for your comprehensive reply. So dust is not a problem. Another thought I have is the use of all the H atoms in the path of the craft. Could they be collected, undergo fusion, hence release energy which is then used to propel the craft to a higher speed? I'm don't know if there is enough H to useful. Thanks@@A_J_Higgins

[@foxuploader]

Just got around to watching this. Fascinating stuff thanks Frasier!

[@frasercain]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@craigpardy6204]

@@frasercain what a gent.. the video is a year old, you have nearly 1/2 a million subscribers and you're still replying to comments. Legend..

[@arunmoses2197]

I absolutely love Andrew Higgins' enthusiasm!

[@frasercain]

Agreed!

[@jamesh9744]

I like how Higgins smiles every time he blows your mind (and mine)! 😂

[@richardcallihan9746]

UAP smiling. [Unacknowledged Access Project]. We have been there and done that. We can take ET home. UAP, is Quite a malleable Acronym, now wouldn't you say.

[@rJaune]

Wow, this was fascinating! Thanks so much, you two

[@i.m.gurney]

A great talk, thank you Fraser. In my mind the ultimate energy source is the Higgs Field. As the base field I believe it predates our universe, is the progenitor of our & other universes, & will ultimately allow us to out last & travel beyond this universe.

[@mittelwelle_531_khz]

35:30 what I not quit understand here is the comparison with the RAT (Ram Air Turbine) to provide emergency power to an airplane. What is mentioned is the enormous power in the (slower) particles around but due to the conservation of momentum that can only be used to slow the vehicle down, not to accelerate it further. Or what am I missing?

[@A_J_Higgins]

A windmill attached to a moving vehicle can extract power from the wind of particles blowing past the vehicle, and then use the power to launch reaction mass out the back, generating forward thrust. I appreciate this is very counterintuitive (it took me a while to accept this as well!), but it is entirely consistent with the conservation of momentum. In fact, the entire analysis is based on conserving energy and momentum. Let me try to develop the idea here in a bit more detail: Let us say you find yourself flying on an airplane at high-speed and without fuel. Your first instinct is to deploy the RAT (ram air turbine) to generate power for hydraulics and instruments. You find that your aircraft is transporting water and you have a high ejection-velocity water pump onboard. You point the water pump aftward and use the power from the RAT to eject the water, generating forward thrust. Will the thrust you generate be greater than the drag? Now, shift the reference frame to a stationary observer on the ground below. They look up and see you in your aircraft. If you are ejecting water at a speed equal to the speed of the aircraft, this ground-based observer sees the water that has been ejected falling straight down, like rain. When the aircraft first appeared, it had a lot of kinetic energy due to the water tanks in the cargo hold. After the aircraft flies overhead, the water that is falling straight down has zero kinetic energy? Where did the energy of the water go? If the power extraction via the RAT is done with high efficiency, that energy had to go somewhere, and that somewhere is into the aircraft itself by increasing its speed. So, yes, you can generate forward thrust via the a windmill that extracts power from the apparent wind blowing past the vehicle. Now, repeat the exercise when going at 5% c (where the kinetic energy of everything exceeds the energy content of the equivalent mass of fusion fuel), and you start to appreciate the potential of the concept. When moving a 5% the speed of light, the mass of *anything* has more kinetic energy in it than fusion fuel. To use that energy propulsively, you need a second medium to interact with. That is why you need to interact with the solar wind or interstellar medium. For the complete details, Fraser put the link to Jeff Greason’s paper “Reaction Drive powered by External Pressure” in the video description above.

[@mittelwelle_531_khz]

@@A_J_Higgins thanks for the explanation. I wasn't aware of the point that the concept involves to carry reaction mass ON BOARD. That is the crucial point where it deviates from the RAT (as I had it in my mind, without a hypothetical high speed water pump).

[@A_J_Higgins]

@@mittelwelle_531_khz To further clarify, the dynamic soaring technique I discussed with Fraser does *not* involve carrying onboard propellant. It uses a windmill to extract energy blowing over the vehicle and then launch waves that impart momentum into the wind *sideways*. This generates lift. Lift, by itself, does not increase the velocity of the spacecraft, but by flying lifting trajectories between regions of wind with different speeds, it is possible to increase the vehicle velocity without expending propellant.

[@richardmarkham8369]

Best qualifications for getting into interstellar propulsion? Basic pyhsics and sailing!

[@melvyndavis2745]

Brilliant!

[@rogerfreeman6787]

At around 18:00 he's talking about dynamic gliding, and I think that's done in the book 7 Eves.

[@Zorlof]

Wonderful chat, I think locating those solar wind pockets of turbulence in real-time will be a challenge. I’m not sold on the interstellar mass ejection idea, there is no way to extract energy from the interstellar medium without pumping out as much enegy to collect it. You cannot add mass to your craft in the middle of your trip, if it’s mass that was already on at mission start..why was it added to begin with? The idea of catching electrons with a mag field and using it as a propellant is a far shot in the interstellar medium where there are fewer electrons.

[@A_J_Higgins]

I agree the idea of extracting energy from the interstellar medium that is blowing over the spacecraft (as viewed from the moving reference frame of the spacecraft) is difficult to accept at first glance; I had the same initial response when Jeff Greason proposed the idea (his "q-drive" concept). But after working through the analysis and equations, I confirmed it is not a perpetual motion machine. The q-drive simply concentrates the kinetic energy in the mass onboard a vehicle initially loaded with reaction mass and already in motion into a smaller mass (the payload of the vehicle without reaction mass) by expelling the reaction mass backward. To answer your question: "why was it added to begin with?" The answer is: Because that mass had an initial velocity that was created by another propulsion device (fusion rocket, solar sail, etc.). The q-drive then concentrates this kinetic energy into the smaller mass of just the payload while expelling most of the initial mass. Again, you are concentrating the initial kinetic energy of the larger vehicle into a smaller mass (thus, making it go faster), but doing this requires interacting with another medium (the interstellar medium, in this case). This is entirely consistent with the conservation of energy and momentum. If you want the full details, you can find Jeff Greason's paper “A Reaction Drive Powered by External Dynamic Pressure" which is linked in the video description above. This paper (and the subsequent work we have done building upon it) has gone through peer review prior to being published.

[@Seehart]

Light sail tech is interesting because it can leverage tech innovation post-launch. The idea is to simply assume that the power delivery tech would exponentially increase over time rather than design the mission based on current tech. Ditto for receiver tech. You could launch a mission using current transmission tech, but assume vastly superior receivers, and assume much more bandwidth than we currently have. Any mission that is based on current tech at the time of the mission is doomed to become quickly obsolete, with the next decade's mission passing this decades launch and watching it in the rear view mirror. In that case there is no point in launching anything until the mission can be complete in a couple decades. I think when people think about this topic, they tend to forget the technology tends to change rapidly on the order of years rather than centuries. Although it's admittedly embarrassing to note the absence of a moon base (let alone a moon mission) 55 years after Apollo.

[@Seehart]

... though I'd speculate that by the time a light sail mission arrives for a fly-by, our space telescope tech will be at the scale of square kilometers, with image quality possibly exceeding anything from the flyby. For an earth sized planet, we would need a kilometer of diameter per pixel of direct observation, which could be improved with interferometry and/or multiple exposure.

[@maverickrider4591]

Money spent on this endeavor will reap untold advancements in our daily lives. Hats off to the professor who can make a difficult to understand subject understandable to those of us lucky enough to hear him speak. Thanks to Professor Higginsber, and Fraser Cain for tuning me in.

[@bashkillszombies]

Money spent on anything to do with space is mostly diverted to 'science educator' hires who do nothing but talk all day. It's a farce at this point. Our only hope is the private sector.

[@kristinaF54]

A crazily missed opportunity in your video is using pictures, even napkin drawings, to illustrate what your guest speaker is talking about.

[@fsaldan1]

Questions: What would happen to a craft traveling at 2% of the speed of light if it collided with a particle the size of a grain of sand? What would be the probability of that collision happening?

[@A_J_Higgins]

There are not many sand-grain-sized objects in interstellar space. A lightsail would fly edge-on during the interstellar cruise phase and should be able to avoid striking larger grains like this. However, it can't be ruled out entirely. Laser-driven lightsail probes (as envisioned by the Breakthrough Starshot) would be able to be launched as swarms of numerous small laser lightsails, so if some were damaged or destroyed in route, at least others would get through. Most interstellar dust grains are micron-sized and smaller. We can calculate how much energy they could explosively release on impact: At 30% the speed of light, it is about 10 J of energy. (This is just ½ mass * velocity^2, so you can check the numbers yourself.) This energy is the equivalent of a firecracker going off. It will certainly do some local damage, but the spacecraft can be designed with this in mind, including shielding and self-healing materials. Such an impact will not vaporize the spacecraft.

[@MichaelRobertLawrenceITsec]

a simple plasma/ion field with magnetic deflection ( star trek's deflector dish concept ) or a mass shield sacrificial metals in front. ie like a knights shield.

[@user-tc5pl3zw3h]

Propulsion isn't the answer. Compressing space or interdimensional travel is the answer. We can't keep trying to circumvent the existing laws of physics by pursuing some new way of pushing a thing faster. All we've accomplished in the entire scope of human history (no matter how long you believe that has been) is to throw a thing at another, distant thing, and strap an engine on it so it continues to have forces pushing it the direction we threw it. Basically, we've learned to throw something further. But that's not travel. That's just hitting a target with a dart. Pushing out faster and faster won't get us anywhere in a human lifetime. We'll have to stop worrying about breaking the existing "laws" of physics, and start exploring new physics. After all, we only understand about 4% of nature right now, per our "laws" that we have discovered to this point. While the stargates and star treks may seem science fantasy, we have achieved much of the technology found within their canon. If we're to progress our science, we have to learn to push our notions of reality beyond the barriers of known physics. Also, look at the leaps and bounds physics has taken in the past ten years. I'm hopeful that we can extend our ability to move beyond the "laws" of physics that we have imposed on ourselves. Yes, there are observable, concrete causaleffects of natural conditions that we can measure and replicate. But there are also conditions in nature we have yet to observe, measure, or replicate. Those are the things we have to pursue to overcome our existing physics boundaries.

[@ThePulsar14]

Amazing interview reach of proposals for the future 👍🏼 happy for that

[@ajctrading]

That anti matter factory would be interesting. Would have to be built in the middle of nowhere. Kilograms of anti matter and matter going up in an accident would be quite a headache Ahh, 13:00, Andrew said to build it in space, yes, that would be wise

[@elinoreberkley1643]

Are you insane? Maybe the Moon is a better place.

[@jasoncuculo7035]

@@elinoreberkley1643 Or Mars. Keep that antimatter factory far away. I ounce of antimatter released woulf yield 12 Megatons of TNT equivalent power. A kilo is 2.2046 pounds. A pound (British Imperial weights and measures) is 16 ounces. So, the mini Tsar-Bomba detonated in 1961 yield 58 megatons is 4.3 ounces. A kilo of positronium released due a magnetic vacuum bottle breach would create a mushroom cloud maybe hundreds of miles wide. A country destroying or even civilization collapsing event.

[@Nefertiti0403]

I Admire You Very Much! I appreciate the Fact You’re To the Point and Realistic ❤❤

[@mithunchandramohan2452]

Fascinating conversation! Thank you for making this happen

[@ditto1958]

Two things: 1. Not a religion post, but simply an observation- as our society has become more secular, the question of whether we are alone in the universe has become more pressing. As a 65 year old who was raised as a Catholic in earlier times, I have always been curious about whether life exists outside of earth, but I wouldn’t be sad if it doesn’t exist. 2. Just as an alarming percentage of people think humans walked the earth with dinosaurs, I think a surprisingly large percentage of people alive today believe we will find evidence of other civilizations during their lifetimes. That seems highly unlikely to me. So much of science fiction relies on traveling faster than light, yet it almost always uses things like warp drives and just glosses over them to move on with the story. I wonder how many people actually understand how large space is and how slow our fastest spacecraft actually travel? The reality is that we can’t travel to the nearest star in less than thousands of years. If other life forms are out there, they can’t travel to us either. So, we aren’t going to find them and they aren’t going to find us. There just the truth. And there’s no reason to feel bad about it.

[@BeastofBourdon]

I've been wondering about the cosmic filaments that have been discovered. From my limited knowledge, I understand they are believed to be electromagnetic phenomena that we don't fully understand yet. My question is would it be theoretically possible to harness that energy in a way that a vessel could "ride" the filament? Similar to a mag-lev train, could you use the electromagnetic force to propel you in a given direction? I'm not expecting it to give the kind of acceleration where you could go the speed of light, but could it provide a constant acceleration to a vessel as long as the vessel's power source held up and if so, what kind of power source would such a thing require? Would a nuclear reactor do the job or would it require more than humanity is currently capable of?

[@Littlestar41752]

Asking all the right questions thank you so much!

[@44R0Ndin]

I've always been a bigger fan of "hard" sci-fi, namely the kind that focuses on fusion drives and only ever mentions warp drives as "theoretical curiosities" that we haven't ever achieved. So this is a welcome breath of fresh air. So tired of the "aliens" having the FTL tech and gifting it to us. So tired of us discovering how "easy" it is to go FTL ourselves. It trivializes the true difficulty of all things space travel, and in so doing it loses a lot of it's punch. There's some part of me that says "NASA and the like are purpose-oriented to tackle the most technically challenging areas of engineering we have yet faced, allowing a human to exist in an environment that has never encountered a being like them". And the rest of me goes "That's just a hair's breadth distant from being literally impossible, so why are all these sci-fi media depicting it being as easy as driving to the grocery store?" The story shouldn't be "XYZ plot, but in space". The story should be "Space, period." Unfortunately, nobody seems to be interested in writing that kind of sci-fi, it all seems to be in books written in the 40's to the -60's, with only a few select authors. More of it is needed IMO. Few example plots I can think of, just because there's oh-so-many ways for your ship to betray you in the most insidious of lethal ways: Life support systems fail on you? Better hope the whole crew's not in hibernation, or that the automated systems can wake up enough engineers to patch it together enough to get you to a safe place, else you're gonna have an encounter with The Cold Equations. Engines malfunction? Probably not gonna have the tools or materials to fix that, if it's a nuclear engine you better cut the failed one loose, and you better also have brought a spare (you're not gonna repair the magnetic bottle on your fusion drive if it got a railgun round shot thru the containment field coils cryo plumbing, and not JUST because it's "lethal in mere seconds" radioactive). By the way, you can't just say "oh it's not radioactive because it's using D-He3 fusion which is aneutronic", because even a D-He3 reactor is only "a lot less" radioactive, not "not radioactive", you're still doing high energy atomic physics, meaning D-D fusion is gonna be happening in that reactor in side-reactions, which emits even more neutrons than D-He3 fusion. The only reason it's "Less" neutronic is because those D-D side reactions are side reactions and not the main focus, so they don't happen nearly as often. Still plenty of them to cause the reactor itself to saturate any kind of radiation detector you care to point at it, with the drive turned off for 30 days and THEN measured. Colony run short on supplies, like needing a water pipe? Use lasers to 3-d print a stone or concrete water pipe out of local regolith, because if you use a pipe from anywhere remotely near the ship's power reactor or nuclear engines, the whole colony is gonna be fighting any number of "new and interesting" cancers. You thought Radium Jaw was bad, what do you think happens when the very water you drink and bathe with has been turned radioactive by a wrongly-selected piece of plumbing? Oh and it's not just pipes, valves and fittings are bad news too. So is something as mundane as an O-ring. Literally any matter that has been irradiated should be banned from contact with the potable water, ventilation, sanitation, or any other system that helps support the crew. Yes, that includes the sewer pipes, because you're almost certainly going to be recycling the wastewater from those systems. Alien contatct? Nope, no sentients, microbes at best. Alternately, if you do think we can contact sentients, it will be them contacting us, and us stumbling on to their transmissions as noise with strangely self-consistent patterns in it. Extremely extremely faint signals, we'd need at the MINIMUM a radio telescope on the Moon's far side to even have a chance of intercepting the signals so sent. The signal we sent, intentionally, probably didn't even make it to Alpha Cent, distance wise. That's how faint things get over such large distances. If you want a truly interesting set-piece, maybe us humans figure out that a pulsar isn't quite as perfectly regular as it should be in it's timing, instead it's somehow modulated. And then thru years of analysis using the most powerful supercomputers, we figure out that there is data encoded in this modulation. More years of analysis and we can figure out what that data is, if it's even digital data (who knows, they might develop computers based on "neuron" analogue cell-type constructions rather than doped semiconductors, depends on how easy it is to purify elements without resorting to what passes for biology on their world). Point is, expect it to look like "oddly patterned noise" for 5+ generations of analysis before we figure out what it is. Also expect some new religion to pop up to worship whatever it is they think it is we found when we actually still don't have a clue. Really really drive home the point of how so much of actual new territory being explored by science is best described as "fumbling around in the dark inside a house", but the only data you have is the theory of what a house is, namely something like "a house is composed of a series of connected rooms sharing a roofing system, with one or more floors, passage between floors being facilitated by stairs, ladders, or elevators". And we don't know what rooms, roofs, floors, passages, stairs, ladders, or elevators are yet either. Basically sometimes science is just flailing around in the dark and noting down what you bump into or knock over, and if you knock something over noting what noise it made when it fell.

[@OstlerDev]

It’s so exciting to see what might be possible! I’ve always been convinced it’s impossible and that I would never see it in my lifetime. Here’s hoping! 🤞🏻 thank you for the detailed explanations! 😸

[@neoclassic09]

until a speck of dust hits your craft at 30% the speed of light and vaporizes it

[@A_J_Higgins]

@@neoclassic09 Note we specifically discussed the dust grain impact problem here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZyqg4msdpdmp6s

[@A_J_Higgins]

@@neoclassic09 Impacting a micron-sized dust grain at 30% the speed of light releases about 10 Joules of energy. This is the equivalent of a firecracker going off. It will certainly do some local damage, but it will not vaporize the entire spacecraft.

[@davidconner-shover51]

@@neoclassic09 Part of the beauty of this is that said particles will be directed down the gullet of said magnetic device, accelerated, and spat out the back end, this kinda resolves most of those issues IMO Reality, requires empirical testing however

[@davidconner-shover51]

@@A_J_Higgins no problem, as long as we can contain the rarely, but expected at least twice 1kg ball of matter at these speeds, pm a trip to Alpha Centauri, we should be ok

[@Wagoo]

So could we use a network of satellites orbiting Mars running plasma-magnets to give it a new artificial magnetosphere?

[@robertweekes5783]

8:45 Why would you need antimatter to activate propulsive fission reactions when a neutron beam could do it

[@A_J_Higgins]

I like your thinking: If we had any way to generate fission reaction fragments, this would be ideal for propulsion. Any means of doing this that would not involve antimatter is most welcome! Some issues, however: We don't have the ability to generate neutrons (much less, neutron beams) efficiently. Neutrons can be generated in particle accelerators, fission reactors, or (eventually) fusion reactors. Obviously, we want to avoid carrying a fission or fusion reactor on our tiny robotic probe. Particle accelerators can be miniaturized, but the efficiency with which they can generate neutrons is terrible (much less than 1%), so you would end up needing a power supply that is many times greater than the jet power output of your fission fragment rocket. I.e., you would still end up needing to bring a nuclear reactor of some kind. Next, neutrons (being uncharged) are not "drawn into" the nucleus. Antiprotons (being negatively charged) are attracted to the positive nucleus, so the reaction efficiency is high. Using matter-antimatter reactions are a bit like hypergolic propellants: They *want* to react. With neutrons, most of the neutron beam will miss the target nucleus, so you would need to find some way to recirculate the beam, which can't be done with uncharged neutrons. You might think to direct the beam into a dense target (solid uranium, for example), but the fissile target must be "thin" to allow the fission daughters to escape if we are going to use them as rocket exhaust. While antimatter is enormously difficult to produce and a challenge (a solvable challenge, I would argue) to handle, it has the advantage that it releases nuclear energy (i.e., taps into the strong nuclear force) without the need for a reactor, a critical mass, or confinement/time/temperature requirements. And it *wants* to react. This is antimatter's appeal. Still, I like your thinking. Keep going!

[@robertweekes5783]

@@A_J_Higgins I see your point about directing charged particles in the same direction for propulsion, but I will mention neutrons again as a possible means of releasing mass to increase acceleration like the Q drive discussed around 32:00 - neutrons hitting a target causing spallation Also, neutrons can be released without an accelerator if you’re talking about natural fission, such as the plutonium isotope used in thermal electric batteries on the Voyager probe and others

[@A_J_Higgins]

​@@robertweekes5783 Yes, there is a concept called the radioisotope sail, wherein you rely on the natural radioactive decay (of, for example, Po210, Th228, etc.) to generate alpha particles that are moving at a few percent of the speed of light. But the problem is, you have to carry the entire mass of the radioisotope to generate an alpha particle (or a neutron, in the case of your idea) and that dead mass ends up lowering your specific impulse. So, I think your idea would have the same problem: Whatever radioactive source you bring to make the neutrons will end up being heavier than the propellant itself, so the performance is poor (or, more precisely, not good enough for interstellar flight). There is one crazy option I haven't seen discussed: Californium 254. This isotope undergoes spontaneous fission 99% of the time, with the fission daughters moving at 4-5% of lightspeed. You could just use this directly as fuel, since all the mass gets converted into reaction mass for exhaust. The only issue is, we can only make milligram quantities presently and it has a half life of just 60 days, so it is impossible to stockpile. If someone could mass produce Cf254 quickly, that would be a potential ticket to the stars!