tag:theconversation.com,2011:/institutions/university-of-texas-at-brownsville-1701/articlesThe University of Texas at Brownsville2015-01-22T10:41:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/355232015-01-22T10:41:44Z2015-01-22T10:41:44ZIf Earth falls, will interstellar space travel be our salvation?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69707/original/image-20150122-29832-17j22fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this how space travel will look some day? 'Sulu, punch it!' </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some climatologists argue it may be too late to reverse climate change, and it’s just a matter of time before the Earth becomes uninhabitable – if hundreds of years from now. The recent movie Interstellar raised the notion that we may one day have to escape a dying planet. As astrophysicists <em>and</em> avid science fiction fans, we naturally find the prospect of interstellar colonization intriguing and exciting. But is it practical, or even possible? Or is there a better solution?</p>
<p>Science fiction has painted a certain picture of space travel in popular culture. Drawing on stories of exploration from an age of tall ships, with a good helping of anachronisms and fantastical science, space exploration is often depicted in a romantic style: a crew of human travelers in high-tech ships wandering the Galaxy, making discoveries and reporting back home. Perhaps they even find habitable words, some teeming with life (typically humans with different-colored skin), and they trade, colonize, conquer or are conquered. Pretty much, they do as humans have always done since the dawn of their time on Earth.</p>
<p>How close do these ideas resemble what we may be able to achieve in the next few hundred years? The laws of physics and the principles of engineering will go a long way to helping us answer this question.</p>
<h2>Nature’s speed limit</h2>
<p>Nature has given us a speed limit. We call it the speed of light – about 186,000 miles per second – because we first noticed this phenomenon by studying the properties of light, but it is a hard upper limit on all relative speeds. So, if it takes light one year to get somewhere, we can’t possibly get there sooner than one year. </p>
<p>There is also the fact that the universe is big, really big. It takes light about eight minutes to get to our Sun, three years to get to the next-nearest star, 27,000 years to get to the center of our own Galaxy and more than 2,000,000 years to get to the next galaxy. The amazing thing about these distances is that, as far as the universe is concerned, this is all in the neighborhood.</p>
<p>The vast distances between solar systems combined with the speed-of-light limit puts severe constraints on the realities of space travel. Every space-based science fiction writer has to decide early on how to deal with this white elephant standing proudly in the room. Much of the more recent science fiction employs some form of “worm hole” or “warping space”: bending the four-dimensional structure of space and time to create shortcuts between two spatial locations in the universe. </p>
<p>Such possibilities have been analyzed with some <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0204022">mathematical rigor</a>, and although the studies are tantalizing, they show that these methods cannot work unless we discover a form of matter that behaves very differently than anything we have ever seen.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69708/original/image-20150122-29842-jl8w4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nature’s speed limit – light – means it’s unlikely we’ll be able to hop in a space ship and roam the galaxy. Until we develop ‘warp’ technology, that is.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Limits of propulsion</h2>
<p>Practical space propulsion systems available today and for the foreseeable future are based on Newton’s laws. In order to move forward, we have to throw something backwards or get hit by something moving forward. It turns out that even using the best propulsion systems available, there is not enough mass in the <em>entire Universe</em> to propel even a single human being up to half the speed of light. Even relative speeds of 0.01% of the speed of light start to get prohibitively expensive.</p>
<p>Things look slightly better with advanced propulsion concepts such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion">thermonuclear propulsion</a>, but optimistic near-future designs still top out at a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29#Interstellar_missions">few percent</a> of the speed of light.</p>
<h2>Finding a habitat for humanity</h2>
<p>Large distances combined with low speeds means that exploration is going to take time. Astrobiologists tell us that our galaxy has no shortage of habitable worlds: estimates range from at least <a href="http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=11625">1 every 10,000 stars</a> to as many as <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10509-009-0081-z">1 every 10 stars</a>. Even so, given the vast distances between stars and the low speeds achievable by realistic spacecraft, you should plan on voyages between worlds taking centuries to millennia.</p>
<p>Consider also what is meant by a “habitable world.” To an astrobiologist, this means a planet with water oceans orbiting a sun-like star. But habitability <em>by humans</em> requires more than just water, and the chances that ordinary humans could simply step out and populate such a world is slim. The atmosphere and living ecosystem of Earth is the result of its own unique evolutionary history, one that is unlikely to occur coincidentally on any other planet. </p>
<p>Despite its current problems, the Earth is still far closer to the ideal that our species grew up in than any world we are likely to discover out in the Galaxy. Climatologists warn us of the devastation that could result from increasing the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by less than a tenth of a percent. Compared to that, another living world, with its own unique ecology, would most likely have an environment that is unbreathable and infertile at best, lethally toxic at worst. </p>
<p><em>Terraforming</em>, or modifying such a world to be habitable to humans, would require reconstructing its atmosphere and biosphere practically from scratch, eradicating any native ecosystem. This would be a task orders of magnitude more challenging than the relatively minor tweaks needed to restore the Earth’s environment to a pristine state.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69709/original/image-20150122-29885-11ts45z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are there habitable worlds in this cloud of stars? Or at least ones we could make livable via terraforming?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Artificial worlds</h2>
<p>Perhaps a more fundamental question, then, is <em>why</em> humans would wish to colonize other worlds. Given the centuries-long treks between stars, interstellar voyagers would necessarily have moved beyond the <em>need</em> for a planet to support their lifestyle: their vessels would be their habitat, autonomous and self-sufficient. They would not have to seek out new homes, they would <em>build</em> them.</p>
<p>From an economic standpoint, this would be vastly more resource-efficient than converting entire planets. NASA-sponsored researchers have developed <a href="http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/Chapt4.html">detailed plans</a> for spinning habitats that could accommodate tens or hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, from material that could be mined on site from an asteroid a few hundred meters across. This type of construction would avoid one of the major expenses of space colonization: the cost of lifting millions of tons of building materials into space. </p>
<p>Since our Solar system contains <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid#Size_distribution">millions of such asteroids</a>, they could support a population many times that of Earth, in air-conditioned comfort, with a fraction of the effort and none of the exotic technologies envisioned to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars#Proposed_methods_and_strategies">terraform Mars</a>, for example.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69719/original/image-20150122-27517-10fm4v6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clean and green: an interior rendering of the Torus, an artificial world imagined by scientists at NASA and Stanford.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69720/original/image-20150122-27526-1yh3let.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The torus, first conceived in 1975, consists of a doughnut-shaped ring, rotates once per minute to provide artificial gravity and could support 10,000 people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>So why travel the stars?</h2>
<p>Ultimately, travel to other stars and colonization of other planets will be driven not by need, but by desire: the intellectual impulse to explore strange new worlds, and perhaps an aesthetic preference for “natural” (albeit engineered) environments.</p>
<p>Where do we go now? The commercialization of space flight promises to bring the cost of space travel down considerably, from tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram to just hundreds of dollars per kilogram, through economies of scale and reusable rockets. This means that space will be more accessible to more and more people.</p>
<p>Already the lure of asteroid resources has fueled <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Proposed_mining_projects">commercial competition</a>. A single kilometer-sized metallic asteroid could supply <em>hundreds</em> of times the total known worldwide reserves of nickel, gold and other valuable metals. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power">Space-based solar power</a> could provide limitless renewable energy – once the cost of construction in space becomes manageable.</p>
<p>The hyper-exponential growth that we have seen in other areas like automobiles and computers can now take place for space technology. The physical realities described above paint a very clear picture of the near future: orbital habitats perfectly designed for our lifestyle using resources obtained from our Sun, Earth, and the asteroids. </p>
<p>So if Earth ever become uninhabitable, we won’t need to traverse the stars to find a new home. Orbital habitats will require a significant expansion of space industry, but this will happen soon enough, especially if we are forced to leave the planet for a little while so it can recover from our mistreatment.</p>
<p>Of course, if we discover warp drive, the picture will be entirely different.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fredrick Jenet is the creator/director of both the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy at UT Brownsville and STARGATE, a public/private partnership with SpaceX. He works for UT Brownsville. He receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DoD).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Teviet Creighton is a professor in the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy at UT Brownsville and STARGATE, a public/private partnership with SpaceX. He works for UT Brownsville. He receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DoD).</span></em></p>Some climatologists argue it may be too late to reverse climate change, and it’s just a matter of time before the Earth becomes uninhabitable – if hundreds of years from now. The recent movie Interstellar…Fredrick Jenet, Associate professor, University of Texas at BrownsvilleTeviet Creighton, Associate professor, University of Texas at BrownsvilleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/337112014-11-03T15:39:56Z2014-11-03T15:39:56ZPrivate spaceflight will survive Virgin tragedy because we choose to dream big<p>This week, I can predict with a high degree of accuracy that more than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year">50,000 car accidents</a> will occur in the US, over 500 of which will involve fatalities. Last week was no different. Is social media alive with discussions on the future of the automotive industry due to these incidents? Have the “Big Three” seen major losses in stock prices? Are people now afraid to get into their cars because of this? The answer is a resounding no.</p>
<p>So, why is it when something happens in the aerospace industry, private or public, we get all up in arms about it? Yes, space travel is a risky business and extremely difficult. But, in the entire history of human space travel, there have only been 18 in-flight fatalities, as compared to the more than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year">3 million car related deaths</a> since the creation of the automobile. </p>
<p>A few failures are not going to stop private space flight, just as a few crashes are not going to stop the automobile industry. There may be some bumps in the road along the way, but we should be ashamed if mishaps cause us to run away from a challenge. Where would we be if the Wright brothers decided not to pursue aviation because <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal">Otto Lilienthal</a>, a pioneer of aviation, was killed in a glider accident? Failure is a necessary part of great success. In our efforts to travel to the moon during the golden age of space travel, there were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon">55 mission failures and only 41 successes</a>. One of the most famous innovators of all times, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanfurr/2011/06/09/how-failure-taught-edison-to-repeatedly-innovate/">Thomas Edison, knew that failure was intimately tied to success</a>. When developing the electric light bulb, he reportedly failed over 10,000 times before getting it right.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Virgin Galactic’s Branson said he would learn why SpaceShipTwo crashed so they could move forward and continue to “push the boundaries of human endeavor.”</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Although I would not be so bold as to put words in other people’s mouths, I think its safe to say that today’s visionary leaders of private spaceflight such as Elon Musk and Richard Branson fully understand the risks involved and will not be deterred by failures. Nor should any of us. Of course, it would be a huge mistake not to understand the causes of these failures and learn how to prevent them in the future. </p>
<p>Like it or not, modern life depends on spaceflight. We rely heavily on global communication, weather prediction, and GPS navigation, each of which is enabled by assets in space. The exploration of space opens our minds to new ways of thinking and solving problems. NASA has counted more than <a href="http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinfaq.htm">1,800 spinoff technologies</a> that have enhanced many aspects of our daily lives including health and medicine, transportation, public safety, consumer goods, energy, the environment, information technology, and industrial productivity. There is clearly a need in our society for a strong space program. Private spaceflight companies are capitalizing on this need and taking us to the next stage in the evolution of space exploration. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a visionary who fully understands the risks involved in pursuing spaceflight and will not be deterred by incidents like the Virgin crash.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/7369205774">NASA/Flickr via CC BY-NC</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>It was only three and a half years ago that NASA retired the space shuttle program and opened the doors for private industry. This is allowing for many different companies to innovate with different technologies under the pressures of commercial viability and competition. This will ultimately lower the costs of space access for everyone, but, since we are just getting started, we have to be patient. </p>
<p>Ultimately, we have two choices. We can play it safe, stifle creativity by being totally risk averse, and resign ourselves to being stuck on Earth for the rest of eternity. Or, we allow ourselves to dream big, take on huge challenges and claim a space for ourselves among the stars. I have no doubt that we will decide to pursue the second choice. But, be ready for more crashes, explosions and, unfortunately, fatalities. These failures signify that we are once again pursuing great things, things that are going to define who we are as a human race, and take us to a future where we explore and shape the galaxy and the universe beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fredrick Jenet is the creator/director of both the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy at UT Brownsville and STARGATE, a public/private partnership with SpaceX. He works for UT Brownsville. He receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DoD). </span></em></p>This week, I can predict with a high degree of accuracy that more than 50,000 car accidents will occur in the US, over 500 of which will involve fatalities. Last week was no different. Is social media…Fredrick Jenet, Associate professor, University of Texas at BrownsvilleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.