Pros And Cons Of Spacecraft Propulsion

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does not necessarily mean it is the only viable option. There are other options that are more mathematical speculation rather than scientific fact. These methods include Warp Drives and Wormholes, which the latter is a solution to Einstein’s field equations. While the former is based around the idea of stretching spacetime and creating a bubble around normal space, where within that bubble the known laws of physics no longer apply and you’re able to travel faster than light. Anyone with even a relatively basic background in geometry or mathematics will know that the shortest distance between two points is a line. But that is only when the plane is flat. Imagine a piece of paper flat on a desk and you put two points on it. If you keep the paper …show more content…

My proposal is that we pool funding into a NASA project under the same name as the summary, Hypothetical Methods of Spacecraft Propulsion, similar to the program that they had several years back, under the name “Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program.” It was run from 1996 to 2002, during which time it was funded 1.6 million dollars. It was shut down in 2002 due to a lack of an imminent discovery. There are several arguments for the scientific research into these hypothetical methods of spacecraft propulsion, most of them, however, are indirect benefits to the human race, not necessarily direct ones. That is, most of the benefits are beneficial because of what would happen as a result, such as avoiding extinction, furthering humanity’s reach, discovering alien life, and generating economic activity. On the other hand, there is but one or two direct benefits that would be an immediate result of a breakthrough. This is the additional “branched,” or spin off technology that would be invented due to the breakthrough. There have been 1800 spin off technologies since NASA’s creation in late 1958 (“Spinoff”). Our other option for FTL (Faster Than Light) travel would be something straight out of Star Trek and other Science Fiction, the Warp Drive. This name is unofficial, however, where in reality it is actually called the Alcubierre Drive. Allow me to start off by saying that you cannot travel faster than the speed of light, locally. Meaning, in normal …show more content…

Inside of it, it has become dense enough to be under intense pressure and a high temperature. Within it are a countless amount of light atoms, such as hydrogen and helium. These atoms undergo a process called nuclear fusion, which is basically two hydrogen atoms colliding, combining into helium. But the problem we see is that after a couple billion years, that star will run out of atoms to fuse and it will begin to expand outwards into a different kind of star, a red giant. It grows one hundred fold, from a diameter of 1/100th of an AU (average distance from the Earth to the Sun) to 1AU, just enough to consume the Earth (“Holland & Williams”). A little awhile in astronomical terms later, (hundreds of millions of years or billions of years) after it has run out of helium in the core, it will shrink, then explode outwards as a new “shell” of helium sinks down to the core. When that helium core ignites, it sheds the outer material off the star, and that material is the material that forms a planetary nebulae, leaving it’s atomic material (such as hydrogen and helium) to restart the cycle when the time comes. All stars die, it may not be immediately in a human lifetime, it might take hundreds of thousands of generations of humans, however, all stars die, and ours is no different from any other. Our sun will turn into a red giant, it’s diameter by a factor of