Were TPF & SIM victims of JWST or was the technology not quite there or what?What a cool area of astronomy to have the plug pulled.
If you go to nearest star with convenient speed, let say you are covering the distance in 2 years.
On the span of 4,2LY how do you actually communicate with the ship,its crew, daddy call home?
What are the chances of a flagship mission in the 2030's to either Proxima Centauri ...
Just looking at the pace of exo-planet discoveries makes me extremely optimistic about new discoveries. 15-20 years ago we discovered the first one and now we know of hundreds. Now that we are or very close to finding or confirming the first Goldilocks planets, in another 15-20 years I think we will know of many of them as well.
1. Note that technology does not just advance on its own as time goes by, it actually needs further investments and developments.2. I don't see a lot of reason to be very sanguine about future discoveries, looking at currently planned observatories.
Maybe, maybe if you expended trillions of dollars over decades we MIGHT be able to design a probe that could get up to 0.05c or 0.1c or something, and so a 40-50 year mission flyby of proxima centauri with a very small probe could be conceivable.
My 2 cents, on the other hand, are in the possibility that we learn to manipulate time or space or dimensions themselves in an exotic way unknown to us yet, so that we can really travel distances between stars in the far future. (call that the Star Trek way or Babylon 5 way or CERN way whatever...)
Quote from: K-P on 11/26/2011 07:33 pmMy 2 cents, on the other hand, are in the possibility that we learn to manipulate time or space or dimensions themselves in an exotic way unknown to us yet, so that we can really travel distances between stars in the far future. (call that the Star Trek way or Babylon 5 way or CERN way whatever...)Yeah, but I think we should always be reminded that modern notions of "technological progress" are laden with a disturbing amount of hubris. It might be that the basic laws of physics don't allow bending of space and time (except with massive energy/mass wells like black holes) and so we're just SOL in terms of interstellar travel. There's nothing that says interstellar travel is inevitable or doable.I personally believe we've gone from an Aristotelian version of the universe where stars are fundamentally unknowable structures created by God on crystalline spheres rotating about the center of the universe (Earth) to a more modern scientific notion over the last half-millenia of what is out there, to wild expectations of where we are going (Star Trek), and finally I believe we are heading back towards the first vision, where maybe we can get some knowledge about the stars but they are fundamentally unknowable and untouchable by human kind for the rest of time.And while you can point to examples of "we made this work, we made that work" most of the basics of these ideas are very old. Electromagnetism was worked out 150 years ago, chemical propulsion by rockets a century ago, hell rocket engines themselves haven't substantially improved since the early 1960s (or 1970s at the lastest). There are no corresponding theories of how FTL travel might actually work that seem plausible in any kind of real way, as for instance, a chemical rocket might have seemed possible to those that understood fireworks and ballistics in the 19th century.Wild optimism about the future of computers and biology while maybe not completely warranted is at least understandable given current events. Wild optimism about space travel is not.
I am hopeful about lower launch costs in the future. I am thrilled about what Kepler has/will accomplish for $.5 billion. But any current plan of observatories is effected by JWST and the fact that low cost launch is not here yet. Hopefully a temporary condition.
I was more interested in how would one communicate with far object like nearest star ( not our Sun ). And more over without delay, or at least acceptable - like 10 mins. Is there any effort to do high bandwidth, low delay, very deep space communication technology? Nasa deep space network is primary for communication with it's probes?What would it take? (no politicians, sls, jwst or health care spelling)
Quote from: spaceStalker on 11/27/2011 05:46 amI was more interested in how would one communicate with far object like nearest star ( not our Sun ). And more over without delay, or at least acceptable - like 10 mins. Is there any effort to do high bandwidth, low delay, very deep space communication technology? Nasa deep space network is primary for communication with it's probes?What would it take? (no politicians, sls, jwst or health care spelling)It would take a re-writing of the laws of physics. If you are 4.2 light years away, it will take 4.2 years for signals to come back. You can't send information faster than the speed of light.
Unless you find a way of communicating via entangled particles.
Quote from: majormajor42 on 11/26/2011 06:22 pmI am hopeful about lower launch costs in the future. I am thrilled about what Kepler has/will accomplish for $.5 billion. But any current plan of observatories is effected by JWST and the fact that low cost launch is not here yet. Hopefully a temporary condition.I'm not sure how lower launch costs would bring about better observatories. In case of JWST the launch costs are absolutely dwarfed by the total project budget.There has not exactly been a rush of telescope proposals for F9H either, that is supposed bring about the true era of cheap launch, or something.