• Question: how long do you think before we can invent space-flight and use sustainable energy sources to power the ships? thanks in advance

    Asked by to Becky, Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Thomas Elias Cocolios

      Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      It is tough to know because we are moving so fast, yet so slow. We have just sent our first man-made object outside of the solar system (it reached the limit last year after many many years!).

      I won’t buy extra-terrestrial real estate just yet, but I would love to see that happen in my lifetime.

    • Photo: Simon Albright

      Simon Albright answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      We already have space-flight, but it’s far from sustainable.

      The honest answer for that is that I simply have no idea. I think the most likely way for it to happen would be if we can build a space elevator, basically a giant lift we can use to efficiently put things in orbit. And then once you’re IN space things get a lot easier.

      If you had a long time to play with you could use a solar-sail for propulsion. A solar sail is a huge sheet of material with gets pushed along by all the particles and the light coming from the sun. That would take you to the edge of the solar system but then you’d need something else to get beyond that. What that something else is I don’t know, but it’ll be a while before you hear anyone calling for maximum warp.

    • Photo: Clara Nellist

      Clara Nellist answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Like Simon said, we already have space flight, but it takes a lot of energy to get anything into orbit. For sustainable energy, it really depends on how much effort we put into researching it which will say how long it will take. Also, there is the problem of not only having a sustainable but how to store it on the ship.

      A good way to go faster in space without extra fuel is to use moons or planets with a gravity field to slingshot ourselves off into space. We already do this to get our robots to Mars. This is great because it uses very little energy, but the problem is how to slow down once we’ve got to where we want to go. If we knew there was another planet or big moon exactly where we needed it, we could go into orbit around that.

      But one of the main problems with space travel at the moment, is not just the fuel needed to get there, but also the effect it has on the human body along the way. There’s a lot of radiation in space coming from the sun that we’re normally protected from on Earth (thanks to our very useful magnetic field!). But in a space ship, humans would be exposed to a lot of radiation and this could problems such as cancer in the future. So we’d also need better shielding on the ships to protect the people in them.

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