The errors... 7.5km orbital distance, huh? And claiming that a red star is safer because it won't go supernova in xxx trillion years. Well, newsflash: It's a red dwarf, it's _never_ going to go supernova. It's too small for that. On the other hand, red dwarf stars are anything but safe to be around, they're well know for their *massive* flares that'll easily wipe any planet in its "habitable zone" clean of anything resembling life on the regular.
Last I heard, at least 3 solar masses necessary for star to go nova. The process is driven graviationally and gravity is directly proportional to mass. This, of course, means NET mass after any mass ejection events...
Isaac Arthur also had a really great video on colonizing alpha Centauri. He believes though that we could get there in our lifetime if we extend the average human lifetime, which he believes will progress quickly enough to be feasible. So get a fusion drive and a big comfortable city colony ship and wait out a few hundred years to get there!
"Intergeneration colony ship"? Elmer fud is a great guy but he is too much of an intellectual so lazy leaning on colloquial misuse of key terms like "sentient" where he means *Sapient.* His generic misuse is too common for me to fix as idiots will continue conflation in colloquial misrepresentation for the sake of "convenience."
@@tomedward8652 sentient means "having senses" Sapient means "having sense of indiviual autonomy." Mictobes are sentient, they are not Sapient. Mouth-breathers are not Sapient, they are merely sentient for the collective is their centre of being, which is why they mistake facts as reality and pretend that actual reality is just "subjective woo woo" of so called "personal bias."
Channel is a hidden gem, hopefully not for long. Space Race really stands out in candidness, accuracy and the insightful but unbiased content being produced so consistently for such a small channel. Make sure we all share with our friends y’all.
I think the content is good, but I'm not sure I'd use the term "unbiased." There's clear bias for Elon Musk and against Jeff Bezos. That's not a bad thing, but I don't believe it makes the channel unbiased
@@colinhouseworth9027 Yeah, FAR from accurate! They really need to do more research! I'm not the smartest (but not stupid) so if I pick up on the inaccuracies there has to be something wrong!
7.5 kilometers???! Is that true? Your presentation is amazing as always; I love your channel! Keep up this continued content & you’ll keep growing for sure!
Yeah 7.5 kilometers is definitely not habitable. It is way too close. It couldn’t even have a stable orbit that close. 7.5 million kilometers sounds more reasonable.
The idea of escaping an extinction level event by running to another star system with all the same potential, or greater, to kill us as that of the good ol’ Solar System, just leaves me scratching my head. Much, much simpler to build habitats (think O’Neill Cylinders built to live in interstellar space) and avoid all the dangers of living at the bottom of a gravity well that regularly blows up, all while orbiting a monstrous and wide-open fusion furnace, is just nuts. Building O’Neill Cylinders is certainty challenging but not nearly as challenging as moving an equally large percentage of humanity to another star. Come on, Man
Not entire humanity would move. Just a tiny fraction. A privileged fraction. Which is pretty much how the world works right now. But yeah, I agree, building a generational ship or some kind of habitat to house millions is definitely more viable than travelling in a void of space for 15-20 years. The bottom line is we will never be able to save 100% humans (7, 8, 9, 10 billions or whatever this number is in the future). Only small part of humanity will be able to survive. Hopefully, genetically diverse part.
@@konradd8545 Humanity may become outdated before self sufficient colonies are possible. Space isn't a good place to live for humans, so it is more likely it will belong to our successors.
Great video. I do enjoy how tight the script is, plenty of facts without any fluff. I really enjoy the concept of 'solar' highways around the solar system and to other stars. Fell in love with the idea when I first heard about them from Isaac Arthur's discussion on the topic. Just for inner system time frames could get cut down to something actually useful. Fingers crossed for more video's around getting 'around' our solar neighborhood!!
Great video, however, please let me point out the following as it actually made me pause the clip; Proxima B is a red dwarf type of a star and therefore will definitelly NOT undergo supernova. Our Sun is ~ 80% more massive and still it is just not enough to explode in a supernova. Once red dwarfs run out of fuel they simply turn into a white dwarf in a rather undramatic process. I love your channel and I'm usualy not the type of a person to moan about stuff, but this is a super basic mistake and it does feel real sloppy. I would expect and much appreciate science dedicated channel to be more precise. Again, I do like your work and been following for some time now. I also appreciate how much work it is to put a vid like this together. Thank you for doing this. Keep it up!
We should definately find a way of the Earth. All this talk about colonizing Alpha Centauri is like humans looking at the moon in the 18th century. All the complications in getting to the Moon and there is almost NO idea of what is in the Centauri system. Reallity can be very painful. Nice video.Our science is still young.
8:55 I noticed you didn't mention Nuclear Propulsion as a method of transit. Look at projects like Orion and Nerva. Scientists who worked on Orion believed that they could use Nuclear Propulsion to accelerate a Spacecraft to 3.3% the speed of light, and that this ship could theoretically reach Proxima Centauri in as little as 133 years (keep in mind, this calculation was made using 1960s technology, when the project was first proposed). The method has a number of benefits over both antimatter drives and solar sails: 1. unlike antimatter drives, we have the technology to produce the amount of fuel needed for the journey 2. unlike solar sails, we can easily scale up the project to carry people, and 3. we have a method of slowing down once reaching our target, solar sails don't.
@@michaelsommers2356 You're right. These projects were eventually discontinued because of safety issues and environmental impact, among other things. Though I still think out of all the possible propulsion technologies we could use in the future, Nuclear Propulsion is probably the most realistic for interstellar travel.
If it would take 133 years with Nuclear Propulsion to reach Alpha Centauri than it would not be worth it, I'm sure that way before it reaches it's destiny we would probably have faster ships that would surpass that one and get there before the Nuclear Propulsion ship. 100 years for new technology is a lot.
@@juanfermin1841 All my comments keep getting deleted for some reason. I'm not sure why though, because we're not discussing anything too controversial, just interstellar travel. If you're getting multiple notifications from me, I'm really sorry. I'm not trying to spam you, it's that the previous comments I've posted have been deleted. Here is what I wrote in the previous comment. "That's a fair point, but there's a consideration I forgot to talk about in my previous comment; studies have come out since then stating that a hypothetical nuclear propelled rocket has the potential to reach 8-11% the speed of light. If we use the conservative estimate from the previous figure, we find that a potential spaceship could reach Alpha Centauri in as little as 55 years. Here's a link to an article which tries to assess the speed of a hypothetical nuclear propelled rocket. It states that a speed of 10% the speed of light is achievable. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576507000665?via%3Dihub"
133 years isn't that long in a future society where the average lifespan for purely biological humans is around 1000 years and where cybernetic immortality is relatively common.
We should definitely send a space telescope over there, one that goes extra-extra fast to beam back information. It would be cool to see information back. In a few years of course, we don't possess the tech right now, but it's within our grasp, and I want to actually look at interstellar photos in my lifetime
Fastest way we have to send information is lasers. We haven't figured out how to effectively use quantum entaglement for communication yet. That would allow instantaneous communication if it were possible.
@@christopherbeddoe406 I meant more like the travel to another galaxy, an 8 year period for information being is quite small enough for this kind of project
Sending a telescope to Proxima Cen is not within our grasp. Ridiculous amounts of energy would be required, both to get there and to slow down. There would be no way to power the craft during its trip---solar is out of the question, and RTGs don't have enough power for so long. It would take so long to get there that the telescope would be nearing the end of its lifetime, and there would be no way to service it----JWST is expected to last only 20 years or so. Then there's the question of sending data back to Earth. I have never seen any serious discussion of how to do that, and I have looked. Among the problems are power, the antenna, and bandwidth.
@@christopherbeddoe406 _"We haven't figured out how to effectively use quantum entaglement for communication yet. That would allow instantaneous communication if it were possible."_ We haven't done it because it's impossible. Impossible in principle, not because of inadequate technology.
@@michaelsommers2356 Ach, you're probably right. Someone like me with no expertise on the subject just wants to believe that this could happen, but ultimately, it may not work out.
To get to Proxima Centauri B in a reasonable amount of time our spaceships would have to be capable of at least 25% of light speed. If we go any slower such as 10% the speed of light it would take us more than 40 years to reach Proxima Centauri B. Most of the crew and passengers on the starship would either die on the journey or die within a few years of landing. How many people would want to spend that much time in a spaceship not knowing if Proxima Centauri B would be capable of supporting human life? What if the planet can support human life but there's intelligent but primitive life there? Something like the neanderthals of Earth. Do we live on a part of the planet where no local life lives or do we live with the locals?
Wow, your best episode yet and they've been great so far already! You really researched the best thinking on the concepts and threw in a ton. Thanks! You are so absolutely right that you build space infrastructure before setting up camp on the planet surface. The first things an incoming colony fleet will want is energy (fissiles, solar and fusion fuel) and resources (volatiles and non-volatiles like metals and carbon, etc.). The best place to get matter is floating rocks of all sorts as you say. So I think the first three spots will produce energy, volatiles and non-volatiles, working together for manufacturing. Then comes the orbital infrastructure (power, geo and com satcons and stations). Then comes sort some of orbit-surface transportation system, where you hit the nail on the head again. Orbital rings or launch loops/drivers would be incredibly big megaprojects for a new colony. But your orbital mirror idea to simulate Earth days on the darkside is great and really thought out imo. 10:40 Billionaire Zuckerberg has been partners with a Russian billionaire oligarch for years working on a huge project that involves putting the largest laser in history in a huge facility on the Moon? If that's just the cover story, I wonder what their billions have really built so far, and where. What kind of shit needs that kind of cover story? Could be an episode ;) Anti-matter is a bit down the road. Not only producing it in quantity, but storage seems impossible on a ship, let alone a little one. Perhaps if we build a century ship with 100,000 people, anti-matter propulsion, power and storage will make sense and be possible. 4:18 *"Proxima b is only 7.5 kilometers away from its star."* Let that sink in. You look up, and the entire sky is filled with the blazing sun just a few blocks away. And the gravitic tides! Proxima b would have to be ultra dense of course and moving at relativistic speeds, which make landing tricky. [It's 7.5 *million* km :) ] And good news, 5:10, it will never go supernova, or even nova, because it is much too small. Not even if all three kicked off together would we get a supernova. Just keeping ya honest :) Thanks again, outstanding!
I mean everything takes time. It took humans several thousand years from when the first boat was created until we had submarines. And it's been less than a hundred years since the first spaceship was created, and we're already talking about traveling to other solar systems. Yes, it's good to be ambitious, but one must be reasonable as well. I'd say a fair timeline for colonizing the Moon is say 25 years, Mars 50 years, the solar system as a whole say a thousand years, and getting to another solar system maybe 2-10,000 years.
In my opinion your timeline isn't realistic. I believe people would prefer to send an exploration mission to another solar system as soon as possible. You don't need to wait for your best plan or technology before you start expanding to space. The sooner you begin , the sooner you would get valuable data about space and the universe itself. We shouldn't forget that most scientific "facts" of today are either only proven on Earth or are just theories. For example that light speed is the fastest speed in the know universe and nothing can surpass (which is an oxymoron since velocity is relative to the observer).
@@alexandervlaescu9901 people do want to send spacecraft to another solar system, but the closest one is about 25 *trillion* miles away. Even with the fastest spacecraft we have right now, it would take over 50,000 years to get there. If we had a spacecraft that was 10 times faster, it'd still take over 5,000 years. Anyhow, I was talking more about timelines when humans would arrive, not just unmanned spacecraft. I agree with you that within maybe this century we will have the technology to send some very tiny microchip sized spacecraft to another solar system, but yea, it's gonna be thousands of years before any human sets foot in another solar system
Our fastest rockets are 60 miles/ second. That is approximately E (speed of light) divided by 3,000. So it would take approximately 12,000 years to travel 4 light years, or 13,000 years to get to Proxima ( I think its 4 and a third light years away). For perspective 11,000 BC (stone age basically) was roughly 13,000 years ago. In most science fiction stories with "generation ships" where only the distant descendants will reach the intended destination the future generations end up forgetting the original mission or in some cases, get this NOT EVEN BEING AWARE THAT THEY ARE ON A SPACE SHIP AT ALL, thinking that the entire universe (its all they know) is the inside of the ship. Often there are power struggles and the inhabitants end up at war with each other inside the ship. The admittedly troubled at least in part doing to low budget and terrible special fx technology of the time but VERY interesting Canadian TV show called THE STAR LOST totally expresses these problems. The STARLOST was filmed in the early 1970s, only a few years after Star Trek was canceled and a MODERN REMAKE could be AWESOME.
We should do deeper studies on the planetary systems around Alpha Centauri A and B first. If stable orbits are possible around those two stars, there are probably small rocky planets around them. Given a choice of two planets, one tidally locked and bathed in flares, better to choose one around a friendlier, more Earth-like star. Centauri A and B are only slightly further away than is Proxima Centauri. Also--if we have the technology to get to the Centauri system, maybe we could get to Tau Centi or Episolon Eridani, both of which are also fairly close--although they also, have downsides.
Alpha Centauri A and B don't have a stable "Goldilocks-Zone" - they are in the wrong distance from each other. Planets being in a stable orbit around one of them would be too hot, and planets orbiting the 2 of them together would be way too cold. There might be some rocks drifting in the "cold nowhere" around them - but why should we go there? Earth has its own Kuiper Belt.
If we have the energy tech to get to Proxima we will be way past needing solar panels to set up shop once we’re there. Likely either fission or fusion energy.
Does anybody really look at the energy needed to travel interstellar? I don't have my spreadsheet here, but if you work out the figures for acceleration to, say, 0.25c, and corresponding decel, you get some HUGE numbers for any practical-seeming mass of ship. I don't think I'm screwing up -- I use fundamental physics: F=ma, E=Fd, d=0.5at^2, and so forth. Energy is valuable -- I keep getting results that suggest choices like "send a bus to Proxima OR feed Spain for a year".
The energy required is approximately 100 watts per Newton of thrust, per 30 kg Engine. A 30 kg Engine is a stack of ten Engine's. The new all electric Sub Light Impulse Engine is being assembled now, the first hardware component is on the test fixture. Keep the hope alive!
You are right. The energy required to propel an interstellar space ship would be enormous. According to our world in data the annual energy consumption of humanity is about 17000 TWh which I make to be 6.1 x 10^14 kJ. A 1000 tonne spaceship moving at 0.25c will have a kinetic energy of 1000000 kg x 75000000 m/s / 2 = 2.8 x 10^21 J or 2.8 10^18 kJ. This means that the energy required to accelerate the ship will be about 4500 x our global energy for a year and we will need the same again to slow it down.
s. Not in a 1to 1 relationship, but as a team. But, our team has the thankless task of creating hand in hand with keeping rogue players, like Putin & his Poodle, and others from stealing or destroying the field of play first. We have only been able to get to this point barely. We'll need consult with Spock for the odds of success.
Another bunch of “small steps” and we’ll eventually get there. We haven’t moved much since we first landed on the moon. Colonize the Moon first, then Mars and then the Asteroid Field. We’ll need a lot of supplies that we can’t find enough on Earth. Rare Earth metals in particular to make the next gen spaceships and space stations. A hundred space stations the size of cities extending into the Ort Cloud outside our solar system and beyond.
Yea everything is in steps. The first step was colonizing our entire planet, which we've done. Humans live on every continent, we live temporarily on cruise ships and in submarines in the ocean, and we even have humans living right above our planet on the ISS. Step 2 is getting bases and temporary living quarters on/around the Moon, then Mars, maybe Titan, maybe Europa, Venus, and otherwise colonizing our solar system. Then after we do all that, perhaps we can try and get to moving outside of our solar system. If I had to guess a timeline for all this, I say we'll colonize the Moon within 50 years, Mars within a hundred, the solar system as a whole within 1 thousand years (so by 3,000 AD), and be colonizing another solar system within 10,000 years.
@@matthewviramontes3131 I've see you and so many other people throw out these #'s (please take no offense) but the Wright brothers flew in 1903? What do you think they would think of an iPhone today? (its your calculator, you phone, your email, your flashlight, your GPS, Alarm clock, weather channel, text, radio, TV... what else did I miss?) Do you think they would say yeah planes will have auto piolet in 200 years. I think we very much under estimate what we are truly capable of. I think Elon Musk has certainly demonstrated just what we can do..... But to you point I do think I'm not going to see warp drive in my lifetime.....
@@Secssl128g Well I'm just trying to be conservative with the timelines. Some technologies take very long to develop, like it took literally thousands of years from when the first boat was created until we had submarines, but it only took about a hundred years from when the Wright brothers first flew until we had the ISS. So no one ever really knows when or how long it will take until we accomplish any specific thing, but you can often make reasonable predictions. For example, you can reasonably predict that humans won't be leaving the solar system within the next hundred years, but we could very well set up bases on the Moon/Mars within that time.
I think we need to cryo freeze people and automatically revive them when at Proxima B. It would still take thousands of years to get there, but feel instand for the user.
Laser propulsion is the best. Isaac Arthur's video Interstellar Highways explores the idea of building out strings of large stations across space to propel and slow ships designed with laser propulsion in mind. Presumably, to build it out in the first place you would, send a ship that will slow itself down using whatever high energy engine we please, maybe with a bit of heliobraking. This would also have the ability to build out a construction system that could develop the needed local infrastructure von Neumann probe style.
7.5km away from its Star, that’s a funny error, also Proxima won’t go super nova. Simple stellar knowledge, red dwarfs turn into a blue dwarf for a while at the end of its like then fades out into a white Dwarf. Also if I lived on the planet I would live in the twilight zone just after the evening point where if it has an atmosphere it won’t be completely pitch black.
When we reach Proxima Centauri we would upload our consciousness into a computers, this will allow us to waistband radiation much better. This is also true even for mars colonization.
If we're going to use lasers to propel the ship, we'd have to discover the incoming black hole or whatnot enough in advance for us to get up to speed before the lasers are destroyed. And then we'd have to find a way to stop at the other end.
Humanity is a waste instead of investing heavily into space exploration we waste money on wars and killing each other. Space exploration is what will take technology to a whole other level.
The prolonged life span of Proxima is a moot point, isn’t it? Because the other two stars it shares its system with aren’t as long lived, are they? What effects will their deaths have on Proxima (and Proxima B). But then again, it’s more likely that they’ll still outlive the human species, wherever it finally ends up.
Seems the best option is to hitch a ride on a rogue planet as it has excessive amounts of all the raw materials we need and cumulative mass. We would just add life, energy, and information.
Strange matter are probably easier to made than antimatter, by mixing deuterium with pig iron in particle accelerators And that strange matter is used on alcubierre warp engines
Very true -- planets are overrated. Once you have the life-support issues solved (radiation, gravity, food, etc), all you need from a planet is fuel and raw materials for further construction projects. And those don't even need to be Goldilocks planets.
You made a mistake, with the size proxima won't go supernova cause not enought mass. For a supernova you nead a sun of a few times the mass of our sun. The easiest method is a genartion ship. Either way we have to get back to the moon, it has frozen water and quite some iron, titan and other stuff. ( Was discovered 2020) Either way the ship will be running on fision or in 30 years on fusion 😅. So you would need the laser for the initial burn and after that you would run it with your reactors
We should explore our own solar system and Oort Cloud which could take thousands of years even with FTL drive. The other star systems can wait and most likely already is claimed by other intelligent races.
All this seem very interesting and in order for man to travel out into space the most important thing is that man has to discover SPEED to over come our challenge .
will a spinning ship even create gravity in space? if you eliminated gravity wouldn't your ship just spin around you leaving you floating in mid-air? unless youre constantly speeding up, WOW maybe eliminating gravity is how their making these impossible turns
Humanity, just like Breakthrough Starshot, is Zuck'd... Too few psychopaths controlling too much resources and power... And the sad part is... Ahh, if I just had a penny for every solar system out there...
it's better to just invest in human consciousness extractor, put that on a hard drive and send it away to deep space in case the sun is about to explode.
isnt the fastest thing we shot into space that weird manhole cover that we used to try and cover a underground nuke but instead turned it into the worlds biggest shotgun edit: nvm it only went about 125000 miles per hour
Hmmm...I don't know...so many down sides.But so many up sides. I guess the biggest upside though, would be if we can survive as a species so that our decendants centuries from now will actually be doing this-people on the precipice of this kind of adventure. Lets not screw it up for them now...let us survive our technological "adolescence", so that these future generations can deal with the challenges that you outlined here!
The place looks habitable and the plans are okay. but the problem is getting there. maybe in the next century people will come up with great innovations in the transport sector. only then we can Get there
Correction, we said Proxima B is 7.5 km away from its Sun but we meant 7.5 million km.
The errors... 7.5km orbital distance, huh? And claiming that a red star is safer because it won't go supernova in xxx trillion years. Well, newsflash: It's a red dwarf, it's _never_ going to go supernova. It's too small for that. On the other hand, red dwarf stars are anything but safe to be around, they're well know for their *massive* flares that'll easily wipe any planet in its "habitable zone" clean of anything resembling life on the regular.
Thank you for saving me from typing this!
As well thinking one would be safe from flares while orbiting in a space habitat.
Red dwarfs don’t go supernova.
5:09 Proxima Centauri is a low mass star that will not go supernova !
Last I heard, at least 3 solar masses necessary for star to go nova. The process is driven graviationally and gravity is directly proportional to mass. This, of course, means NET mass after any mass ejection events...
Isaac Arthur also had a really great video on colonizing alpha Centauri. He believes though that we could get there in our lifetime if we extend the average human lifetime, which he believes will progress quickly enough to be feasible. So get a fusion drive and a big comfortable city colony ship and wait out a few hundred years to get there!
"Intergeneration colony ship"?
Elmer fud is a great guy but he is too much of an intellectual so lazy leaning on colloquial misuse of key terms like "sentient" where he means *Sapient.*
His generic misuse is too common for me to fix as idiots will continue conflation in colloquial misrepresentation for the sake of "convenience."
@@linyenchin6773 - no, he means sentient. It seems you don't understand what the word colloquial means.
@@tomedward8652 sentient means "having senses" Sapient means "having sense of indiviual autonomy." Mictobes are sentient, they are not Sapient.
Mouth-breathers are not Sapient, they are merely sentient for the collective is their centre of being, which is why they mistake facts as reality and pretend that actual reality is just "subjective woo woo" of so called "personal bias."
One of my favorite episodes.
having gotten farther into this episode, I think he's watch the Isaac Arthur alpha Centauri.
Channel is a hidden gem, hopefully not for long.
Space Race really stands out in candidness, accuracy and the insightful but unbiased content being produced so consistently for such a small channel.
Make sure we all share with our friends y’all.
I think the content is good, but I'm not sure I'd use the term "unbiased." There's clear bias for Elon Musk and against Jeff Bezos. That's not a bad thing, but I don't believe it makes the channel unbiased
This channel is full of bias and inaccuracies. Good for entertainment purposes only. Do not consider this educational at all.
@@colinhouseworth9027 Yeah, FAR from accurate! They really need to do more research! I'm not the smartest (but not stupid) so if I pick up on the inaccuracies there has to be something wrong!
Red dwarfs don't go supernova.
4:19 it should be 7.5 million KM , not 7.5 KM.
7.5 kilometers???! Is that true? Your presentation is amazing as always; I love your channel! Keep up this continued content & you’ll keep growing for sure!
7.5 million KM
Yeah 7.5 kilometers is definitely not habitable. It is way too close. It couldn’t even have a stable orbit that close. 7.5 million kilometers sounds more reasonable.
@@a22226565 haha! Ok 👍🏻 cool! I figured it was a slip…but doesn’t chow much I loved this vid … More will be AWESOME! Thanks for the reply!
Actually the 2nd time in recent vidoes where the million was forgotten.
Steps outside and looks up at a sky of fire:
The idea of escaping an extinction level event by running to another star system with all the same potential, or greater, to kill us as that of the good ol’ Solar System, just leaves me scratching my head. Much, much simpler to build habitats (think O’Neill Cylinders built to live in interstellar space) and avoid all the dangers of living at the bottom of a gravity well that regularly blows up, all while orbiting a monstrous and wide-open fusion furnace, is just nuts. Building O’Neill Cylinders is certainty challenging but not nearly as challenging as moving an equally large percentage of humanity to another star. Come on, Man
Not entire humanity would move. Just a tiny fraction. A privileged fraction. Which is pretty much how the world works right now. But yeah, I agree, building a generational ship or some kind of habitat to house millions is definitely more viable than travelling in a void of space for 15-20 years. The bottom line is we will never be able to save 100% humans (7, 8, 9, 10 billions or whatever this number is in the future). Only small part of humanity will be able to survive. Hopefully, genetically diverse part.
We can move away from stars D day too
@@konradd8545 bad part if it's the wealthy who's going to do there work XD we know tge rich don't want to work
@@okidokidraws I guess if we figure out fission we could!
@@konradd8545
Humanity may become outdated before self sufficient colonies are possible. Space isn't a good place to live for humans, so it is more likely it will belong to our successors.
Great video. I do enjoy how tight the script is, plenty of facts without any fluff.
I really enjoy the concept of 'solar' highways around the solar system and to other stars. Fell in love with the idea when I first heard about them from Isaac Arthur's discussion on the topic.
Just for inner system time frames could get cut down to something actually useful.
Fingers crossed for more video's around getting 'around' our solar neighborhood!!
Antimatter engines are not warp drives. Man you really dropped the ball on this video. Third mistake I’ve caught so far.
Correct, neither am I.
I thought only our star system was the solar system due to our sun being named Sol.
Great video, however, please let me point out the following as it actually made me pause the clip; Proxima B is a red dwarf type of a star and therefore will definitelly NOT undergo supernova. Our Sun is ~ 80% more massive and still it is just not enough to explode in a supernova. Once red dwarfs run out of fuel they simply turn into a white dwarf in a rather undramatic process.
I love your channel and I'm usualy not the type of a person to moan about stuff, but this is a super basic mistake and it does feel real sloppy. I would expect and much appreciate science dedicated channel to be more precise.
Again, I do like your work and been following for some time now. I also appreciate how much work it is to put a vid like this together.
Thank you for doing this. Keep it up!
We should definately find a way of the Earth. All this talk about colonizing Alpha Centauri is like humans looking at the moon in the 18th century. All the complications in getting to the Moon and there is almost NO idea of what is in the Centauri system. Reallity can be very painful. Nice video.Our science is still young.
8:55 I noticed you didn't mention Nuclear Propulsion as a method of transit. Look at projects like Orion and Nerva. Scientists who worked on Orion believed that they could use Nuclear Propulsion to accelerate a Spacecraft to 3.3% the speed of light, and that this ship could theoretically reach Proxima Centauri in as little as 133 years (keep in mind, this calculation was made using 1960s technology, when the project was first proposed). The method has a number of benefits over both antimatter drives and solar sails: 1. unlike antimatter drives, we have the technology to produce the amount of fuel needed for the journey 2. unlike solar sails, we can easily scale up the project to carry people, and 3. we have a method of slowing down once reaching our target, solar sails don't.
Do you really want to put a thousand nuclear bombs in orbit?
@@michaelsommers2356 You're right. These projects were eventually discontinued because of safety issues and environmental impact, among other things. Though I still think out of all the possible propulsion technologies we could use in the future, Nuclear Propulsion is probably the most realistic for interstellar travel.
If it would take 133 years with Nuclear Propulsion to reach Alpha Centauri than it would not be worth it, I'm sure that way before it reaches it's destiny we would probably have faster ships that would surpass that one and get there before the Nuclear Propulsion ship. 100 years for new technology is a lot.
@@juanfermin1841 All my comments keep getting deleted for some reason. I'm not sure why though, because we're not discussing anything too controversial, just interstellar travel. If you're getting multiple notifications from me, I'm really sorry. I'm not trying to spam you, it's that the previous comments I've posted have been deleted. Here is what I wrote in the previous comment.
"That's a fair point, but there's a consideration I forgot to talk about in my previous comment; studies have come out since then stating that a hypothetical nuclear propelled rocket has the potential to reach 8-11% the speed of light. If we use the conservative estimate from the previous figure, we find that a potential spaceship could reach Alpha Centauri in as little as 55 years.
Here's a link to an article which tries to assess the speed of a hypothetical nuclear propelled rocket. It states that a speed of 10% the speed of light is achievable.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576507000665?via%3Dihub"
133 years isn't that long in a future society where the average lifespan for purely biological humans is around 1000 years and where cybernetic immortality is relatively common.
This video is priceless. @7:15 I learned I can run from B to its star in 50 minutes.
5:09 Proxima Centauri is too small to go supernova. It will end as a white then black dwarf.
We should definitely send a space telescope over there, one that goes extra-extra fast to beam back information. It would be cool to see information back. In a few years of course, we don't possess the tech right now, but it's within our grasp, and I want to actually look at interstellar photos in my lifetime
Fastest way we have to send information is lasers.
We haven't figured out how to effectively use quantum entaglement for communication yet. That would allow instantaneous communication if it were possible.
@@christopherbeddoe406 I meant more like the travel to another galaxy, an 8 year period for information being is quite small enough for this kind of project
Sending a telescope to Proxima Cen is not within our grasp. Ridiculous amounts of energy would be required, both to get there and to slow down. There would be no way to power the craft during its trip---solar is out of the question, and RTGs don't have enough power for so long. It would take so long to get there that the telescope would be nearing the end of its lifetime, and there would be no way to service it----JWST is expected to last only 20 years or so.
Then there's the question of sending data back to Earth. I have never seen any serious discussion of how to do that, and I have looked. Among the problems are power, the antenna, and bandwidth.
@@christopherbeddoe406 _"We haven't figured out how to effectively use quantum entaglement for communication yet. That would allow instantaneous communication if it were possible."_
We haven't done it because it's impossible. Impossible in principle, not because of inadequate technology.
@@michaelsommers2356 Ach, you're probably right. Someone like me with no expertise on the subject just wants to believe that this could happen, but ultimately, it may not work out.
We could just turn the moon into a spaceship and survive through space until we find another planet to become aliens to .
Starts at 8:56.
All these planets are tidal locked. Great idea and amazing video but unfortunately we need to keep looking. Can't wait to see the next vid
To get to Proxima Centauri B in a reasonable amount of time our spaceships would have to be capable of at least 25% of light speed. If we go any slower such as 10% the speed of light it would take us more than 40 years to reach Proxima Centauri B. Most of the crew and passengers on the starship would either die on the journey or die within a few years of landing.
How many people would want to spend that much time in a spaceship not knowing if Proxima Centauri B would be capable of supporting human life? What if the planet can support human life but there's intelligent but primitive life there? Something like the neanderthals of Earth. Do we live on a part of the planet where no local life lives or do we live with the locals?
We tell them we’re gods and use them to conquer the galaxy! Lol
Wow, your best episode yet and they've been great so far already! You really researched the best thinking on the concepts and threw in a ton. Thanks!
You are so absolutely right that you build space infrastructure before setting up camp on the planet surface. The first things an incoming colony fleet will want is energy (fissiles, solar and fusion fuel) and resources (volatiles and non-volatiles like metals and carbon, etc.). The best place to get matter is floating rocks of all sorts as you say. So I think the first three spots will produce energy, volatiles and non-volatiles, working together for manufacturing. Then comes the orbital infrastructure (power, geo and com satcons and stations). Then comes sort some of orbit-surface transportation system, where you hit the nail on the head again. Orbital rings or launch loops/drivers would be incredibly big megaprojects for a new colony. But your orbital mirror idea to simulate Earth days on the darkside is great and really thought out imo.
10:40 Billionaire Zuckerberg has been partners with a Russian billionaire oligarch for years working on a huge project that involves putting the largest laser in history in a huge facility on the Moon? If that's just the cover story, I wonder what their billions have really built so far, and where. What kind of shit needs that kind of cover story? Could be an episode ;)
Anti-matter is a bit down the road. Not only producing it in quantity, but storage seems impossible on a ship, let alone a little one. Perhaps if we build a century ship with 100,000 people, anti-matter propulsion, power and storage will make sense and be possible.
4:18 *"Proxima b is only 7.5 kilometers away from its star."* Let that sink in. You look up, and the entire sky is filled with the blazing sun just a few blocks away. And the gravitic tides! Proxima b would have to be ultra dense of course and moving at relativistic speeds, which make landing tricky. [It's 7.5 *million* km :) ] And good news, 5:10, it will never go supernova, or even nova, because it is much too small. Not even if all three kicked off together would we get a supernova. Just keeping ya honest :)
Thanks again, outstanding!
I mean everything takes time. It took humans several thousand years from when the first boat was created until we had submarines. And it's been less than a hundred years since the first spaceship was created, and we're already talking about traveling to other solar systems. Yes, it's good to be ambitious, but one must be reasonable as well. I'd say a fair timeline for colonizing the Moon is say 25 years, Mars 50 years, the solar system as a whole say a thousand years, and getting to another solar system maybe 2-10,000 years.
In my opinion your timeline isn't realistic. I believe people would prefer to send an exploration mission to another solar system as soon as possible. You don't need to wait for your best plan or technology before you start expanding to space. The sooner you begin , the sooner you would get valuable data about space and the universe itself. We shouldn't forget that most scientific "facts" of today are either only proven on Earth or are just theories. For example that light speed is the fastest speed in the know universe and nothing can surpass (which is an oxymoron since velocity is relative to the observer).
@@alexandervlaescu9901 people do want to send spacecraft to another solar system, but the closest one is about 25 *trillion* miles away. Even with the fastest spacecraft we have right now, it would take over 50,000 years to get there. If we had a spacecraft that was 10 times faster, it'd still take over 5,000 years. Anyhow, I was talking more about timelines when humans would arrive, not just unmanned spacecraft. I agree with you that within maybe this century we will have the technology to send some very tiny microchip sized spacecraft to another solar system, but yea, it's gonna be thousands of years before any human sets foot in another solar system
Our fastest rockets are 60 miles/ second. That is approximately E (speed of light) divided by 3,000. So it would take approximately 12,000 years to travel 4 light years, or 13,000 years to get to Proxima ( I think its 4 and a third light years away).
For perspective 11,000 BC (stone age basically) was roughly 13,000 years ago.
In most science fiction stories with "generation ships" where only the distant descendants will reach the intended destination the future generations end up forgetting the original mission or in some cases, get this NOT EVEN BEING AWARE THAT THEY ARE ON A SPACE SHIP AT ALL, thinking that the entire universe (its all they know) is the inside of the ship.
Often there are power struggles and the inhabitants end up at war with each other inside the ship.
The admittedly troubled at least in part doing to low budget and terrible special fx technology of the time but VERY interesting Canadian TV show called THE STAR LOST totally expresses these problems.
The STARLOST was filmed in the early 1970s, only a few years after Star Trek was canceled and a MODERN REMAKE could be AWESOME.
We should do deeper studies on the planetary systems around Alpha Centauri A and B first. If stable orbits are possible around those two stars, there are probably small rocky planets around them. Given a choice of two planets, one tidally locked and bathed in flares, better to choose one around a friendlier, more Earth-like star. Centauri A and B are only slightly further away than is Proxima Centauri.
Also--if we have the technology to get to the Centauri system, maybe we could get to Tau Centi or Episolon Eridani, both of which are also fairly close--although they also, have downsides.
Alpha Centauri A and B don't have a stable "Goldilocks-Zone" - they are in the wrong distance from each other. Planets being in a stable orbit around one of them would be too hot, and planets orbiting the 2 of them together would be way too cold.
There might be some rocks drifting in the "cold nowhere" around them - but why should we go there? Earth has its own Kuiper Belt.
I always click when you make a new video. For some reason the videos are entertaining
If we have the energy tech to get to Proxima we will be way past needing solar panels to set up shop once we’re there. Likely either fission or fusion energy.
We'll get there its our nature to explore
Does anybody really look at the energy needed to travel interstellar?
I don't have my spreadsheet here, but if you work out the figures for acceleration to, say, 0.25c, and corresponding decel, you get some HUGE numbers for any practical-seeming mass of ship.
I don't think I'm screwing up -- I use fundamental physics: F=ma, E=Fd, d=0.5at^2, and so forth.
Energy is valuable -- I keep getting results that suggest choices like "send a bus to Proxima OR feed Spain for a year".
The energy required is approximately 100 watts per Newton of thrust, per 30 kg Engine.
A 30 kg Engine is a stack of ten Engine's.
The new all electric Sub Light Impulse Engine is being assembled now, the first hardware component is on the test fixture.
Keep the hope alive!
You are right. The energy required to propel an interstellar space ship would be enormous. According to our world in data the annual energy consumption of humanity is about 17000 TWh which I make to be 6.1 x 10^14 kJ. A 1000 tonne spaceship moving at 0.25c will have a kinetic energy of 1000000 kg x 75000000 m/s / 2 = 2.8 x 10^21 J or 2.8 10^18 kJ. This means that the energy required to accelerate the ship will be about 4500 x our global energy for a year and we will need the same again to slow it down.
Our creators gave us the capabilities for us to become alike. Not 1 for 1, maybe, but a bunch to 1.
Some of us have the gift
s. Not in a 1to 1 relationship, but as a team. But, our team has the thankless task of creating hand in hand with keeping rogue players, like Putin & his Poodle, and others from stealing or destroying the field of play first.
We have only been able to get to this point barely.
We'll need consult with Spock for the odds of success.
Another bunch of “small steps” and we’ll eventually get there. We haven’t moved much since we first landed on the moon. Colonize the Moon first, then Mars and then the Asteroid Field. We’ll need a lot of supplies that we can’t find enough on Earth. Rare Earth metals in particular to make the next gen spaceships and space stations. A hundred space stations the size of cities extending into the Ort Cloud outside our solar system and beyond.
With difficulty I shouldn't wonder as we can't even colonise our own Moon!
Yea everything is in steps. The first step was colonizing our entire planet, which we've done. Humans live on every continent, we live temporarily on cruise ships and in submarines in the ocean, and we even have humans living right above our planet on the ISS. Step 2 is getting bases and temporary living quarters on/around the Moon, then Mars, maybe Titan, maybe Europa, Venus, and otherwise colonizing our solar system. Then after we do all that, perhaps we can try and get to moving outside of our solar system. If I had to guess a timeline for all this, I say we'll colonize the Moon within 50 years, Mars within a hundred, the solar system as a whole within 1 thousand years (so by 3,000 AD), and be colonizing another solar system within 10,000 years.
@@matthewviramontes3131 good luck as they probably said that 50 year ago!
@@matthewviramontes3131 I've see you and so many other people throw out these #'s (please take no offense) but the Wright brothers flew in 1903? What do you think they would think of an iPhone today? (its your calculator, you phone, your email, your flashlight, your GPS, Alarm clock, weather channel, text, radio, TV... what else did I miss?) Do you think they would say yeah planes will have auto piolet in 200 years. I think we very much under estimate what we are truly capable of. I think Elon Musk has certainly demonstrated just what we can do..... But to you point I do think I'm not going to see warp drive in my lifetime.....
@@Secssl128g Well I'm just trying to be conservative with the timelines. Some technologies take very long to develop, like it took literally thousands of years from when the first boat was created until we had submarines, but it only took about a hundred years from when the Wright brothers first flew until we had the ISS. So no one ever really knows when or how long it will take until we accomplish any specific thing, but you can often make reasonable predictions. For example, you can reasonably predict that humans won't be leaving the solar system within the next hundred years, but we could very well set up bases on the Moon/Mars within that time.
I think we need to cryo freeze people and automatically revive them when at Proxima B. It would still take thousands of years to get there, but feel instand for the user.
Laser propulsion is the best. Isaac Arthur's video Interstellar Highways explores the idea of building out strings of large stations across space to propel and slow ships designed with laser propulsion in mind. Presumably, to build it out in the first place you would, send a ship that will slow itself down using whatever high energy engine we please, maybe with a bit of heliobraking. This would also have the ability to build out a construction system that could develop the needed local infrastructure von Neumann probe style.
A fellow SFIA fan!
7.5km away from its Star, that’s a funny error, also Proxima won’t go super nova. Simple stellar knowledge, red dwarfs turn into a blue dwarf for a while at the end of its like then fades out into a white Dwarf.
Also if I lived on the planet I would live in the twilight zone just after the evening point where if it has an atmosphere it won’t be completely pitch black.
Proxima is never going to go supernova
When we reach Proxima Centauri we would upload our consciousness into a computers, this will allow us to waistband radiation much better. This is also true even for mars colonization.
I think Kepler 452B would be a better planet to become Earth 2.0 it's further away but it would be easier to colonize
GAIA confirm that the 3 stars bound together, and far as I know Proxima Centauri got 3 planets.
The terminator zone is where it is livable
We need to work on lowering the cost of those grams of antimatter, maybe when its down to about 10 million per gram we can get that warp drive built.
If we're going to use lasers to propel the ship, we'd have to discover the incoming black hole or whatnot enough in advance for us to get up to speed before the lasers are destroyed.
And then we'd have to find a way to stop at the other end.
You think a Russian oligarch is worse than an American oligarch?
Daydreaming at high level - there are lot of planets, but there is no planet B. Take good care of this planet earth.
Humanity is a waste instead of investing heavily into space exploration we waste money on wars and killing each other. Space exploration is what will take technology to a whole other level.
The prolonged life span of Proxima is a moot point, isn’t it? Because the other two stars it shares its system with aren’t as long lived, are they? What effects will their deaths have on Proxima (and Proxima B). But then again, it’s more likely that they’ll still outlive the human species, wherever it finally ends up.
Lets all promote a healthy space civilizations.
ruclips.net/video/9nmdGPkLwvQ/видео.html
That works be a tall order I'd say through generations
bend space in front and rear. create a bubble.
Our AI overlords will send us there in Warp equipped spacecraft in 2065
That one ship suspiciously looks like a Vulcan ship from star trek
Seems the best option is to hitch a ride on a rogue planet as it has excessive amounts of all the raw materials we need and cumulative mass. We would just add life, energy, and information.
I noticed how you spoke about the Russian oligarch it shows you are more in tune with reality than most people
So we can have a tatooine?!?!?
Nice presentation, but note that warp drives and antimatter drives are very different systems not to be confused with one another.
Actually, the antimatter is just a source of energy of which a massive amount would be needed for a warp drive.
Kevin, did the 🎶🌌☯️Emperor ☯️🌌🎶 inspire you to find his cosmic sox way out there?
It's going be like Gurran Laggan
"Far side of the Moon". The word "Dark" means unknown. Like Dark Matter and The Dark Ages.
Strange matter are probably easier to made than antimatter, by mixing deuterium with pig iron in particle accelerators
And that strange matter is used on alcubierre warp engines
The book The Three Body Problem is based on the centaur system.
I don't think we would get there before we have generation ships. Thing is, one you have a generation ship, you don't need to go there specifically.
Very true -- planets are overrated. Once you have the life-support issues solved (radiation, gravity, food, etc), all you need from a planet is fuel and raw materials for further construction projects. And those don't even need to be Goldilocks planets.
@@stevenscott2136I don’t think that is what he meant
I love your videos 😍
Warp drive
How does a red dwarf go supernova?? Our sun isn't even big enough to go supernova.
What hipocrisy:
American billionaire = entrepreneur
Russian billionaire = oligarch
You made a mistake, with the size proxima won't go supernova cause not enought mass. For a supernova you nead a sun of a few times the mass of our sun. The easiest method is a genartion ship. Either way we have to get back to the moon, it has frozen water and quite some iron, titan and other stuff. ( Was discovered 2020) Either way the ship will be running on fision or in 30 years on fusion 😅. So you would need the laser for the initial burn and after that you would run it with your reactors
Sorry, a Class M, red dwarf sun goes nova after 4 trillion years?!? Where did you get that factoid please? I'd very much like to check it.
We should explore our own solar system and Oort Cloud which could take thousands of years even with FTL drive. The other star systems can wait and most likely already is claimed by other intelligent races.
And if we find that B is already occupied?
All this seem very interesting and in order for man to travel out into space the most important thing is that man has to discover SPEED to over come our challenge .
Bad part is a solar storm might have wiped it out
Well, that clip of the woman burning to death was 100% necessary 🤪 jeez
stay in our own solar system
will a spinning ship even create gravity in space? if you eliminated gravity wouldn't your ship just spin around you leaving you floating in mid-air? unless youre constantly speeding up, WOW maybe eliminating gravity is how their making these impossible turns
Humanity, just like Breakthrough Starshot, is Zuck'd... Too few psychopaths controlling too much resources and power... And the sad part is... Ahh, if I just had a penny for every solar system out there...
it's better to just invest in human consciousness extractor, put that on a hard drive and send it away to deep space in case the sun is about to explode.
Not in my lifetime though, but even if somehow they did manage to do it in my lifetime its not like i could ever be able to afford a trip anyway...
isnt the fastest thing we shot into space that weird manhole cover that we used to try and cover a underground nuke but instead turned it into the worlds biggest shotgun
edit: nvm it only went about 125000 miles per hour
we got the jomba juice so yea
All of this assumes that we are even still human by the time we could perform this trip. It is more likely that we will be machines.
the world should forget about the money and just do it, we need to expand are species so that we wont go extinct .
Hmmm...I don't know...so many down sides.But so many up sides. I guess the biggest upside though, would be if we can survive as a species so that our decendants centuries from now will actually be doing this-people on the precipice of this kind of adventure. Lets not screw it up for them now...let us survive our technological "adolescence", so that these future generations can deal with the challenges that you outlined here!
planet B, no chance. It's tidally locked. Uninhabitable.
We can't even get our shit together here on earth what make you think we will ever make to another solar system
There is a lot more antimatter around Saturn compared to the earth.
i wonder how the three stars radiation would effect life and the planet
THERE IS LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS AND THERE IS NO GOD UGABUGABUGA
we are better off going to trappist-1
We would probably screw up that planet just like own
With ai and robots humans could spread across the entire universe, speed of travel has been made irrelevant.
The place looks habitable and the plans are okay. but the problem is getting there. maybe in the next century people will come up with great innovations in the transport sector. only then we can Get there
7.5Km from the star? Are you sure about that? 🤨
hi
7,5 kilometers, that did not Sound right. But I gues it is an honest mistake, since I checked and it is 7,5 million km :)
We should create anti matter and sell it to other countries.
Red dwarf supernova???
Imagine another God exist in another planet
YOU DON'T LIKE OLIGARCHS "RIGHT NOW"? IF YOU EVER START LIKING THESE CRIMINALS, PLEASE LET US KNOW SO WE CAN GET SPACE INFO SOMEWHERE ELSE.