[Bonus] Biggest Disappointment in Space Exploration, Aliens Hiding, Privatisation of Space | Q&A 304
What is my biggest disappointment in the history of space exploration? Will the YR4 asteroid have a chance to hit the Moon? Does the solar gravitational lens need a coronagraph? And in our free extended version, how time dilation changes intergalactic travel? All this and more in this Q&A show.
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0guVsZhB2Ww
Here's a link to the full, un-edited live stream: https://youtube.com/live/Tab9WziiYAs
Comments (6)
If time dilation occurs on the ship cruising along at 99.999% the speed of light, slowing time from 100k years to one year, does it's fuel consumption drop to what it would use in one year?
Fuel is used to accelerate the ship and then decelerate it, plus a tiny bit to run systems during the flight. There a no fuel needed to maintain velocity in a vacuum. The acceleration / deceleration takes a lot of energy compared to the rest, so time dilation doesn't help here.
Ironic that Kepler is a candidate for biggest disappointment but also best success with so many exoplanets found just not the kind we most wanted.
Surely ET has fusion figured out by now. We've been 5 years away from commercial fusion for 10 years. No need for Dyson swarms if you have fusion.
I'm not sure about that. Stars can fuze far more elements and with no losses for cooling, etc. Building mirrors and/or photovoltaics is a lot easier and (I would think) less resource-intensive than giant and/or innumerable reactors. If you are using energy at Dyson swarm level rates, the "easily" fusible material on the Earth and Moon aren't going to last long; you'd need to start harvesting asteroids and/or disassembling planets at that point. I haven't done the math on any of this, so prove me wrong! ;)
I for one will follow your curiosity 🧐🤔🤓🤨 to the n’th degree 😍