Rockets Are Too Slow for Meaningful Space Travel When one thinks of NASA they might think of a government agency which they like. Liking a government agency is rare now days, but NASA has such a rich history it is hard not to like for the average citizen. One of the problems is NASA doesn’t have the lead in technology it once had and other countries are catching up in leaps and bounds and the ironic part of them gaining on us is they probably learned from us. There has to be more going on than just rocket technology and building bigger rockets, because everyone who studies space knows you can’t really get very far into space with a rocket, because it is just too slow. Sure, we have other means of propulsion, but none of it is capable of launching a vehicle from earth into space. There have been rumors of planes which have dual propulsion systems, but so far, they would only be good to get into low orbit and after that would also act as a rocket. A rocket is probably one of the most inefficient ways to propel something. It uses a tremendous amount of expensive fuel which it takes a good portion of just to get into orbit and takes up much of the weight on the rocket and this is all done to get a slow-moving vehicle into space with a relatively small payload when you figure the original weight of the rocket with its fuel. When the Nazis developed the V2 rocket during World War II it cost them the equivalent of 100 billion dollars in today’s money, so it does make one wonder how much it might cost to develop a new way to get objects into space and get them to move much faster. There have been ideas put forward on how to get a rocket almost into orbit before launching it using a balloon, a very big balloon. They have even given it a name, it is called a rockoon. The idea would be to use this giant gas bag to lift the rocket to a height where much less fuel would be needed to get it into space. This does not solve the problem of the slowness of a rocket however. The same is true for the attempts by private rocket companies to build special high-altitude planes which would carry the rocket to a great height and then launch it from the planes. There has been an idea put forward which suggests it might be possible to harness gravity and use it in such a way it would allow us to explore our solar system. Supposedly it would allow a craft to travel much faster than a rocket. In a crude way some say NASA does this when it uses the slingshot effect to speed up spacecraft. The slingshot effect is comprised of using a gravity assist around a planet to increase the velocity of a spacecraft by speeding around the planet and then leaving. As I said this is a crude maneuver, but if spacecraft could use gravity to attract or repel their craft they might not even have to carry fuel even though they would be moving faster. Now that we have discovered gravity waves they might also play into this scenario. Perhaps we could use them to help us with our imaginary gravity powered ship and even travel between solar systems using the waves. UFO buffs will tell you UFOs are alien and many are powered by gravity and if this is true and if we have captured any we might already know how to use gravity to travel to the stars. Scientists thought it was impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. We know Einstein said this and gave the reason that it would take too much power and there wasn’t enough of that energy in the universe. Some very famous people in key positions in the aerospace industry have come out and said there were errors in his calculations and we should be able to travel faster. Then they said in death bed statements we have already achieved faster than light speed. Is it possible we have this ability and it has been kept secret? It seems there are a whole lot of secrets being kept by the government about everything, because the government has become paranoid. Why are there so many secrets? Secrets are kept for several different reasons. One reason might be things are being done we wouldn’t like. Then there is the reason it could cause a politician to lose an election. Another reason is the government thinks we can’t handle the truth. We also keep secrets so foreign powers don’t know what we are doing, but this doesn’t seem to work out too well for us and many times every foreign power knows what is going on here and the only ones who don’t know are us. I am sure there are many other reasons also. Lately we have been hearing a lot about warp drive. Warp drive is not exactly propulsion, it is the bending of space around your vehicle. Space is moved by the vehicle. Aside from my humble opinion that this sounds crazy to me, it would mean we are doing something to space which may affect other planets and objects around the ship we are using. I remember a Star Trek episode which was about an area in space where warp engines couldn’t be used, because their constant use was destroying space. It was just a story, but could bending space cause tremendous problems? We never hear much about that. We are at a point where speed in space means more danger. The faster we go without some sort of shield the more danger of even a sand sized object hitting the ship with such force it could destroy it. Unless we can travel faster than the speed of light, a lot faster, we are doomed to never getting very far in our explorations of space. It could take years just to get to some of the planets in our own solar system, which means carrying tons of supplies or putting people to sleep, neither option makes much sense. We want to be able to travel to other worlds in a reasonable amount of time, not spend an entire lifetime going somewhere. That too will be a problem, because when an explorer who has been traveling faster than light returns to earth the people on earth will have aged far faster and his family might even have aged and died. Einstein said the faster you go the less you age. |
