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#51 2016-09-02 16:18:10

RobertDyck
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From: Winnipeg, Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Past 20 years the future is simply the future, I won't be part of it most likely, I am nearing 50 now.

And I'm 54. My grandparents passed away in their early 90s. Why would 20 years not be part of our experience?

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-09-02 16:18:23)

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#52 2016-09-02 17:17:05

Antius
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From: Cumbria, UK
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

I don't think we need AIs or frozen embryos or an artificial uterus to develop interstellar travel.  Human beings have lived in small isolated colonies for as long as they have been human beings.  They didn't go nuts, quite the contrary.  Isolation in small habitats tends to lead to highly regimented societies, with behaviour organised around ritual.  If you want examples of small societies that persisted for centuries in small environments, think of places like St Kilda or the Pacific islands, or the Greenland Norse.  For most of history, humans have lived in small colonies for centuries at a time and these were often impossible to leave.

Surprisingly, most of those people were happy, and we are often less happy in our large, boundaryless, impersonal, urban worlds.  Mental illness is a much more acute problem in big cities like London than it is in small rural villages in the wilds of Scotland, even though the latter is supposedly isolated from the big wide world and offers far narrower horizons.  It can be very comforting to live a life in which the world follows a predictable pattern of social discourse.  People having children in such an environment have the confidence that their lives will be safe and uneventful, following exactly the same paths as theirs, with time honoured tradition.  I do not see that such an existence need be unbearable or unfair.  It will present its own set of frustrations, but as with everything else, human beings are good at tolerating what they are accustomed to.  If you spend your entire life in a habitat 100m wide, it forms the limit of your world.  You do not desire what is outside of it because your psychology is focused on the world within.

Last edited by Antius (2016-09-02 17:28:38)

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#53 2016-09-02 20:47:24

Void
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

I think I share your view reasonably well.  I will respond by staying in "Orbit" around what I think you have communicated, and the idea of our heritage in some way touching on Proxima b & Proxima Centauri eventually.

Personally, I think it is practical to consider that other star system as something to observe, both because we have a lot to do just to get a better sense of what it is, and because it is such a different kind of star system.  Personally, even if Proxima b is habitable, and not yet inhabited, I would not consider it to be prime real estate because of the mass of it.  Very hard to get on to and off of.  And it most likely at best is marginally suitable to humans.

You mentioned various island cultures in relative isolation.  I tend to agree with what you have said.

Culture might be like genetics.  There is a fine balance between endogamy and exogamy.

Actually it probably makes sense to promote "Island" cultures.
An auditorium for each musical group.  Not all of them clashing at once in one big mega room.  Of course that would drive people nuts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

If you have one big auditorium with many "Bands" playing different music at the same time, inevitably control freaks will seek to end chaos, and make everyone play the same song.  Of course that is a waste of time, doing that, you no longer have a large supply of monkeys on individual keyboards, coming up with new patterns, you would have a vast wastage, as you would have redundant monkeys, taking up space, and being required to not innovate.

I will not name particular current cultures on Earth that are trying to create redundant monkeys, but there are quite a few of them, and quite a few wanna bees waiting in the "Wings" as well.

I think we are talking space-time now, as the real treasure of leaving Earth.  Getting away from the stupids and their craving for that giant auditorium.

The universe seems to be offering two things that I mention now.  The ability to see to some extent places where humans will probably never go, and places humans might go which will have the potential for isolation from the giant auditorium idiots.

We might be lucky, if in fact it is a firm reality that nothing can travel faster than light. (Or nothing that matters to us now).

I might think that it could be possible to have a spaceship with a wormhole communication device. (Ray Kirtzweil wrote about it).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictio … y_Kurzweil

But when the giant auditorium people called up and demanded that the people in the spaceship play the same tune at the same time, the space crew could have their choice of playing something else, or playing it in an annoying fashion, or being rude, or just hanging up.

If the big auditorium people then sent Darth Vader after them in a mega ship, he could only chase down one island at a time, and he would probably run into unsurmountable budget problems to fund his mission anyway.

So, in my view a dispersed population is the thing to want.

Generation ships might be suitable in some cases, but I think the best bet is to start with Mars and Venus, and then as the big auditorium people (Who just can't behave themselves), come to harass those people, then Dwarf planets are a very good bet.  (All the time building better and better ways to get data on Proxima b & Company).

The big minor planets (Pluto sized for instance), appear to be an excessive challenge to me).

I would be looking for +/-Ceres sized Dwarf Planets, further and further out.  Ceres has probably been baked by the sun for billions of year, so it is not really likely to be an accurate model, but it is something we are beginning to know about.  It appears that it has a crust which is about 60% rock and soil, and 40% water and lighter ices (Perhaps).

Finding analogs of it out in the Kuiper belt, and perhaps one beyond it, and the Oort cloud, I speculate that those could be like Ceres, but with a greater enrichment of N2 and other useful things.  Hopefully a goldilocks situation, where there is just enough, but not too much of an overburden, to reach the rocky/soil crust.

As far as how to use that, I won't go there for fear of reaping righteous wrath, and because we have been over that stuff, typically in the terraforming section anyway.

Proxima b and it's associates are best used at this time to get information on how that system works.  This if referenced to our information on our own system may provide benefits of discovery well worth the effort.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2016-09-02 21:51:13)


Done.

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#54 2016-09-02 23:50:51

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

RobertDyck wrote:
Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Past 20 years the future is simply the future, I won't be part of it most likely, I am nearing 50 now.

And I'm 54. My grandparents passed away in their early 90s. Why would 20 years not be part of our experience?

My Uncle died when he was 69, my maternal grandfather died in his 70s, my paternal grandfather died in his 80s as did my paternal grandmother. My maternal grandmother lived to be 94 after witnessing the death of her two children, one was my mother who died in 1995, she was born in 1943, so she died at age 52, and my 49th birthday is coming up on September 15th of this year, the aforementioned uncle was her twin brother. So my maternal grandmother watched her husband die at 70, her daughter die at 52 and her son die at 69. My father is still alive, and he was born in 1942 so that makes him 74 years old, he is a healthy 74, so I'm hoping I take more after my father than my mother, who was a smoker by the way. I suppose if I'm careful, I could live another 20 to 30 years. My time horizon goes out to 2047 that is when I reach my 80th birthday. Any Terraforming, I'm probably not going to see. I guess I may see astronauts return to the Moon, and maybe humans on Mars in my old age, and I am hoping that medical advances will allow me to live longer than 80, they have 31 years to happen. Will I ever see a picture of the Proxima planet? I don't know, at best it might be a fuzzy dot.

I am hoping for AI, that is probably my only chance to live past 100, we need minds that are way smarter than human in order to figure out how to arrest aging, maybe even reverse it. We need powerful minds to figure out how to set up human colonies on other planets, the problem of space travel has been such a hard nut to crack, I sometimes wonder if its going to take superhuman intelligence to figure out how to do it! Maybe human minds aren't smart enough to figure out how to colonize space or make nuclear fusion work, o how to grow nerve cells. I still see people in wheel chairs, I still see blind people, I see people who are missing limbs and cannot grow new ones, there are a lot of things we still have not figured how to do, despite decades of study and research.

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#55 2016-09-03 00:03:22

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

Personally, I think it is practical to consider that other star system as something to observe, both because we have a lot to do just to get a better sense of what it is, and because it is such a different kind of star system.  Personally, even if Proxima b is habitable, and not yet inhabited, I would not consider it to be prime real estate because of the mass of it.  Very hard to get on to and off of.  And it most likely at best is marginally suitable to humans.

Anybody who can travel across the void between the stars is not going to have trouble getting off an Earth sized planet, as we will have to get off an Earth sized planet just to start the journey to the stars in the first place. If your talking about traveling faster than 10% of the speed of light you start getting ridiculous or gigantic ideas, myself included. I have the idea of light years long linear accelerators, and that is one way to accelerate an decelerate at 1-g for the entire journey without using antimatter, There are those giant lasers that are thousands miles wide pushing thin light sails, and there are microwave beams and star wisps, and that pretty much exhausts the realistic possibilities for interstellar travel. if one wishes to use fusion, you have to plan on a trip that will take generations, either a generatin ship, a sleeper ship, or most likely a seeder ship. An AI would have to pilot and crew it. Unfortunately humans don't hatch out of eggs, and need to be raised and educated. Humans are clever and will tend to do things in a generation ship that are no anticipated. I don't feel comfortable with sending a space colony on a one thousand year journey to Alpha Centauri, its hard to predict what humans will do during the 1,000 year transit, and such a starship will be huge, just to suppose a colony of sufficient size. Sleeper ships crewed by AIs are a different story.

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#56 2016-09-03 01:00:08

RobertDyck
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

we need minds that are way smarter than human in order to figure out how to arrest aging, maybe even reverse it.

I don't think so. I've encountered people who are so obsessed with accepting how things are, that they object to any attempt to cure aging. I't mostly a matter of trying.

I've posted before, the primary cause of aging was discovered in the 1960s: shortened telomeres. There's a natural enzyme that repairs telomeres, it's called telomerase. The gene to produce telomerase is normally only produced during miosis, the special cell division that produces a sperm or ovum. My suggestion is gene therapy to introduce an activation sequence for this gene. Not to turn it on all the time, that would be wasteful and could cause other problems. Instead activate it during mitosis, normal cell division. Telomeres are shortened during cell division, so the enzyme to repair telomeres will only be produced when its needed.

The trick is how to apply gene therapy to an adult human. One way is to introduce a DNA segment encased in a virus shell. Without viral DNA, the virus cannot infect. Rather than the shell delivering virus DNA to take over the cell, instead it would deliver the new segment of DNA. That segment would have to be incorporated into a chromosome somehow. Scientists know how to apply gene therapy to activate a gene; for example the sheep called Dolly was engineered to produce a human hormone in its milk. The hormone was not produced all the time, just when the genes for milk were active. That way the hormone would not affect the sheep's growth. It only produced a few grams of the hormone per litre of milk, but the hormone costs thousands of dollars per gram to synthesize, and you can go to the grocery store to see how much a litre of milk costs. I don't know how to create an activation sequence, but obviously the scientists who created Dolly do. And they know how to incorporate that sequence into DNA; they did for the single cell that grew to become Dolly. So can we produce lots of virus shells that deliver gene therapy to an adult human? Therapy that will not interfere with the current activation sequence, but will add an activation sequence for mitosis? In nature, a virus attacks one type of cell, so this may require several virus shells to deliver the therapy to all cells of the body. One per type of cell in the body.

So how do you ensure a single cell only gets a single copy of the activation sequence? For a patient with blood flooded with virus shells, several could deliver the therapy to the same cell. So how do you ensure a single cell gets only one?

Studies have shown that a strong healthy human body can prevent most types of cancer. The immune system attacks it in the early stage. Latest treatments for several types of cancer work by strengthening this part of the natural immune system. So keeping a person strong, healthy, and youthful could prevent types of cancer common with age.

Another part of aging is loss of hormones. Could youthful telomeres ensure endocrine glands produce youthful levels of hormones?

Blood vessels that are firm like solid plastic tubing can provide plentiful blood flow and blood pressure. Blood vessels that are loose like plastic film or a like a used condom will collapse, providing insufficient blood to tissues and lack of blood pressure. You need collagen for healthy firm blood vessels. It's also needed for muscles, bones, skin and tendons. Hormones control collagen production; primarily human growth hormone.

You also have to ensure blood vessels don't get clogged with plaque. You need cholesterol. A healthy liver will encapsulate cholesterol with lipoproteins. High density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) will not stick to the inside of blood vessels. Low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) will have cholesterol exposed so it can stick to whatever it touches. So a healthy liver can prevent clogged arteries. Researches are working on ways to dissolve plaque, other than reaming it out with a roto-rooter like device (atherectomy). But it starts with a healthy liver to prevent the problem.

So we have progress. It's human beings, not AI.

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#57 2016-09-03 23:12:33

Void
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

OK, I will attempt to bring this back on topic.
Not with my thinking, but with more creditable sources.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6022 … proxima-b/

From what I read, if the planet formed in place, they think it will be tidally locked.  If it migrated, somehow they think it will not be tidally locked.

It conditions could be any of these (But maybe something else I should think).
-A dried out big rock.
-Venus like.
-With water, maybe habitable.
-Neptune like and hot.

I was always leery about a good outcome for this planet, I think it is closer to Proxima Centauri then I would like to see.

I am holding out for other planets further out, I speculate that their chances will be better.

But we have a lot to learn about Red Dwarf systems, and in fact just knowing one does not mandate that they are all the same.  Should I live to see it I look forward to more factual information about the Proxima Centauri system.

Last edited by Void (2016-09-03 23:15:23)


Done.

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#58 2016-09-04 12:04:40

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

It is the closest system, and it has three stars with three habitable zones, knowing that their is at least one Earthlike planet should stimulate development of interstellar travel. I tend to think slow boats are more realistic, we might be able to send small ultralight craft on a beam of microwaves, but what comes after that would be slow boats. I think the most practical way to get there at 10% of the speed of light would be a staged fusion rocket like the Daedalus. The Daedalus can reach 12% of the speed of light, so if it were on a colonization mission with a slow down, it could reach 6% of the speed of light. A Daedalus would take 70 years to reach Proxima if it were to reserve fuel for slowing down. Some of the ideas I had are a bit ridiculous, and for a later time, if ever! Antimatter is a bit hard to handle or even manufacture! Fusion, I think we'll have that this century, and if we really wanted to, we could use nuclear bombs to propel a spaceship, that should do much better than our current chemical weapons can.

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#59 2016-09-04 14:17:29

RobertDyck
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

I know, GW Johnson has argued in favour of Orion. But whenever any talks of nuclear pulse propulsion I see...
giphy.gif

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#60 2016-09-04 14:26:44

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

Interesting looking at that site. You can see that the atomic explosion occurred before the man riding the missile, as you can see evidence of an atomic bomb blast in the background!  So they must have filmed it above the site where an actual atomic bomb explosion took place, that is the explosion shown in the film.

But seriously, you know chemical rockets will never get us to the stars, antimatter is too theoretical right now, I don't see lasers thousands of miles wide in space happening any time soon. If we wanted to build a starship in a hurry, then the only one we could build would be the Orion design, we know atomic bombs after all, and more and more people are getting them, most are mostly interested in blowing up cities and causing megadeath with them, so I would suggest that we use them to get off this planet before someone does! Probably the most obvious destination for an atomic bomb spaceship would be Mars, which makes me think of starting another thread on that.

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#61 2016-09-04 14:31:35

RobertDyck
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

The British Interplanetary Society designed Daedalus. A similar technology is the interstellar ramjet, proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard. It would use a magnetic field called a Bussard collector to collect "solar wind" from interstellar space, and use that as fuel for a nuclear fusion engine. Modern studies have shown the interstellar medium is not sufficiently dense for that to work. However, would solar wind within the heliosphere of the destination star be sufficient to provide enough fuel for a nuclear engine to slow the craft? Starting with the bow shock, then heliopause, then termination shock. "Heliosheath" is space between the heliopause and termination shock. Don't know the density of each region, and don't know how space around a red dwarf would be different from our solar system. But could this work?

Use Daedalus to accelerate to full speed, with the Bussard collector augmenting stored propellant until it leaves the heliosphere of our solar system. Could it achieve 20% the speed of light? Then use the Bussard collector alone to provide propellant to the fusion engine to slow at the destination star system. Coming in at high speed would aid the Bussard collector, so I'm expecting it would work more efficiently for slowing than accelerating.

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#62 2016-09-04 14:39:28

RobertDyck
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

The animated GIF is a clip from the movie "Dr Strangelove". It was a spoof. It obviously shows actor Slim Pickens riding a prop in a studio, with a background superimposed with 1960s technology. Then cut to real film of a nuclear test. The ground is completely different. Who could think this was anything other than a scene from a silly comedy movie? Actually the movie did have a serious message about dangers of war.

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#63 2016-09-04 14:58:31

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

RobertDyck wrote:

The animated GIF is a clip from the movie "Dr Strangelove". It was a spoof. It obviously shows actor Slim Pickens riding a prop in a studio, with a background superimposed with 1960s technology. Then cut to real film of a nuclear test. The ground is completely different. Who could think this was anything other than a scene from a silly comedy movie? Actually the movie did have a serious message about dangers of war.

The roads do look similar, I think they took an aerial film of a site where an atomic explosion took place, for a film of an atomic explosion which they already had, then they superimposed they guy riding the missile prop in front of it. The ground below looks blasted, so something did occur there!

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-09-04 14:58:42)

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#64 2016-09-04 15:03:40

Tom Kalbfus
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Posts: 4,401

Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

RobertDyck wrote:

The British Interplanetary Society designed Daedalus. A similar technology is the interstellar ramjet, proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard. It would use a magnetic field called a Bussard collector to collect "solar wind" from interstellar space, and use that as fuel for a nuclear fusion engine. Modern studies have shown the interstellar medium is not sufficiently dense for that to work. However, would solar wind within the heliosphere of the destination star be sufficient to provide enough fuel for a nuclear engine to slow the craft? Starting with the bow shock, then heliopause, then termination shock. "Heliosheath" is space between the heliopause and termination shock. Don't know the density of each region, and don't know how space around a red dwarf would be different from our solar system. But could this work?

Use Daedalus to accelerate to full speed, with the Bussard collector augmenting stored propellant until it leaves the heliosphere of our solar system. Could it achieve 20% the speed of light? Then use the Bussard collector alone to provide propellant to the fusion engine to slow at the destination star system. Coming in at high speed would aid the Bussard collector, so I'm expecting it would work more efficiently for slowing than accelerating.

I suspect that the solar wind around Proxima would not be a great area in which a slow down could occur. I think it would be easier to slow down in the broader solar winds of Alpha Centauri A and B. I think if we were in a hurry to build a spaceship, an Orion would be the thing we could build without having to develop too many radical new technologies. Anyway our enemies are not as deterred by nuclear weapons as they once were, how else do you explain the 9/11 attack? Maybe if we were to explode a few nuclear weapons to launch an Orion, that would have a healthy effect on our potential enemies, that they'd better not mess with us. In any case, we could send a bunch of people to Mars with that.

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#65 2016-09-04 16:05:17

RobertDyck
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

One science fiction book talked about space aliens arriving to our solar system. That book had large ships, each with a giant light sail. In the book, astronomers noticed a new star in the sky, then noticed the spectrum was an exact match of our own Sun. It was reflection from a giant mirror. The ships slowed for a number of days, then got dramatically brighter when the sail became energized with an electro-static field to reflect and accelerate solar wind. Would that work? Would that be enough to act as an interstellar parachute to slow the spacecraft enough that it could enter orbit about the star?

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#66 2016-09-04 17:52:15

Tom Kalbfus
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

RobertDyck wrote:

One science fiction book talked about space aliens arriving to our solar system. That book had large ships, each with a giant light sail. In the book, astronomers noticed a new star in the sky, then noticed the spectrum was an exact match of our own Sun. It was reflection from a giant mirror. The ships slowed for a number of days, then got dramatically brighter when the sail became energized with an electro-static field to reflect and accelerate solar wind. Would that work? Would that be enough to act as an interstellar parachute to slow the spacecraft enough that it could enter orbit about the star?

Proxima is a small star, about the size of Jupiter, its solar winds would diminish a lot more quickly by the inverse square law from Proxima than it would with our Sun. I think the other two stars in the trinary system, would be better targets for slowing down. I am hoping that we find some more Earthlike planets in the Alpha Centauri system, particularly one orbiting Alpha Centauri A would be good, it is the most Sunlike star.

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#67 2016-09-04 20:30:20

SpaceNut
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

If we can make it to them why not visit all three as they are only the distance of the sun to pluto or to saturn depending on where you pick up the binary stars.

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#68 2016-09-05 17:42:45

GW Johnson
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

As hard as it is to reach even the nearest stars, I quite agree.  A grand tour of a trinary system is absolutely required of any probe design to Proxima/Alpha Centauri.  I am at a bit of a loss as to how we might actually achieve that.  We may not yet be ready to attempt this feat. 

GW


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#69 2016-09-05 18:31:00

RobertDyck
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

Wikipedia: Alpha Centauri

the distance between them varies from about that between Pluto and the Sun to that between Saturn and the Sun.
...
The much fainter red dwarf Proxima Centauri, or simply Proxima, is ... 0.24 light years [from Alpha Centauri AB].

Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years from our Sun. Proxima is 4.24 light years away. That's because Proxima is not perfectly in line between us and Alpha Centauri.

StarShot is supposed to be a project to send a solar sail nano-spaceship called StarChip to Alpha Centauri. Ground based lasers would focus light on the sail. There is already talk of sending it to Proxima, which would then proceed on to Alpha Centauri. Doing that requires using the light sail to steer. Do we know how to do that?

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#70 2016-09-05 20:56:43

SpaceNut
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

Solar sail steering links coming your way..... Angular momentum change relative to center of sail.

Maneuvering on a Light Beam: How to Steer a Solar Sail Spacecraft

http://www.space.com/8896-solar-sail-sp … -time.html

Liquid crystal panels on the edges of the sail can change their surface reflection of sunlight by using low amounts of electricity to turn on or off. The "on" setting creates a mirror-like reflection that pushes the spacecraft forward, while the "off" setting has a more diffuse reflection that redirects the pressure of sunlight in all directions, lessening the force against the sail.

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_s … sails.html

http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl … propellant

20100723_ikaros_2e.jpg?itok=k5hTNoPM

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#71 2020-11-07 10:42:28

SpaceNut
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

digitalwaala wrote:

Impression of Planet Proxima Centauri with New the stars, Centauri a and Centauri B - Information about  Proxima Centauri .

Welcome to NewMars Digitalwaala, here is the topic which the discusion of the existence of a planet circling the nearby star is.
We may never see it since its would take several life times to get there but small probes could....

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#72 2020-11-08 08:20:58

SpaceNut
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

Copied from another topic again...

digitalwaala wrote:

Impression of Planet Proxima Centauri with New the stars, Centauri a and Centauri B - Information about  Proxima Centauri .

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#73 2020-12-20 11:11:27

SpaceNut
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

The closest star to earth seems to be getting some focus as Alien hunters detect mystery signal coming from the closest star system

BB1c5swx.img?h=450&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

Its not the first time we have listened to radio signals but they were short and did not repeat...

Proxima Centauri system, just 4.2 light-years from Earth would still be beyond our capability to get there in a lifetime....

It would require a nuclear powered large Ag ship with a small crew to survive the tip...

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#74 2020-12-20 11:18:48

tahanson43206
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

For SpaceNut re #73

Thanks for posting the link to this interesting report.

I'll make sure it is posted to the local radio astronomy news feed, although it may already be there.

Edit#1: I was the first to post this news on the local radio observatory news feed! Yay! Thanks SpaceNut!

(th)

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#75 2021-06-11 11:09:09

Mars_B4_Moon
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Re: Earth Like planet around Proxima Centauri?

A record superflare observed on Proxima Centauri
https://english.tachyonbeam.com/2021/04 … -centauri/

old 2020 Article
'Looking at an alien sky': New Horizons probe sees shifted star positions (photos)
https://www.space.com/nasa-new-horizons … hotos.html
Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 are much more distant still, of course. Though Proxima Centauri is the sun's nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star is still 4.2 light-years — about 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km) — from Earth. Wolf 359 lies about 7.9 light-years from us.


A new but old type of spacecraft propulsion system
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech … tauri.html
Scientists are developing a laser-powered SAIL for the stars?
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/explor … by-lasers/

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