Posted by: Pali
« on: March 05, 2015, 04:05:00 AM »
Define "travelling between the stars", please. Technically, the Voyager 1 probe is doing just that currently, as it officially (by our reckoning) left our solar system over a year ago... but do not expect it to reach another solar system during our lifetimes (it'll be 40,000 years before it comes within 1.7 lightyears of another star). If you expect FTL travel... well... you are expecting either new laws of physics or new types of hypothesized exotic materials that don't work the way normal matter (or antimatter, which is also pretty normal) work. For example, the Alcubierre drive that Elite Dangerous's FTL drive is based on is a real proposed idea for FTL travel via the folding of space (contracting space in front, expanding in back, providing FTL travel relative to external frames of reference but sub-light from within), but it would require a material with negative mass to function - and we have no idea if that type of material CAN exist, let alone does exist.
Otherwise, like Beznerds, I don't see us leaving this solar system outside of sleeper or generation ships - the former remains outside of our current technology level, though I wouldn't be surprised if better cryosleep methods are developed in the near future, but the latter we could probably do NOW if we really wanted to. Hell, if we'd really wanted to, we could've started up a Martian outpost/colony decades ago that would be close to self-sufficient by now.
As for ship designs... well, it depends on what the ship is designed for. Aerodynamics are pointless for an asteroid miner that isn't intended to ever enter an atmosphere - all that matters are the relationships between mass, volume, structural support and thrust capacity. For purely space-going vessels, ones designed without luxury/aesthetics in mind anyways (military/industrial/utility), I'd expect essentially skyscrapers with engines at the bottom - thrust would provide gravity, and while a sphere may be technically ideal for maximizing volume vs surface area, a rectangular box doesn't lose out much in that regard and seems to be easier for humans to work with and fill to capacity (imagine trying to figure out what part of the the hull's curvature a specific crate is supposed to fit into).