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From the lens Guide to Intergalactic Travel.

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DakshaDesign1 Apr 26, 2012 @ 3:30 am | delete

Thanks for Great post. I really like this article.

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knit1tat2 Mar 20, 2012 @ 10:20 am | delete

wow, too much time spent figuring it all out! It's called speed of thought, and yes, by remote viewing you can travel all those places! To do so mechanically, electromagnetic propulsion gets you around gravity, and from there, the ships driven by community thought are my most favorite!

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Toni_Roman Mar 21, 2012 @ 3:25 am | delete

Too much time figuring it all out? Wrong. Too little time. I have a day job. If I had to close all of my lenses but two, IGT would be one of the two that I would keep open. Intergalactic Travel is for me my life's work and my lifework and for other people it is also their lifework. They will be remembered for their contribution to the project. If I could, I would do IGT research and development full time. And someday I shall. Fortunately, people are intelligent and respect that this is the efforts of mathematicians, scientists, engineers, cheerleaders (and other encouraging supporters), and business people to birth the biggest project of all time. Bigger than building the pyramids, the Panama Canal, and the Great Wall of China. Bigger than the Apollo Project that put humans on the moon. And it will be bigger than the first trips by humans to Mars and to Alpha Centauri. And for those of us who were around when this project was first proposed, it is behind schedule. It does not interest us to be satisfied with sending probes to the outer planets of the Solar System or to image Jupiter-sized planets circling nearby stars. We're not interested in interplanetary travel or interstellar travel. Those missions have their advocates and their tight-knit communities and I won't bore myself by listing those groups. Intergalactic travel or IGT requires a different order of intellect. The best and the brightest. The elite. We wish to use our lives for something exciting. And since it is our lives, we get the final say in how our lives are spent.

Remote viewing? If by this you mean some sort of ESP, then I would remind you that even if such were possible, one cannot take luggage, companions or even one's own body. This is not travel. This is a night's sleep that one is describing. It is impractical. It's only a lens? Thanks Squidoo but one day we have to grow and leave the nest. I have already announced that as soon as funds are raised, then an IGT society will have its own dedicated server and website. Another drawback to psychic remote viewing the cosmos is that there may be other civilizations who may regard it as an invasion of their privacy and may therefore regard it as a hostile act. A good reason to be able to evacuate the galaxy and run for our lives if we piss off a more technically advanced civilization. Impossible you say? Tell that to the Tasmanians who were wiped out of existence when white convicts arrived in Australia. Genocide still happens in places like The Sudan. If by remote viewing you mean remote sensing, then I enjoy the pretty pictures that the Hubble and the probes to other planets send back. But it whets one's appetite for actually going. While NASA is currently developing robot and android astronauts, they still have not figured out why people are turned off by all that and why no one has protested too loudly NASA budget cuts. Some of us (like me) say cut it to zero. Get them out of the way so that red-blooded explorers can have at it. We are humans not machines. Why should I pay taxes for a machine to go when I want to go myself? Remote viewing? No thank you.

Electromagnetic propulsion? It won't get us up to hyperluminal speeds but a galaxyship is likely to have at least seven modes of propulsion.
1. Vernier thrusters and retro rockets for moving a galaxyship a few inches in dry dock.
2. Some sort of booster that does not emit all the scorching flames that the Saturn 5 did. This is for launch and meant to work in conjunction with a mass driver. To compare it with being shot our of a cannon is misleading but a start in conceptualizing what I am describing. The muzzle of a cannon is far too narrow in diameter. The next step in visualizing this is to remember how the Battlestar Galactica launched fighters ? but scale it up a hundred times larger or even a thousand times larger. That is the kind of launch tube we are talking about. Galaxyships will be creatures of pure space. None will ever land or even come into low orbit. Due to their enormous size, it may be foolish to even bring one too far inside a stellar system. So the launch tubes for each galaxyship will be floating in space at the galaxyport described elsewhere in this lens.
3. About a minute after launch, a galaxyship will be far enough away from the galaxyport and starships and space walkers and millions of others gathered to see the darn things finally fly that it will be safe to start accelerating to relativistic but sub-light velocity. This third drive would probably be an ion drive or the electromagnetic propulsion you spoke of or a Bussard ramjet or some of the other concepts proposed for starships.
4. Once the ship is out of the Milky Way's galactopause out in intergalactic space where space is thinner, the ship accelerates past 1 celeritas (one times the speed of light) using antimatter or some other method. We'll call it a translight drive.
5. Another method of propulsion we do not currently conceive will be needed to accelerate up to 1 billion celeritas. This drive will be responsible for the superluminal range of speeds.
6. At one billion, there is a theory that says that there is a transition similar to that at the light barrier. A drive to get us safely past this will need to be invented. Let's call it after the theorist who proposed this second barrier.
7. Finally, a drive to maintain cruise speed in the hyperluminal range. Without it, the voyage would take millions of years. Humans generally don't live that long and would get stir crazy on any voyage longer than a few years. Ten years is pushing human endurance. Even in stasis. Few people would appreciate being awakened and told that a million years had passed and that they were not just Rip Van Winkle but a specimen in a zoo. No one wants to be obsolete so it is unfair to ask people to be out of circulation for more than a few years. Ten tops. This is why we have a need for extreme speed.

Knit1tat2 ,the whole project is destined to be taken over by the engineers as the rest of us get out of their way. Does that bother me? Oh contraire. I welcome it. Engineers get things done.

Ships driven by community thought is a poetic way of putting it. I rather like that. Every project began as thought. All we are doing is making it tangible and touchable. Dilithium crystals? I don't know. Hydroponic gardens? Definitely. Could we use some angels? Yes, both the financial kind and the celestial kind (guardian angels). Networking and weaving together an IGT research & development community? Yes.

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Inkhand Jan 23, 2012 @ 3:29 am | delete

A fascinating lens, the Whirlpool galaxy looks amazing.

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Toni_Roman Jan 25, 2012 @ 1:05 pm | delete

Whirlpool is a brand of major apppliances in many countries. Their television commercials used to feature the Whirlpool galaxy.

I am not sure what is going on technically with Squidoo but visitors used to be able to see very large images of galaxies that I put in this lens. I have not changed any settings so it is not me. At least I hope not.