08-11-2025, 02:07 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-11-2025, 02:09 AM by AstroChara.)
Reminds me of the Centauri Highway.
Just yesterday I mused about the feasibility of interstellar travel on Discord; it appears that unless you use a generous amount of the very best shielding material humanity has to offer, you would have little luck surviving a short trip against the normal dust that exists everywhere. Presumably laser brooms or other innovative ways of shielding could help, but they have their own issues (like having to shield the lasers themselves against the dust).
That's before going into sand grains and pebbles, especially those big enough that lasers cannot deal with effectively; I suspect these would punch right through the ship and probably rapidly end the mission; we don't know how abundant these are, but if they are common enough, then fast interstellar missions become infeasible, and perhaps we'd have little choice but to slowly diffuse out between the stars.
Even 0.1c is insanely fast, after all.
Just yesterday I mused about the feasibility of interstellar travel on Discord; it appears that unless you use a generous amount of the very best shielding material humanity has to offer, you would have little luck surviving a short trip against the normal dust that exists everywhere. Presumably laser brooms or other innovative ways of shielding could help, but they have their own issues (like having to shield the lasers themselves against the dust).
That's before going into sand grains and pebbles, especially those big enough that lasers cannot deal with effectively; I suspect these would punch right through the ship and probably rapidly end the mission; we don't know how abundant these are, but if they are common enough, then fast interstellar missions become infeasible, and perhaps we'd have little choice but to slowly diffuse out between the stars.
Even 0.1c is insanely fast, after all.