last Monday, the Russians revealed their plans to built a new super plane called 'aerospace craft’.

they want to built a plane that can fly 30 000km/h (faster than the Space Shuttle).  it will be powered with rocket egines and can be flown manually or with autopilot. i will have the shape of a circle and can take up about 1000 passengers. it will be 75 meters long and weigh 800 tons.

they think the plane will be a fact within 10 to 15 years.

what do you think? fiction or reality? 

30 000km/h is that all? You should see Fozzer on his bike when he hears that Sainsburys have a special on wine!!!!!!!!!

Ozzy

howdy Mr Fozzer.
Some of the basic principals of Star Trek are actually easaly possible today. Photon Torpedos are just matter anti matter warheads(which scientists are looking into)
quantum torpedos are a higher concentration of the matter over anti-matter.
impluse drives are obviously coming close with Kens whole point of his topic.
Warp drive is def no-where near close to being an option.

I'm sure most of the technology we see in Star Trek will become a reality eventually.  Look at some of the old science fiction novels.  A lot of the technology described in these old books were considered impossible back then, but are a reality today.

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Hi Will...!
Of course Star Trek is real... ...!
Like The Matrix, Time Gate, etc.... ...!
Just ask anyone between the ages of nine to nineteen*...!
They will give you a 1001 reasons that it is all possible, and happening at this very moment...!
I beam myself between Sainsbury's and back home every day.
...saves an absolute fortune on 'bus fares..
...and the Worm Hole between my house and Paddington Station takes no time at all...
British Rail are way behind the times... ...!

LOL...LOL...LOL...!

Cheers all... ...!
Paul.
(England).

..*around 70 you tend to get a bit sceptical.... ...!
LOL...!

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Hi Kat...!
The reason that I use lots of "LOL's" is because I am a happy sort of chap who likes to humour the members as often as possible, and not to annoy, insult or bore them with reams of un-intelligable dross.
Therefore as a technican of many years I help where I can in an interesting and lively sort of way, without getting bogged down in too much detail, which is generally lost on most people anyway...!
I look on the Forum mostly for fun with a bit of general information thrown in now and again....
So...
You will see lots of "LOL's" and smileys from me...as usual... ...!

Cheers...
Paul.
(England...the land of mirth...)...!

P.S. I apologise if I annoy you with my laughter... ...!

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All right.  Any SPACE SHIP given motion by a solar sail will NEVER get enough push to reach anything even remotely close to the speed of light.  I don't mean to beat on ya, Kat, but it just seems kinda funny.

A solar sail works by capturing the photons (the solid stuff pushed by light waves, or the stuff we actually "see") and using them as "solar wind".  This wind would be perfect for travel within the confines of our inner solar system.  Anything out beyond about Jupiter will never get enough OOMPH! to go anywhere in any reasonable length of time.

The reason has to do with a law (I forget the name) that states that light, like sound, falls off cubicly as you get farther away from it.  That is to say, take the square root cube (3) of the distance, and that will tell you how much energy you are getting, with a few other variables thrown in along the way.  So the farther you get away from a light source, the larger the solar sail would have to be, by a factor of 10^3.  That's pretty big.  If you were to start with a sail as big as your house when you left earth's orbit, to keep the same acceleration you would have to have something 100 times that size (give or take a few) by the time you reached the orbit of Mars.

And it would have to keep getting bigger.

Oh, and at 1/4th of the speed of light, your problem isn't friction.  Any solid matter you encounter (pebbles, meteorites, atoms) will punch a hole in your SPACE SHIP like rebar through a birthday cake.

The law is, I believe, the inverse square law.

The reason that a sailing ships sails work so well is that the form a "wing" and the "lift" generated pulls the ship forward.  This is why a square rigged ship works best with the wind on its quarter.

It is unlikely that a solar sail will generate the required Oomph.

Will

Well, I guess we'll find out if solar sailing works or not soon.  A private organization is planning to launch a solar sail in early 2004.  They were supposed to launch it last month, but they delayed it.    I've been looking forward to seeing how it goes for about a year now.

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Once a solar sail ship goes beyond Jupiter, lasers based somewhere in the inner solar system could give the sail some "oomph", since the light from a laser doesn't diffuse into space as quickly as sunlight.

ok so you mount the laser on the back of the ship, aim it at the sail, and you got all the oomph you need.

Seriously, I have no idea what this whole thread is about now, my head hurts and i think ill go lie down now.

Yeah, that's why the laser would have to be aimed from somewhere else.

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You could do it the easy way and rotate the sails so it would hit correctly. 

For anyone who's totally lost in all this solar sail stuff (hey, what happened to Star Trek  ??? lol) Click Here for an explanation (and a cool picture  8))

Ender Baron,

I think you are refering to the inverse square law about light.  The intensity varies inversely with the square of the distance.

best,

................john