A Case for Spaceships
Who are you?
I’m a student, living in Slovenia. I study medicine, but my love is coding and design. That’s all good and well, but where is engineering, you say? Where is math? Physics? Chemistry? Where is any skill required to build a spaceship? No, I’m just a dreamer. I’m just a dreamer. (Read more about me, if you’re not really that into spaceships.)
Why spaceships?
Every person on this lovely blue marble has to have a goal in life. I can’t imagine anyone not having one. I know they may differ in scale and attainability depending on where you grew up, where you live and many other variables, but it just so happens to be that our time is a time of the biggest dreams mankind could ever have had. The moment you read the previous sentence in did not allow dreams as big as the moment you’re reading this sentence in does. And some say our dreams are already too big.
So with all of what’s happening around and in us, with all of man’s current and future technologies, with all of our imagination and curiosity, what dream could one possibly have, that would be considered the grandest?
People have been dreaming about going to space ever since skies were above the Earth. There are people (nine people) and probes there right now and some have even voyaged outside of our solar system.
Now if you said that to somebody a hundred years ago, that people will have sensors outside of our solar system and that there will constantly be someone floating above our heads in the vacuum of space, you’d mostly be considered a bit of a lunatic. So why not dream of spaceships today? Why not dream of interstellar spacecrafts capable of manned flight? Why not make it your goal, to someday be a part of an extraordinary endeavor and make your mark in history?
What kind of spaceships?
I’m not talking about small cramped submarine-like spaces engulfed in semi-darkness. No, I’m talking about big luxurious rooms with generated natural light. I’m talking about huge meeting rooms and recreation rooms, beautiful artificial parks like that one on Diamond One (A Deepness in the Sky). I’m talking about space-time bending telecommunications and engineering rooms and laboratories and schools and holodecks. I’m talking about a city in the sky.
How do you plan to do this?
Well I haven’t figured out every detail yet, but I guess you can’t blame me. The current plan is to become rich in Earth terms (easy enough, right?), then become a philanthropist and support the best and brightest in building our dream. I will update this case as details start to emerge, but since it’s a lifetime project, it might take a while.
Propulsion system
Every ship worth its name needs an engine that provides its thrust. Since human powered pedaling is currently out of the question for large cities in the sky, we must come up with something else.
Current physics says that our best bet are black hole spaceships. Now, don’t get me wrong, these are as tricky as they come, but at with our current knowledge they beat propulsion systems like solar sails, fusion or anti matter.
How exactly does a black hole spaceship work, I hear you asking. Intuitively you may think that it involves traveling through some portals in black hole singularities, but that is not the case at all. A black hole craft has a sizable parabolic reflector mounted at its back, at the center of which is a black hole. The spacecraft is propelled (if this term can be used) by the Hawking radiation from the evaporation of a black hole. Matter is being converted into energy in this process and it is this energy (there’s a lot of it!) that pushes the spacecraft forward.
So for no real theoretical objections were substantiated, but there are, of course, enormous practical difficulties. On a less gloomy note, they are supposedly already making black holes at the LHC.
What?
If you read this far, congratulations. You’ve also probably found me a bit weird (told you so), but you know what, so is everyone else. I encourage you to read a bit more about my other current projects.