Read Sci Fi instead.

Any recommendations?

I'm sure I've only scratched the tip of the top of the iceberg with regards to sci-fi but from what I have read some good recommendations with regards to solar and stellar distances would be these.

Solar - Red / Green / Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Extra solar - Ringworld / Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven
Galactic - Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained by Peter F hamilton

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. </dna>

Not written as Sci Fi (genre nit invented at time of writing), but I did enjoy Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon.

I didn't. Impenetrable, repetitive tosh. IMHO / YMMV. *whistles*

One thing is certain - Voyager 1 is definitely out of reach of any rail guns we've developed, regardless of whether they're firing straight up, or at an angle to the horizon.

So long Voyager.

If anyone does find it maybe we should have also put a warning marker on the plaque so not only do they know where it came from but they know who gave them radiation poisoning.

I wonder if man-kind will ever overtake Voyager 1?

It is currently the furthest man-made object from the Earth but I wonder how long it will take for use to send something beyond it?

Will it be achievable within our lifetimes? What would be required to achieve it?

Even travelling at twice the speed it would take 33 years just to catch it up.

I think an orbital space dock (i.e. a spacecraft construction dock in orbit) would be a requirement just to remove the energy required to get into orbit in the first place.

Still though, a hell of a lot of work.

Thinking about it though... if a rocket can get into orbit at 17,000mph from a stationary start from earth whilst working against gravity then I wonder what that same rocket could do if it started in orbit at 17,000mph?

Well, obviously, the problem with that is it's getting harder al the time .


We have the technology, at least on paper, to be able to make a vehicle that could accelerate much more quickly and reach a much higher top speed than Voyager. So in theory we could. The question in fact is, why would we do that? What would it gain us? nothing really.


Eliminating the gravity well will certainly help. But personally I think right now we should be spending our time & effort on exploring (& exploiting) the solar system rather than throwing more stuff into the inter-system void where there's, well, nothing.

Jon

I kind of agree with the sentiment, but don't you also agree there's an awful lot that really needs sorting out down here on the planet?

I think something like this should be high on the list of things to do in order to achieve exploration closer at hand also.

While the cost if it would be quite large the subsequent costs of launching big missions would be significatnly reduced.

True.

Oh absolutely. I wasn't suggesting it should be all our effort. However I do believe that exploring the space around us is something that we as a species benefit from, if not immediately and materially (although there are certainly vast natural resources in the solar system that would be very useful) then at least in terms of the fact that if we don't have ambition and we don't push forward and outward, we're going to stagnate.

It's a slightly faux argument but... if we/Kennedy hadn't decided the USA were going to put effort into going to the moon, which had no obvious immediate material gain, we would have been slower to develop all sorts of technologies that came from that 'project' and we might not even be able to have this conversation on this medium for another 20 years...

Jon

Oh, yeah. I think we should continue to explore our own system with robotic probes. We've learned tons of great stuff in the past couple of decades, with more and more coming in each passing week.

But until we sort out the serious stuff going on down here, there's no point in trying for the albeit amazing manned space exploration phase again.