Even using green energy cars has reached astonishing high--but in order to explore space, we need to be much higher than this speed
This is a centrifuge, the pilots will use this equipment to test the human body can withstand the overload limit
Beijing time on August 20, according to the United Kingdom broadcasting company (BBC) website reported that us obsessed with the pursuit of higher speed--the athletes continue to break world record in track and field, and the United States are committed to the development of the air force can break the Hypersonic Mach 5 times, speed of about 6100 kilometers per hour.
However, this type of aircraft will be unmanned. But not manned, not because the body cannot withstand such a high speed, in fact, long before humans had speeds in excess of Mach 5. But the question we want to know is, humans are able to withstand the velocities have a limit?
Fastest human athletic records consists of 3 United States astronauts remain, they are the three astronauts of Apollo – 10th. In 1969, when they took the ship back from the moon when bypassing their velocity relative to the Earth 39897 kilometers per hour. United States space equipment supplier Lockheed Martin jimu·Bali (Jim Bray), said: "I think we certainly can't imagine in 100 years ago was able to nearly 40000 km per hour speed. "
But today, we're pretty sure knows, not long before the record will be broken again. Barry is the United States is developing the next generation of manned spacecraft, "Orion" (Orion), the project manager. The design of new spacecraft to send astronauts into low-Earth orbit, it would very much hope that the breakthrough had stood for 46 years of human flight speed record.
Under the current plan, used to launch the Orion spacecraft "space launch system" (SLS) rocket will be launched in 2021, at which point it will take astronauts to access a had already been dragged into lunar orbit asteroid, the future will also assume the Mission of sending a manned spaceship to Mars. At the current stage, the designers expected the ship's regular top speed of about 32,000 km/h. But even with the basic configuration version of the Orion spacecraft, Apollo spacecraft, 10th of current year speed records could be broken. Barry said: "Orion design focus throughout their life cycle, will take on a variety of missions. Its flight speed can be greatly enhanced. "
But even the Orion spacecraft is no speed limit on our behalf. Barry said: "there is no specific obstacles preventing us from going faster, except for one thing: the speed of light. "Speed of light in vacuum is about 1 billion km/h. Then we have 40,000 kilometres per hour from the current records began to improve gradually and eventually reach levels close to the speed of light?
Interesting is that speed itself--that is, our measure of the movement--there is no limit for our body issues--as long as the movement speed and can go in a certain direction. Therefore, in theory humans can afford to fly at close to the speed of light.
But if we are able to overcome the technical difficulties of building super fast aircraft, we will still face a lot of water under the condition of ultra-high speed moving issues that may occur. The other hand, if based on the physics of the upgrade or the new-found that humans might one day flies at speed of light, you probably will encounter unexpected danger.
United States next-generation manned spacecraft "Orion" would install a large number of protective measures to ensure the security of space flight
Threat of overload
It is very important, that is, although we can now achieve ultra high speed flight of 40,000 kilometres per hour, but we still must slowly accelerate to that speed, then slowly reduce the speed down. Rapid acceleration or deceleration for the body would be fatal: I think we all saw when two speeding cars collided head-on car personal injury – but be aware that such cars get more speed per hour of dozens of hundreds of kilometers.
Why is this happening? ' here involves a very important phenomenon in the universe: inertia. Quality of any object will resist the changes in their State of motion. In the Newton's first law of inertia has a very good description of the phenomenon: any object will remain at rest or in uniform rectilinear motion until outside forces it to change state.
Barry said: "for the human body, is good at a constant speed. We should worry about is not the speed, but the acceleration. "
About a century ago, practical sturdy plane appeared able to get pilots to maneuver in high-speed flight, many pilots later reported the speed and direction of changing some of the strange phenomena, including temporary vision loss, and felt her body become heavy or weight loss. This is the effect of acceleration, or directly represented by how many g, meaning it represents is imposed on certain objects, such as the size of the acceleration on the human body. As its name implies, a g is equal to the acceleration of Earth's gravity exerted on the human body, called the gravitational acceleration on its size at sea level is about 9.8M/s2.
G direction is vertical, from head to toe, or vice versa. This is definitely a bad news for pilots or astronauts: when it comes to an acceleration (or "overload") for negative values, the blood from the body to the head set, lead to serious head up, much like the feeling when we use both hands while doing a handstand. Pilots face flushed, eyes Bloodshot. Conversely, when the acceleration is positive, blood from the head to the feet, and in extreme cases the eyes and brain appear symptoms of hypoxia. Pilot there may be blurred or even temporary blindness condition, the worst results in the pilot unconscious, professionally known as "overload lead to loss of consciousness" (GLOC). There are many causes of aviation accidents is the pilot's temporary blindness or coma leads.
Most people can suffer from head to foot about 5 g of continuous overload, exceeding this limit would lapse into a coma. Professionally trained and professional flight pilots you can crush resistance in up to 9 g's consciousness still clearly under strong pressure controlled aircraft. Headquartered in Virginia, United States, Executive Director of the Aerospace Medical Association jiefu·siwenteke (Jeff Sventek) says: "within a short time, the human body can withstand far more than 9 g pressure. But if it continues for too long, that only a few people can afford. "
If only for a short time, our body is able to withstand very strong overload without causing serious injury. Current record-holder is a United States Air Force Captain xiaoaili·beiding (Eli Beeding Jr). He had recorded in the rails of a rocket engine experiments in 1958 to 82.6g stunning overload, when his rocket Rails were installed in 10 seconds up to 55 kilometers per hour. Bedin coma on the spot, but then wake up and found just a little bit of back scratches. This is the perfect show for human endurance.
United States air force is developing super high-speed aircraft to fly at more than 5 times the speed of sound technologies
Go to space
Based on the type performing different tasks, the astronauts also experience high levels of Overload: rocket and spacecraft returned to earth when they need to withstand the 3~8 g overload. If the acceleration is in the direction of the chest to the back, high overload for the body's influence is relatively small, so we can see that the majority of Shuttle astronauts will be bound in the design of the seat, so that it faces the direction of flight acceleration, this is very scientific and design. Once it enters the stable cruise phases of flight, shuttle's orbital speed of about 26,000 km per hour, but at this time the astronauts will not feel the existence of speed, as we sat in high-speed flight, the aircraft is very comfortable.
However, if the overload may not constitute a threat for Orion long-term tasks, small space rock may be a threat. The small space rock particles can reach amazing speed, some of more than 300,000 kilometers per hour. In order to protect the Interior of the ship and the crew, Orion was designed in protective housing 18~30 cm of thickness, there are also other protective measures and backup devices. Barry said: "so that we can ensure that the spacecraft would not lose something key equipment for the ship as a whole, we must consider this point of micro-meteorites may come. " Several mixed reality smart electricity
Truth is, the threat of micrometeorites in space is not the only future deep space manned missions will face problems. With the ever increasing speed of manned space flight, such as when performing a Mars mission, must also pay attention to other issues, including astronaut food issues and long term exposure to high-dose cancer risk caused by cosmic ray environment. These factors are in a short-term space flight can be ignored, but cannot ignore these problems on long flights.
United States the three astronauts of Apollo-10th is by far the fastest-flying man. But how long they can keep record of this? The future of space travel
The pursuit of speed we will be setting our own unprecedented obstacles. Will probably break speed record of Apollo 10th United States new spaceship design will use proven and reliable technology and materials research, and engine based on chemical propulsion system, which is the first human space flight programme has been used so far. Such traditional programmes, however there are serious limitations in terms of speed, because the efficiency is very low.
Therefore, in order to achieve human flight to Mars and other destinations in the efficient execution of the mission, scientists believe it is necessary to develop other, more efficient propulsion system. Barry said: "today the equipment we have is enough for us to get there, but we still want to be able to see a revolution in the propulsion system. "
Ailike·daiweisi (Eric Davis) is based in the United States Austin, Texas "Institute" and a senior research scientist and participate in the United States at NASA "breakthrough propulsion physics project", which is a 6-year period, at the end of 2002, research projects. This presents the 3 most has the potential to promote the programme in the future, these scenarios are based on the traditional theories of physics, and if successful would allow humans to achieve interstellar travel. In simple terms, all three respectively based on nuclear fission, nuclear fusion and antimatter propulsion.
The first principle of the programme is to split atoms, as as happened in a commercial nuclear power plant. The second project is the fusion, merge--this is the nucleus of stellar energy sources, this technology mankind has not been able to achieve controlled, perhaps can be achieved in the next 50 years. Davis says: "this technology is very advanced, but is still based on traditional principles of physics and the atomic age has been raised from an early stage. "The optimistic estimation, using nuclear fission and nuclear fusion technology advance programme in theory will be able to ship to accelerate to the speed of light is about 10%, or about 100 million kilometres per hour.
Of course, the programme is the third most powerful propulsion, or antimatter annihilation reaction propulsion. Physics has already stated, when ordinary matter and antimatter annihilation reaction would happen and release large amounts of energy. Today, particle physicists have achieved a small amount of antimatter production and storage. But if you want to create a practical amount of antimatter particles still need to wait for the next generation of new equipment and technology, and want to convert it to actual spacecraft propulsion technologies will be greatly tested human engineering technology. But Davis noted that engineers have now made a lot of very good scenarios.
If you use antimatter propulsion engines, a spaceship will be able to last for several months or even several years, accelerated, reach very high speeds at the same time overload control in the context of an astronaut can afford. However, this amazing high speed will have a new danger to human beings.
High speed risks
When people at the amazing speed of millions of kilometers per hour, any particle in space, from hydrogen atoms to the micro-meteorites, will become a threat to ships may actually "bullets". Yase·aidesitan (Arthur Edelstein) says: "when you have this kind of flying at high speed, the particles relative to your speed becomes very high. "Weilian·aidesitan yase·aidesitan father (William Edelstein) before his death is the United States at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Professor, that father and son have described in a paper published in 2012, the hydrogen atoms in space for high-speed craft could pose a risk.
Although in deep space environment, space density only about per cubic centimeter of hydrogen atoms in an atomic level, but they may change as the intense radiation. When into contact with a high speed craft, the hydrogen atoms will burst into subatomic particles and penetrate the spacecraft, astronauts and equipment can cause radiation damage. When the crew reaches the speed of light is about 95% level, exposure to such radiation reached lethal levels. In addition to such high-speed flying craft will also faced heated questions, the friction heat will melt almost any existing traditional materials, and astronaut body water will boil, which will be the most difficult issue.
In 2012, paper, aidesitan and his son made use of powerful "magnetic field shield" to protect the spacecraft from the hydrogen atom "rain" bombardment scenario. But even using magnetic shield technology, the spacecraft's speed still cannot be more than about half the speed of light, if it does, astronauts are still at risk of deadly radiation.
Make·miersi (Marc Millis) served as United States NASA "breakthrough propulsion physics project" in charge. In his view, aidesitan and his son referred to such a high risk there is no practical considerations to be included in the stage. He said: "according to our current level of physics, the 10% is very difficult to reach the speed of light. We haven't reached the point of risk will occur. As an analogy, we have no way to get in the water before, we don't need to worry about drowning problem. "
Beyond the speed of light?
So if we ever really learned how to swim, then our future will learn time surfing? or did we could achieve FTL flight?
Vision of faster than light flight, although based largely on conjecture, but it is not entirely unfounded. One of the theories is what appears in the film Star Trek called "curvature-driven" concept. From a physics standpoint, the principle of this engine is the "akubierui drive" (Alcubierre drive), mainly located in front the ship, described in Einstein's theory behind doing its normal space and time are compressed and the compressed space-time release process. In essence, the spacecraft is in time and space "BLOB" way, like a "bubble of curvature" (warp bubble). In this way, to break the speed of light limit. In the spatio-temporal jump during the spacecraft itself continues to be safely placed in their "normal space", so as to avoid a violation of speed limit of the universe. Mr Davies said: "If the traditional way of flying was like swimming in the water, akubierui drive is like surfing on the waves. "
But the most important issues facing the technology is that it will require a special material, which has negative mass, for the compression or expansion of time and space. Davis says: "Physics does not prohibit negative mass. But we have yet to find real cases, in such cases has never been observed in nature. "Another question, 2012 Australia Sydney University researchers published an article that, at the time of this flight, because the ship is in, have the normal spatio-temporal characteristics of" curvature bubble "will be unable to avoid contact with other substances in the universe, it will suffer serious and high energy cosmic ray bombardment. Part of that cosmic rays will go inside the bubble and deadly radiation.
Trapped in a sublight level?
So, because of our biological vulnerability, we will be forever trapped in a sublight level do? the answer to that will be directly related to whether we humans will one day be able to free navigation in the Galaxy, but also our human future has the potential to become a powerful Galactic races. If half the speed of light limit in accordance with aidesitan and his son flying, we find closest star takes approximately 16 years. According to the theory of relativity, to fly at about half the speed of light craft, it experiences time dilation effects will not be significant.
But Mills is still hopeful. He thinks as humans develop more and more advanced with defect suits and micro-meteorite protection technology, more and more people in the future will be able to overcome high speed environment may face difficulties.
He said: "If the future of physics will allow us to develop incredible high-speed aircraft, then I believe that the future of physics will also allow us to develop incredibly protective measures. "