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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @05:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the to-infinity-and-beyond dept.

Stephen Hawking wants humanity to pursue a Mars mission in the mid-2020s rather than the mid-2030s:

Prof Stephen Hawking has called for leading nations to send astronauts to the Moon by 2020. They should also aim to build a lunar base in 30 years' time and send people to Mars by 2025. Prof Hawking said that the goal would re-ignite the space programme, forge new alliances and give humanity a sense of purpose.

He was speaking at the Starmus Festival celebrating science and the arts, which is being held in Trondheim, Norway. "Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity," he said. "I hope it would unite competitive nations in a single goal, to face the common challenge for us all. "A new and ambitious space programme would excite (young people), and stimulate interest in other areas, such as astrophysics and cosmology".

Prof. Hawking also talked about interstellar travel:

[We'll] never know how hospitable Proxima b is unless we can get there. At current speeds, using chemical propulsion, it would take 3 million years to reach the exoplanet, Hawking said. Thus, space colonization requires a radical departure in our travel technology. "To go faster would require a much higher exhaust speed than chemical rockets can provide — that of light itself," Hawking said. "A powerful beam of light from the rear could drive the spaceship forward. Nuclear fusion could provide 1 percent of the spaceship's mass energy, which would accelerate it to a tenth of the speed of light."

NASA usually talks about planning for "Mars 2035". Who is trying to get there by 2025?

A Mars mission architecture SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk will unveil in September will call for a series of missions starting in 2018 leading up to the first crewed mission to the planet in 2024, Musk said June 1.

Related: Elon Musk's Plans for Mars and Beyond Revealed
Elon Musk Publishes Mars Colonization Plan


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  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:18AM (2 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:18AM (#529374)

    If something follows natural laws then when those laws are known it can be simulated.

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    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:19AM (1 child)

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:19AM (#529399) Journal

    Not always. Or rather it can but there may be no practical way to accomplish it.

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:59PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:59PM (#529541)

      The only case I can think of where that may apply would be if more computing power is needed than is currently available, in which case all you need to do is wait.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek