Title: NASA'S SUPER FAST SOLAR SHIP MAY CHANGE SPACE EXPLORATION FOREVER Source:
[None] URL Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f74w2WW17CY Published:Feb 9, 2016 Author:Staff Post Date:2016-02-09 13:38:40 by Horse Keywords:None Views:502 Comments:11
There was no mention of "warp speed" in the video, and the stated speed of 64,000 mph is still slow as molasses in comparison to light speed, which is 186,000 miles per SECOND. In miles per hour, that'd be 669.6 MILLION miles per hour.
As far as being ripped to shreds, there is empty vacuum in space, so there's nothing to rip it.
Meteors are small space rocks which burn up in the earth's atmosphere. Asteroids are very large space rocks, some as big as small moons, which orbit the sun.
The smaller space rocks luckily are extremely spread out and to my knowledge have never hit a manned or unmanned space vehicle. Otherwise satellites orbiting the earth would be frequently destroyed by such and manned space flight, including the ISS, would be impossible.
The low orbiting satellites are in fact impacted by dust and tiny specs of debris. Specs of paint from older space craft have been found in microcraters of the shuttle, I believe, and 2 satellites did collide a few years ago, disintegrating both and resulted in blasting a fair amount of junk of various sizes into orbit, increasing the hazard of other satellites being harmed.
Deep space has less dust, of course, but it is still out there. Comets, for one, spray a fair amount of dust into space as they near the sun. Long term space travel will inevitably potmark spacecraft with it. A sail might be able to tolerate a lot of microcraters before its performance would be affected.
I don't know why they haven't designed and implemented an electrostatic type of repeller which would act as a force field deflecting micrometeors such as the tiny specs of dust you mention.
It almost would seem to be a necessity on long manned voyages, such as to the planets.