When and how can we send a mission manned or (un)manned to Barnards Star? What about a unmanned and what about a (manned) mission to this red dwarfstar that maybe(?????) have a planetsystem. Lets talk or discuss about it.

Denis12

Check out the British Interplanetary Society's Project Daedalus.

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Project Daedalus is almost 30 years old as an idea. Personally I'm not sure the pulse fusion drive is near term technology, but who knows? At the time people thought Barnard's star had a planet or two, but later study shows that those measurements were spurious. It doesn't have any LARGE planets. We can't know about Earth-sized planets yet.

I think it is not too far fetched to look 100 year into the future and think that we could build a rail gun (or other linear propeller scheme) from a small near Earth asteroid (a few km diameter) that could get a modest sized unmanned probe going at very high speeds.

If we built the gun 10,000 km long, and make it able to accelerate the probe at 200g, we could get the probe going 200 km/sec. This could get a sturdy probe from here to Barnard's star in only 5000 years. Just about in time to meet it's closest appraoch to the Sun.

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Project Daedalus is the most detailed study of an interstellar mission to date. It would be interesting to revisit the idea. What has changed in the last 30 years with respect to such missions?

Jon

And what kind of probe will be the best option? And what will be the fate of such a spaceprobe that is traveling to Barnards Star? Will it maybe return to us when it has doing all the important and interesting things at Barnards Star ,or will it be going further and further away into our galaxy? Or maybe it will stay forever in the area of Barnards Star if it has discovered one or more Jovian or (intelligent) life harboring planets. What do you think about it?

We could cut down on that 5,000 year travel time if we also shot out fuel for our probe to scoop up and use. I assume we can accelerate small packets of fuel faster than the probe itself.

Can we start up this thread please???

Thank you very much! Lets start discussing again about this far future space mission.

Denis12

But haven't we had this discussion before?

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Well, not about Barnard's Star, itself...

Mission to the orion nebulae
Mission to Mira Ceti
Going to cygnus x1
Mission to HD 284242
Mission to Andromeda Galaxy M31

About the only difference is that Barnard's Star is close enough that humanity might still exist by the time the data comes back.

Fred

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Good list. There also was Is the Alpha Cantaurisystem interesting for a visit? which covered the same issues and is even closer.

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Tch. Missed that one. We might even survive as a culture long enough for the data to get back from there.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
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He's had quite a few threads about travelling to stars, including:

Barnards Star (from January 6, 2006)
Possibility of Solarsystem Around HD711
Hypothetical planet at 1 lightyear from the sun
Mission to HD 9775?
Is Polaris a small or large star?
Closest exoplanet?
Tau Ceti -interesting stuff
Anybody who knows about the star 70 virgo?
Possibility of interstellar spacetravel through the galaxy
HD,SAO or HIP number of supernova candidate star Rho cas
Possibility of (intelligent) life around Tau Ceti
Polaris (pole star) a good candidate for a life harboring planetsystem?
Is a mission to a (very) hot O type of star dangerous or not?
What is the HD or HIP number of the monsterstar Eta Carinae?
Some questions about Pleione the hot blue star in the Pleiades
3 Questions about Sirius A
Orion star Rigel

Plus these about difficult missions inside the Solar System:
Manned mission to Mercury & Venus was also similar in some ways.
Mission to Sedna
Manned mission to Halley,s comet
Mission to Uranusmoon Miranda

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Daedalus had a 50 year mission time, chosen because it was just inside the professional lifetime of our short-lived species.

Jon

Chosen? Did someone actually start building this?

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Unfortunately not the study ended in 1978;
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/re.../ideaknow.html

Sadly no (the technology for autonomous AI and propulsion among other things is well beyond what we are presently capabale of). But the study did look at a range of feasible mission times, and chose this one for the reasons I gave (as i recall, it's been a while since I read it).

Jon

Barnard's Star is a halo star, which means it spends most of its time way above or below the galactic plane. Being a halo star also means that it is ancient--perhaps 11-12 billion years old--and is devoid of heavier elements.

There is strong evidence that a star's metallicity is linked to the probability of planets. Despite contrary claims, there is no evidence whatsoever that Barnard's Star has any planets. It of course may have terrestrial planets (we lack the technology needed to detect them), but it seems unlikely.

So, Barnard's Star is not a very good targed for a space mission.

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That's known now, but was not when the report was written. Essentially they wanted a target star that was nearby and had some indication of planets. But the mission profile was flexible enough to be adapted (as i recall for any star within 10 light years).