ET Hypothesis

Let's try this again. NASA launches a manned mission to the Kuiper belt to repair a space probe that had become silent. What the crew finds is my hypothesis of how we could determine if there are intelligent aliens out there in the universe and what would NASA morph into because of it.

Story and illustrations Copyright © 2024 by John Shirey. All rights reserved.

Locations and Names are fictional even though they may be real. No offense is intended to any person, place or institution.

The Chapter 1. Explanation

No theory is validated until it has solid evidence that proves it.

A deep space mission would be extremely complicated. Traveling to a location 50 AU (Astronomical Unit is the distance from Earth to the Sun, 93 million miles) will not be done by a rocket. A large space craft will be constructed in orbit and never actually take off from Earth or land on anything.

The living sections of the space craft will use rotation to create centrifugal force as a substitute for the lack of gravity in outer space. Maintaining this artificial gravity system would use electrical energy and require a lot of space, but it would help astronauts to not suffer the physical damages from the lack of gravity.

Powering the ship's engines will also require a lot of electricity, necessitating nuclear power.

One of the most critical problems of space travel is radiation. Space is dangerous and the levels of radiation in the form of gamma rays and high energy particles need to be shielded to prevent serious health problems. One way would be to store water in the walls of the vessel. Hydrogen atoms stop radiation because they're small, and water has plenty of them. Large atoms, like those in metal, are not very good at stopping radiation because they generate high energy radiation from particle collisions. It's equivalent to shooting at bowling balls instead of billiard balls.

The spaceship would need storage space to include enough water, oxygen and food to serve astronauts on a long space mission. It would be somewhat equivalent to the International Space Station situation, but without the problem of free fall.

Food would be grown on a rotating deck by robots, a process that would require artificial sunlight and water. Most of these necessary processes would require robotic assistance, which would in turn require a sophisticated computer system.

Travel to and from the space craft while in orbit around Earth will require a shuttle, essentially a space plane that can take off from a runway using jet engines and then use rocket engines to achieve orbit. Return to Earth would employ the same shuttle procedure in reverse. Such shuttles have yet to be created, but they could be with existing technology.

Traveling to a location 50 or more AUs would take months in a high impulse electrodeless plasma thruster engine powered spaceship. The acceleration to the needed speed and slow down to orbital speed would involve tolerable g-forces but would be enough to require using methods that prevent physical stress. Hibernation is one solution, but it comes with risks. Another method would be to use fighter jet pilot procedures to reduce the G-force effect, but either method would still involve months of boredom. Hibernation would prevent the rigors of that, but it could cause blood clotting problems.

The procedure used in this story would involve hibernation to get to the location and then return without it. The mission would require mostly young astronauts in excellent physical condition, and it would also depend on a good deal of robotic involvement, which suggests that future space exploration will eventually be totally robotic.

The propulsion systems are already being used on deep space probes, but presently there seems to be more interest in rockets; probably because they're less expensive.

Ion drive systems are complicated, but they can only be used in space because they don't offer the propulsion force to take off from a planet like Earth. However, they can operate for long periods of time to achieve the necessary velocity for deep scale space missions.

One such ion drive system is the Hall effect thruster which uses ionized xenon charged and accelerated with a cylindrical anode. The beam of gas blasts out of the engine and is neutralized as it leaves the rocket, providing thrust.

These concepts applied to a large vessel are on the drawing boards of space engineers, but they're not quite there yet. None of the science I use in this story is fiction. The fiction involves what is discovered, and even that is within existing science.