-Outer Space: David Balam is a Canadian astrometrist.(high precision positional measurement), a research associate with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. David has an obsession with the sky and astronomy. 

With no formal training, he has risen to the top of his field, searching the sky nightly for potential NEOs.(near Earth objects), in order to warn us if one looks as if it may come dangerously close. 

His colleagues describe him as incredibly interested in all regarding his chosen field and he learns constantly, he's so in love with what he is doing. David has discovered a key to getting great joy in life.

-From.Answers In Genesis.(AnswersinGenesis.org):."Our closest star Proxima Centauri.(a-Centauri C).is 40.7 million million kilometers.(approximately 25 million million miles).away. The Apollo flights took three days to get to the moon. At the same speed, one would need 870,000 years to get to this nearest star. Of course, one could accelerate.(particularly unmanned).probes to a greater speed. 

"At the incredible speed of one tenth of the speed of light, the trip, one way, would still take 43 years. However, one would need enormous amounts of energy for such an acceleration, roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of the entire world's population for one month. 

"In every cubic kilometer of space, there are an estimated 100,000 dust particles.(made up of silicates and ice).weighing only a tenth of a gram. At such a velocity, colliding with even one of these tiny objects could destroy a spaceship.

"1. For a spacecraft to acquire a speed of c/10, the kinetic energy needed is given accurately enough by the non relativistic formula of 1/2 mv squared. For a very small unmanned spacecraft of 10 kg, this is 1/2 x 10 kg x.(3 x 10 **7 m/s).**2 = 4.5 x 10 **15 J, or approximately the whole world's electricity production for a month. 

"For a manned spacecraft weighing several tons, the energy requirements would greatly exceed the world's annual electricity consumption. For the city-sized spacecraft in the movie Independence Day,  the energy requirements would be staggering. And when the spacecraft slowed again, it would need to use up almost this amount of energy in braking. 

"If the spacecraft had to accelerate to c/10, slow down and speed up many times, the energy needed would be many times greater. 

"It would probably be impossible for enough fuel to be carried without some sort of antimatter drive. If perfect annihilation - complete conversion of matter to energy.(E = mc squared).- were possible, 1 ton of antimatter could annihilate 1 ton of ordinary matter to produce: 2000 kg x.(3 x 10 **8 m/s).squared or 1.8 x 10 **20 J. And this is the absolute maximum amount of energy that could be produced from a given mass of fuel. A real spacecraft could be nowhere near this efficient. 

"2. The kinetic energy of a speck of dust with a mass of just 0.1 gram impacting at a tenth of the speed of light, calculated from the spacecraft's reference frame, is 1/2 mv squared or 2 x 10 **- 4 kg x.(3 x 10 **7 m/s).**2 = 4.5 x 10 **10 J. 

"The combustion energy of TNT is 4,520 kJ/kg, or 4.52 x 10 **9 J/ton. So 4 5 * 10 **10 J is equivalent to 9.95 tons of TNT. Therefore, the impact energy of a 0.1 g object hitting a spacecraft traveling at c/10 would be the equivalent to an explosion of about 10 tons of TNT."

Based on an article by Dr. Werner Gitt published in Creation, 1997, 19(4):46-48.

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