General / Off-Topic The terrifying thought that interstellar travel just isn't possible.

Hagledesperado

Hagledesperado
We might be able to produce an AI and send it out in the universe before we perish. But the meat, it is too dependent on this planet right here. The meat is staying.
 

Greyhawk

Greyhawk
Getting really tired of people constantly saying "humanity is a disease" and "we are all as good as dead". Have some goddamn pride how far we have come in so short a time. Yes, at the moment we are backpedalling on space exploration - mainly because the country with the actual balls to do it has now lost those balls and decided its too dangerous and/or turned space into a commodity only private companies can exploit.

Currently its the very definition of the "best of times and worst of times". In my lifetime I've seen people walk on the moon (I was 3 months old at the time) and then lose the technology to do it and then losing the tech to even get back in space. We cant rely on 40 year old Russian tech for long.

If we had the smegging will to do it we could easily get to the nearest star. All the tech is right here, right now. We could easily build a large ship using either nuclear propulsion or ion engine tech to get to Proxima. One big enough that the people aboard could grow their own supplies and big enough that psychological issues are lessened. One big enough that it could be radiation shielded (the biggest issue with long term space travel). It could generate 1G by rotating easily enough.

There are few if any technical barriers to this. The barriers are financial and political sadly.

Stop dissing Humans. We rock (mostly).
 

OnePercent

OnePercent
mysterious42 said:
we , like us chatting here ?

lol.... no matter what we say we wont be there so what does it matter in the end lol
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hehe, I mean we as in the human race, Us, Organic self replicating self aware machines.

I really love this philosophical argument on the journey of humans.

I think we should colonise the rest of the solar system, First with the moon, then mars.

I think the thought of colonising the outer solar system is also very exciting, Just imagine colonising Europa and Ganymede, The protective nature of jupiters magnetic field and magnetosphere (excluding the intense radiation belts) could aid a colony from cosmic and heliocentric charged particles.

Spreading ourselves around the solar system is just as amazing as the technological acomplisments set in the elite universe.

I suggest everyone to watch this beautiful mini movie "Wanderers a short film by Erik Wernquist"

[video=youtube;Q6goNzXrmFs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6goNzXrmFs[/video]
 

Darth Sidious

Darth Sidious
Ziljan said:
The problem isn't just the technology to propel yourself to another star system. We can do that now in theory. The real problems are the logistical details.


1) fighting bacteria and viruses that get strong in space even as our immune system gets weaker in zero g
2) surviving deadly radiation outside the protective bubbles of the magnetosphere of the earth and heliosphere of sun
3) what if something breaks? What are the odds that you could travel for years though interstellar space and have nothing malfunction?
4) what if an engineer or scientist used english instead of metric units (yes this kind of error has cost billions of dollars already), and you end up in the middle of nowhere with not enough fuel to do anything
5) finding a place that is hospitable to human life! (the estimate for ELW in elite are optimistically high, and we have FSD technology)
6) if we find an ELW, then it may very well have existing bacterial life that is hostile or deadly to human tissue, for which we would have no natural defense
7) space debris: we could travel several light years and get obliterated by a high speed pebble in the last 1000km of the journey
8) the incredibly perilous journey of falling through an alien planet's atmosphere faster than the speed of sound
9) not crashing on the planet's surface
10) The unknown: this is probably the most deadly of all the items on the list
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Therefore we won't be doing it ourselves.
well let a drone do it for us with our genes. See it as a seedling messing with the genes it encounters.
well call it Genetic overseer drone and thats how well spread our heritage across the galaxy.
Just like our own G.O.D. did

Moehahaha
 

Stodgy

Stodgy
The speed of light isn't as much of a barrier as most people think. IF you could make a ship that has a constant 1g acceleration then relavistic effects start to kick in and it takes suprisingly little time (for the poeple on the ship) to reach the stars. A journey of 100s of lightyears can be completed in a few years from the ships frame of reference, (it would take 100s or 1000s of years from the earths frame of reference).

The real problem is making a ship that can accelerate at 1g for a few years. It would require a LOT of energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration
 

DocWatts

D
It would be far easier to learn to live sustainably on this planet than it would be to visit other stars. Hell, it would still probably be easier to adapt to differing levels of luminosity being output by the sun or live in space stations around a white dwarf than it would be to travel light years.

If we get out sh*t together, we could potentially live in a paradise with cradle to grave security for every person for the lifetime of this planet. Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me.

"People need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them." - Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
 
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se_thrax

se_thrax
I say we forged the present with our dreams and imagination. Nothing is impossible otherwise we make it possible. Since humans 100 years ago could not even phantom todays technologies we should not even start to try and comprehend the next 100 years. Just dream and unique people will arrise, einsteins from our age will amaze and inspire those of the next century.

Yes we seem to go slowly, just because the access to all information is so readily and fast available. But we are going fast and there are no "limits" just exceptions.
 

Apos

Apos
DocWatts said:
It would be far easier to learn to live sustainably on this planet than it would be to visit other stars. Hell, it would still probably be easier to adapt to differing levels of luminosity being output by the sun or live in space stations around a white dwarf than it would be to travel light years.

If we get out sh*t together, we could potentially live in a paradise with cradle to grave security for every person for the lifetime of this planet. Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me.

"People need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them." - Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
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The problem is not the white dwarf state to be honest.

It's the red supergiant that will swallow us right before that.
 

Darth Sidious

Darth Sidious
Stodgy said:
The speed of light isn't as much of a barrier as most people think. IF you could make a ship that has a constant 1g acceleration then relavistic effects start to kick in and it takes suprisingly little time (for the poeple on the ship) to reach the stars. A journey of 100s of lightyears can be completed in a few years from the ships frame of reference, (it would take 100s or 1000s of years from the earths frame of reference).

The real problem is making a ship that can accelerate at 1g for a few years. It would require a LOT of energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration
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Oh yeah
that reminds me
and may I get your attention to this project?

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...tionary-solar-sailing-spacecraft?ref=category
 

elrogarddublanc

E
Dakron Nova said:
I had a disturbing thought, we have become used to technology moving forwards in human history. Sometimes it moves forwards in bursts, sometimes it crawls, and sometimes we see a seemingly steady rate of progress.

But in terms of interstellar travel, what if this just isn't possible. What would that mean for the human race if we couldn't ever get to other stars. The human race is quite young, given the number of extinction events on earth. But I can't help think that there must be intelligent life in other solar systems that must have been around far longer and if interstellar travel is possible would have branched out across our galaxy, and that we would have picked up some evidence by now either by direct communication or by picking up on radio transmissions etc. Is the human race so closely tied to that of our own sun.
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Interstellar travel is quite possible today with today's technology, but I suspect you mean FAST interstellar travel.

Given enough time, resources and people, a colony ship can transport people to target planets around far flung stars. If faster than light travel is impossible, it is quite possible to have vastly separated 'pockets' of humanity spread across probably just a local region of space in 1-2 thousand years time.

The single biggest issue we face is not the technical development, but simply surviving: resource supply, disease, climate change and of course the daddy, war. Interestingly, in my view while these items are risk factors for our ongoing survival, they are also catalysts for the expansion into a colonial species.

Currently, while possible, there is simply no motivation beyond exploration to send people to other planets let alone other stars. When the above factors begin to be significant, there may well be impetus to go somewhere else, at least in small groups.

I expect such a separated civilization (again, assuming a lack of FTL transport and communications) to have quite divergent development after a period of time. Sounds interesting to me.
 

CYB34

CYB34
500 years ago people couldn't wrap their heads around the term "speed of sound", not to mention flying in a steel ship, faster than that.
Gallileo barely dicovered how to measure speed, distance covered vs. time it takes. That basic.

Nobody can imagine what we might discover in terms of materials and technology 500 years from now.

Just like nobody could have imagined 500 years ago what we're doing with Silicon (Si) today.
 

elrogarddublanc

E
%OnePercent% said:
We have 4-5 billion years to safely be in the solar system - Chill guys.
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And it is exceptionally unlikely that anything called humans will be around in 4-5 billion years. Extinction, evolution and the fossil record very much imply we will already be long gone by the time anything happens to our home star.
 

elrogarddublanc

E
ianw said:
Was watching something on the discovery channel that was saying another big practical issue is cosmic rays - the only that stops us getting microwaved is the heliosphere (I think) - once we got beyond the safety of that we'd be barbequed PDQ by all accounts.
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Surely just a matter of shielding/having enough matter between you and the bad particles? Not science. Engineering.
 
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