[Tublecane]

Maybe we’ll never master interstellar travel, but it’s only been fifty years since we sent objects into orbit, for pete’s sake. It would have been a bit mean to say to Democritus, “Yeah, we all like your atom theory, but when are you gonna get down to business and split it?” These things take time.

Maybe if physicists put down they’re wacky string theories and refocused on the real world we’d have forward progress.

[cripplecreek]

Exactly why reaserch into faster propulsion should be a priority.

[GeronL]

liberals want us to go back into the caves and then back to the primordeal oooze

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Yes! But we have Velcro and Tang now!

Who knows what other wonders await us... <\s>

[freedumb2003]

The Moon, although it appears so close, is 239,000 miles away. It is impossible for man to bridge this gap — the distance is just too far — our fastest steamships can barely do 20 miles an hour with an entire stoking company.

The idea than people will be able to telephone each other 24 hours a day and exchange messages, short and long, is just silly. There is no known technology here in the 1920’s that can allow so many messages.

The Babbage calculating machine, although a great novelty item, will never be more than a parlor novelty. The new 18th century will look back and laugh.

Well folks, these were the thought at the time.

[Erasmus]

But a trip to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the Sun and 100 million times farther from us than the Moon, would consume a tedious 800 centuries or so. You’ll want to upgrade.

At the very least, choose a flight that offers snacks.

[JRios1968]

But a trip to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the Sun and 100 million times farther from us than the Moon, would consume a tedious 800 centuries or so. You’ll want to upgrade.

Standby for Ludicrous Speed...

[B-Chan]

"[A]fter [Dr. Robert Goddard's] rocket quits our air and really starts on its longer journey [into space] it will neither be accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics... [Professor Goddard] does not know of the relation of action to reaction, and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react".
--Unsigned editorial, The New York Times, January 12, 1920

[Salgak]

No, it just means that one theory, of the Alcubierre Warp, is unworkable given the current state of physics and engineering.

There may be MANY ways of going faster-than-light. We just haven't discovered one yet. Or, as the late Arthur C. Clarke once said. . .

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

This is also known as Clarke's First Law. . .

[shibumi]

Seth Shostak needs to grasp the concept of non-locality.

[SunkenCiv]

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