Posted on 12/26/2013 1:54:41 PM PST by BenLurkin
think it is possible for humans to become an interstellar race. I think it’s possible, but not within my lifetime, not the next hundred years without some really transformative technologies in between. The key one on the International Space Station right now we’re testing life support systems, and doing phenomenally well.
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don’t see us becoming that space-faring race, not within the next hundred years, not perhaps within the next thousand years. But again, these are timescales that I can’t even fathom within my small existence. We’re talking about a galaxy that’s billions of years old – we’re talking about missions that could conceivable take hundreds of years to get to the nearest group of stars. I think we need to start changing the way we think, and science fiction helps – it helps with the warp drive and all that – it kind of pushes us in ways that we wouldn’t understand. But in realistic terms, at least a hundred years before that even becomes a possibility."
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
We will become an interstellar race when they figure out FTL travel and a method to but something in orbit inexpensively and safely.
Still waiting for my flying car like on Back to the Future.
Not sure I'd want to go back that far, knowing that a Great Depression and two World Wars awaited me. However, I do have a fantasy of going back to around 1955 as a 20-year-old man - knowing what I know now.
I'd be 78 years old today but a mega-billionaire thanks to my prudent investments in companies such as Boeing, IBM, McDonalds, Microsoft and Apple, among others!
That argument certainly eliminates the possibility of traveling back in time. If traveling forward in time is possible we won’t hear about it until it’s invented. Even then only those who use the technology will know if it works.
Absolutely yes.
But I think the time scale set by most people is science fiction.
I think it will take many thousands of years, perhaps ten thousand years, just for the first pioneers.
Plus, where are you going to go?
Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, is 4.24 light years away, and, today, we have no reason to believe there are any planets in that system that can reasonably house or support human life.
Even our own star system has limited possibilities.
The Earth, the Moon, Mars, maybe some asteroids.
I'm not sure it's even possible to construct or anchor a human shelter on, or inside, a asteroid because of ultra low gravity.
The main issue after we solve interstellar travel is, “Where do you live?”
If you have to spend your entire life living inside a cave, I don't think space travel will catch on with the masses.
I'm also skeptical about the financial reality of mining in space.
I think if we committed $1 trillion to R&D in materials science instead of space of travel, we could probably become modern day alchemists and literally construct the minerals that have great value.
I’m a long term yes but that’s discounting great leaps in technology which are also possible.
There is a lot of promising research going on as well. The VASIMR engine is logging a lot of working test hours. There is a solar sail in production with plans to launch in a few years. The Orion project is technically possible but expensive and the political implications of launching thousands of nuclear bombs into is obvious. Even the Alcubierre warp is being tested with what scientists are calling promising results (currently warping space by nanometers)
A week from Monday.
Do I win a prize?
We can do it within a thousand years if we stop allowing leftists to take power around the world.
It really helps to contemplate space travel from two points of view, that of space, and that of time.
Let’s start off with a short trip to our nearest star neighbor, around 4 light years away. That is, if you were traveling at the speed of light, a one way trip would take you four years. The speed of light is 670,616,629 mph.
If you were traveling at twice the speed of light, 2 years. Four times the speed of light, 1 year. Eight times the speed of light, six months. That would be 5,364,933,032 mph. Or 5.3 billion miles per hour.
Mind you, there is almost no chance of a planet capable of sustaining life within 100 light years.
Now let’s look at time.
The age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years. Earth has only been habitable for about 3.6 billion years. Of that time, it has had what passes for intelligent life for perhaps 100,000 years. And what we define as human intelligence for maybe 5,000 year. Having technology advanced enough to consider space travel less than a hundred years.
But planet Earth has “hit the reset button” several times, starting mostly from scratch. But this doesn’t mean that other habitable worlds have.
If you are generous, you might estimate the lifespan of an intelligent species as being anywhere from 500,000 to a million years.
If so, there could reasonably have been 12,000 cycles of intelligent species coming and going in the universe, with our current cycle just one of them. Vast cosmic empires might have existed and disappeared.
But at least judging from our galaxy, “natural disasters” like a supernova, can sterilize an entire sector of space, so unless its inhabitants had warning and faster than light travel, they would be just gone. And as fast as their home worlds would reboot, not a trace would be left behind.
Where we would go is a question but we wouldn't have to tie ourselves to the idea of inhabiting a solar system. If we could find and utilize materials from space we could build our own worlds independent of those 'unstable' star systems.
I remember my first cell phone. It was one of those flip phones. It had voice-activated calling.
I couldn't resist having the voice command to call home be "Enterprise".
Keep imagining! Going to any stellar system, except the very closest, will take much longer than any human lifetime. Not many people would volunteer to go, knowing that they will die on the way and be ejected into space, and that their offspring will wind up the same way, and that 10 generations down the road a distant descendant will set foot on a distant planet.
And forget about warp drives or wormholes. They’re for science fiction writers or scientists who need more grant money.
The Liberals will fight Interstellar travel with all their might. Why? Here are just a few reasons:
1. Its too good an escape route from their policies
2. Liberals loathe frontiers of any kind
3. It will diminish the amount of wealth that can be redistributed.
4. Space colonization means JOBS, which will ultimately diminish the size of the welfare state
5. It supports the Military-Industrial complex
You are correct sir. It is not going to happen in our present bodies. People just do not have an appreciation for the vast distances of space.
I’ll be interstellar when I get my resurrection body.
And they watch too much fictional television.
And lets not forget “WE GOTTA FIX EARTH FIRST MAN!”
Before 1935, all the front-line fighters in US inventory were biplanes. Just ten years later, we had gone to jet fighters.
great science fiction book about going back to the 50s, knowing what we know about what is to come, it’s called : Replay, written by Ken Grimwood. The guy keeps going back, living a life, dying, then ends up in his college dorm room again, through countless lives... the first thing he does in each new life, is build his fortune by betting on the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, Sony stock, etc...very cool story, and extremely hard to put down.
When the saved of earth are at the feet of Jesus Christ, then we will be interstellar, not before. God will not permit sinful man to spread sin beyond this solar system.
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