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What Will It Take for Humans to Colonize the Milky Way?
Scientific American ^ | 1/13/16 | Kim Stanley Robinson

Posted on 01/13/2016 9:28:58 PM PST by LibWhacker

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Forget arks. We're going to have to do it with speedy starships, so that people can get there in a couple of years (ship's time), or not at all. And before we do that, robotic scout vehicles are going to have to check the planet out first to determine its habitability. Condemning generations of unborn innocent people to spend their lives in some nightmare, totalitarian prison ark is inhumane, unethical in the extreme.
1 posted on 01/13/2016 9:28:58 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

Baby steps, first a Moon Pie then a Mars bar then a Milky Way.


2 posted on 01/13/2016 9:36:00 PM PST by minnesota_bound
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To: LibWhacker
What will it take?

Discovery of some sort of warp in space-time "wormholes" or the like to jump the distances. Otherwise the relativistic time issues are going to create a bunch of totally disconnected nodes of humanity never to contact each other again. Once someone has left, that is it. No further contact, ever. in a useful manner. Radio conversations with multiyear pauses between replies do not work so well I should think. And that would be for close neighbors.

3 posted on 01/13/2016 9:37:33 PM PST by doorgunner69
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To: LibWhacker

>What Will It Take for Humans to Colonize the Milky Way?

A lot of Mars Bars. ;-)


4 posted on 01/13/2016 9:39:02 PM PST by r_barton
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To: LibWhacker

IMHO, the whole enterprise is “beyond imagining”. The reality of these distances conquers any notion we may rationally maintain of traversing them. I may cite the Fermi paradox ... where is everybody?


5 posted on 01/13/2016 9:39:39 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: LibWhacker

“Forget arks. We’re going to have to do it with speedy starships, so that people can get there in a couple of years (ship’s time), or not at all. And before we do that, robotic scout vehicles are going to have to check the planet out first to determine its habitability. Condemning generations of unborn innocent people to spend their lives in some nightmare, totalitarian prison ark is inhumane, unethical in the extreme.”

An asteroid the size of Ceres has been calculated to provide as many hectares/acres of arable land inside the asteroid as all of the arable land on the Earth. Such a craft would be a mobile world rather than a restrictive prison. A cavern space wit a ceiling about 700 meters in height is sufficient to give the impression of a blue sky, while centrifugal force provides a substitute for Earth’s gravity necessary for good health.


6 posted on 01/13/2016 9:41:20 PM PST by WhiskeyX
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To: LibWhacker

Ummm, I think we have already colonized the Milky Way. It is called Earth.


7 posted on 01/13/2016 9:41:22 PM PST by doug from upland (Some of you keep telling yourself -- Romney would have been as bad or worse.)
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To: LibWhacker

Never happen, we will not go back to the moon, or ever try for Mars. After Jesus comes and kicks some evil bootay yes. Man by himself, we are too busy fighting each other and always will be.


8 posted on 01/13/2016 9:45:01 PM PST by Glad2bnuts (Go Cruz GO, scare the RINO's to death)
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To: LibWhacker
speedy starships

It's only a matter of time until some rebel physicist breaks the universal speed limit of 186,000 mps, then all bets are off. The whole universe will open up for the humans of this little mud ball we call planet earth.

9 posted on 01/13/2016 9:50:47 PM PST by Windflier (Pitchforks and torches ripen on the vine. Left too long, they become black rifles.)
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To: minnesota_bound

Lol!


10 posted on 01/13/2016 9:51:44 PM PST by pax_et_bonum (Never Forget the Seals of Extortion 17 - and God Bless America)
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To: dr_lew
The reality of these distances conquers any notion we may rationally maintain of traversing them.

There was a time when humans couldn't imagine distances we routinely travel today. The same will hold for the future, which is endless. We've literally got forever to figure this stuff out - and we will.

11 posted on 01/13/2016 9:53:36 PM PST by Windflier (Pitchforks and torches ripen on the vine. Left too long, they become black rifles.)
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To: LibWhacker

Well, we have to go back to the moon first. It’s been almost 50 years since we’ve been there. Currently, the U.S. can even refly John Glenn’s mission without paying for a Russian seat. :-(


12 posted on 01/13/2016 9:53:56 PM PST by r_barton
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To: LibWhacker

Immortality.


13 posted on 01/13/2016 9:54:18 PM PST by RC one (race baiting and demagoguery-if you're a Democrat it's what you do.)
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To: r_barton
Currently, the U.S. can even refly John Glenn's mission without paying for a Russian seat.

Thanks to Obutthole, who had the gall to cite the U.S. space program in his rant last night.

14 posted on 01/13/2016 9:56:43 PM PST by Windflier (Pitchforks and torches ripen on the vine. Left too long, they become black rifles.)
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To: LibWhacker

After the first few colonies, we can automate the process.

Send a colony ship with self-replicating robots to do all the work of building habitats, stockpiling fuel and materials, making air and water, raising food, and then terraforming the new world.

Once everything is ready, take some embryos out of the freezer and raise the kids (a great clone army). Call home and report in, or lay low and try to hide from the government (no reason to think they will be any better then).

Then start building and launching an endless stream of further colony ships.

Repeat exponentially.


15 posted on 01/13/2016 9:57:50 PM PST by BeauBo
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To: LibWhacker

Let us not be unkind to creatures beyond our realm, and restrict human perfected suffering and misery to our own planet.


16 posted on 01/13/2016 10:01:57 PM PST by deadrock (I is someone else.)
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To: Windflier
There was a time when humans couldn't imagine distances we routinely travel today.

Excuse me, but I'm hard put to name what these unimaginable distances are that we routinely travel today, since we haven't left the earth since Apollo.

17 posted on 01/13/2016 10:04:01 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: dr_lew

“where is everybody?”

The vast majority of extraterrestrial Life can be expected to be single cell like forms, which you cannot expect to be attempting to communicate. Where the more complex multicellular lifeforms exist and developed into sentient beings, there is still the problem with overlap in time and space. Humans have been aware of the radio spectrum for only an instant in time. There are innumerable reasons why the Universe is teeming with Life and we would not yet detect it.


18 posted on 01/13/2016 10:04:27 PM PST by WhiskeyX
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To: LibWhacker
Wow, A really stupid question as it will never happen, especially coming from a publications that once doubted man would ever fly.
19 posted on 01/13/2016 10:05:09 PM PST by Fungi
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To: Windflier
It's only a matter of time until some rebel physicist breaks the universal speed limit of 186,000 mps, then all bets are off.

I think the answer is suggested in the Bible. The answer is not to try and go faster than the speed of light, but to stay still and bring the mountain to Mohammed, so to speak.

20 posted on 01/13/2016 10:05:29 PM PST by UCANSEE2 (Lost my tagline on Flight MH370. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
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