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The craziest thing to me is that if we sent a generational spaceship there that was expected to take 1,000 years, it seems likely that better technology would a
by MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
The craziest thing to me is that if we sent a generational spaceship there that was expected to take 1,000 years, it seems likely that better technology would allow the next generation of spaceships to get there much faster. So by the time the 1,000 year spaceship arrived, there would already be people there!
- scotty79 10y agoIt was a theme it this cartoon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Space
- maerF0x0 10y agoOr maybe they'd rendezvous and bring them "up to speed" so to speak ?
- platz 10y agoit would be better to just 'seed' the tiny starshot spacecraft with human embryos that could litter the planet and then develop on arrival.
- jdmichal 10y agoSee James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear. It involves a post-scarcity civilization seeded in much the way you suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
- jcoffland 10y agoRight because human babies let alone embryos do so well on their own.
- platz 10y agothat's why we also send self-replicating nanobots along with them.
- ju-st 10y agoAdults from later, faster spacecrafts could raise the babies.
- nerfhammer 10y agoThis is a known paradox, I forget what it's called though. The concept is that it's arguable that any long-term space travel is pointless because there will always be a faster ship surpassing it as the originating civilization improves its technology, and so on for that faster ship. So, it's irrational to ever launch anything...
- ChristianBundy 10y agoThis is known as the incessant obsolescence postulate: http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.1066 http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.1066
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 10y agoSeems like you'd reach a point where it becomes worth it even with continuous improvement. If the speed of light really is a speed limit, then you'll get to a point where the maximum theoretical improvement is still some small amount. If there's a way to go faster than light, then you'll get to a point where it only takes two seconds to get to your destination.
- dmurray 10y agoEven without the speed limit, you can expect to reach this point. Let's say your technology gets 10% faster every 25-year generation, you should launch a 200-year trip but not a 250-year one. We'll probably keep improving at that pace or better for a few iterations at least, but eventually space travel will be a stable technology, speed improvements will be rare and incremental, and 1000-year journeys will be justified.
- mikeash 10y agoRight, barring time travel, once you can make the voyage at all, you'll always reach a point where it makes sense to depart on it. If you invent technology that takes a million years to arrive, then you have a maximum deadline of a million years. Past that point, even instantaneous travel won't be worth waiting for, if your goal is simply to get there as early as possible.
- lifeformed 10y agoMaybe there could be a kind of factory-ship that was built to be self-improving, so during those 1000 years it would improve itself and increase it's speed.
- flukus 10y agoIf you're limiting it to generational ships then there isn't much improvement to be made, we can still only accelerate at ~1G. The only variable is how long that acceleration can be maintained.