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Hearing distances like 12 light years makes you think if it is ever possible to travel there. However, when you start to think about it, nihilist thoughts star

by h4l0 9y ago

Hearing distances like 12 light years makes you think if it is ever possible to travel there. However, when you start to think about it, nihilist thoughts start to kick in.

fsiefken 9y ago
With the EMdrive it'll take around 150 years (give or take a century), so it's within the realm of possibility if we can engineer a ship with shielding that can last that long. The mission becomes an order of a magnitude more difficult if you want to put a viable human population on it... watch Pandorum for one scenario.... perhaps it's best to send a seed ship (as written about in the excellent SF story by Pamela Sargent, Earthseed)
- swasheck 9y ago
  Give or take a century? So you're saying that the range could be 50-250 years?
  - delecti 9y ago
    On the scale of interstellar distances, even 250 years one-way is just down the block.
- kibwen 9y ago
  150 years by what calculations? Are you also factoring in deceleration time?
  - ajross 9y ago
    An "EmDrive" is a pseudoscience device. Poor calculation rigor is not the biggest error component in that number.
    - jandrese 9y ago
      It's a good example of the problem though. Any drive that relies on reaction mass will take too long to cross the distance to even nearby stars. The rocket equation kills the plan unless you're willing to make an absolutely ridiculous starship. So you need a reactionless drive, which thus far is entirely science fiction. This is even before you start thinking about micrometeorites in the way (which long transits increase the danger from), and simply maintaining complex machines in perfect working order for decades or centuries in the harsh vacuum of interstellar space with no external power source (no solar panels). And that's before you start thinking about how we don't even know how to colonize an alien world, and unless you're willing to wait centuries to get intelligence on the planets you're flying in blind. IMHO the answer to the Fermi Paradox is the most depressing one. Interstellar travel is too difficult and expensive. By the time it's feasible you are already well past the point of needing it. You can build endless orbital colonies and mine your home system and it's nearly unlimited resources forever. There is no need to embark on a colossally expensive boondoggle to colonize a distant solar system when everything you need is at home.
      - abecedarius 9y ago
        There's a bunch of ideas that the rocket equation doesn't apply to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket... Yes, it's hard at our current tech level. But not nearly hard enough to explain the Fermi thing. I mean, take your scenario of solar system development: it'd be natural to exploit the Kuiper Belt and then the Oort, and the Oort blends into interstellar travel, as Freeman Dyson pointed out -- still quick on a geological timescale.
        jandrese 9y ago
        The problem with thinking about it on geologic timescales is that humans (and civilizations!) don't exist on geologic timescales. It's going to be a tough sell to tell people "You need to pay an extra tax for your entire life so we can fund construction of an interstellar ship that your great grandchildren might witness the launch of, but won't arrive at its destination for a thousand years after that." It's hard to imagine anything that could motivate the human race to do that short of the Vogon constructor fleet announcing that it will arrive within a couple of centuries, ready or not.
  - fsiefken 9y ago
    it was an estimate based on a vague memory of this article https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/ https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-fut...
svachalek 9y ago
12 light years is actually very close as interstellar distances go. Such a mission could probably be launched in our lifetimes if the whole world got together behind it (which they won't but still...)
- dmix 9y ago
  Which has fascinating implications when considering extraterrestrial life. But at the same time it's entirely possible that the closest other life is extremely far away which would make any theoretical travel time be too long to meaningfully discover earth. Does anyone recommend any books that have explored these ideas?
- jogjayr 9y ago
  From a practical standpoint though (assuming that every nation decided to work together) how would such a mission work? We'd most likely need a generation ship, given that current estimates of max velocity is in the range of 0.5 to 0.8c. That means spending trillions of dollars and putting thousands of people in a ship in orbit, sending them off and most likely never seeing them again. But before that we'd want to send unmanned probes to: a) test out the propulsion and other systems b) scout the planets themselves, identify a good candidate But the probe itself would take 20-30 years to reach + 12 more to report back. Otherwise you're asking thousands to be explorers and guinea pigs for all this technology, with no guarantees about finding a habitable planet or coming back home. With something like the Mars mission you'd probably get volunteers without any family. People would be far more reluctant if it's a generation ship.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    > Otherwise you're asking thousands to be explorers and guinea pigs for all this technology, with no guarantees about finding a habitable planet or coming back home. That sounds like Mass Effect: Andromeda. Which is basically about that, humanity sending a sleeper ark to another galaxy (due to a perceived threat that might wipe out humanity in our galaxy), with no guarantee that there will be something there (although they did do some telescope measurements of the potential planets there).
- 9y ago

by h4l0 9y ago

Hearing distances like 12 light years makes you think if it is ever possible to travel there. However, when you start to think about it, nihilist thoughts start to kick in.

fsiefken 9y ago

With the EMdrive it'll take around 150 years (give or take a century), so it's within the realm of possibility if we can engineer a ship with shielding that can last that long. The mission becomes an order of a magnitude more difficult if you want to put a viable human population on it... watch Pandorum for one scenario.... perhaps it's best to send a seed ship (as written about in the excellent SF story by Pamela Sargent, Earthseed)

swasheck 9y ago
Give or take a century? So you're saying that the range could be 50-250 years?
- delecti 9y ago
  On the scale of interstellar distances, even 250 years one-way is just down the block.
kibwen 9y ago
150 years by what calculations? Are you also factoring in deceleration time?
- ajross 9y ago
  An "EmDrive" is a pseudoscience device. Poor calculation rigor is not the biggest error component in that number.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    It's a good example of the problem though. Any drive that relies on reaction mass will take too long to cross the distance to even nearby stars. The rocket equation kills the plan unless you're willing to make an absolutely ridiculous starship. So you need a reactionless drive, which thus far is entirely science fiction. This is even before you start thinking about micrometeorites in the way (which long transits increase the danger from), and simply maintaining complex machines in perfect working order for decades or centuries in the harsh vacuum of interstellar space with no external power source (no solar panels). And that's before you start thinking about how we don't even know how to colonize an alien world, and unless you're willing to wait centuries to get intelligence on the planets you're flying in blind. IMHO the answer to the Fermi Paradox is the most depressing one. Interstellar travel is too difficult and expensive. By the time it's feasible you are already well past the point of needing it. You can build endless orbital colonies and mine your home system and it's nearly unlimited resources forever. There is no need to embark on a colossally expensive boondoggle to colonize a distant solar system when everything you need is at home.
    - abecedarius 9y ago
      There's a bunch of ideas that the rocket equation doesn't apply to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket... Yes, it's hard at our current tech level. But not nearly hard enough to explain the Fermi thing. I mean, take your scenario of solar system development: it'd be natural to exploit the Kuiper Belt and then the Oort, and the Oort blends into interstellar travel, as Freeman Dyson pointed out -- still quick on a geological timescale.
      - jandrese 9y ago
        The problem with thinking about it on geologic timescales is that humans (and civilizations!) don't exist on geologic timescales. It's going to be a tough sell to tell people "You need to pay an extra tax for your entire life so we can fund construction of an interstellar ship that your great grandchildren might witness the launch of, but won't arrive at its destination for a thousand years after that." It's hard to imagine anything that could motivate the human race to do that short of the Vogon constructor fleet announcing that it will arrive within a couple of centuries, ready or not.
- fsiefken 9y ago
  it was an estimate based on a vague memory of this article https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/ https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-fut...

svachalek 9y ago

12 light years is actually very close as interstellar distances go. Such a mission could probably be launched in our lifetimes if the whole world got together behind it (which they won't but still...)

dmix 9y ago
Which has fascinating implications when considering extraterrestrial life. But at the same time it's entirely possible that the closest other life is extremely far away which would make any theoretical travel time be too long to meaningfully discover earth. Does anyone recommend any books that have explored these ideas?
jogjayr 9y ago
From a practical standpoint though (assuming that every nation decided to work together) how would such a mission work? We'd most likely need a generation ship, given that current estimates of max velocity is in the range of 0.5 to 0.8c. That means spending trillions of dollars and putting thousands of people in a ship in orbit, sending them off and most likely never seeing them again. But before that we'd want to send unmanned probes to: a) test out the propulsion and other systems b) scout the planets themselves, identify a good candidate But the probe itself would take 20-30 years to reach + 12 more to report back. Otherwise you're asking thousands to be explorers and guinea pigs for all this technology, with no guarantees about finding a habitable planet or coming back home. With something like the Mars mission you'd probably get volunteers without any family. People would be far more reluctant if it's a generation ship.
- kuschku 9y ago
  > Otherwise you're asking thousands to be explorers and guinea pigs for all this technology, with no guarantees about finding a habitable planet or coming back home. That sounds like Mass Effect: Andromeda. Which is basically about that, humanity sending a sleeper ark to another galaxy (due to a perceived threat that might wipe out humanity in our galaxy), with no guarantee that there will be something there (although they did do some telescope measurements of the potential planets there).
9y ago