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Yeah, pretty much. Space travel and space colonisation are basically civilisation/world ending disaster insurance, which is something that's likely going to be

by CM30 7y ago

Yeah, pretty much. Space travel and space colonisation are basically civilisation/world ending disaster insurance, which is something that's likely going to be needed more and more as time goes on. Want the best chance of not seeing civilisation wrecked by a solar flare/meteor/nuclear war/other disaster? Have multiple other settlements on other planets/moons. There's also that point where the sun will become a red giant or something and Earth will physically be unable to support life, but there's at least 600 million years before that one becomes an issue, and I'm sure something would have figured out space travel before then. It's like running a large website and using multiple servers/cloud hosting/multiple datacentres. Or hosting your site, domain and email at different providers. Makes it far less likely the whole system will collapse at once.

manderley 7y ago
Except speed of light means we'll have to come to terms with the fact we'll never be able to leave. And that's fine.
- kozziollek 7y ago
  According to wiki [1]: > At a constant acceleration of 1 g, a rocket could travel the diameter of our galaxy in about 12 years ship time, and about 113,000 years planetary time. If the last half of the trip involves deceleration at 1 g, the trip would take about 24 years. If the trip is merely to the nearest star, with deceleration the last half of the way, it would take 3.6 years. 24 years is one generation of humans. And 113,000 years is still less than 600 million years. Speed of light is not a problem. Making that ship self-sustainable and even being able to accelerate to 0.999 c might be. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_ac...
  - CM30 7y ago
    It's also probably worth pointing out that the future of space travel may not be trips made by people in their lifetimes with the knowledge of science that exists now. If we can somehow figure out how to keep astronauts in stasis some way or the other, that would remove the need to get anywhere in under 100 years or so. If humans become cyborgs and lose the need for standard forms of nutrition or air, that helps too. If methods for life extension are found, the same. And if that fails, well there's always robots. Or potentially colony ships. Nothing says the automated ship has to be 'on' for the duration of the journey, only the launch and destination. with any of these ideas, the speed of light becomes even less of an issue.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

by CM30 7y ago

manderley 7y ago

Except speed of light means we'll have to come to terms with the fact we'll never be able to leave. And that's fine.

kozziollek 7y ago
According to wiki [1]: > At a constant acceleration of 1 g, a rocket could travel the diameter of our galaxy in about 12 years ship time, and about 113,000 years planetary time. If the last half of the trip involves deceleration at 1 g, the trip would take about 24 years. If the trip is merely to the nearest star, with deceleration the last half of the way, it would take 3.6 years. 24 years is one generation of humans. And 113,000 years is still less than 600 million years. Speed of light is not a problem. Making that ship self-sustainable and even being able to accelerate to 0.999 c might be. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_ac...
- CM30 7y ago
  It's also probably worth pointing out that the future of space travel may not be trips made by people in their lifetimes with the knowledge of science that exists now. If we can somehow figure out how to keep astronauts in stasis some way or the other, that would remove the need to get anywhere in under 100 years or so. If humans become cyborgs and lose the need for standard forms of nutrition or air, that helps too. If methods for life extension are found, the same. And if that fails, well there's always robots. Or potentially colony ships. Nothing says the automated ship has to be 'on' for the duration of the journey, only the launch and destination. with any of these ideas, the speed of light becomes even less of an issue.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]