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We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we

We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we can comeback and see them again.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Unless some really freaky physics discovery is made (allowing FTL travel), and I don't believe at this point that that'll ever be done (or if it will that it may cause a sudden cataclysmic event), I don't believe we'll ever become interstellar travelers. More viable at this point is that we'll develop Von Neumann probes. But that depends on whether we manage to develop computers smart enough to fully independently harvest resources and self-reproduce. Before that, it'll be projects like Voyager, deep space probes that contain fragments of our knowledge and culture. If there's other intelligent species out there, there may be a slim chance that they'll be found, eventually. But the chances are slim. Maybe if there's a lot, they get sent to start orbiting distant stars, and can start broadcasting. But given that it takes tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest stars, it's unlikely that the probes will be anything but dead chunks of slag by the time they arrive.
- onion2k 6y ago
  But given that it takes tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest stars, it's unlikely that the probes will be anything but dead chunks of slag by the time they arrive. You're not exactly saying meteorites are the remnants of alien probes, but you're not not saying that either.
dreen 6y ago
I agree but the nearest star is (only?) 4 light years away. If we only managed to travel close to the speed of light, we surely live long enough today. Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right?
- koolba 6y ago
  > Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right? Technically they wouldn’t be older, you’d be younger.
  - dangirsh 6y ago
    "relativity"
- tobmlt 6y ago
  The trip becomes quicker (to you) the faster you go. If you could ride a beam of light, you’d be there instantaneously, thanks to length contraction. Meanwhile 4 years would pass on earth in some sense. (To an observer watching from earth with a hypothetical telescope, you are seen to arrive only after eight years total. Of course you could just ride the light back and tell him about it all, ha.)
- maxerickson 6y ago
  With FTL you could wish yourself a good trip before you left.
- speeder 6y ago
  There is a cool calculator of what happen if you travel around with constant 1G acceleration. Long story short: to travel to Alpha Centauri it would take for the traveller still about 4 years, and when back at home, people would have aged only some months more than the astronauts. Crazy things happen if you decide to go on galaxy-wide trips though, to the astronauts because space contraction they perceive their own trip as happening still rather quick, a 100 000 ly trip (the size of our galaxy, for reference) takes 22 years for someone inside a spaceship with 1g acceleration, perfectly doable. But people outside still see it taking 100 000 years... (meaning they will be 100 000 years "older" from the point of view of the astronauts) After I found all this out, I concluded space travel isn't THAT hard, assuming you have a way to accelerate constantly at 1g for 22 years (that is the hardest part actually), you can get anywhere in the galaxy in a human lifetime, no need for generation ships, cryogenics or other crazy tech. In fact even going to other galaxies is easy, a trip to Andromeda takes 28 years! Mind you, all those calculations were done assuming you will burn at 1g until half the distance, and then burn at 1g to brake, if you don't brake you can get even faster to places (although that wouldn't be very useful I guess). According to google the universe is 93 billion ly wide. If you accelerate (and decelerate later) at constant 1g, this trip takes 49 years for the astronaut!
rdsubhas 6y ago
I kind of disagree here. 50 thousand years — it doesn't matter if people are biologically alive. You, your friends, family, society, relationships — would all be very, very different when you come back. If you just meant "see friends and family", yeah technically you could see each other I guess. Practically, might as well be an alien.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- checkyoursudo 6y ago
  You haven't met my family, I see.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  It's a solved problem: just make the stars your home and live there. The ability to live among the stars is required for interstellar travel. That will be your place to come back. Those who travel among the stars don't live in dirt like earth pigs.
  - monkeycantype 6y ago
    I would like to know more about how this problem was solved, so that I too may be freed from the indignity of living like an earth pig.
- rurban 6y ago
  50.000 years is a bogus number. No serious space engineer calculates with that. The goal is 1/5 lightspeed, which would mean 25 years.
- tetris11 6y ago
  You take an instance of the people you want to take with you, and they take an instance of you in return. It won't feel like goodbye. 50,000 years later you sync memories if there has no been trickle of communication in that time between you and your instances
kadoban 6y ago
Living longer would help. Changing society would help more. If you can engineer society towards some obsession with expanding through the universe, we could probably travel to the stars in our lifetimes. It'll be slow, shitty, dangerous travel though.

We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we can comeback and see them again.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Unless some really freaky physics discovery is made (allowing FTL travel), and I don't believe at this point that that'll ever be done (or if it will that it may cause a sudden cataclysmic event), I don't believe we'll ever become interstellar travelers. More viable at this point is that we'll develop Von Neumann probes. But that depends on whether we manage to develop computers smart enough to fully independently harvest resources and self-reproduce. Before that, it'll be projects like Voyager, deep space probes that contain fragments of our knowledge and culture. If there's other intelligent species out there, there may be a slim chance that they'll be found, eventually. But the chances are slim. Maybe if there's a lot, they get sent to start orbiting distant stars, and can start broadcasting. But given that it takes tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest stars, it's unlikely that the probes will be anything but dead chunks of slag by the time they arrive.

onion2k 6y ago
But given that it takes tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest stars, it's unlikely that the probes will be anything but dead chunks of slag by the time they arrive. You're not exactly saying meteorites are the remnants of alien probes, but you're not not saying that either.

dreen 6y ago

I agree but the nearest star is (only?) 4 light years away. If we only managed to travel close to the speed of light, we surely live long enough today. Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right?

koolba 6y ago
> Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right? Technically they wouldn’t be older, you’d be younger.
- dangirsh 6y ago
  "relativity"
tobmlt 6y ago
The trip becomes quicker (to you) the faster you go. If you could ride a beam of light, you’d be there instantaneously, thanks to length contraction. Meanwhile 4 years would pass on earth in some sense. (To an observer watching from earth with a hypothetical telescope, you are seen to arrive only after eight years total. Of course you could just ride the light back and tell him about it all, ha.)
maxerickson 6y ago
With FTL you could wish yourself a good trip before you left.
speeder 6y ago
There is a cool calculator of what happen if you travel around with constant 1G acceleration. Long story short: to travel to Alpha Centauri it would take for the traveller still about 4 years, and when back at home, people would have aged only some months more than the astronauts. Crazy things happen if you decide to go on galaxy-wide trips though, to the astronauts because space contraction they perceive their own trip as happening still rather quick, a 100 000 ly trip (the size of our galaxy, for reference) takes 22 years for someone inside a spaceship with 1g acceleration, perfectly doable. But people outside still see it taking 100 000 years... (meaning they will be 100 000 years "older" from the point of view of the astronauts) After I found all this out, I concluded space travel isn't THAT hard, assuming you have a way to accelerate constantly at 1g for 22 years (that is the hardest part actually), you can get anywhere in the galaxy in a human lifetime, no need for generation ships, cryogenics or other crazy tech. In fact even going to other galaxies is easy, a trip to Andromeda takes 28 years! Mind you, all those calculations were done assuming you will burn at 1g until half the distance, and then burn at 1g to brake, if you don't brake you can get even faster to places (although that wouldn't be very useful I guess). According to google the universe is 93 billion ly wide. If you accelerate (and decelerate later) at constant 1g, this trip takes 49 years for the astronaut!

rdsubhas 6y ago

I kind of disagree here. 50 thousand years — it doesn't matter if people are biologically alive. You, your friends, family, society, relationships — would all be very, very different when you come back. If you just meant "see friends and family", yeah technically you could see each other I guess. Practically, might as well be an alien.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
checkyoursudo 6y ago
You haven't met my family, I see.
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
It's a solved problem: just make the stars your home and live there. The ability to live among the stars is required for interstellar travel. That will be your place to come back. Those who travel among the stars don't live in dirt like earth pigs.
- monkeycantype 6y ago
  I would like to know more about how this problem was solved, so that I too may be freed from the indignity of living like an earth pig.
rurban 6y ago
50.000 years is a bogus number. No serious space engineer calculates with that. The goal is 1/5 lightspeed, which would mean 25 years.
tetris11 6y ago
You take an instance of the people you want to take with you, and they take an instance of you in return. It won't feel like goodbye. 50,000 years later you sync memories if there has no been trickle of communication in that time between you and your instances

kadoban 6y ago

Living longer would help. Changing society would help more. If you can engineer society towards some obsession with expanding through the universe, we could probably travel to the stars in our lifetimes. It'll be slow, shitty, dangerous travel though.