6 ms·
My feeling is that interstellar travel will be slow and require many generations of travelers -- or not done by human beings at all.
by papaf 6y ago
My feeling is that interstellar travel will be slow and require many generations of travelers -- or not done by human beings at all.
- rossjudson 6y agoWhich is easier? 1) Faster than light travel. 2) Extend lifetimes so 1) doesn't matter.
- papaf 6y agoGiven that human beings are very successful at breeding, I don't see the point of extending lifetimes so space can be explored by geriatric astronauts.
- gruez 6y agoThe problem with that is you don't know how willing the next generation is willing to continue carrying out the mission.
- kyriakos 6y agoPeople are willing to follow religions because of society, family and peer pressure,I take it they will be willing to do so under the same pressure and for something that can at least be scientifically proved to exist.
- steelframe 6y agoIf the year 2020 taught me anything, it's that an alarmingly large number of people can all as a group reject something that's scientifically proven.
- creamytaco 6y agoScience is (a lot less) powerful than religion. Indoctrination taken to religious levels, in a confined and controlled environment, would be more than enough to propagate programming for hundreds if not thousands of years.
- seg_lol 6y agoSo we design cult missiles and send that at other star systems, sounds like a pretty hostile weapon.
- kyriakos 6y agoHuman cult is still human. If we aim to continue our species it may be what we need. Say a civilization is built at the destination we can assume it will go through its own dark ages at some point before a renaissance.
- papaf 6y agoIf they grow up and then turn around, my guess is that their chances of seeing Earth for the first time would be slim. It does raise a moral argument though for only using robots.
- zhengyi13 6y agoIf we assume relatively slow travel, which do you think we'd be more successful at designing? 1) A psychological screening program to select those suited for long life, or 2) A whole society that manages to perpetuate itself long enough to reach the goal? (Not that these are our only two options in a slow travel scenario)
- papaf 6y agoI am assuming that the nearest star is not reachable in a human lifetime (even given some breakthrough in longevity). The big problem being fuel and how to carry it [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Required_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Required_e...
- jkaplowitz 6y agoI'd rather predict 3) A spaceship large enough and self-sufficient enough that many generations of society can live and die on the spaceship at sub-light speeds. Not the flashy sci-fi solution, but the most likely.
- sli 6y agoIt's not flashy, sure, but sci-fi is no stranger to generation ships.
- ruslan 6y ago"Orphans of the Sky" by R.Heinlein, very much recommended read.
- hahajk 6y agoOh man, take it from someone who has been in the Navy: that’ll have to be one gigantic and well-functioning spaceship.
- blacksmith_tb 6y agoHell is other people. Which also explains why hibernation or some other kind of suspended animation also frequently appears in SF stories multi-generation-spanning ships.
- marcosdumay 6y agoThere's no reason a space ship can not have dozens of km in radius. That's a small asteroid, what looks like the most obvious thing to repurpose into one.
- nine_k 6y agoHibernation is being forgotten here. Many mammals are capable of it, so it should be within a more probable reach than making humans actively live 500 years, to say nothing of superluminal travel.
- GuB-42 6y agoInterstellar travel doesn't have to be slow for the travellers. You could get to Alpha Centauri and back to Earth in a day (at least as far as relativity is concerned), but for those who stayed on Earth, a decade would have passed. That's the twin paradox btw.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoHow many gs of acceleration would that take? Sure, you could accelerate your mass to a gamma of 6000 or so, and then back down, in half a day, and do it all again for the return trip, but would you still be alive at the end?
- ConceptJunkie 6y agoAt 1g constant acceleration, you could reach the center of the galaxy in your lifetime (~50 years). Everyone else... not so much.
- jackcosgrove 6y agoI don't think humans themselves will travel between stars. If we find habitable planets, we'll send probes with bioreactors that can then be fed a stream of individuals' DNA to populate the planet.
- vl 6y agoThis is a sure way to get competing species that can one day show up to exterminate you.