4 ms·
> ... interstellar voyages will be undertaken by those intelligences, not meatbags. The energy requirements for interstellar travel are so vast that the life s
by cletus 4y ago
> ... interstellar voyages will be undertaken by those intelligences, not meatbags.
The energy requirements for interstellar travel are so vast that the life support requirements for thousands of meatbags for possibly thousands of years really are just a rounding error.
- cwillu 4y agoIt's only a rounding error because rounding 10¹⁸ to 10²⁰ is a thing you do in astrophysics.
- ben_w 4y agoKinetic energy of 100kg at 0.1c is ≈ 4.5e16 J Minimum possible life support for a human ≈ human basic metabolic rate ≈ 73 W Divide energy by power to get time; that's 20 million years, which at that speed would get you to Andromeda before the lowest possible energy cost of life support reached the lowest possible energy cost of the velocity.