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There is no evidence that space travel is practical or sustainable. The only viable spaceship known to man is Earth, and we don’t steer it. Maybe there are lot

There is no evidence that space travel is practical or sustainable. The only viable spaceship known to man is Earth, and we don’t steer it. Maybe there are lots of earth-like planets with intelligent beings, but travel is impossible and communication is useless given the time delay.

billytetrud 3y ago
Saying there is "no evidence" is factually absurd. There are a whole host of possibilities for practical long distance space travel. At very least for small light-weight robots. And it even seems possible that we can viably transport our entire solarsystem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU . No evidence indeed... only if you lack imagination.
nox100 3y ago
It's not hard to believe that we could make self replicating drones in the next 100 years that go from system to system, make a few more, and continue. We've already sent drones out of our solar system. They don't have to go fast. They'd still visit every system in the known universe in a "relatively" small amount of time. (relative to the age of the known universe).
dekhn 3y ago
I think it's reasonable to say that we could probably build a fleet of ships containing tardigrades in their dried-out tun state (which is biologically inert, up to tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and extremely resilient to radiation and vacuum), launch them with enough mass to reach a nearby (up to 10 LY at 0.001c?) solar system with a planet that has water, and deliver the payload to the water, such that the tardigrades would revert to their normal living state. It would cost a lot of money. It would take a very long time (hundreds of thousands of years). Nobody alive today would see the results. There are any number of systematic and non-systematic failures that could occur. building things that work autonomously for 100Kyears is nontrivial. Even if you succeeded- say, 100Kyears from now, one out of a thousand of your samples crash-lands onto a remote planet and revives- congratulations, you've maybe just contaminated an otherwise unknown ecosystem. The story gets more interesting if earth has fusion, stable government and research funding, then you could make humans into tuns that can travel for 10K years, and have advanced propulsion (.01-.1c), pre-deliver full infrastructure...
lebean 3y ago
Turns out that the great filter was something as mundane as interstellar travel being impractical.

billytetrud 3y ago

Saying there is "no evidence" is factually absurd. There are a whole host of possibilities for practical long distance space travel. At very least for small light-weight robots. And it even seems possible that we can viably transport our entire solarsystem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU . No evidence indeed... only if you lack imagination.

nox100 3y ago

It's not hard to believe that we could make self replicating drones in the next 100 years that go from system to system, make a few more, and continue. We've already sent drones out of our solar system. They don't have to go fast. They'd still visit every system in the known universe in a "relatively" small amount of time. (relative to the age of the known universe).

dekhn 3y ago

I think it's reasonable to say that we could probably build a fleet of ships containing tardigrades in their dried-out tun state (which is biologically inert, up to tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and extremely resilient to radiation and vacuum), launch them with enough mass to reach a nearby (up to 10 LY at 0.001c?) solar system with a planet that has water, and deliver the payload to the water, such that the tardigrades would revert to their normal living state. It would cost a lot of money. It would take a very long time (hundreds of thousands of years). Nobody alive today would see the results. There are any number of systematic and non-systematic failures that could occur. building things that work autonomously for 100Kyears is nontrivial. Even if you succeeded- say, 100Kyears from now, one out of a thousand of your samples crash-lands onto a remote planet and revives- congratulations, you've maybe just contaminated an otherwise unknown ecosystem. The story gets more interesting if earth has fusion, stable government and research funding, then you could make humans into tuns that can travel for 10K years, and have advanced propulsion (.01-.1c), pre-deliver full infrastructure...

lebean 3y ago

Turns out that the great filter was something as mundane as interstellar travel being impractical.