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The distance is so ridiculously incomprehensibly far is hard to see this as anything except science fiction fantasy. If you think this sort of thing is possibl

The distance is so ridiculously incomprehensibly far is hard to see this as anything except science fiction fantasy. If you think this sort of thing is possible you really don’t understand how far it is. To put it in relative perspective, if we represent the furthest distance humans have ever traveled as 1.3cm then the nearest star is 200 kilometers away.

happytiger 3y ago
True but we haven’t been further than the moon, our nearest neighbor. Unmanned missions have gone much further with success (and even returned).
grecy 3y ago
Remember people said exactly the same thing about flying, and about stepping foot on the moon. Everything is impossible until it's done.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  The comparisons don’t hold up. It’s not simply a country we haven’t found yet with a six month sailing journey.
  - onethought 3y ago
    True - we know exactly where it is, how far, what technology will be required and we have light speed communication. The six month sailing journey sounds waaaaay more ominous.
    - spacecadet 3y ago
      yeah people died on those, entire ships lost.
ofslidingfeet 3y ago
Since you want to take such a condescending tone about it, here we have an entire fucking article about how NASA thinks it's possible and is working on potential solutions.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  Sorry if my comment came across as condescending. However the point remains that it’s simply impossible. My original analogy of 1.3cm versus 200km was wrong according to another commenter in fact it’s more like 1.3cm versus 1,300km - so vastly impossibly far out of the range of anything that could be conceivably be done under any plausible scenario.
29athrowaway 3y ago
Voyager 1 (1977) travels at 38,210 mph. The ISS (1998) travels at 17,400 mph. There's abundant precedent of accelerating to high speeds in space, where there's no friction with an atmosphere that slows you down and where you can use gravitational fields as sling shots. 0.3c might seem high but if you keep accelerating you will eventually reach that speed.
- shmageggy 3y ago
  > There's abundant precedent of accelerating to high speeds in space But there's zero precedent for slowing down once you get somewhere (in 10,000 years)
  - irrational 3y ago
    Why would they slow down? Fly by and beam back the results.
    - z3phyr 3y ago
      How much power is needed to beam back the results from that distance? I ask because I suppose the probes are going to be very small.
    - sidlls 3y ago
      At 0.25c the probes would blast through the centauri system in minutes. Hardly enough time to collect data more useful than what we already can sitting here practically stationary, even if absurdly far away.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  About 75,000 years away at voyager speed.
  - 29athrowaway 3y ago
    The difference is that these spacecraft will be smaller, and use light sailing as propulsion mechanism. Which means that a ground station can keep beaming light at them causing them to accelerate.
irrational 3y ago
What about the voyager probes? How far has the farthest one travelled in your analogy?
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  Well, to make his analogy more rigourous, because his 200 km is laughably too small. Moon: 238,900 miles --> 1.3 cm or 0.00 km (This defines the scale as 0.0000054416073670992 cm / mile.) Voyager 2: 12,000,000,000 miles --> 65,299.0 cm or 0.65 km Proxima: 25,000,000,000,000 miles --> 136,040,184.2 cm or 1,360.40 km
- Sanzig 3y ago
  About 120 meters. Interstellar space is big.
- dwaltrip 3y ago
  Using the moon for the farthest distance humans have traveled… Voyager has traveled 60,000 times further (14 billion miles). 1 cm x 60,000 = 600 meters Which is less than 0.5% of the distance to Alpha Centauri (“200 km” in the analogy, 25 trillion miles in real units) Edit: a neighboring comment pointed out that on this scale of distance to moon ~= 1 cm, the Alpha Centauri system is more like 1000 km away. So voyager is less than 0.1% of the way.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    And voyager is going so fast because it used a clever gravitational slingshot technique, for which such a good opportunity hasn't yet arisen again. Without that natural assistance, humans don't have the ability to leave the solar system - we just can't build a rocket powerful enough.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      Of course we can, we just choose not to. We've had designs for nuclear rockets for many decades now.
javajosh 3y ago
Yes, but...the analogy I like to use is to imagine that we are tiny creatures living in a hole in a vast sheet of ice. Our hole is ~1 au in diameter, Proxima Centauri is 270k au away. So if the hole is 1cm wide the next hole is ~2.7km away. That's a long way for a microbe to walk, but it's not outside the realm of possbility if the ice is very, very flat and it can make tiny ice skates such that you don't need to spend energy to maintain speed. Of course, the real problem with the analogy is that the fastest you can go 1 cm in this universe is about 8 minutes. So the absolute shortest time it takes you to travel that 2.7km is 4.2 years. That's a few hundred cm per year. But in reality the best we could possibly do is a few tens of cm per year (e.g. c/10), and even that's in the realm of science fiction. On the bright side, humanity has the Solar system all to itself with wonderful natural barriers to invasion and conquest. So we have time to figure out how to not blow ourselves up and/or stop dismantling our life support system to make Ikea furniture.

happytiger 3y ago

True but we haven’t been further than the moon, our nearest neighbor. Unmanned missions have gone much further with success (and even returned).

grecy 3y ago

Remember people said exactly the same thing about flying, and about stepping foot on the moon. Everything is impossible until it's done.

andrewstuart 3y ago
The comparisons don’t hold up. It’s not simply a country we haven’t found yet with a six month sailing journey.
- onethought 3y ago
  True - we know exactly where it is, how far, what technology will be required and we have light speed communication. The six month sailing journey sounds waaaaay more ominous.
  - spacecadet 3y ago
    yeah people died on those, entire ships lost.

ofslidingfeet 3y ago

Since you want to take such a condescending tone about it, here we have an entire fucking article about how NASA thinks it's possible and is working on potential solutions.

andrewstuart 3y ago
Sorry if my comment came across as condescending. However the point remains that it’s simply impossible. My original analogy of 1.3cm versus 200km was wrong according to another commenter in fact it’s more like 1.3cm versus 1,300km - so vastly impossibly far out of the range of anything that could be conceivably be done under any plausible scenario.

29athrowaway 3y ago

Voyager 1 (1977) travels at 38,210 mph. The ISS (1998) travels at 17,400 mph. There's abundant precedent of accelerating to high speeds in space, where there's no friction with an atmosphere that slows you down and where you can use gravitational fields as sling shots. 0.3c might seem high but if you keep accelerating you will eventually reach that speed.

shmageggy 3y ago
> There's abundant precedent of accelerating to high speeds in space But there's zero precedent for slowing down once you get somewhere (in 10,000 years)
- irrational 3y ago
  Why would they slow down? Fly by and beam back the results.
  - z3phyr 3y ago
    How much power is needed to beam back the results from that distance? I ask because I suppose the probes are going to be very small.
  - sidlls 3y ago
    At 0.25c the probes would blast through the centauri system in minutes. Hardly enough time to collect data more useful than what we already can sitting here practically stationary, even if absurdly far away.
andrewstuart 3y ago
About 75,000 years away at voyager speed.
- 29athrowaway 3y ago
  The difference is that these spacecraft will be smaller, and use light sailing as propulsion mechanism. Which means that a ground station can keep beaming light at them causing them to accelerate.

irrational 3y ago

What about the voyager probes? How far has the farthest one travelled in your analogy?

jonathankoren 3y ago
Well, to make his analogy more rigourous, because his 200 km is laughably too small. Moon: 238,900 miles --> 1.3 cm or 0.00 km (This defines the scale as 0.0000054416073670992 cm / mile.) Voyager 2: 12,000,000,000 miles --> 65,299.0 cm or 0.65 km Proxima: 25,000,000,000,000 miles --> 136,040,184.2 cm or 1,360.40 km
Sanzig 3y ago
About 120 meters. Interstellar space is big.
dwaltrip 3y ago
Using the moon for the farthest distance humans have traveled… Voyager has traveled 60,000 times further (14 billion miles). 1 cm x 60,000 = 600 meters Which is less than 0.5% of the distance to Alpha Centauri (“200 km” in the analogy, 25 trillion miles in real units) Edit: a neighboring comment pointed out that on this scale of distance to moon ~= 1 cm, the Alpha Centauri system is more like 1000 km away. So voyager is less than 0.1% of the way.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  And voyager is going so fast because it used a clever gravitational slingshot technique, for which such a good opportunity hasn't yet arisen again. Without that natural assistance, humans don't have the ability to leave the solar system - we just can't build a rocket powerful enough.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    Of course we can, we just choose not to. We've had designs for nuclear rockets for many decades now.

javajosh 3y ago

Yes, but...the analogy I like to use is to imagine that we are tiny creatures living in a hole in a vast sheet of ice. Our hole is ~1 au in diameter, Proxima Centauri is 270k au away. So if the hole is 1cm wide the next hole is ~2.7km away. That's a long way for a microbe to walk, but it's not outside the realm of possbility if the ice is very, very flat and it can make tiny ice skates such that you don't need to spend energy to maintain speed. Of course, the real problem with the analogy is that the fastest you can go 1 cm in this universe is about 8 minutes. So the absolute shortest time it takes you to travel that 2.7km is 4.2 years. That's a few hundred cm per year. But in reality the best we could possibly do is a few tens of cm per year (e.g. c/10), and even that's in the realm of science fiction. On the bright side, humanity has the Solar system all to itself with wonderful natural barriers to invasion and conquest. So we have time to figure out how to not blow ourselves up and/or stop dismantling our life support system to make Ikea furniture.