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I was born 11 years after the Moon landing. Theoretically, if I lived to be 120, I might see the data from this Proxima swarm fly-by. (Assuming a 2076 launch, t
by pavlov 2y ago
I was born 11 years after the Moon landing. Theoretically, if I lived to be 120, I might see the data from this Proxima swarm fly-by. (Assuming a 2076 launch, twenty years travel time at 0.2c, and four years for the information return trip.)
I know it’s extremely unlikely this program ever gets deployed. It’s also very unlikely that I could last that long, barring some miracle medical breakthrough. It’s still an inspiring thought that humankind might get from its moon to the nearest star almost in one lifetime.
Obviously there’s nothing on Proxima, just like there’s nothing on the Moon. But that’s not the point. Everything of value is here on Earth, in the people we share it with. But we need joint ambitions and dreams. They don’t have to make sense to be worth dreaming about. It’s the opposite: the sense that quarterly reports and performance reviews are made of is the enemy of dreams.
- Invictus0 2y ago[flagged]
- holoduke 2y agoA || B or A && B. I prefer && sign. Exploring things wether its far or very closeby will always be beneficial for human kind. That includes clean water.
- downrightmike 2y agoWe can easily afford both, but the war hawks and monopolies don't want to
- shswkna 2y agoAiming our goals and dreams towards the lowest common denominator, will not result in successfully reaching them. Aim higher and higher, so you pull everything else up in your wake. Even more so if your intentions are pure.
- sebzim4500 2y agoRealistically, the kind of person who makes a comment like yours would find another reason not to invest in spaceflight once clean drinking water is universal. Food, shelter, abolition of war, universal access to travel, etc.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Teever 2y agoYeah, exactly, this sanctimonious 'no child left behind' politician schtick is always on display whenever people talk about cool space exploration stuff. It's just a way for people to steal attention away from the topic they don't like and derail the conversation.
- RajT88 2y agoExactly right. The money space programs spend is but a drop in the ocean compared to military budgets. We can - and should - do more than one thing with government budgets.
- sph 2y ago"Stop having fun, there are much more important things to worry about." Like moaning on the Internet about what people do with their time and talent?
- volkk 2y agoi wonder whether limiting human ambition to very specific (maybe one might argue lower effort, hopefully that's not too callous of a term) goals is actually somewhat of a detriment, in that, if you aim for goals that are far more grandiose, then the likelyhood of a breakthrough for something like unlimited clean water for all of earth is actually a higher probability. presumably focusing on long distance spaceflight will need inventions within the drinking water realm, and reusable <insert thing here> with very tight resources/constraints. surely this is the smarter way to think about this kind of thing?
- dotnet00 2y agoWhy are you spending your time and money posting here? Focus on providing every human with access to clean drinking water, you can worry about social media after that.
- cgriswald 2y agoSurely convincing two others to spend their time and money this way is more important work. And if they in turn convince two others than he has done the work of four people. If those four people each convince two more and so on then he’ll have convinced everyone to do the work. Not sure who will do the actual work though.
- tokai 2y ago>Obviously there’s nothing on Proxima, just like there’s nothing on the Moon. Not necessarily obviously. The moons of the gas giants was thought to be inert and boring, until we went there and realized they are varied and brimming with interesting features.
- dylan604 2y ago> they are varied and brimming with interesting features. one of those features being lifeless
- zardo 2y agoFor all we know Europa and Enceledous could support millions of tons of biomass.
- idlewords 2y agoRight now Enceladus is the most likely target for extant life in the solar system, and is one of four moons with a subsurface water ocean. We know almost nothing about them.
- greggsy 2y agoIn order to make any of these interstellar dreams at all useful, we’d need to master the ability to explore the full gamut of what a solar system can offer. It’s just not sexy enough to make headlines.
- wongarsu 2y agoMost proposed interstellar missions (including the article) are just flybys. We won't learn much more about how to do flybys by observing our own solar system. The data from such a flyby might build the support necessary to develop propulsion technologies that allow us to slow down at interstellar targets. But they'd be decades into the future, by that time we will have done a lot more exploration in our solar system as well
- 2y ago
- bunabhucan 2y agoIn 2124 someone will synthesize your consciousness from this and other posts and tell "you" about the results.
- idlewords 2y agoPlease don't synthesize my consciousness from Hacker News posts.
- Loughla 2y agoOr my online presence in totality, to be honest. Who I am online is only a small part of who I am. Just like being a father, or an employee, or a woodworker do not fully define me as human, being a little snarky bitch on the Internet also does not sometime define me.
- ben_w 2y agoOn the internet, I'm a wolf. So synthesising a persona from my digital presence would be… well, 100% on brand for how weird everything else is, honestly.
- jon_richards 2y agoBy asking that, you just guarantee your synthesized consciousness will be miserable.
- idlewords 2y agoWell, at least it will be accurate.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- konstantinua00 2y agotoo late, my imagination is fuuuming
- 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DrBazza 2y agoThe trouble with being at the beginning of space travel is that we will get better and faster at it. In fact there's a 'law' or 'paradox' that I can't remember the name of - but if we were to launch in 2076 at 0.2c, we could eventually launch something faster, than might even overtake the original probes.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> if we were to launch in 2076 at 0.2c, we could eventually launch something faster If you never launch at 0.2c, you’re less likely to build the kit that launches something faster later.
- avensec 2y ago> In fact there's a 'law' or 'paradox' that I can't remember the name of The incessant obsolescence postulate.
- anvandare 2y agoI think you're thinking of the Lightspeed Leapfrog trope[1]. (In a more general sense, it's the inverse of the first-mover advantage: the law of the handicap of a head start[32]) Or: the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightspeedLeapfrog https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightspeedLeapfr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_handicap_of_a_head_start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_handicap_of_a_head_...
- andy99 2y agoWe launched the first Voyager in the 70s. 50 years on do we have anything catching up to it?
- DrBazza 2y agoIn 2076 we might.
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoObviously there's nothing... I was stumped by that. You don't know until you look.