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Am I the only one who feels mind boggling amazement followed by a sense of depression that we are too short-lived, too primitive and too weak to be able to visi

Am I the only one who feels mind boggling amazement followed by a sense of depression that we are too short-lived, too primitive and too weak to be able to visit and explore these distant galaxies? It is like we are given a glimpse of this insane and terrifyingly beautiful expanse with the knowledge that that's all it will ever amount to. Like a child looking through the glass window at the limitless world outside without any hopes of reaching it while knowing that she will never be able to get out of the house.

rafaelmn 2y ago
What exactly do you hope to find ? It's not like we're living in a Star Trek universe where every solar system has a warp civilization.
afh1 2y ago
Unlike a grassy field in a sunny Earth day, space is cold, dark, deprived of oxygen and bombarded by radiation, and the few rocks that exist in the vast void of nothingness are pretty much just lifeless rocks. So yeah, enjoy our house, it's pretty neat here. It would be cool to explore this dark desert, but it's not hard to find happiness inside if you try.
mway 2y ago
Mortality can be a tough thing to accept. But, if it helps, just know that it is always a spectrum - it is never binary - in that everything has an end (as far as we, and our physical/cosmological models, can understand). We've got it better than pretty much every other type of animal life on earth (with a few exceptions) - insects or our pets, for example - so while we might not have "cosmological endurance", let's call it, we've still got it pretty good. :) Agreed that it's a shame we can't explore everything, though!
Out_of_Characte 2y ago
No need for nihilism. Alpha centauri is approximately 4.37 light years away. Project starshot is already aiming to get there. This can take anywhere from 20 to 50 years depending on the mission. We already have a spacecraft from 1977 that is still operating today which proves our potential to build on a 50 year timeframe. We'll likely have humans somewhere in our solar system besides earth before anyone attempts to go to alpha centauri but besides that I also think we would be able to live much longer. Life expectancy increases are around 1% or 0.8% per decade at its current pace. There's no guarantee this continues but even so, if that's the average in the coming decades then we'll expect people to live hundreds of years by the time we can send a ship to alpha centauri.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  So at 50 years, that requires traveling an average of 10% the speed of light. That’s 150x times faster than the peak speed ever built which got a significant amount of speed from gravitational assists. That’s a massive leap to assume we’ll have craft traveling that fast anytime soon considering the considerable fuel costs involved not to mention relativistic problems that going that fast requires (shielding against interplanetary dust, energy requirements growing exponentially etc). And on top of everything, stopping is a huge question when you’re going that fast so how are you achieving that? Is that fuel you had to accelerate as well? And remember - that’s 150x average speed faster than peak so your actual peak to achieve a speed up followed by a slowdown would need to be even faster. As for voyager, that craft is barely operational in some sense. At 10% and at significantly further distances than ever achieved it would be even harder to keep it operational I think. Let’s be optimistic but let’s live in reality and not unrealistic sci-fi.
  - gizmo686 2y ago
    Project star shot is still very much s research project at this point, but it seems serious. The idea is to not use self powered rockets, but launch a thousand small solar sail based probes. These would launched into orbit traditionally, then accelerated individually from a massive earth based laser array, solving the rocket equation problem while introducing a host of its own. Many probes will not make the trip, but the hope is enough would survive to do a fly by.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      A fly by at relativistic speeds would be an accomplishment but what data are you realistically capturing? And Wikipedia captures my critique of it accurately: > According to The Economist, at least a dozen off-the-shelf technologies will need to improve by orders of magnitude That’s about right. That kind of orders of magnitude improvement within a lifetime requires novel scientific theories (eg similar to quantum mechanics and the impact it had). Without that growth is drastically slower. And consider that even computational and communication capabilities have basically been maxed out at our current tech level - we’re no longer growing them exponentially due to thermal and physics constraints. It’s an ambitious goal worth doing because of the “if you aim for the moon and miss you still hit the stars” kind of effect. And there’s plenty of directed research that needs to be funded. Thinking any of this happens in our lifetimes is ambitious and spaceships carrying humans going to the stars is fantasy* * as always, completely new physics that upend our knowledge of what’s possible changes the calculus. But those come very rarely and there’s no reason to believe the next revolution will be as impactful as quantum mechanics in terms of impact on our technological capabilities.
dotnet00 2y ago
You can always redirect your depression into constructive optimism by working to help ensure that eventually, our descendants might have a chance to be able to do so.
chankstein38 2y ago
Nope, I feel the same sense of depression about space. I love it but I absolutely feel that. We see these beautiful things and will likely never, as a species or as individuals, even get NEAR seeing them in person.
jajko 2y ago
Unless you believe in fairy tales and santa claus, mankind will never reach them. Sure, we will settle surrounding few hundred light years, maybe a thousand in next million years, if we as mankind are extremely lucky, I talk range somewhere 1:1000 to 1:million. Other chance is show or quick death. Beyond that, no real settling, just some probes that will take tens of millenia to come back (or send signal back). Think about all the stuff and beauty we have now, to experience and explore it on our pale blue dot, trivially reachable considering our recent past, and all that will be almost inevitably lost to future generations. Compared to what we have here, stuff in cold hard vacuum or some illusions of beauty pale in comparison (and that comes from a guy who loves astronomy). You can experience it now, in its original form and not some crappy re-creation of good ol' days. Trust me, future generations will be wishing for many reasons to be able to live now (at least those healthy). I don't believe we will find some magic above-c transport in Star trek style. Sure, its a nice fantasy and we would love for it being true, but thats not how reality works. Same as some beardy old dude in the clouds fantasy, having for some reason very strict bronze-age morals yet letting billions innocents suffer immeasurably without a care in the world(universe). But of course there is magical wonderland after its over here, pure magic in D&D style with alternate realities/planes/universes or whatever those folks who wrote it up thought made sense back then.
- dekhn 2y ago
  We could probably get a population of tardigrades to another solar system. They can hibernate for tens of thousands of years, in a mode that is highly resistant to radiation.
tiffanyh 2y ago
Have you gone to a National Park? (assuming you live in the US) You can get similar amazement here on earth, normally within 1-day drive of where most people live, by just visiting a National Park. We take for granted the beauty of Earth, and so much is still undiscovered here at home.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
m3kw9 2y ago
You haven’t even finish exploring your own planets in solar system
skybrian 2y ago
If you do feel that way, beware that it's a rhetorical trick. More: https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning

rafaelmn 2y ago

What exactly do you hope to find ? It's not like we're living in a Star Trek universe where every solar system has a warp civilization.

afh1 2y ago

Unlike a grassy field in a sunny Earth day, space is cold, dark, deprived of oxygen and bombarded by radiation, and the few rocks that exist in the vast void of nothingness are pretty much just lifeless rocks. So yeah, enjoy our house, it's pretty neat here. It would be cool to explore this dark desert, but it's not hard to find happiness inside if you try.

mway 2y ago

Mortality can be a tough thing to accept. But, if it helps, just know that it is always a spectrum - it is never binary - in that everything has an end (as far as we, and our physical/cosmological models, can understand). We've got it better than pretty much every other type of animal life on earth (with a few exceptions) - insects or our pets, for example - so while we might not have "cosmological endurance", let's call it, we've still got it pretty good. :) Agreed that it's a shame we can't explore everything, though!

Out_of_Characte 2y ago

No need for nihilism. Alpha centauri is approximately 4.37 light years away. Project starshot is already aiming to get there. This can take anywhere from 20 to 50 years depending on the mission. We already have a spacecraft from 1977 that is still operating today which proves our potential to build on a 50 year timeframe. We'll likely have humans somewhere in our solar system besides earth before anyone attempts to go to alpha centauri but besides that I also think we would be able to live much longer. Life expectancy increases are around 1% or 0.8% per decade at its current pace. There's no guarantee this continues but even so, if that's the average in the coming decades then we'll expect people to live hundreds of years by the time we can send a ship to alpha centauri.

vlovich123 2y ago
So at 50 years, that requires traveling an average of 10% the speed of light. That’s 150x times faster than the peak speed ever built which got a significant amount of speed from gravitational assists. That’s a massive leap to assume we’ll have craft traveling that fast anytime soon considering the considerable fuel costs involved not to mention relativistic problems that going that fast requires (shielding against interplanetary dust, energy requirements growing exponentially etc). And on top of everything, stopping is a huge question when you’re going that fast so how are you achieving that? Is that fuel you had to accelerate as well? And remember - that’s 150x average speed faster than peak so your actual peak to achieve a speed up followed by a slowdown would need to be even faster. As for voyager, that craft is barely operational in some sense. At 10% and at significantly further distances than ever achieved it would be even harder to keep it operational I think. Let’s be optimistic but let’s live in reality and not unrealistic sci-fi.
- gizmo686 2y ago
  Project star shot is still very much s research project at this point, but it seems serious. The idea is to not use self powered rockets, but launch a thousand small solar sail based probes. These would launched into orbit traditionally, then accelerated individually from a massive earth based laser array, solving the rocket equation problem while introducing a host of its own. Many probes will not make the trip, but the hope is enough would survive to do a fly by.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    A fly by at relativistic speeds would be an accomplishment but what data are you realistically capturing? And Wikipedia captures my critique of it accurately: > According to The Economist, at least a dozen off-the-shelf technologies will need to improve by orders of magnitude That’s about right. That kind of orders of magnitude improvement within a lifetime requires novel scientific theories (eg similar to quantum mechanics and the impact it had). Without that growth is drastically slower. And consider that even computational and communication capabilities have basically been maxed out at our current tech level - we’re no longer growing them exponentially due to thermal and physics constraints. It’s an ambitious goal worth doing because of the “if you aim for the moon and miss you still hit the stars” kind of effect. And there’s plenty of directed research that needs to be funded. Thinking any of this happens in our lifetimes is ambitious and spaceships carrying humans going to the stars is fantasy* * as always, completely new physics that upend our knowledge of what’s possible changes the calculus. But those come very rarely and there’s no reason to believe the next revolution will be as impactful as quantum mechanics in terms of impact on our technological capabilities.

dotnet00 2y ago

You can always redirect your depression into constructive optimism by working to help ensure that eventually, our descendants might have a chance to be able to do so.

chankstein38 2y ago

Nope, I feel the same sense of depression about space. I love it but I absolutely feel that. We see these beautiful things and will likely never, as a species or as individuals, even get NEAR seeing them in person.

jajko 2y ago

Unless you believe in fairy tales and santa claus, mankind will never reach them. Sure, we will settle surrounding few hundred light years, maybe a thousand in next million years, if we as mankind are extremely lucky, I talk range somewhere 1:1000 to 1:million. Other chance is show or quick death. Beyond that, no real settling, just some probes that will take tens of millenia to come back (or send signal back). Think about all the stuff and beauty we have now, to experience and explore it on our pale blue dot, trivially reachable considering our recent past, and all that will be almost inevitably lost to future generations. Compared to what we have here, stuff in cold hard vacuum or some illusions of beauty pale in comparison (and that comes from a guy who loves astronomy). You can experience it now, in its original form and not some crappy re-creation of good ol' days. Trust me, future generations will be wishing for many reasons to be able to live now (at least those healthy). I don't believe we will find some magic above-c transport in Star trek style. Sure, its a nice fantasy and we would love for it being true, but thats not how reality works. Same as some beardy old dude in the clouds fantasy, having for some reason very strict bronze-age morals yet letting billions innocents suffer immeasurably without a care in the world(universe). But of course there is magical wonderland after its over here, pure magic in D&D style with alternate realities/planes/universes or whatever those folks who wrote it up thought made sense back then.

dekhn 2y ago
We could probably get a population of tardigrades to another solar system. They can hibernate for tens of thousands of years, in a mode that is highly resistant to radiation.

tiffanyh 2y ago

Have you gone to a National Park? (assuming you live in the US) You can get similar amazement here on earth, normally within 1-day drive of where most people live, by just visiting a National Park. We take for granted the beauty of Earth, and so much is still undiscovered here at home.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

m3kw9 2y ago

You haven’t even finish exploring your own planets in solar system

skybrian 2y ago

If you do feel that way, beware that it's a rhetorical trick. More: https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning