4 ms·

Let me remind you guys that "just 20 light years" = roughly 200 trillion kms. At the speed of voyager 1, it takes roughly 1600 yrs to travel 1 trillion kms. 200

Let me remind you guys that "just 20 light years" = roughly 200 trillion kms. At the speed of voyager 1, it takes roughly 1600 yrs to travel 1 trillion kms. 200 trillion kms would take 320,000 years to reach there. Even if you increased the speed of voyager 1 by 10 times, it would still take 32000 years to reach. We really need to up the speed by a factor of 10000 before we can get anywhere close to human lifetime achievable travel times.

RobotToaster 2y ago
Even the fastest spacecraft ever made (the parker solar probe) "only" went at 692000kph. So 1,000,000,000,000/692,000 = 1,445,086 hours, or 164 years.
foobarian 2y ago
How fast could a ship get going with a RTG powered ion engine like AEPS? Rough back of the envelope figures come out to 100 years to cover 1 light year, or a few thousand to reach 20 ly out, which is... nothing like science fiction books but not impossible either.
CrimsonCape 2y ago
Accounting for acceleration and deceleration seems like an unspoken obstacle in your timeline. How can a human comfortably accelerate or decelerate at a rate greater than 9.8m/s^2 for long periods of time? “Hey guys, we will need you to pull 9Gs for the next seventy years as your ship slows down to enter a stable orbit”
- PartiallyTyped 2y ago
  Or alternatively, we make Alcubierre spacecraft work, or we move our whole planet system. All entirely plausible approaches :D
- throwawayk7h 2y ago
  Accelerating consistently at 1G (and then -1G for the second half), should take 6 years of proper time (from the perspective of the traveller) to get there.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Yea, actually the problem is not at all that we’d need too much acceleration for the human body. Accelerating at 1g for a couple years gets you to preposterous speeds (and we don’t even need any artificial gravity nonsense!). The problem is that accelerating at 1g for years would require a ridiculous amount of energy.
  - dctoedt 2y ago
    In his 1958 juvenile novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (I read it years later as a tween), Robert A. Heinlein described this as a "skew-flip maneuver" that would get someone from Earth to Pluto in five days at 8G (!). And apparently E.E. "Doc" Smith described it even earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_Travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_T... https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/261753/what-was-the-earliest-reference-to-turnover-maneuvers-for-constant-boost-spacesh https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/261753/what-was-th...
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      And because faster acceleration only gives you square-root returns, a leisurely 1G trip going the same distance is still over in 14 days.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    Huh. I've heard lots of science fiction ideas for artificial gravity, usually starting with rotating space stations. I never heard of anything so obviously straightforward as that, though. Surely impractical, but good to know!
    - danielbln 2y ago
      You should read the The Expanse books (or watch the show).
      - lIl-IIIl 2y ago
        Don't they use magnetic boots in the Expanse (at least in the show)?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  You just need to be constantly accelerating to hit very high speeds very quickly. You don’t need to pull 9Gs throughout.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  I don't think we'll be sending humans on these kinds of missions. We'll be sending AI systems (ship, bots, etc.) and then waiting millennia for them to report back.
  - buu700 2y ago
    It's conceivable that we could send the seeds of humanity and other terrestrial life — along with AI systems capable of raising it, terraforming the planet as necessary, and building a society. We might not ever travel there or receive guests from New Earth any time in the foreseeable future, but it's fun to imagine that one day we could have a colony of distant pen pals separated by only 20 years of latency.
  - tzfld 2y ago
    Under current financial and incentive system this will not going to happen unfortunately.
- IAmGraydon 2y ago
  I have a feeling that when we figure this out, the forces of acceleration and deceleration will no longer be a problem.
AndrewKemendo 2y ago
I’ve never understood the idea that humans should be doing space exploration. Especially given the proof that robots and machines are demonstrably better and more suitable for these kind of tasks by such a degree that they dominate off-planet sensors-effector combinations. Making space exploration comfortable for humans instead of creating TARS like intelligent machines (possible in our lifetimes imo) foundationally limits and constrains the ability and scale of exploration. Seems entirely egoistic and anthropocentric. Is there any alternative reason - other than stated - as to why humans should be considered the best candidates for these tasks?
- nout 2y ago
  If these robots find a good target and make it habitable, then you would still need to send humans at some point, right? But then you sort of wasted all these thousands of years by doing robots first, you might as well send humans too.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Humans generally do things out of their own self interest (which for a lot of people includes improving the living conditions of their descendants). So, if humans aren’t going to colonize space, we’ll either need somebody who… just sort of likes colonizing space with robots? Like as a hobby I guess? Or maybe we’ll have robots at some point capable of working in their own self-interest.
- dwaltrip 2y ago
  Because they want to. We see mountain, we climb it. Space is no different.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    I wonder if space exploration will turn out to be no different than mountain climbing. There's nothing useful on the mountain, we can't live there, it's purely exploration, sport, and a feeling of achievement.
    - 2y ago
Fiahil 2y ago
Yes, but that’s only a few hours away through hyperspace !
echelon 2y ago
> before we can get anywhere close to human lifetime achievable travel times. Humans are an intermediate step. We are not the final shape of earth-origin intelligence. Why would we continue to fill these bodies when we develop the tech to no longer be so limited? Constrained to the parameters of our gravity well and to short lifespans without backup? Or maybe we just get replaced outright. Or, the worst outcome, everything from this planet dies without ever having left.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  A universe full of p-zombies
  - galangalalgol 2y ago
    If you haven't, read "blindsight" by Peter Watts
    - Jeff_Brown 2y ago
      +1. Aliens and vampires in the same book. And really far-out ideas about cognition and biochemistry, well-grounded in science.
- MagicMoonlight 2y ago
  You can’t develop tech to move intoto a computer. Although it’s a good book idea. A kool-aid style cult where they convince their followers they will be “uploaded” once they hand over all their possessions. Then they just get shot in the head. AI might do it, but I wouldn’t count that as us going there.
  - echelon 2y ago
    You're inventing requirements. This doesn't require that any of us live or achieve immortality.
    - 2y ago

RobotToaster 2y ago

Even the fastest spacecraft ever made (the parker solar probe) "only" went at 692000kph. So 1,000,000,000,000/692,000 = 1,445,086 hours, or 164 years.

foobarian 2y ago

How fast could a ship get going with a RTG powered ion engine like AEPS? Rough back of the envelope figures come out to 100 years to cover 1 light year, or a few thousand to reach 20 ly out, which is... nothing like science fiction books but not impossible either.

CrimsonCape 2y ago

Accounting for acceleration and deceleration seems like an unspoken obstacle in your timeline. How can a human comfortably accelerate or decelerate at a rate greater than 9.8m/s^2 for long periods of time? “Hey guys, we will need you to pull 9Gs for the next seventy years as your ship slows down to enter a stable orbit”

PartiallyTyped 2y ago
Or alternatively, we make Alcubierre spacecraft work, or we move our whole planet system. All entirely plausible approaches :D
throwawayk7h 2y ago
Accelerating consistently at 1G (and then -1G for the second half), should take 6 years of proper time (from the perspective of the traveller) to get there.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Yea, actually the problem is not at all that we’d need too much acceleration for the human body. Accelerating at 1g for a couple years gets you to preposterous speeds (and we don’t even need any artificial gravity nonsense!). The problem is that accelerating at 1g for years would require a ridiculous amount of energy.
- dctoedt 2y ago
  In his 1958 juvenile novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (I read it years later as a tween), Robert A. Heinlein described this as a "skew-flip maneuver" that would get someone from Earth to Pluto in five days at 8G (!). And apparently E.E. "Doc" Smith described it even earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_Travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_T... https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/261753/what-was-the-earliest-reference-to-turnover-maneuvers-for-constant-boost-spacesh https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/261753/what-was-th...
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    And because faster acceleration only gives you square-root returns, a leisurely 1G trip going the same distance is still over in 14 days.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Huh. I've heard lots of science fiction ideas for artificial gravity, usually starting with rotating space stations. I never heard of anything so obviously straightforward as that, though. Surely impractical, but good to know!
  - danielbln 2y ago
    You should read the The Expanse books (or watch the show).
    - lIl-IIIl 2y ago
      Don't they use magnetic boots in the Expanse (at least in the show)?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dyauspitr 2y ago
You just need to be constantly accelerating to hit very high speeds very quickly. You don’t need to pull 9Gs throughout.
UncleOxidant 2y ago
I don't think we'll be sending humans on these kinds of missions. We'll be sending AI systems (ship, bots, etc.) and then waiting millennia for them to report back.
- buu700 2y ago
  It's conceivable that we could send the seeds of humanity and other terrestrial life — along with AI systems capable of raising it, terraforming the planet as necessary, and building a society. We might not ever travel there or receive guests from New Earth any time in the foreseeable future, but it's fun to imagine that one day we could have a colony of distant pen pals separated by only 20 years of latency.
- tzfld 2y ago
  Under current financial and incentive system this will not going to happen unfortunately.
IAmGraydon 2y ago
I have a feeling that when we figure this out, the forces of acceleration and deceleration will no longer be a problem.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

I’ve never understood the idea that humans should be doing space exploration. Especially given the proof that robots and machines are demonstrably better and more suitable for these kind of tasks by such a degree that they dominate off-planet sensors-effector combinations. Making space exploration comfortable for humans instead of creating TARS like intelligent machines (possible in our lifetimes imo) foundationally limits and constrains the ability and scale of exploration. Seems entirely egoistic and anthropocentric. Is there any alternative reason - other than stated - as to why humans should be considered the best candidates for these tasks?

nout 2y ago
If these robots find a good target and make it habitable, then you would still need to send humans at some point, right? But then you sort of wasted all these thousands of years by doing robots first, you might as well send humans too.
bee_rider 2y ago
Humans generally do things out of their own self interest (which for a lot of people includes improving the living conditions of their descendants). So, if humans aren’t going to colonize space, we’ll either need somebody who… just sort of likes colonizing space with robots? Like as a hobby I guess? Or maybe we’ll have robots at some point capable of working in their own self-interest.
dwaltrip 2y ago
Because they want to. We see mountain, we climb it. Space is no different.
- mmooss 2y ago
  I wonder if space exploration will turn out to be no different than mountain climbing. There's nothing useful on the mountain, we can't live there, it's purely exploration, sport, and a feeling of achievement.
  - 2y ago

Fiahil 2y ago

Yes, but that’s only a few hours away through hyperspace !

echelon 2y ago

> before we can get anywhere close to human lifetime achievable travel times. Humans are an intermediate step. We are not the final shape of earth-origin intelligence. Why would we continue to fill these bodies when we develop the tech to no longer be so limited? Constrained to the parameters of our gravity well and to short lifespans without backup? Or maybe we just get replaced outright. Or, the worst outcome, everything from this planet dies without ever having left.

throwaway290 2y ago
A universe full of p-zombies
- galangalalgol 2y ago
  If you haven't, read "blindsight" by Peter Watts
  - Jeff_Brown 2y ago
    +1. Aliens and vampires in the same book. And really far-out ideas about cognition and biochemistry, well-grounded in science.
MagicMoonlight 2y ago
You can’t develop tech to move intoto a computer. Although it’s a good book idea. A kool-aid style cult where they convince their followers they will be “uploaded” once they hand over all their possessions. Then they just get shot in the head. AI might do it, but I wouldn’t count that as us going there.
- echelon 2y ago
  You're inventing requirements. This doesn't require that any of us live or achieve immortality.
  - 2y ago