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Agree. Voyager is probably considered by many to be one of our greatest achievements. It makes me wonder when we'll have anything set foot in another star syst

Agree. Voyager is probably considered by many to be one of our greatest achievements. It makes me wonder when we'll have anything set foot in another star system. I would guess realistically after 2100, but then we went from the Wright brothers to landing on the moon in under 70 years... so I may be proven wrong.

jonhohle 11mo ago
Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen. Back of the envelope math - 4.2 light years to the nearest star that's not the sun, current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager (e.g. 1 light day in 5 years). If something was launched today it would get to the nearest star system in about 7,660 years (assuming that star system also a radius of 1 light day). 100x faster than current (1,000km/s) would still take 76 years. Definitely not before 2100 and almost certainly so long after that we will seem like a primitive civilization compared to those that do it.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- alexose 11mo ago
  Just spitballing, but maybe it would be possible with relatively modest advances in ion thrusters, and one (admittedly less-than-modest) breakthrough with fusion. It's maybe too speculative to even matter, but I don't think it's _crazy_ to imagine a handful of AI-fueled advances in materials discovery during the next decade or two. Possibly enough to unlock laser fusion, or something that could be crammed onto a spacecraft.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Forgeties79 11mo ago
    > AI-fueled advances There is no amount of money in the world that would get me on the ChatGPT rocket
    - setopt 11mo ago
      By "AI" they probably aren’t thinking about LLMs in this context.
      - Forgeties79 11mo ago
        Just a dumb joke
- api 11mo ago
  Humans might one day have settlements around the solar system and in free space (large stations, etc.), but I have doubts about whether we'll ever go to the stars. For machine intelligence, though, it would be easy. Just switch yourself off for a few thousand years. It's likely that our "children" will go to the stars, not us.
  - LarsDu88 11mo ago
    Unfortunately at the current trajectory, it will be Grok that reaches the next star system first. Just imagine interplanetary immortal AI sycophantic towards a very specific billionaire
- polski-g 11mo ago
  Getting the travel time down to 500 years would be a reasonable goal. You'd ship embryos and caregiver robots, start breeding/raising people 30 years before you'd arrive.
  - pyrolistical 11mo ago
    Imagine being born and told your life has been determined by some other humans living a comfortable life with unlimited air and water. You are told you are to about make the great achievement humankind has ever made but all you want is a little bit more food and to take a shower.
    - immibis 11mo ago
      Isn't that already all of us?
      - 725686 11mo ago
        Wow, you are really enjoying life. Hope it gets better.
    - polski-g 11mo ago
      Sometime people are born for greatness.
- grvbck 11mo ago
  > current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager As I understand it, not really. Parker Solar Probe is crazy fast, but only because it has that trajectory, and is unable to just change course and keep that speed in other directions. If you want to launch something for deep space, the Jupiter-Saturn slingshot is still the most powerful trajectory we know of. Today's rocket engines would give the probe a higher initial speed, but the final velocity would not differ dramatically. A fair bit higher, but not orders of magnitude.
  - georgefrowny 11mo ago
    You can do a Sun-diving Oberth maneuver too. Project Lyra was a proposal for an `Oumuamua flyby that got over 50km/s: http://orbitsimulator.com/BA/lyra.gif http://orbitsimulator.com/BA/lyra.gif
- fooker 11mo ago
  > Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen You are underestimating acceleration. To travel and come to a stop at 4.2 light years, a spaceship with 1g acceleration barely needs 3.5 years in relativistic ship time (~6 years earth time). The technology to sustain 1g acceleration through 3.5 years is a different story, but very much within our understanding of physics (and not warp drives, etc). 20-50 years of engineering can get us there.
  - christkv 11mo ago
    You got the shielding problem how to protect the ship from disintegrating when it hits the first pebble at massive speed
    - fooker 11mo ago
      Carry or produce antimatter. Make it collide with stuff colliding with the ship, redirect it's energy for propulsion.
  - stickfigure 11mo ago
    > 20-50 years of engineering can get us there. What energy source do you think is merely 20-50 years of engineering effort away from being able to power that kind of journey?
    - fooker 11mo ago
      Some kind of nuclear reaction or matter-antimatter collision, I assume.
  - brookman64k 11mo ago
    I think you are way too optimistic. Even with an antimatter drive and 100% conversion efficiency, such rocket would have a fuel to payload ratio of >1000.
    - fooker 11mo ago
      That seems pretty promising actually. Our moon landing missions had a similar ratio, so I assume we can do the engineering to make even a slightly worse ratio work for us a 100 years after it. In practice it would be better with slingshot maneuvers and picking up mass on the way.

jonhohle 11mo ago

Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen. Back of the envelope math - 4.2 light years to the nearest star that's not the sun, current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager (e.g. 1 light day in 5 years). If something was launched today it would get to the nearest star system in about 7,660 years (assuming that star system also a radius of 1 light day). 100x faster than current (1,000km/s) would still take 76 years. Definitely not before 2100 and almost certainly so long after that we will seem like a primitive civilization compared to those that do it.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
alexose 11mo ago
Just spitballing, but maybe it would be possible with relatively modest advances in ion thrusters, and one (admittedly less-than-modest) breakthrough with fusion. It's maybe too speculative to even matter, but I don't think it's _crazy_ to imagine a handful of AI-fueled advances in materials discovery during the next decade or two. Possibly enough to unlock laser fusion, or something that could be crammed onto a spacecraft.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Forgeties79 11mo ago
  > AI-fueled advances There is no amount of money in the world that would get me on the ChatGPT rocket
  - setopt 11mo ago
    By "AI" they probably aren’t thinking about LLMs in this context.
    - Forgeties79 11mo ago
      Just a dumb joke
api 11mo ago
Humans might one day have settlements around the solar system and in free space (large stations, etc.), but I have doubts about whether we'll ever go to the stars. For machine intelligence, though, it would be easy. Just switch yourself off for a few thousand years. It's likely that our "children" will go to the stars, not us.
- LarsDu88 11mo ago
  Unfortunately at the current trajectory, it will be Grok that reaches the next star system first. Just imagine interplanetary immortal AI sycophantic towards a very specific billionaire
polski-g 11mo ago
Getting the travel time down to 500 years would be a reasonable goal. You'd ship embryos and caregiver robots, start breeding/raising people 30 years before you'd arrive.
- pyrolistical 11mo ago
  Imagine being born and told your life has been determined by some other humans living a comfortable life with unlimited air and water. You are told you are to about make the great achievement humankind has ever made but all you want is a little bit more food and to take a shower.
  - immibis 11mo ago
    Isn't that already all of us?
    - 725686 11mo ago
      Wow, you are really enjoying life. Hope it gets better.
  - polski-g 11mo ago
    Sometime people are born for greatness.
grvbck 11mo ago
> current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager As I understand it, not really. Parker Solar Probe is crazy fast, but only because it has that trajectory, and is unable to just change course and keep that speed in other directions. If you want to launch something for deep space, the Jupiter-Saturn slingshot is still the most powerful trajectory we know of. Today's rocket engines would give the probe a higher initial speed, but the final velocity would not differ dramatically. A fair bit higher, but not orders of magnitude.
- georgefrowny 11mo ago
  You can do a Sun-diving Oberth maneuver too. Project Lyra was a proposal for an `Oumuamua flyby that got over 50km/s: http://orbitsimulator.com/BA/lyra.gif http://orbitsimulator.com/BA/lyra.gif
fooker 11mo ago
> Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen You are underestimating acceleration. To travel and come to a stop at 4.2 light years, a spaceship with 1g acceleration barely needs 3.5 years in relativistic ship time (~6 years earth time). The technology to sustain 1g acceleration through 3.5 years is a different story, but very much within our understanding of physics (and not warp drives, etc). 20-50 years of engineering can get us there.
- christkv 11mo ago
  You got the shielding problem how to protect the ship from disintegrating when it hits the first pebble at massive speed
  - fooker 11mo ago
    Carry or produce antimatter. Make it collide with stuff colliding with the ship, redirect it's energy for propulsion.
- stickfigure 11mo ago
  > 20-50 years of engineering can get us there. What energy source do you think is merely 20-50 years of engineering effort away from being able to power that kind of journey?
  - fooker 11mo ago
    Some kind of nuclear reaction or matter-antimatter collision, I assume.
- brookman64k 11mo ago
  I think you are way too optimistic. Even with an antimatter drive and 100% conversion efficiency, such rocket would have a fuel to payload ratio of >1000.
  - fooker 11mo ago
    That seems pretty promising actually. Our moon landing missions had a similar ratio, so I assume we can do the engineering to make even a slightly worse ratio work for us a 100 years after it. In practice it would be better with slingshot maneuvers and picking up mass on the way.