Poll: How will we get around?

[Delta4Embassy]

I think the current laws of physics suggests travelling from point A to point B via the 'real fast' method isn't practical. Can never go faster than light, and even at velocities high enough to benefit from relativistic time dilation one speck of dust hitting the nose of your ship and you're all done. So I worry about space travel in the future. So how will we do it?

 

[Delta4Embassy]

In the realistic, forseeable future I expect we're gonna get to Proxima via the slow boat to China method and either cryonic or cryogenic suspension (stop aging process and consumption completely, or slow it way down.) Ship wont go especially fast, no more than 10% light at best via solar sail or nuclear propulsion of some sort.

Think warp is a pipe dream. Theoretically possible but the energy to fuel it seems implausible. Antimatter? We can't get our conventional chemical rockets to not blow up yet, no one's gonna approve antimatter production facilities.

 

[alang1216]

It's already happened. Voyager is outside our solar system.

When we develop truly intelligent machines, they will be us, and it is they who will do the interstellar travel.

 

[Asclepias]

We will at some point in time travel faster than the speed of light. I believe our minds are capable of travel outside of the restrictions of physics

 

[Zander]

We will move to faster than light travel by folding space ala the Holtzman effect from Frank Herbert's Dune.

HOLTZMAN EFFECT

Holtzman Drive - The effect is used in this case to fold space at the quantum level, allowing the Spacing Guild's heighliner ships to instantaneously travel far distances across space. However, the chaotic and seemingly non-deterministic quantum nature of "foldspace" requires at least limited prescience on the part of the human navigator; otherwise the absurdly complex mathematics involved in producing reliable physical projections of such events would only be possible with advanced computers, which are strictly prohibited because of mankind's crusade against thinking machines, the Butlerian Jihad. To this effect, the Guild produces melange-saturated Navigators who intuitively "see paths through foldspace" in this way.

We won't need the Navigators since we have no prohibition against "thinking machines".

 

[Asclepias]

We will move to faster than light travel by folding space ala the Holtzman effect from Frank Herbert's Dune.

HOLTZMAN EFFECT

Holtzman Drive - The effect is used in this case to fold space at the quantum level, allowing the Spacing Guild's heighliner ships to instantaneously travel far distances across space. However, the chaotic and seemingly non-deterministic quantum nature of "foldspace" requires at least limited prescience on the part of the human navigator; otherwise the absurdly complex mathematics involved in producing reliable physical projections of such events would only be possible with advanced computers, which are strictly prohibited because of mankind's crusade against thinking machines, the Butlerian Jihad. To this effect, the Guild produces melange-saturated Navigators who intuitively "see paths through foldspace" in this way.

We won't need the Navigators since we have no prohibition against "thinking machines".

They are already investigating using melanin as a bio-semiconductor.

Melanin as New Material for Bioelectronics | Biology | Sci-News.com

A study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for the first time gives remarkable insight into the electrical properties of this pigment and its biologically compatible “bioelectronic” features.

 

[westwall]

Mankind will figure out a way (provided we don't get wiped out by a asteroid) to travel faster than light.

 

[Old Rocks]

Far more likely to get wiped out by our own stupidity and ignorance than by an asteroid. As for tran-C travel, physics is a hard taskmaster.

 

[alang1216]

If faster than light travel is possible were are all the tourists? (Fermi Paradox)

If I had to guess, I'd have to say it is impossible.

 

[Montrovant]

I think the Fermi Paradox is very flawed.

Regardless, I have no idea how the kind of travel the OP seems to be talking about will be done, assuming it ever is.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

We can't EVER travel faster than light. Mass becomes infinite, energy to keep going becomes infinite too. Travelling at high velocity is something that'd we'd use for intersolar system travel ala 'impulse speed' in Star Trek parlance, but not interstellar travel. Plus, any 'go fast' method requires shield technology too to do something about hitting micrometeroites which at hyper velocities are like getting hit in the face with a megaton range nuke.

Warp drives or 'folding space' (same thing really) isn't travelling through space really fast so much as doing something to space itself. The effective velocity is faster than light, but there's no real velocity to speak of.

 

[westwall]

Far more likely to get wiped out by our own stupidity and ignorance than by an asteroid. As for tran-C travel, physics is a hard taskmaster.

Wrong. And we have already teleported a photon which is the first step towards trans C travel. And you claim to be a scientifically minded person! Well, at least you no longer sacrifice virgins to appease the volcano God........right?????

 

[Old Rocks]

Far more likely to get wiped out by our own stupidity and ignorance than by an asteroid. As for tran-C travel, physics is a hard taskmaster.

Wrong. And we have already teleported a photon which is the first step towards trans C travel. And you claim to be a scientifically minded person! Well, at least you no longer sacrifice virgins to appease the volcano God........right?????

No, much more involved in preventing said sacrifice as pleasantly as possible.