Space news and Exploration II

Basically a space probe on a microchip with a sail propelled by a laser. They can reach alpha centauri in 20 years. They travel 1/5 the speed of light.

Each space probe costs as much as an iPhone.
Very interesting. That would make exploration of the closest stars very plausible and affordable.

To bad that these things will always have such a large time horizon.
What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.

So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?

Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.

What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.

And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?

Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs


We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.

It will take a VERY long time to get any appreciable number of people to hop on a space craft and travel possibly for 2 or three generations just so they can have more elbow room.
I disagree. I think you could manage it right now if we had reliable info on another planet and the financial backing. There are 7 BILLION people on this planet. Many of them want to do some AMAZINGLY asinine shit. Traveling to another planet will get plenty of volunteers. What is missing is the enormous expense that would take and the information that such a trip would yield results.
 
What's a time horizon? They are hoping they can get them there in 20 years and send the info back in 4. That's not too long to wait.

So we have telescopes finding thousands of moons and planets that could hold life and these spaceships cost as much as an iPhone to make. We can send out as many of these chips as we want and if any life is intelligent maybe they'll find them. What would we do if we discovered a spaceship like this from another planet?

Or id love to find a planet that has everything we need but no intelligent life.

What if we found a planet with humans but they are more like native American Indians? Would we do it the same way again? I would hope not but suspect we would.

And what if they were 1% smarter than us? How would they welcome us? Would they experiment on us like we would them?

Id love a planet with no humans and no dinosaurs


We would just tell ourselves that the planet or moon had huge deposits of gold or diamonds or some other expensive desirable stuff right on the surface so any explorer volunteers would become instantly incredibly wealthy for their efforts.
Meh - there is already something far more valuable on any garden world than those - land.
We will locate a planet that's ripe and send our seed ship to somehow get man there so we can reproduce and populate that planet. Its what humans do. We didn't stay in England we settled the west. I would go.

Most likely any voyage of that type would require a few generations in time to complete. Maybe some kind of suspended animation where the participants are "frozen" for the greatest part of the voyage. It sounds risky to me. Maybe a rotation of "live" people at the wheel in case the unforeseen happens. I wouldn't trust 100% in automation for such an endeavor.
You made me think what if we had eggs and spirm and robots and baby formula and all the technology for robots to raise the humans once the ship arrives.

What? The robots would keep the "ingredients" for human life in liquid nitrogen for the voyage? What would they do to duplicate a womb? How would these robots simulate a "birth"? Seems like raising "normal" human babies would be problematic. Maybe THAT"S where the hologram environment kicks in to give the children something like a "normal" human experience as the children develop.
 
I think humanity should go for it as it preservers our species and makes sure we can't be wiped out if something happens to the earth. But more so, just because we're a species that loves to explore.

Within my opinion, only about 3-4 planets of the 1200 released today get me anywhere near excited. One of them is kind of like kepler 452b ;) Another is kind of like Kepler 62e.
 
http://www.leonarddavid.com/europes-...off-next-year/
The voyage of Europe’s ExoMars 2016 spacecraft is moving closer to the Red Planet – departing the clean rooms of Thales Alenia Space in Cannes for shipment to Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

This ExoMars spacecraft is headed for a March 2016 liftoff atop a Proton booster.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope gets its first mirror

Construction is well under way on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – the space agency's next generation installation, scheduled to launch in 2018. The instrument is really starting to take shape, with engineers successfully installing the first of 18 mirrors.
This Sunday instead of learning about the lord I learned about the James Webb telescope set to be launched in 2020?

What do we know about planets in the habitable zone? As of right now we don't know if they have life or not, correct? So there is imo at least a 50 50 chance planets that are in the habitable zone have life. What that life looks like who knows but life none the less.

Science is great.
 
I think humanity should go for it as it preservers our species and makes sure we can't be wiped out if something happens to the earth. But more so, just because we're a species that loves to explore.

Within my opinion, only about 3-4 planets of the 1200 released today get me anywhere near excited. One of them is kind of like kepler 452b ;) Another is kind of like Kepler 62e.
You mean excited as far as us being able to live on them? I agree. It'll be great if life is on Europa but that doesn't mean I can go swim there.
 

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