interstelar colonization

[william the wie]

I need a new yacht, villa and expensive girlfriend.

Does your wife know about your posts or did she sign pre-nup from hell?

 

[westwall]

It is essential for the survival of the human race to get off of this one rock, so yes.

 

[American Horse]

do you think its worth it?

Whether or not it is "worth it" will not be decided by our government or any other unless it is done as a safe harbor for humanity to avoid an extinction event.

But that aim can be achieved by simply expanding methodically and gradually through the solar system.

IMO it won't be governments which drive the expansion out through the solar system, it will be corporate entities, academic institutions and lastly governments to provide some research and development grants and guidance through those kinds of incentives including awards for achieving logical goals along the way.

Eventually going to the stars will be the logical next step. When a way to get there is developed we will already know with great certainty the planets of destination; their qualities such as size, gravity, atmospherics, surface temperatures, length of day, land/water surface features, existence of life forms, orbital eccentricities, etc. The devices to make those examinations will become available relatively early in the 21st century.

In a 10 light year sphere around our sun there are 15 stars, any one of which will almost certainly have numerous planets. Even a giant planet could have near-earth sized satellites which could be warmed on their surfaces by gravitational tides so the potential is very great to find habitable planets.

But as for another “cost” it would be a sad situation if a huge generational starship were launched only to be overtaken by a much more highly developed and faster ship to arrive hundreds of years earlier, thus making their journey, for all its difficulties and hardships, irrelevant.

Presently, with all our technology, we have nowhere near the capacity to build a dynamic structure that would function for a thousand years, regardless of the number of spare parts and back-up redundancy we could pack into it. Our best aircraft carriers are worn out in 50 years.

That’s why I believe it will take a natural developmental progression with systems built as a result of a long series of earlier proven and reliable systems put to the test of actual results and provability.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

How are illegal aliens going to get to the new settlements?

 

[sealybobo]

at the moment

we would need 30 years of intense expensive research

to develop a interstelar spaceship

that would need about 1000 years to get to a star that might have a planet worth colonizing

and then we would need another 50 years to build the starship

but by 2100 we could build a starship

that would be able to colonize another star

in 1000 years

and we propably could build further starships

every 10 years

do you think its worth it ?

One day our sun and planet will be gone. If we want our species to live beyond that we have no other choice. Imagine if instead of the cold war we spent all that time advancing space exploration? I heard at our top speed we can get to the nearest star in 70,000 years but we may be able to one day do it in 40 years. But 1000 years will have passed here on earth.

 

[Judicial review]

I already see the stars. They are right outside my window. You guys need to get out of your parents basements. man oh man.

 

[sealybobo]

do you think its worth it?

Whether or not it is "worth it" will not be decided by our government or any other unless it is done as a safe harbor for humanity to avoid an extinction event.

But that aim can be achieved by simply expanding methodically and gradually through the solar system.

IMO it won't be governments which drive the expansion out through the solar system, it will be corporate entities, academic institutions and lastly governments to provide some research and development grants and guidance through those kinds of incentives including awards for achieving logical goals along the way.

Eventually going to the stars will be the logical next step. When a way to get there is developed we will already know with great certainty the planets of destination; their qualities such as size, gravity, atmospherics, surface temperatures, length of day, land/water surface features, existence of life forms, orbital eccentricities, etc. The devices to make those examinations will become available relatively early in the 21st century.

In a 10 light year sphere around our sun there are 15 stars, any one of which will almost certainly have numerous planets. Even a giant planet could have near-earth sized satellites which could be warmed on their surfaces by gravitational tides so the potential is very great to find habitable planets.

But as for another “cost” it would be a sad situation if a huge generational starship were launched only to be overtaken by a much more highly developed and faster ship to arrive hundreds of years earlier, thus making their journey, for all its difficulties and hardships, irrelevant.

Presently, with all our technology, we have nowhere near the capacity to build a dynamic structure that would function for a thousand years, regardless of the number of spare parts and back-up redundancy we could pack into it. Our best aircraft carriers are worn out in 50 years.

That’s why I believe it will take a natural developmental progression with systems built as a result of a long series of earlier proven and reliable systems put to the test of actual results and provability.

I'm hoping we can mine other plan

at the moment

we would need 30 years of intense expensive research

to develop a interstelar spaceship

that would need about 1000 years to get to a star that might have a planet worth colonizing

and then we would need another 50 years to build the starship

but by 2100 we could build a starship

that would be able to colonize another star

in 1000 years

and we propably could build further starships

every 10 years

do you think its worth it ?

Start reallocating all the money we're wasting on "Climate 'science'"

Climate change research is how we will figure out how not to be our own undoing. Ask NASA. If you want to save money stop building bombs and war machines you uncivilized lemmings

 

[ScienceRocks]

I support and love space exporation...We get the best minds on earth and so much more from being the core of humanities study of the stars.

I can't wait to see humanity move outwards.

 

[defcon4]

Hell, yes!

OK. Cool…. just wanted to make sure if you had the resolution to face the backlash centuries later. Forget that colonization would lift the place from stone age civilization increasing the standard of living; the revisionist criticism will come distorting everything to picture all of you colonists as the imperialist, capitalist devil himself.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

at the moment

we would need 30 years of intense expensive research

to develop a interstelar spaceship

that would need about 1000 years to get to a star that might have a planet worth colonizing

and then we would need another 50 years to build the starship

but by 2100 we could build a starship

that would be able to colonize another star
in 1000 years

and we propably could build further starships

every 10 years

do you think its worth it ?

All science fictions stories and movies predicting what the near-future holds for humanity vis a vis space exploration have been proven wildly optimistic. Was watching "Blade Runner" the other day (opening score is awesome, thanks Vangelis) and noted how the LA it's set in is said to be 2019. Just 4 years from now. And having been written 33 years prior, we are no where close to what was predicted for 33 years hence.

More than the propulsion problems of interstellar travel are biological realities like radiation exposure in 'open space' away from the protective shield Earth has. And though that's actually an easy fix compared to the greater problem of ultra high velocity impacts with particulate matter. If you're travelling fast enough to reach another star, you can't exactly swerve to avoid impacts with micrometeorites, even if you could detect them.

The obstacles to interstellar travel are so insurmountable for us right now that even discussing such a thing is absurd. Then of course is the itty bitty problem of even if you can overcome the problems with such travel, trying to get funding for such a thing is akin to getting cats to march in a parade. Is it worth a national or multi-national directive to do it? No. Okay, say you get to another star system, now what? You go and document the planet, maybe land, take some soil samples, look for life, assess the feasibility of human colonization and come back home. Is doing what probes coulda done cheaper and faster really worth the expense of a glorifed PR stunt? If coming back, there's no point in sending humans in the first place. Accomodations for sustaining a human crew make ships incredibly inefficient. But is even sending a human crew one-way even ethical? Currently we're discussing sending humans to Mars one-way and this discussion is already happening. No shortage of eager volunteers, but are the people doing the sending then culpable or liable for the colonists' fate? Law hasn't been written yet to cover this kind of thing. And creating those laws if like other laws takes time. Time needed just to get things down into law are well beyond any 'Mars by 2030' estimations.

I think we need to do a lot of other things and continue to evolve before we look at space as a viable destination or activity. I believe in fact that homo sapiens wont be the version of humanity that goes into space and whatever version comes next will be the ones to do it. We foul our own nests and slaughter one another over who's lies are tastier. Until we evolve beyond that proposing we send such flawed creatures into space, or to pristine new worlds is incredibly irresponsible.

 

[Manonthestreet]

To sail on winds of sunlight has long been a dream of rocket scientists.

The Planetary Society, a nonprofit that promotes space exploration, announced Monday that it would send the first of two small craft testing the technology of solar sails into orbit this May, tagging along with other small satellites on an Atlas 5 rocket. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/science/hoping-to-set-sail-on-sunlight.html?ref=science&_r=0

 

[Old Rocks]

We have much technology to build, just to explore our own solar system. I really think that any planet in the goldilocks zone that has life, cannot be colonized by us, simply because of reactions to foriegn protean that our systems have never encountered before.

For a planet to be habitable for us, it would have had to develop life, no other way to sustain oxygen in the atmosphere. For the first 2 1/2 billion years on this planet, there was no free oxygen in our atmosphere.

 

[Politico]

We have no business inflicting our stupid asses on the universe.

 

[American Horse]

We have much technology to build, just to explore our own solar system. I really think that any planet in the goldilocks zone that has life, cannot be colonized by us, simply because of reactions to foriegn protean that our systems have never encountered before.

For a planet to be habitable for us, it would have had to develop life, no other way to sustain oxygen in the atmosphere. For the first 2 1/2 billion years on this planet, there was no free oxygen in our atmosphere.

Only plant life is required to produce an oxygen atmosphere, and of course higher forms to consume some of that oxygen and transform it into carbon dioxide or etc. to prevent an over-rich oxygen abundance.

Perhaps these other exotic (to us) "foreign protean" agents are not harmful to us (no guarantee that they would be) or can be rendered harmless.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

We are offspring of the Universe surely as the stars .....

 

[jon_berzerk]

we are going to have to master

faster then the speed of light travel

to get anywhere

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Don't forget the Pringles on the trip....

 

[CrusaderFrank]

we are going to have to master

faster then the speed of light travel

to get anywhere

Humans develop a warp engine, they travel the 200 light year to their destination, spend a year exploring, 200 light years back. The crew aged about 3 years, but people on Earth 401 years have passed, and Democrats are still blaming Bush

 

[jon_berzerk]

we are going to have to master

faster then the speed of light travel

to get anywhere

Humans develop a warp engine, they travel the 200 light year to their destination, spend a year exploring, 200 light years back. The crew aged about 3 years, but people on Earth 401 years have passed, and Democrats are still blaming Bush

true

--LOL

 

[defcon4]

Humanity is stuck on the very edge of our galaxy for some good reason, don't you think? This "placement" prevents us to go and spread stupid leftist ideas throughout the Universe, and until such time arrives that the extreme stupidity is erased even from the memory of the human race, there will be no interstellar traveling. Cosmic providence will take care of that.