Why Interstellar Travel is Physically Impossible.

Godboy said:
Humans have the ability to travel great distances in space. You just need a giant ship full of fuel and food and a lot of people. The only problem is, the people who originally embarked on the journey will be dead before they reach it, but their descendants will make it there.

The interesting thing is though, it would take a couple thousand years to get to an habitable planet in a nearby solar system, so you would see wars waged on this ship. Many empires would rise and fall before it reached its destination. Their culture would change dramatically from the culture they once had on Earth. They would be unrecognizable to us back home.
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The problem with that is simple math. Well it actually isn't simple, as the equation is quite long - but it produces a simple, yet overwhelming, problem.
The amount of energy it takes to propel a space ship the size of a small car, with just one person on board in hibernation. No food, no water. Just a ship large enough to carry one human and an enclosure.
The amount of energy needed to travel just one light year is unthinkably large. Roughly, about 7 x 10^{17} joules. Or about 52 million metric tons of modern rocket fuel. But that is just the beginning. Now you have to propel 52 million tons of fuel too! And now we are talking numbers that get mind boggling. And it just keeps getting worse.
"Oh! - but we will discover a super cool energy source that has infinite power!!!" - like Star trek!!!
Yeah - well that doesn't work either. Something called physics. A super neat fuel source like that would create unimaginable problems. How on earth would you contain it? How would you manage to control such power and be able to throttle it? A fuel source that roughly has the power of a small star that only weighs a few hundred pounds or something?? What could it possibly be made of? And how would you obtain such power without, literally, blowing up your own solar system. Like - literally blow it up.
And on and on and on.
 
iamwhatiseem said:
The problem with that is simple math. Well it actually isn't simple, as the equation is quite long - but it produces a simple, yet overwhelming, problem.
The amount of energy it takes to propel a space ship the size of a small car, with just one person on board in hibernation. No food, no water. Just a ship large enough to carry one human and an enclosure.
The amount of energy needed to travel just one light year is unthinkably large. Roughly, about 7 x 10^{17} joules. Or about 52 million metric tons of modern rocket fuel. But that is just the beginning. Now you have to propel 52 million tons of fuel too! And now we are talking numbers that get mind boggling. And it just keeps getting worse.
"Oh! - but we will discover a super cool energy source that has infinite power!!!" - like Star trek!!!
Yeah - well that doesn't work either. Something called physics. A super neat fuel source like that would create unimaginable problems. How on earth would you contain it? How would you manage to control such power and be able to throttle it? A fuel source that roughly has the power of a small star that only weighs a few hundred pounds or something?? What could it possibly be made of? And how would you obtain such power without, literally, blowing up your own solar system. Like - literally blow it up.
And on and on and on.
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We wont be using rocket fuel for interstellar travel. At a minimum we will use nuclear reactors. We could also end up with wild tech light "light sails". It definitely wont be rocket fuel though.
 
Carl in Michigan said:
We know the physical laws the universe operates under. You watch too much science Fiction
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We absolutely do NOT understand the laws of the Universe. We have no idea if its an open or closed universe. We also dont understand why the universe is expanding, how fast its expanding, if its expanding equally across the outer edge of the universe, or if its exanding at different speeds in different areas.

We can also only see things in 3 dimensions, but there are tons of things taking place in other dimensions that we dont see or understand.
 
Godboy said:
We wont be using rocket fuel for interstellar travel. At a minimum we will use nuclear reactors. We could also end up with wild tech light "light sails". It definitely wont be rocket fuel though.
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Light sails take forever to accelerate. And once you get around pluto, the sun is just a bright star. Not gonna happen.
 
Godboy said:
We absolutely do NOT understand the laws of the Universe. We have no idea if its an open or closed universe. We also dont understand why the universe is expanding, how fast its expanding, if its expanding equally across the outer edge of the universe, or if its exanding at different speeds in different areas.

We can also only see things in 3 dimensions, but there are tons of things taking place in other dimensions that we dont see or understand.
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We KNOW you can't exceed the speed of light. Yes we do
 
Fort Fun Indiana said:
Using... the physical laws? That would be quite a trick.
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The only way I see it happening is if someone figures out this is the matrix and learns the rules of the matrix. Other than that we abide by the rules of the matrix, never realizing we are in the matrix.
 
ShahdagMountains said:
Susskind went into the physical effects prolonged languishing in space would have on the human body.
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Susskind is an idiot. Aliens don't travel between star systems about the galaxy in rockets under g-force, intertia, propulsion needing fuel floating around, needing gravity, food and freedom from radiation, they travel between stars by accessing physical laws of the universe using a science we don't even suspect.
 
15th post
Carl in Michigan said:
Light sails take forever to accelerate. And once you get around pluto, the sun is just a bright star. Not gonna happen.
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I assume that we would use a hybrid system. Nuke tech for acceleration, and sails for longer term travel. :dunno:
 
If, as physicists now maintain, space itself is expanding faster than the speed of light, then it is possible that it can be put to use as a tool for such incredibly long journeys.

I believe it is related to the conceptual process of “warp” drive.

I’m pretty sure my life will be long long over before humanity is ever able to progress that far, if it ever is possible.
 
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