Voyager Exiting the Solar System

[Coito ergo sum]

Lets face it. We are never going to explore space. The nearest star is more than four light years away. What's the equivalent in human terms?

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

The faster you travel, the more energy needed for acceleration, and deceleration when you arrive.

First things first. Let's go to the Moon, then Mars, then the outer planets. We'll then start with a probe to another star. Most folks in the 19th century would have placed traveling to the Moon or Mars as among the list of impossibles. Had we followed your advice then, we'd not have gone as far as we have.

And you can't survive more than one g for long periods, so deceleration must take as long as acceleration. So getting humans to the NEAREST star would take a lot more than a thousand years, and huge amounts of energy.

Under current technology, using conventional rockets. Theories have existed for decades about how faster than light travel might be effected some time down the road.

So when you talk about manned exploration of space, you're really talking about manned exploration of THE SOLAR SYSTEM. Any further isn't a practical proposition.

And there ain't really too much in the solar system worth sending a man to.

Everything in the solar system is worth sending men to. We can learn to live on Mars in constructed habitats. We can, potentially, down the road, even terraform the planet.

[Coito ergo sum]

Space is finished. It isn't expanding with stuff. The space above out heads is getting emptier by the year. Soon it'll all be gone, leaving nothing behind excepty - empty space.

Unless we learn to travel between universes, or create our own universes.....http://www.casavaria.com/sentido/scienc ... iverse.htm

[mistermack]

Wow. If everyone had that sort of attitude, we'd all still be living in caves.

We are. We just build them ourselves now, as there aren't enough to go round.

Perhaps I could point to an editorial which appeared in the New York Times, arguing that at the current rate of progress it would be centuries before mankind might be able to achieve mechanical flight. It was published the same day the Wright Brothers started assembling their plane in Kitty Hawk, NC.

You can point to it, but there's no comparison.
One silly editorial a hundred years ago hardly has relevance to this.
People had been gliding for fifty years before that editorial, and many people were experimenting with engines. The Wright brothers simply solved the problem of control, not of flight itself.

Here is a web page by someone who has looked at the practicalities of reaching another star :
(Link)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

mistermack, please stay on Earth. Humans probably have a bad enough rep in the galaxy as it is.

[mistermack]

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

I'm not sure that a silly comment from a hundred years ago is at all relevant.

First things first. Let's go to the Moon, then Mars, then the outer planets. We'll then start with a probe to another star. Most folks in the 19th century would have placed traveling to the Moon or Mars as among the list of impossibles. Had we followed your advice then, we'd not have gone as far as we have.

I didn't give any advice about any of that.

Under current technology, using conventional rockets. Theories have existed for decades about how faster than light travel might be effected some time down the road.

Not theories.
There is one that qualifies as theory, that's relativity, and it explicitly says it can't happen.

Everything in the solar system is worth sending men to. We can learn to live on Mars in constructed habitats. We can, potentially, down the road, even terraform the planet.

Depends what you mean by terraform. You can never give it 1g gravity.
I can't see how you can give it a magnetosphere, so radiation will always be deadly. And to give it one bar of atmospheric pressure, you would need far more gases than Earth, because of it's lower gravitational pull. You would probably end up losing more gas than you were adding, as it would be harder for the planet to hang on to the gas molecules at much greater height, lower gravity, and no magnetic sheild.
The solar wind would always strip atmosphere faster than you could add it.

[Ian]

This is a perfect example of the difference between linear trend analysis and exponential trend analysis. Looking at only the past and the current rate of progres, I'd agree with Mistermack that we might never explore much of space.

But I don't like to be a linear thinker. The development of computer power, the mapping of the human genome, the proliferation of personal computers and cellphones, etc... these are all examples of exponential trends. And sometimes they come in jumps. If we look at space flight only on a linear trend of the development of solid or liquid fuelled rockets, then absolutely we'll never go very far. But current technologies are not the end of things. Alternate modes of transport may become available. What is really lacking right now is energy... suppose in the the future antimatter can be produced in large quantities (hopefully not on Earth)? Suppose synthetic gravity can counter the g-forces of heavy acceleration and deceleration? There are always possibilities...

[mistermack]

Ian, you can always say there are possibilities. But the physics of relativity says it's bordering on the impossible.
The speed of light is the limit, but it's impossible to approach it, because the faster you move, the slower time runs. So when get near the speed of light, a second approaches infinity. So if you are accelerating at about ten metres per second per second, that becomes ten metres per infinity, per infinity, which is nil.

Here's a good link where they've worked on the mathematics, using a theoretical perfect propulsion unit. Even with perfect propulsion, it would be unfeasible, except for the very nearest stars :
(Link)
Another bit of evidence for me, is the fact that we've never been visited by aliens. That points to it being impossible too.
.

[Coito ergo sum]

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

I'm not sure that a silly comment from a hundred years ago is at all relevant.

It's about as relevant as a silly comment from today to the same effect.

[mistermack]

It's about as relevant as a silly comment from today to the same effect.

Fair enough. Which comment, and why is it silly?
.

[Blondie]

I am VGER, I search for the creator..

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I am VGER, I search for the creator..

I am a crappy plot device and people should have gotten their money back.

[Coito ergo sum]

It's about as relevant as a silly comment from today to the same effect.

Fair enough. Which comment, and why is it silly?
.

"Lets face it. We are never going to explore space. The nearest star is more than four light years away. What's the equivalent in human terms?"

....man will never fly...
....man will never travel faster than sound...
....man will never walk on the moon...

In 1894, Albert A. Michelson remarked that in physics there were no more fundamental discoveries to be made. That's what you're saying when you say we're never going to explore space because the nearest start is four light years away. You are the equivalent of a 19th century man, incapable of contemplating a new discovery....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It's about as relevant as a silly comment from today to the same effect.

Fair enough. Which comment, and why is it silly?
.

"Lets face it. We are never going to explore space. The nearest star is more than four light years away. What's the equivalent in human terms?"

Oh, THAT silly comment.

[Coito ergo sum]

I am VGER, I search for the creator..

I am a crappy plot device and people should have gotten their money back.

[devogue]

I am VGER, I search for the creator..

I am a crappy plot device and people should have gotten their money back.

Yul Brynner as Frank n Furter ...