Space Travel

Our studies on improving technology has always been focused more on improving itself with respect to itself, rather than with respect to our environment. Although in recent times more environment-friendly methods and technology have gone mainstream, the gist of this movement - sacrificing some efficiency for the sake of the environment - has barely managed to take root at all. As far as I know most of the research being done with respect to improving our energy consumption is still being left to third world countries, for example. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that it seems most people are still hoping that technology is gonna win out in the end, so instead of actually admitting any faults and backtracking they've decided to see this though to the end regardless of what happens.

It doesn't help that these things take time - it's one thing to say "we're going to try and make our world better now" and another to wait for the 20, 30, 40 or so years it takes to make any significant scientific/technological/social breakthroughs on the subject. At this point it all becomes something like politics.

 

On wormholes - if they do even exist - the only way you'd know where they led to is to go in one. Who wants to be the volunteer for that? And as for creating wormholes ourselves, well, if we ever get to the level of technology sure, but that seems milenia away.

To continue the sci-fi thought, I have heard that time slows as you approach the speed of light, and would actually stop if you reach it. Does that mean that if you were on a theoretical spaceship that could travel at the speed of light, that the journey you would undertake would seem instantaneous from your perspective?

 

No; it would have to be a real spaceship. But if it were, then I believe that would be the case.

 

I'm no physicist, but I'm pretty sure that length contraction only applies to the object in motion, and (although I'm less sure about this) the contraction is only relative to a person observing the object. In any case, the "no distance away" part would seem to me to be the result of time slowing down (because you appear to get there instantly) rather than length contraction.

 

Hmm. I always understood it to be the way I described, but I did some more digging, and I see that we’re both right. The description I found explained that, if distance is measured in terms of how far light travels over a given period of time, and time slows down for an object in motion, then distance reduces for that object. So basically, the length of the object shortens relative to an outside observer, while the distance between the object and points along its path reduces relative to an observer in the object.

 

Sorry to swing back to the original theme but I think I detect a flaw in Beren's thought process.

Why not try do *both*, that is travel to other worlds *and* take better care of the Earth.

If we build a space elevator space travel/construction suddenly becomes far more eco-friendly.

And if life from Earth is going to survive when the Sun expands and cooks planets Earth distance away and closer then space travel isn't a bad idea (for humans, plants, and so on).

I generally like the idea of life on/from Earth not going extinct (at least sooner) when we can avoid it.

Now we could try to alter the orbit of the Earth to take us further away from the Sun, but if you're going to go that far it doesn't hurt to look at space travel on top of that because the Milk Way and the next closest galaxy (I believe it is Andromeda) are going to eventually collide and spreading across the Galaxy could help prevent extinctions if the large black hole at the center of that galaxy shoots a massive gamma ray at the Milky Way as they get closer.

On the whole light speed topic I think the theory is that if you ever travelled at light speed time would slow for you so that when you stopped centuries could have passed for everyone else but you would still seem to be about as young as when you started.

 

Call me a cynic but I think man is doomed to extinction on this planet and we'll never be in contact with any sort of sentient lifeforms from other planets. I doubt any material we'll be able to produce could ever sustain us or transport us the distances required. We might eventually use the closer planets for mining purposes but I have my doubts that we'd get even that to be cost efficient.

 

At the rate the human population is growing, and if history is any indication of what would happen next, we might not even get that far.

 

I would recommend taking that overpopulation stuff with a grain of salt. The Population Bomb predicted that there would be starvation within 1st world nations (USA, Western Europe) during the 1970s. It didn't happen. One of the ways both technology and human practices have succeeded is in producing enough food to feed the whole human race. Now that doesn't mean our societies always do feed everyone (such as with many English authorities exporting wheat from Ireland during the Irish Potato Blight/famine being one example to generally avoid repeating) but we can.

Plus, according to current theory the human population is likely to stabilize around 9-12 billion and potentially even drop after that while projections are that the Earth can feed 15-20 billion people.

As humans with a fair amount of capabilities these days I would argue what we choose to do is far more important than how many of us there are.




To what Blackthorne said....

Considering that we are talking about the survival of much of the life on Earth I would say people may be motivated to find the money to do both.

Earth sustainability could use funding now (Global Warming and so on being very near term problems).

The budget for NASA really isn't that big compared to the rest of the US federal budget so continuing it shouldn't be too hard to do.

And making sure we colonize other solar systems and worlds (not to mention moons and asteroids) is something we should get around to doing as far as I can tell.

But that is something humanity and the human economy has hundreds of thousands of years to work at.

Like I said, I think we should try to do it, but we may have the time to accumulate the capabilities and resources to do so.

 

travel

Interstellar colonization would be largely a pointless endeavor in regards to trying to create a galactic empire.
Huge distances = long time between communications with earth = a lot of colonies that are basically independent and may or may not wish to have anything to do with the homeworld. Even colonizing the solar system would have this problem - its the equivalent of england colonizing the americas and then taxing them too much = revolt, which is hard to defeat because of the distances involved and the fact that youll be fighting on their turf not yours.

Space is also a very dangerous place
If your traveling at near the speed of light, a pebble could cause a hull breach and the death of your entire crew. Then theres possible radiation issues, the lack of a power source that would be able to provide electricity for 200+ years without supervision, and if theres supervision then the problem of the crew losing touch with reality/going crazy etc.
Then theres the actual world you find, could colonize it and then day 3 get hit by a meteor or a new disease indigenous to that planet kills everyone...native species if any may be quite violent too; we cant kill the cockroach, what are we going to do about their equivalent on an alien world where those cockroaches might even be more dangerous for whatever reason?

So...lets just be good to our home planet for a few more hundred thousand years and if were lucky technology will have enabled us to live in hivemind computer databases instead of biological bodies thereby doing away with the entire need of expanding out of our solar system.

 

Keep in mind that I was arguing colonization as a way for life on/from Earth to survive (not just us though humans certainly count).

The Earth is likely to get cooked at some point so unless the computer network you speak of can survive either been consumed by the sun or the type of heat that it would take to make the oceans boil I wouldn't limit my options to that.

I wouldn't stop you from trying it but I'll point out that it is still a bigger risk than expanding.



And don't forget my point wasn't about a empire building (if we really want we can try to do that too) but my point was about *survival*.

Now perhaps we can move the Earth's orbit but even doing that leaves us relying what could be luck to survive when the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies get closer as they are falling towards each other. When they combine (and the super black hole in Andromeda consumes/combines with the one in the center of our galaxy) that may give us an even larger galaxy to explore.

However the worry comes before that point when galaxies get closer together the super black holes in the center of each are more likely to go on a feeding frenzy because the gravity of the other galaxy tends to shake things that were in very close orbit to the black hole into a position where they fall in. When a super black hole goes on a binge it may send out a huge gamma ray blast.

I don't know if any of the planets in our solar system would be capable of shielding us from that if it happens but-in case one hits our neck of the galaxy it may make sense (empire or not) to have far flung colonies so that, hopefully, some group that is somewhere in the galaxy survives.

This is may be survival by shotgun approach but it is an attempt at survival.



As for colonizing this solar system. Go for it. If it would be as easy as building a new British Empire then that is doable. The British Empire survived the loss of most of its colonies in North America. It took 2 world wars (which involved a British Empire and a more concentrated German one breaking or putting great strain on each other) and the fact that in a number of places the British had potentially hostile local populations.

Even after loosing the Empire the British Commonwealth exists to this day where economic relationships (and a certain amount of respect for royalty) continue.

As for where and when to colonize.... I would actually recommend a step by step process. Establish bases on moons before planets. This provides a stepping stone and, perhaps, a base from which to make observations/send out shorter range exploration missions in order to better prepare for if and when a planet is colonized.

Also there are neat things out there that may be in short supply here on Earth-such as Helium 3 being found on our moon far more than here on the Earth.


And I'd also like to point out that I haven't advocated treating the Earth badly. If we can keep it around even to the point other parts of the galaxy have been colonized let alone our nearby solar systems then great. But I'm advocating not putting all of one's eggs in one basket.

 

It will be billions of years before the sun even starts to die, while as far as we know the first "human" emerged just some 200,000 years ago. 200k years and our numbers have grown from 1+ to 7 billion, and our numbers continue to grow exponentially. All that time every other species on our planet has been on the decline, except the ones that are actually benefiting from human technological advancements and practices (aka beings like the cockroach and certain microorganisms). Seriously, in 10 years I've seen rural towns blossom into smoke-covered cities and forests disappear with my own two eyes, and even now some of the animals of my childhood are in the endangered species list.

If our ever-increasing population itself was just the problem, like if the growth of the human race was a closed system (which is what most of population research is based on btw) then I wouldn't be concerned. Except that it's not.

 

No they don't.

Our numbers are projected to peak between 9 and 12 billion and then shrink.

That isn't exponential growth and whoever claims it is (including a series of videos on youtube that claim, incorrectly, to be the most important videos someone will see ) happens to be mathematically wrong.

If you look at the USA, Europe, and China the growth rate is not exponential-some European nations even face population shrinkage right now with China, perhaps, in the future.

So like I said before, take the overpopulation claims with at least some skepticism.


Now population decline or no that still doesn't mean that space exploration/colonization is a bad idea.

And if (or perhaps simply when) a space elevator gets built that becomes a lot easier to do-both environmentally (less need for large rockets when something similar to a railroad to low Earth orbit is available) and in general (having something similar to a railroad ot low Earth orbit saves on fuel costs and would allow for more frequent trips outside of the atmosphere.

 

From the population perspective, every society on earth has followed a very similar tragectory. At first, when child mortality rates are high, people have lots and lots of kids. When modern medicine comes into play, and contraception usually with it, people greatly reduce the number of kids they have. The "population explosions" you hear about happen for a couple of generations when the medicine is there to reduce child mortality, but people keep having a ton of kids. It happened in the US and Europe about 50 years ago. It's happening in China and India right now. The only places where population is still exploding is in areas that have modern medicine, but people are still having a ton o' kids. If they are like the rest of humans, they'll come around in the next 50 years or so.

The sun has already been covered. We've got a few billion years before we need to worry about that.

As for Andromeda colliding with the Milky Way, our analysis at this point also suggests we got a few billion years before that happens. Besides, while the possibility of collisions and falling into a black hole exist, we've seen galaxies merge before, and the most typical occurance for your average solar system is nothing. That's because there's so much more empty space than anything in any galaxy. Interestingly, new research shows that measured by mass, Andromeda may not be any heavier that the Milky Way. While we think that Andromeda has about twice as many stars as the Milky Way, it also appears that the Milky Way has a lot more dark matter, and thus, we're about equal in mass. (I find it strange that we can make an estimate for how much dark matter each galaxy has, when we have yet to prove dark matter exists beyond a theoretical level. We know it should exist, but we haven't found it yet, but we can make fairly precise estimates of how much each galaxy should have of this theoretical substance.)