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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
I used to be entirely supportive of Space Exploration (capital S, capital E). But the older I get, the more cynical I become.
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It is possible you will never see the benefits of Space Exploration personally. Even likely.
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We're never going to get realistic inter-stellar travel in any case. The timelines are simply unrealistic.
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I don't see why not. The distances are large, but if you aren't in a rush, you can manage them.
Lets say you can launch colony probes at 1% of the speed of light. And lets say it takes 100,000 years to bootstrap a solar system from empty to being able to generate a colony probe. And lets say it takes 1,000 years to produce a single colony probe. And, finally, lets say that after 10,000 years of making colony probes (each system makes 10), the systems stops, on average. And finally, half of the colony probes fail.
Every 110,000 years the number of colony probes increases by a factor of 5.
Then, going from a single system to colonizing, say, 1 billion stars, would take about 1.5 million years. It might take longer than this -- the actual limitation on the speed of colonization eventually becomes the speed of expansion of disk of colonized planets, which can't expand faster than 1% of light speed.
1.5 million years is otherwise known as a blink of an eye.
And I think we can do better than 1% of lightspeed. I think that successful intelligent beings is phenomina that will spread at near relativistic speeds. By this logic, there isn't much point in SETI because the time between the arrival of the EM signals of intelligence, and intelligence itself, is obscenely short on a universal time scale.
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This solar system, and therefore humanity, are doomed to a firey death in about five or six billion years. That's if humanity lasts that long anyway, which I personally doubt.
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Peronally, I'm less worried about humanity, than I am about intelligence.
As demonstrated above, it doesn't take all that long for an intelligent "species" to colonize a galaxy. If 'humanity as we know it' isn't recognizeable by the time we (intelligence) spread over the galaxy, I'm not all that worried.
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Interstellar travel is an entirely different kettle of fish to reaching the moon.
It's simply impossible to travel faster than the speed of light assuming we agree that the laws of physics as currently defined are correct. Please do not talk to me about quantum teleportation or refutations of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosenberg (EPR) paradox. The laws of physics are different at the quantum level, but we exist at the macroscopic level. Any arguments to the contrary are just like me saying I could disappear in a poof of quantum smoke. Theoretically possible, but not really.
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You only need to travel fast if you are in a hurry.
There are a few things that can make you not in a hurry.
The first is, increased life span. This can be by some kind of cold sleep or by the simple matter of making more durable humans or by extending your definition of human beyond the biological.
The second is, not sending yourself. Send instructions to make humans, not humans, to other stars.
Lastly, you could send a generation ship.
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We are left with the limitations presented by the speed of light. That precludes the concept of interstellar travel. To argue otherwise shows either a lack of understanding of the distances involved, or an alarming (self-delusional?) sense of optimism.
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Or, not being in a rush.
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Sure, let's invest in space exploration within the solar system. Why not? But I don't think we're gonna get out of this small, inconsequential little star system in a backward corner of the Milky Way. Why not just accept it?
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Even just playing around in our solar system is pretty damn profitable.
There is a dissassambled small planet we can use for resources (right next door!), and a hell of alot of space where we can 'pollute' to our hearts content without worrying about ruining people's quality of life. When robotics and/or nanotechnology starts getting good, the raw materials up there will be extremely useful.