Colonise Space or Perish

[supernova1965]

Stephen Hawkins has come out and claimed that we must colonise space or perish about time someone put the truth of our existance out there.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/10/2979282.htm

[OneOfOne]

Ultimately, I think we will, but it is not something we need to do for a number of generations, when the technology becomes available. Until then, I think we should continue to explore.

[Alchemy]

Nup won't happen, we can't live in space, our bodies fall apart (read degenerate), it would take lifetimes to reach anywhere, just to find there's not a habitable place.
I like scifi as a film medium, but warp drive doesn't exist, or functional wormholes ( theory suggests as soon as matter is put in they collapse), and they are just theoretical themselves.
Pipe dream, as unfortunately is expecting humans to live together in harmony. I'd give humanity 20 years to start another world war..... Now we've got nukes, its an old technology and despotic governments and states are acquiring them.
Got to get imaging before the nuclear winter begins and I can't see the stars anymore.

[multiweb]

I reckon we will too. Human species is very resilient. We'll find a way and adapt. That's what we do best.

[supernova1965]

But the technology won't come unless we make it if everyone just waited for the train or the car we wouldn't have them just my thoughts on the matter:thumbsup::D



When Stephen Hawkins says Space he doesn't just mean we have to live in space stations he means other planets as well I think:thumbsup:




I agree:thumbsup:

[renormalised]

Yes, I believe so too. However there's several things we need to do right here on Earth before we attempt any large scale anything in space. First thing, we need to replace our political systems as they are. It's them that are stuffing us up big time and they're not working. If they were, we'd be in a much better shape than what we are. Secondly, the financial system, for exactly the same reasons. Thirdly, we need to learn to live with one another and actually cooperate to survive on Earth, before we try anything in space. That means none of this "inspired" nonsense that many people go on with. If we can manage to do that, then we'll be half way to being able to get out into space and actually do something with it instead of farting about with robots.

As it stand at present, we will be waiting a very long time before we even start to crawl our way out into the solar system and beyond. If we ever get out there.

[mental4astro]

I can see a 'locked thread' happening...

[multiweb]

In a perfect world yes but I feel the future is not a selfless one without any currency where everybody offers a helping hand to his neighbourg. The state we're at now is what we are and we'll bring it all with us whereever we go next and whatever we do. It's based on limited amount of resources and population growth. When space becomes crowded things turn nasty.

[Barrykgerdes]

We need to get to Alpha Centauri first to see the message that was posted there over 70 years ago regarding the destruction of Earth by the Vogons.

BARRY:lol::lol::lol:

[supernova1965]

I hope not as I started this thread to talk about the science of space travel not politics I hoped for an enjoyable talk about the excitement of what is ahead of our people:thumbsup::prey:

[renormalised]

Unfortunately Warren, you can't divorce one form the other because the money for all this has to come from somewhere and there are all sorts of vested interests that are going to want to have a say in the matter. If we could take all of the politics and other nonsense out of it, that would be great, but we can't. If things keep going the way they have been for the past 4 decades, we will never get past sending "tin men" out to do no more than a little bit of scouting around for us because it'll be just "all too hard" to do otherwise. Too hard to do, and for all the wrong reasons.

[Ric]

Carl is right Warren.

I believe we have the brains, the technology (or at least the ability to develop it) and most definitely the money to pay for it.

But at the moment we just can't past the red tape and intercontinental bickering to make the most of what we have.

[psyche101]

We were about to head of for the stars in the 60's - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) But the Nuclear test ban treaty killed the project before it got started, as we all know, we cannot breach light speed, so anywhere at all will be a long and resource hungry effort. Lets hope one takes this sort of thing seriously again some day.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/ProjectOrionConfiguration.png

[ManOnTheMoon]

It would take too long to get anywhere. Alpha Centuri is the closest star to earth at just 4 light years or 23.2 trillion miles!. In the fastest spacecraft nasa has that travels at 17,500 mph it would take about 153000 earth years to go just 4 light years to reach our nearest star system! If we could travel at lightspeed it would be much quicker but only for those onboard. If you would be inside the spacecraft traveling at the speed of light, it would take you 4 years to reach Alpha Centuri. If you were on the earth waiting for that spaceship to get there and back to earth, something like 800 years would pass for you. This is because time slows down when traveling at very high speeds compared to a stationary object !!

[Baddad]

Hi All, :)
We don't have a lot of time on our hands. Only a few million years or if all goes well 4 billion years. Average asteroid strike rate is one every 100 million years. (the ones big enough to snuff 90% of life)

We go back 3,000 years Average man did not venture more than 12klms from home in a lifetime.
Back 300 years, 20klms
Back 100 yrs, 50klms No one more than 30,000klms (Space travel)
Back 50yrs, 500klms No one more than 100,000klms.
Back 10yrs, Could this be just the start. Moon landings.

There are so many things that are not understood. In this universe.
It was said many times. "Man would never fly"
A cannon ball will fall faster than a musket ball.
The sun is made of burning coal.
Planes can not fly faster than sound because of the "barrier"

Cheers Marty


Do we now have negative thoughts that man will never reach the stars?

[renormalised]

It's not the technology that's the problem, Marty. It's the people.

[renormalised]

Ah, no. Right idea, wrong maths.

Traveling at the speed of light, c, your clock relative to a clock back home would experience no passage of time at all. Effectively, you would get there instantaneously (in your frame of reference) relative to the Earthbound clock. You'd experience no travel time at all even though it actually took 4.4 years for you to get there (by the Earth clock). However, if 4.4 years did actually pass by for you, the time back on Earth would've stretched out for many thousands of years. Actually, at precisely the speed of light, an eternity would've passed on Earth whilst you never aged at all.

Traveling at 0.9c, the trip to Alpha would seem like a 1.9 year trip for you onboard the ship, but 4.84 years would be experienced by an Earthbound observer.

If you traveled at 0.9999999998c, the trip to Alpha would take you (in your frame of reference) 48 seconds.

[TrevorW]

Scenario

a) an advance scout party from some distant planet locate earth and say that looks like a nice place to call home and the locals don't have anything that looks remotely like causing us a problem

b) we intercept and decypher communications that a fleet can get here in 10 years

Guarantee within 10 years we'd have advance robotic weapons platforms stationed beyond Jupiter, high speed intercept ships and battleships patrolling the space lanes

Through common cause man will come togethor to go beyond existing limitations

[renormalised]

It'd be a lot more complicated than that, Trevor, and given the way this planet is run, I'd doubt we'd still have anything effective to ward them off. Plus there'd be people here who would sell us out at the drop of a hat for the right price. There's always a quisling somewhere.

[rcheshire]

Once the baby-boomers pass on, and given the general decline in reproduction worldwide, increased numbers of singles etc etc, the demands on resources may decline, at least until the next boom.

At this stage space travel and colonisation is an exciting prospect, none-the-less technologically impractical. Stephen Hawking may be brilliant, but I think it's a mistake to assume that prominence validates opinion.

Sorry if that offends, but there are more important issues than finding ways to escape mortality. If one was to expire tomorrow, Stephen Hawking's assertion would be completely irrelevant.

[multiweb]

:eyepop: I had it all wrong then. We're safe :lol:

[mswhin63]

Technology should not be a problem I was reading a report on Space Station plan when Tranquility is decommisioned working possibly and gravity module. This could allow long term survival in space. The only other thing we need is to develop food sustainability in space, although if we could do that we may not need to leave earth.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19292-nasa-mulls-sending-part-of-space-station-to-an-asteroid.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

[rcheshire]

Well, only if the experts who quote this stuff are right in the first place - who knows?

One thing is for sure, I won't be around to see it. On the other hand may be we could convince Richard Branson...? Does it matter if the venture runs at a loss?

[Paddy]

I think we need to learn to look after this planet before we go perpetrating our thoughtless destructive ways elsewhere. Any intelligent life out there would very likely and rightly see our venturing out as the spread of a very serious pest animal.

[Jen]

:thumbsup::thumbsup: yep thats where im heading to Baz :lol:

[shelltree]

My thoughts exactly. We're slowly destroying our own world, how can we possibly expect that moving out into space will change anything besides having a new location to destroy with our greed?

[rcheshire]

Yep! Long way to go to run into an intergalactic can of Mortein...!

[avandonk]

We do not have the tools to make the tools to make anything close to interstellar travel. It is mere conjecture.
If any attempt at any colonisation in our Solar System could be a reality the resources needed to support even a few humans would be far greater than the Space station thingy orbiting our Earth. One lousy pump fails and all hell breaks loose! Dunnies fail as well. When we can get even these first baby steps correct on something as simple as an orbiting Space Station maybe we can then colonise the Moon.

We have not even worked out how to stop bones degenerating due to zero gravity for extended periods of months let alone years.

As they said in 'The Castle' tell 'em they are dreaming!

Bert

[CraigS]

Ok .. my 2 cents worth:

Export DNA to Europa, Enceladus and Mars! That should kick off some action.
Perhaps a good sneeze all over the next probes would do the trick.
:)
Cheers
PS: Bert: Would you autograph my Jack Russell terra forming book for me ?
I'm finding it very useful !

[Baddad]

Hi Renorm, :)



I agree with you. You are right. However such was the case back 100yrs. People had similar attitudes. The pace was determined also by the rate of acceptance of new concepts.

Hence: The wheels of progress are not turned by cranks.
In accordance with that quote people will often think a new concept is the work of a crank. Therefore not accepting it and funding will be difficult for research.

People also resist change.
Attitudes have not changed much over the years. Behavior has. We will plod along at the rate of acceptance. Which I believe is accelerating because info is so freely available on the internet.

Cheers Marty

[psyche101]

Some estimates suggest a ballpark figure of 5% the speed of light (or 5.4×107 km/hr). So assuming a spacecraft could travel at these speeds, it would take a Project Orion-type craft approximately 85 years to travel from the Earth to Proxima Centauri.

[psyche101]

I think that we have the ability to reach the stars, but not at light speed. That is one I do not believe we will attain. We are already traveling interstellar distances right now with the Voyager probes.

I see where you are coming from, but I feel there is a "wall" that you have not taken into account where light speed is concerned.

Consider drag racing. It was said the 6 second barrier could not be breached. It was. They said the same about the 5 second quarter mile. We now do 4 second passes. Can we do 3? Maybe. 2? All I could say is WOW, 1? Nope. A physical entity with a combustion engine cannot. Less than 1?

Where do you stop?

I do believe Einstein found the "wall" in E=MC2. Many have tried to break the equation over the past 100 years, yet all that has resulted is further validation, and of course, the atomic bomb. I look forward to the results from NASA's LISA Mission, further validating the famous equation.

In the examples you have provided above, someone must have realized that birds are heavier than air, and they fly, also, someone must have realized bullets break the sound barrier, so that is indeed possible. Such astute observations got us around these difficulties. That is why only empirical results are worthy.

Space travel to such distant places as Alpha Centauri is indeed possible. If one could attain .9c time dilation would make many trips quite viable for the occupants, but back home, your relatives might await centuries for your return. Essentially, that makes it a one way trip but theoretically plausible.

Just some thoughts. I like to discuss things :D

Cheers!

[Paddy]

:eyepop::lol:

[Baddad]

Hi Psyche 101, :)

I am thinking outside of the square.
Unexplained and recent discoveries have caused me to think. Dark energy, dark matter, String theory and multiple dimensions above what we are familiar with. No one has answers.

I feel that these mysteries have much to offer as they are revealed.

Don't forget. That scientists of the age when fission and fusion were unknown believed that the sun was a big lump of coal.

It is human nature to place an explanation to an unknown phenomenom.
Using only the limited knowledge of what they have at hand.
To think outside the square is what Newton, Galileo? etc did.

Pre Big Bang: There was no matter, no light, no space and no time..
Instantly it was all there.

The following perceptions are not mine. It is not possible to travel faster than Light.
Space can be bent? warped folded?
Time can be manipulated
Extra dimensions.
Suddenly I feel like we live in a time that is pre Wright Brothers as far as space travel goes. There is much to discover.

Perhaps I am a crank.
Time will tell.
Cheers marty

[psyche101]

It's doable at 10% the speed of light 40 years, and the Orion project was estimated to reach that.
Exactly, time dilation makes space travel a one way trip, but why would a species not consider the trip? One person still gets to visit a new world, perhaps colonise to keep a species alive? Even if it takes 800 years, that might still be the quickest way to know exactly what is on an exoplanet. We would still want to know wouldn't we? 800 years is better than nothing?
I think such ideals do make interstellar travel possible, just not how the Sci Fi writers in the 50's imagined it.

Here is a question that might be interesting, if anyone here on the board was offered to take such a trip, would you do it? I mean get to see a new world, but likely never your own again?

Would you go?

[mswhin63]

Interesting, for someone that would love long space travel would be easy to take for the first generation although how will the next generation onwards feel about being stuck in space.

Interesting to see how the Mars 500 program works for at least the short/long term.

For me, happily married and would rather concentrate on earth issues before trying to lead a generational venture into space.

[psyche101]

Personally, me too :)

[PCH]

Imagine being the one to go. You go all that way, - spend all that time, - and when you get there, they have "Hey Hey it's frigging Saturday" on TV. :eyepop:

How peeved would you be :lol:

[psyche101]

Be even worse if your were dinner!!

[rcheshire]

...but given time dilation would Hey Hey be on a Wednesday? Possibly, this could be the solution to getting it back to Saturday!

[Octane]

Paul,

Depends -- would Livinia be on? ; )

H

[jeff65]

Remember Biosphere 2?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

The logistics of space travel and distances are the least of our worries. At our present level of understanding we'll starve soon after the stored food supply is exhausted. I think the necessary understanding of biology presents a much greater challenge than the physics of space travel.

[shelltree]

Let's just grow some green algae on mars to create makeshift oxygen and colonise there ;)

[luigi]

Scenario: Alien ship arrives and warns out about earth destruction for reason "X", they recommend evacuation to planet "Z", not as nice as earth but better than nothing.

Do you evacuate or not?

Maybe I need to write a sci-fi short story :)

[mswhin63]

Alien Ship- Vogon's
Reason X - build a hyperspace bypass.

Plausible :P

Hicthhikers guide to the galaxy - :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

[psyche101]

What a very interesting premise, get your pen out! Intergalactic con men!

Do you believe them, when your sun looks just fine? Maybe they sell you back the planet!!

[ManOnTheMoon]

I read the other day that the viewable distance of our universe ( as far as out telescopes can see anyway from out vantage point on Earth) is a wopping 46 billion light years distance in any direction and space still goes on further than that! Yet the universe is only 13.7 billion years old. Its expanding faster than what light can tranverse it!:)

[psyche101]

You might find this an interesting Read Man in the Moon



http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html

[shelltree]

:eyepop: The phenomenal things you read and the photographs you see concerning the universe just blow me away. The enormity of it all is just...wow.

"If the universe was finite, and had a size of about 4 billion to 5 billion light-years, then light would be able to wrap around the universe, and with a big enough telescope we could view the Earth just after it solidified and when the first life formed," Cornish said. "Unfortunately, our results rule out this tantalizing possibility."

:eyepop: :confused2:

[renormalised]

And to think, that's only a very small part of the overall Universe. That 156 billion light years is only what we can see within our small bubble of space. The geometry of our space is flat to within 1/10^6 of a %. How big might that make the whole universe??....probably 100's or 1000's of times larger than that still. Could even be infinite in size, we just don't know.

[Barrykgerdes]

Now you are getting the picture. While ever we give the universe a finite size there is always going to be the question "what is outside this". We don't conceive infinity but we must accept it before we can progress.

We now believe that all the heavy elements are created by a supernova. It is conceivable that what we refer to as DNA is created similarly, perhaps at a "big bang". It then requires a suitable environment (egg) to generate the form of life that answers the code, and like the unstable elements above 92, is there an unstable advanced DNA that could evolve into the God that is part of our culture? Think!

Every question without answer creates more questions!


Barry:question:

[renormalised]

I had the picture, Barry, a very long time ago:)

[mbo]

I don't think complex organic molecules and supernovas get along very well :), DNA melts around 100 degrees and we use relatively low level UV radiation to kill microorganisms.

[Barrykgerdes]

That may be so but I don't want to get into an argument about evolution. Nothing has solid form at the temperature of super novae or big bangs. It is what condenses out it that is the matter we know. DNA has no life till it has the right environment to develop life. It is just a complex key. I am just posing the questions and asking you to think of an answer.

Sherlock Holmes said " Remove the impossible then what remains is the answer no matter how improbable it seems"

Getting back to the original subject. We, as we exist will not colonise space. We only exist here because the environment we survive in is what it is. Our technology will advance and give us means to explore the local environment and probably "mine" it if we do not destroy ourselves before hand. But "Time" will stop anything greater. However we may launch an "ark'' into space that will carry the seeds of life to travel for countless aeons and maybe crash on a suitable environment where life will again develop and flourish.

Once again just think of the possibilities.

Barry

[multiweb]

I have a theory about infinity.
*Disclaimer :drink:

I reckon the infinitely small and the infinitely big are the same and loop somehow somewhere. We just can't see one way or the other. So there's no infinity. Everything goes round and round and round... like this :nerd: . There's no place like home right here right now :)

[avandonk]

It is true that people once thought there was an edge to the world. The so called flat earth theory. If you sailed your ship past this barrier you would fall off the earth!

We know far better now. There is an edge outside the boundary of the biosphere where we need machines to survive and support from Earth to do this for any length of time.

In my humble opinion the Universe is teeming with life and fortunately it will be a very long time before we get anywhere near them to really stuff it up as we have here. It is all too far away.

Humanity is headed for not a big bang but a pathetic whimper as the last human ponders why his I-thingy no longer works.

Bert

[renormalised]

Unfortunately some still do subscribe to this, in its various incarnations.

[Barrykgerdes]

and because infinity means infinity there must be an infinite number of people like us out there thinking the same things. Funny thing though if there is only 1 in 1000000 possible places to support life there must be 1000000 infinities:question:

Barry

[CraigS]

Not wanting to disrupt the flow of this thread (too much), we may have already colonised space unknowingly !:

NASA study will help stop stowaways to Mars
http://www.physorg.com/news107608651.html

The article talks about NASA's clean-room procedures, used when preparing interplanetary probes..

"it is extremely difficult to eliminate all dust particles and microbes without damaging the electronic instruments the process is intended to protect."
....
"Clean rooms are considered extreme environments for microbes because water and nutrients are in extremely short supply. Nevertheless, some bacteria are able to survive on what little moisture the low-humidity air provides and on trace elements in the wall paint, residue of cleaning solvents, and in the spacecraft materials, themselves."

So far, we've deposited heaps of probes throughout our solar system. One day, we might be staring into a set of green eyes we accidentally plonked on another planet !!

Cheers
PS: Sorry for the change in tack .. I'm done .. cheers.

[renormalised]

Actually, no. Even if there were only 1/1000000 places that supported life, the fact that there are an infinity of them still makes that number an infinity. The infinite subset of an infinite number is still an infinite number. They're practically the same size, no matter how much you care to divide them:)

[supernova1965]

I am finding this discussion extremely enjoyable and I am learning stuff as well it is good to see such a wide and varied range of idea's to consider and keep our brains growing instead of atrophying :thumbsup::question:

[Barrykgerdes]

Yes that is so. What a conundrum! If we can define infinity We should be able to prove black is white, the moon is made of green cheese, etc.

Barry

[renormalised]

I always thought that it was??!!:):P