Interstellar Travel Challenge

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Right !! .. And you can't assume that that its all invalid, either .. so chuck it out the door !

That's not what I said nor what he wrote in that line, Craig. Go and reread what I've written...carefully.

Originally Posted by CraigS

Who says it has to do with the 'New Physics of creation' ??
What is that stuff, anyway ???


.. Fantasy & wishful thinking !


The tooth fairy might make me a billionaire tonight, also !
Cheers

Well, we can come up with whacky ideas that won't work, but that's part of the fun. Doesn't mean I necessarily agree with them, either.

Mind you, if the tooth fairy did actually do that, you wouldn't knock it back

[Zaps]

Originally Posted by renormalised

They also once said that man would never fly, or leave the bounds of the planet's gravity. It would take too much energy, it's too far, there is an insurmountable barrier blocking our way, the present state of knowledge tells us so therefore we "know".

As I said previously, those were examples of engineering problems in search of a technological solution. Practical interstellar flight is completely different.

What did Lord Rutherford say about atomic fission, when they discovered the process behind it..." I cannot ever foresee any practical application for this. It will never happen". What was said about traveling into space during the early to middle 1900's, and by very knowledgeable scientists and engineers..."it will never happen". What was said about nuclear weapons before they were finally developed and tested...."either it won't work or it will consume the planet in a conflagration". Plenty of times in the past there has been instance where scientists and the present day thinking decreed inviolate that something was impossible and would never happen. That it wasn't a matter of not finding a way to do it, yet etc etc etc.

Again, all engineering challenges only.

Even in your own lifetime as a scientist, you have seen some amazing stuff come up. But your own level of knowledge is limited to what you've been taught and what you believe to be the case through your own experiences as a scientist. It's the same with any scientist. But because you believe the prevailing paradigm is where it's at and is the cutting edge, you then begrudge future generations of scientists from looking outside that paradigm. You have no idea what they'll know, and as I said neither do I. So, regardless of whatever is thought of at present, we cannot know whether anything will occur in the future that will enable us to travel interstellar distances. It may or may not occur, but given time the likelihood of it occurring is the same as it not occurring.

Nobody says we shouldn't think about such things. I'm saying we shouldn't pretend such things are possible. Certainly not by throwing time, money and elbow grease at them.

It doesn't matter if everyone today is wrong about what will occur to enable us to travel the stars. One day, someone might be right.

Many people are correct now, and they are proven correct every day, when the results of their experiments bear that out.

You can say that practical human interstellar spaceflight may happen if we just wait and hope and think about it, but you aren't necessarily correct. Most scientists - and most science - says you are incorrect.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Zaps

The justification of hopeful people is generally based upon discrete historical examples of stalled thinking, such as Plate Tectonics, etc. Those were isolated issues of specifics, not the required complete rewriting of a scientific discipline - indeed, much of science itself.

I'm not talking about specifics of stalled thinking and I am very much aware of the background of Plate Tectonics as I am a geologist. But I'm also an astrophysicist as well. I have degrees in both fields. And if you think that Plate Tectonics didn't rewrite much of the textbooks about geology, then you're seriously mistaken. It was as big for geology as relativity was for physics. I could equally say that Newton or Einstein are discreet examples of stalled thinking. Each theory has its limits, no matter what it is.

Originally Posted by Zaps

We have a good approximation of the distance to our stellar neighbors. Thanks to Einstein, we understand how much energy is involved in traversing such distances in sensible spans of time. And Einstein also helped us to understand the effect of applying such energies and the associated velocities. Experiment after experiment validates Einstein and the concepts involved.

All agreed, I have no qualms about any of that. And the same was said of Newton and many other scientist's theories. But that doesn't mean that something new or a modification of the present theory won't turn up to change the equation. It's also equally possible that it won't. However, it's the height of intellectual hubris and arrogance to stand there and say that it never will.

Originally Posted by Zaps

Some people long to wear a Starfleet uniform and boldly go where no fan has gone before, but they're up against cold hard reality. Alas.

What's wrong with dreams. More often than not, that cold and hard reality crystallises from those dreams. Even relativity.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Zaps

As I said previously, those were examples of engineering problems in search of a technological solution. Practical interstellar flight is completely different.

Again, all engineering challenges only.

Nobody says we shouldn't think about such things. I'm saying we shouldn't pretend such things are possible. Certainly not by throwing time, money and elbow grease at them.

Many people are correct now, and they are proven correct every day, when the results of their experiments bear that out.

You can say that practical human interstellar spaceflight may happen if we just wait and hope and think about it, but you aren't necessarily correct. Most scientists - and most science - says you are incorrect.

There's actually no point in continuing on with this debate as it's becoming nothing more than a circular argument. You think I'm wrong in my assumptions and I believe you're being typically closed minded. We're actually both scientists, but one of us is more willing to think laterally than the other. The best thing to do is to agree to disagree and let history be our judge. It wouldn't surprise me if both of us turn out to be wrong. Or either one of us does. Who knows. I'm not worried either way. Even if we do manage to build a warp drive, if it's in 100 years time, I won't be here to see it. That sort of technology will be for another generation.