The Moon and a Telegraph, A relative comparison.

Consider these two concepts.
#1.-An electrical impulse transmitted through a wire and picked up in the next room. One of the earliest forms of communication, technologicaly speaking.(Telegraph)
#2.-The W.W.W.(World Wide Web) Our present day medium of communication.

What would you consider to be a fair and relative difference in advancement between the two?

Would it be 2x the ammount of progress?
5x the amount of progress?
10x,25x, 50x,200x,1000x,
or there is no comparison, the web has made unlimited information available?

Now, taking our trip to the moon as being our telegraph next door, with the same level of advancement you belive the W.W.W. to be in regards to the telegraph, what ends of progress do you beleive we will make possible in space travel?

 

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This thread is confusing but I'll give it a shot.

The amount of advancment between the telegraph and the internet...jeez...the internet has a vast amount of information but it is not unlimited. There is a limit, it's just a really, really high limit. I think you can only really answer this depending on what internet connection you have. The telegraph, as I am aware, could only send one message at a time. With the internet you can look at as many sources of information at once but this depends on the connection. 56k dial up users will probably only look at one or two sources at a time but the wealth of information should be greater than the telegraph. Someone with broadband like me can look at a multitude of pages with more information than the telegraph.

So my conclusion to that one is nx

Now the moon part. This was slightly more confusing, do you mean what limit to space travel or what?

 

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Yes,
I was attempting to say something like this(Although poorly I might add,).......
Imagine the telegraph,...and then how far we have come in the level of communication possible through a single conection.
Now, imagine our trip to the moon in our example as the telegraph,
and through the same possibilty for advancement as we had from the telegraph to the W.W.W.,
What about the same possibility from a trip to the moon, to "fill in the blank".
Basically yeah, what do you think the level of possibilty for interstellar travel is?
From how much we have advanced in such a short time, I have a cautious time accepting that what we might consider to be impossible now, will indeed happen.

Such as the possibilty of interstellar travel?
What do you think Thor, possible, or no?
P.S. Please don't give me a "maybe" either!

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The Internet is just a giant computer controlled web of telegraph machines...granted the electrical impulses are transformed into microwaves, light pulses, etc along their way. But the "black box" scenario is the same as it was back then, just more wires and the telegraphs interact with each other

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Hey Thor,
Yah, I was just curious if you think interstellar travel will become possible in our lifetime given the amount of progress we have made with technology and breaking down our own DNA code and all that kinda stuff.
I was just trying to give a concrete example and example of an area I felt we have made progress in. And use that as a background for the (my optimistic) possibilty to indeed make interstellar travel possible.
I guess I didn't succeed by any far stretch did I?
Thanks for your sympathy reply though

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Whatcha Think?

 

Bandwidth.
Dee Cee

 

boy they not helping you out much at all are they... I would have to say the big advancemant in space on a = level with the world wide web would be one of 2 things ... one a way to get large amounts of cargo into space cheep... or reduce ship size so that of a plane so the masses can get into space... and still do it cheeply... maybe some form of fusion power where some of the plasima is scimed off the reactor and is shot down a partical exelarator.. and at the end have a magnetic blockage so that it compresses the plasima making fusion in most if not all the plasima at once providing large amounts of thrust for little waight... yes i know it would be like a small H-Bomb going off constently out of the engine... but the power to weight would make my idea's work able...

 

Both means of communications rely on the same underlying principles; the transfer of electrical impulses along a wire. So-called "wireless" systems are liars; the wires are simply removed from view.

Relating this analogy to space travel, regardless of how far advanced technologically we are from our times of lunar travel, or may become, the underlying principles (Newtonian propulsion, and general relativity) limit, near wholly, our capacity to explore space.