What's so special about Earth?

sculptor said:
It seems most likely that "we" have the technology and engineering skills to build a nuclear powered interstellar space ship
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We don't. We don't even know what we don't know yet.

Our crowning achievement so far is the ISS. We haven't even made it outside the Earth-Moon system, let alone outside the solar system.

I think you wildly underestimate the challenges involved in an interplanetary mission, never mind one that is approximately 10,000 times farther.

At the very least, all you have to do is calculate the fuel mass for such a trip. Nuclear engines are great and all but you still need reaction mass. You can't miniaturize that.

Don't forget, if you want to slow down at the other end, you need four times as much fuel, because you have to lug that fuel with you - which is dead weight on the journey out.
 
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DaveC426913 said:
We don't. We don't even know what we don't know yet.

Our crowning achievement so far is the ISS. We haven't even made it outside the Earth-Moon system, let alone outside the solar system.

I think you wildly underestimate the challenges involved in an interplanetary mission, never mind one that is approximately 10,000 times farther.

At the very least, all you have to do is calculate the fuel mass for such a trip. Nuclear engines are great and all but you still need reaction mass. You can't miniaturize that.

Don't forget, if you want to slow down at the other end, you need four times as much fuel, because you have to lug that fuel with you - which is dead weight on the journey out.
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Our robots are doing the dangerous work right now. Another century and we'll have commuter flights to the Moon.
 
Well, we got one machine that's a few billion miles from being completely out of the solar system. Been, what, fifty years? What's the rush?
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
Where did I lose you?
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Well, the premise we've been working on was getting humans (alive) to a habitable planet.

The farthest we've gotten a human is 2 light seconds away, and the nearest star is 38,000 light hours away, never mind the nearest habitable planet.

Sculptor supposes we have the technology available today to make that trip.
 
I was thinking we'd need to send a scouting mission ahead of a colony ship. Might want to know all we can about the place before investing in a mission to who-knows-what. The scout could get there faster than a ship hauling humans. We'd still have a large number of variables that needed to be addressed. I have little patience for books and movies that show the humans arriving and settling in during first contact with the new world.
 
"Raised by wolves", a scifi series, suggests sending robots with the humans. The people would travel as embryos and the androids would help them grow up and establish a colony. Lots of holes in the show, couldn't cover all the issues, but it's one way to colonize, though not one I'd want to be involved with. Another way would be to get the Bergenholms working so as to make it possible to commute to a new planet. Longer wait for that solution I think.
 
Ok sending robot probes might be a good idea but it doesnt solve the problem of getting humans there.
 
DaveC426913 said:
Ok sending robot probes might be a good idea but it doesnt solve the problem of getting humans there.
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I did suggest one method, the one done in the scifi show. Requires little or no energy expenditure enroute and you have "trained personnel" to get the humans started. Obvious dangers are obvious.
 
Clark's Three Laws:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke's three laws - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Where is the line where "future technologies" are simply fantasy? I think it could be as simple as the line where the economics don't work - and for interstellar colonizing I think Earth's economy would have to be extremely wealthy to support major attempts for such feel-good purposes. Like Mars the economics just don't work - only much, much worse. Fusion drives being possible is not nearly the same as fusion being reliable and cost effective. Like supersonic air travel it may be possible but not worth it. Given how difficult for globally connected advanced industrial economies with generous funding to do fusion at all it may not ever become cost effective.

None of the grand space dreams like colonizing space look anything like inevitable to me, and I don't see the kinds of technological progress needed for dreams as grand as this as being in any way inevitable. Nor that trying harder to achieve them when the technology is so far short of being up to it will make any real difference - trying harder to advance the technologies that will have economic benefits that are within reach is what opens up future possibilities.

Nor is progress open ended; we are circling in on a comprehensive understanding of the true nature of the universe from subatomic to cosmological and I don't expect it to include FTL. Technological progress won't be exponential it will be an S-curve and it will hit hard limits of materials and technologies. We'll achieve a lot, advance a lot and not have our futures diminished by being realistic about expectations or preferntially investing in what is achievable.
 
sculptor said:
Future technology ain't a thing---------now

It seems most likely that "we" have the technology and engineering skills to build a nuclear powered interstellar space ship
but it ain't gonna be cheap
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Impossible, I'd have thought. Bear in mind that such a ship would have to take everything with them that they'd need on the journey, other than, perhaps, some gasses that they might scoop up from whatever the interstellar medium contains.
That means all the spares, repair shops, all the non-recyclable materials that they may need for a journey of, let's say, a few hundred years at least. Likely more than that, into the thousands of years.
Until we have the ability to recycle a very high % of everything then I'm not sure a generation ship is yet possible. it may not be far off, from a technical pov, but I don't think we're there yet.

Plus there's probably not enough duct-tape on the planet for the bodge-jobs that would be needed during that time. ;)
 
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