Interesting vid on youtube

[spaceboy]

I'm not sure how accurate this is but I was watching this

 YouTube vid and it really got me thinking just how far we are from ever sustaining human life. We do after all need at least a star to support life and with our closest star being such a mind blowing distance away what real chance do we have of continuing the survival of the species?! I mean we need a goldilocks planet that just happens to have a habitable surface along with copious amounts of H2O, orbiting a sun like star of which is still in it's "youth". And when I say youth I mean it's still in nappies as the journey time to such a star system could be in the thousands to millions of years even with anything near speed of light capabilities.

I suppose if we could at least get human DNA to a distant deemed habitable planet in the hope that future technology could some how gestate it in to some representation of what we know as human. My guess is what ever the case there would be a necessity for some sort of self supporting Adam and Eve AI android to get the ball rolling. Whether we could ever create each component to make the journey I have no idea. Harsh space conditions and natural decay being a major drawback in travelling such vast distances over many light years. But then there would also be a need to carry along with it other forms of life including plant and insect etc. I'd also think it would take many millions of years for life to evolve to live on a new planet. Just because it is habitable doesn't necessarily mean it would sustain life and each species would have to adapt to it's new environment which in itself could also be evolving.

When you look at all involved I think it is safe to say that anything beyond gaining a few extra years moving to Mars / Titan there is little chance we can sustain the human race indefinitely which kind of begs the question why are we looking for habitable planets ?? I mean unless we are some how able to encode the building blocks of life in to light photons which we can somehow control either side of integration, we have absolutely no chance of getting anywhere in space, in time or in one piece anyway. And before anyone says it is to find possible intelligent life to help us in our quest for intelligence or immortality as a species I would argue that we ourselves have shown no desire or reason to bring back Neanderthals.

I know there is so much that cannot be answered here so it is more intended for light chatter on what the future could hold for the human race and what difficulties are involved. It does to me seem that the universe first makes it difficult for life to exist and then even more difficult for it to be sustained indefinitely. Which when you think the universe doesn't for all intents purposes "exist" with out some form of consciousness to acknowledge it, so what is it's point in it's being anyway??? This is obviously assuming that consciousness itself only exists in living creatures. Consciousness or acknowledgement of being could of course be a separate entity to that of the physical world and that the body for us at least is merely a vessel of interaction?

[JamesF]

Getting through the next 100 years without turning the planet into a giant slag heap would be a good start I think, though it often appears rare that world leaders and greedy corporations share that view.

James

[vlaiv]

While stars are located at huge distances to each other in human terms, they are actually not unreachable on human scales (well, energy part might be way of human scales).

To demonstrate this, just imagine a spaceship with a constant 1g acceleration up to half a distance, and 1g deceleration other half. This sort of craft would provide one very necessary ingredient for human travel - natural gravity environment.

We can calculate, for simplicity sake skipping all relativistic aspects of it, how long such a journey would last to very close star - 4.3Ly

So let's look at simple formula and how long it would take to reach one half of the journey:

s = 1/2 * a * t^2

t^2 = 2 * s / a

a = 10 m /s/s

s ~ 20340720000000000 meters

then t equals

t = 63782003.7s

Or in days: 738.21 days

So it would take us a bit over two years to get to half the distance, or a bit more than 4 years to go the whole way.

Now you will notice correctly that in doing this we used classical reasoning and we exceeded speed of light - which we know is impossible. So actual value will not be this of course - but it just goes to show you that by going with 1g acceleration you can reach large fraction of speed of light rather quickly, so any star travel would be of course limited by distance in light years (not achievable in that particular time), but it shows that for example 20Ly distant star could be well within a reach using this configuration in persons life time - lets say we reach 0.8 speed of light and we need 1 year of acceleration to do so, total travel time would be around 27 years.

There are a lot of stars in 20ly radius around the Sun.

If you accept the notion of multi generational space ship - we set on a voyage but second or third generation will be first settlers (our children, or our grandchildren) - we can look to travel to stars that are up to 50ly away. Well using this technique we can extend our radius quite a bit further.

Although this sounds much more optimistic, we did not address the main problem - amount of energy to provide us with 1 years worth of 1g acceleration and 1 year of deceleration. Fortunately due to e=mc^2 it turns out that it is not that much mass to carry with us, but we need a method of fully converting such mass to energy and energy to acceleration - someone might say antimatter drive?

 

[Louis D]

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

If you accept the notion of multi generational space ship - we set on a voyage but second or third generation will be first settlers (our children, or our grandchildren)

The fodder of more sci-fi novels and television episodes than I can remember.  Inevitably, the people on board forget they're in a spaceship, forget about the original mission, and there is one person who figures it out and tries to convince the rest unsuccessfully that they've arrived and need to disembark.

[spaceboy]

On ‎06‎/‎09‎/‎2018 at 13:35, JamesF said:

Getting through the next 100 years without turning the planet into a giant slag heap would be a good start I think, though it often appears rare that world leaders and greedy corporations share that view.

James

Good point and a again another consideration for the survival of the human race.  If we were ever to get to another planet in the hope of colonization we have to get on with each other and control our cravings first. This seems to be something we seem unable to do even on the habitable planet we have now so it's as if we as a species is destined to become extinct no matter what technology we are able to adapt for exploration of the cosmos. Things would be in limited supply to begin with and we all know how hunger in particular can turn any saint in to a sinner.

[Stu]

If we can get to an appreciable proportion of the speed of light, don’t effects like time dilation come into play, making the on ship journey times much shorter. Some major challenges to be handled in terms of propulsion/deceleration methods and fuel requirements, but theoretically it could be possible to get to the Andromeda galaxy in a lifetime, albeit arriving 2.5 million years after leaving earth, for those back on Earth. Crazy stuff to get your head around!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalactic_travel

[SIDO]

The very spirit of our species has always been survival by exploration, I think the final frontier is our destiny and if we are willing we are then able. 

The retirement we plan for is less important than the journey we take so that nearby habitable star we call the goal is just the lure that ignites our departure.

If we can travel to a distant star with all the systems to sustain us for many years of space travel then one could conclude we most likely could live without a home planet indefinitely on craft as there is plenty of hunting and gathering to be done along the way with star systems being the energy source that drives large extended foraging areas well beyond their habitable zones.

Earth is really just a natural spaceship for the human race, so we would be no worse the wear for our travels. Just think for a second your position in the Milky Way one hour ago...how may miles have you traveled, well just in the last hour your position has moved 1.4 million miles so I guess space travel is in our genes as well as our reality.

After thoughts;

In addition our species is continuing to make significant advances in the conversion of basic and advanced elements as well the manufacture of complex alloys and polymers and deconstruction techniques allowing the reduction of materials down to their basic elements and their reconstruction into other forms. We have also done well with the recycling of elements and gases. These abilities will certainly in my opinion contribute to our ability to harvest/convert and utilize raw materials while traveling in space. Once we can do that everything we need is available close by where ever we go. The biology we take along (including us) will self replicate and produce - Earth - as a byproduct...also turning raw materials into something usable.

Maybe we will one day need to leave Earth but for now we only want to, and that's really the thing that gets us off this rock the need not the want. But we are more prepared than "I think" we give ourselves the credit.

 

 

 

[VNA]

Seen several of these scale models and always make me wonder--will always be amazed.

In order to get there or out there we humans have to get our "stuff" together--sadly and
unfortunately I am not too optimistic! But we can all dream.