Totally random late night thoughtsAt the current known speed of travel throughout space (maybe not max) but at the speed the JSWT (telescope) reached the L2 zone in space. It would take 7291 generations of astronaut to reach some planet they believe has a civilization on it meaning it would take 324.7 Million Kg's of food for the entire journey assuming only 1 breeding pair or humans at any one time (inbred as fuck) 583333.3 years assuming 80 year lifespan which isn't including the 20 year overlap having 4 people on board whilst children are brought up to speed and left at age 20 by their dying parents. They would they be dead because the amount of inbreeding required at those levels would make them so fucking retarded they would forget how to breathe. In closing. Close to 700,000 years worth of life, 389.7 Million Kg of food (including the 20 year overlap) is what would be required to make it to that planetWe aren't making it to any other civlized planets before our finite resources are depleted. Humanity is fucked unless we come leaps and bounds in space travel and shielding technology.
>>1971504>We aren't making it to any other civlized planets before our finite resources are depleted. Humanity is fucked unless we come leaps and bounds in space travel and shielding technology.Yep, always was going to be the case. Sorry science fiction temporarily suspended your disbelief!We're all in this together, and we're all gonna die.
>>1971504by the 2050s AI will be self aware. any beings sent beyond our solar system will be nuclear powered sentient starships that explore planetary bodies via drones.
>>1971504I mean, you just need women and a sperm bank for artificial impregnation, so cut that allowance in half.
All we have to do is find a way to steer the Sun and it will take us to the stars.
>>1971504You don't need to go to another star to colonize space. The Solar System is plenty big and could fit trillions easily.Chemical rockets are pretty dinky and inefficient compared to other propulsion methods. Nuclear pulse propulsion could be done today if there was the political will for it and could easily enable outer solar system exploration or even interstellar travel if scaled up. There are more exotic options like fusion rockets that are very likely possible and even better.
>>1971645So we're going to just change the other planets, are we?We are already living on and in physical control of the entire earth and it's pretty close to our required parameters already and we can't seem to manage to organize ourselves in a way that would prevent us from shitting it up and making it hostile to human life, how in the fuck are we going to turn venus or mars into the garden of eden? Magic?
Not exactly thread related, but I just finished this book and this thread made me think of it. If you like this type of depressing fiction about humanity and space travel, and you haven't read it already, then I recommend it.
>>1973641God this book was such a load of wank. I read it because people rave about it and the premise is great but I was deeply disappointed by Stephenson's characters and writing.
>>1973694For me it was a page turner.
>>1973625>how in the fuck are we going to turn venus or mars into the garden of eden?Why do we have to?
>>1971504>assuming 80 year lifespan which isn't including the 20 year overlap having 4 people on board whilst children are brought up to speed and left at age 20 by their dying parentsSend embryos, problem solved
>>1971504what's the plan once they arrive at destination?go back and report?
>>1971504i think you missed /sci/we could actually still do it if we just built a really big rocket in orbit then fired it up to relativistic speedactually not as unrealistic as it sounds apparentlythe journey would be waaaay shorter at that speed and if it can go fast enough time dilation would shorten it furtherofc there would still need to be generations and all the logistics of that because we probably cant realistically reach a high enough speed for time dilation to be significant enough to get there in 1 generationwe could maybe do it with a probe thoughofc slowing down is a whole other thing so actually the rocket will need to be twice as bigthats where the maths starts getting reeeeally silly
>>1975865populate the planet with lots of inbred babies i guess
>>1971504Fuck it, just send out a broth full of microbes, both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Colonize other planets by seeding them with goo; 700,000 years we're not likely to be the same species we are today anyway.
>>1976909amebaslive,,,forever.
Even if you travelled at the literal speed of light, any human would be dead before they reached a planet with everything required for human life. There are a few candidates which are 4-40 light years away, but they don't look that convincing and how would we get a signal to know if the journey was successful? It's all literally impossible. You might as well just shoot yourself into the Sun and pretend you made it to another planet.
>>1971504>at the speed the JWST reached the L2 zoneThere's the catch. JWST didn't need to go fast because it didn't have humans on it, the mission was all about getting it there as cheaply and safely as possible. Obviously we can't do it with today's technology, just like we couldn't land on the moon with 1880s tech.
>>1971504the poop would not exactly be thrown out the back as reaction mass... matter would be treated with care on a vessel like this, and reactor energy would be used to re-energize the biomass. the only true matter sinks on a mission like this would be reaction mass, spent nuclear fuel, ablative shielding, and perhaps emergency coolant.
>>1973625>omg climate change is ruining earth>omg you are just gonna change the climate of another planet???Also obligatory space is gay and your Malthusian chicken little routine is gay.
>>1971504That's why you send frozen embryos and lab meat uteruses, with AI parents to raise them.
>>1971504>At the current known speed of travel throughout space (maybe not max)There's your problem, you assume we'd go as slow as you describe when there's a lot of ways to go faster through means that simply cost more but, if you already have a built up civilization in orbital space like colonies at the Legrang points, can be done, you're not going as slow as you describe, you're going at 2% of the speed of light between systems or faster. And why would we go to a planet with civilization on it, which likely do not exist and if they do not in our galaxy, when there's trillions of worlds worth of living space to be made from the mass of Centauri?
>>1971504Just make immortal astronauts, problem solved.
>>1976276>then fired it up to relativistic speedUnrealistic.Those fantasies doesn't account energy and power required for relativistic speeds.
>>1985534Depends what we're talking about, 2%C for example is more then realistic using solar sails and a network of lasers to get a vessel to that speed with enough fuel on board to slow down on the return journey, and using that to spread out to the nearest systems to seed civilization to then expand outward from there it'd take about 11 million years to colonise the entire galaxy, which is a long time in human terms but the blink of an eye in astrological terms.
Just go faster then, dumbass
>>1985533the answer always points to machine race
>>1985674Nanomachines, son
>>1985552With laser sail you can accelerate small probe to 2% of C, problem is you cant brake from that speed so your probe just flies through target star system.
>>1985710You can theoretically accelerate up to in excess of 99% of C, problem as you described is deceleration, but having a civilization seeding ship having just enough mass to reduce the speed from 2% of C to a stable entry into a system and enough to build up a laser network to decelerate later waves is well within the real of what can be done, like with many technologies the physical ability to produce such technology exists today with the issue being the economics of doing it at present.
>>1973625>how in the fuck are we going to turn venus or mars into the garden of eden? Magic?the same greenhouse effect that we are using to boil Earth to death could be used to terraform Mars. it would be slow and expensive, but it is doable.the fun thing about Venus is that a pressure vessel with human habitable atmosphere in it would be buoyant in Venetian atmosphere. we could build the star wars cloud cities relatively more affordably.
>>1971504>Totally random late night thoughtswhy didn't doc brown's time-traveling delorian leave him stranded in space? i don't believe it was ever stated that his machine accounted for the position of the earth in any specific time. the position of the earth in space isn't static, nor is the sun or anything else right? so if you took your starting position as a fixed point in space, your destination will most likely be somewhere in the interplanetary void rather than 'where i was on earth but 30 years ago' or whatever.
>>1985879>so if you took your starting position as a fixed point in space,he's driving though
>>1985881the instant of transmission is the fixed point in space where you hit 88 and punch back to 1955, except the earth in 1955 isn't in the same spot as the earth in 1985 and now you're just floating there in outer space.
>>1985912>fixed point in spacebut he's driving
>>1973694>>1973641I just started reading this book, and it has some dumb passages.
>>1985879>>1985912The time tunnel is acted upon by gravity and electromagnetism, so it traces a path in roughly the same position on earth's surface.This is why the flux capacitor even works. If it wasn't affected by electromagnetism, how could the conduits even direct or influence the flux?
>>1971504The concept of seed ships have been speculated in scifi since the 1960s. Essentially you send autonomous AI ships stocked with human sperm and ovum. The ship wanders the cosmos at "slow" speeds for hundreds or thousands of years until it finds a suitable planet. Then the ship AI inseminates thousands of ovum with the sperm and artificially birth the babies. Robots will become the surrogate parents and educate the children. Once the humans are ready, they will be transported down to the planet. The seed ship then departs to repeat the process elswhere.
cryostasis sleep + relativistic speedorFTL warp
