will humans colonize other planets?
this is kind of related to the would you leave earth thread, but different enough i think.
it has always sort of been fabled that in the future humans will colonize other planets when we outgrow our own. does anyone actually see this happening? have any strides been made towards this certainly exhausting effort? overall, i think humans are just too dumb to do this...if we had a world full of einsteins & mathy-type intellectuals maybe...otherwise i think we're just stuck here until someone nukes the whole world.
it has always sort of been fabled that in the future humans will colonize other planets when we outgrow our own. does anyone actually see this happening? have any strides been made towards this certainly exhausting effort? overall, i think humans are just too dumb to do this...if we had a world full of einsteins & mathy-type intellectuals maybe...otherwise i think we're just stuck here until someone nukes the whole world.
Comments
The last few hundred of years (or very few years or months if we deside to do ourself in faster) would be a sad but interesting requiem of desperate attempts to spread ourselfs if it wasn´t for the fact that you had to live on earth to experience it.
I think humanity grows and our potential to create a better life for everyone will rise. But unfortunetly the ultimate promise (something like a Star Trek vision) will not be met because of our other tendencies. Think of the American and French (and Russian) revolutions as the time where humanity had the most promising future and now as somewhere from the middle to the end of the golden age.
How is that for a post in my "positive story thread"
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Anders ]</p>
Would you rather branch out into the universe or live as a eunuch?
Finally, expanding throughout the universe is part of human destiny, IMHO. Humans are always on the move, e.g., from Africa to Europe to the New World and beyond. Mars will be next. After that we need some pretty spiffy scientific breakthroughs to get beyond the solar system in a reasonable amount of time. But they will happen.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: gobble gobble ]</p>
We can start in the very near future if we wanted to. The "want to" part is the hard part, and I'm afraid that it might get to the point of "have to" is the only way to get there.
what about colonizing our moon? that is one place we know we can go...</strong>
Yes. That's the first place we should go. 3 day transit time and high possibility of water ice in the polar regions makes it a bit easier. The logistics would be much the same as it is for the Mir or the ISS.
Mars is a great dream, but I think it's a pipe dream without going to the moon first.
Colonization of other solar systems depends on our developing some kind of "faster than light" drive technologies. A "generation colony ship" using sublight engines would be a huge, global undertaking, requring massive ammounts of resources (human and material), and I would think would be something launched only as a last resort in the event of some catastrophic disaster on Earth.
'Course, anything's possible given a long enough period of time, but right now, I just don't see it.
If you're talking other galaxies / solar systems - no way in hell will our race get there. Maybe our evolutionary descendants, but not us. We don't have enough time, nor the cooperative ability to do this.
Based on my admittedly limited understanding of deep space travel, we have nothing more than a few flimsy theories as to how we could get a spacecraft (of any size) to travel anywhere near light speed, let alone surpass it. We simply do not understand the relevant astrophysical and cosmological problems well enough to solve them mathematically, let alone solve them in practical terms (build something large enough and strong enough to carry humans, supplies, etc. at those speeds for long periods of time).
[But let's assume] there will never be any sort of nuclear war, world plague, monster meteor or other race-snuffing event (and there will be a meteor sooner or later - we can bank on that), we'd still have a tremendous challenge and the odds would be heavily against us.
In this case, we might begin to truly solve the mysteries of black holes, worm holes, light speed travel (and others) in 50 to 100 years from now. That's from a purely abstract, mathetmatical standpoint. From there, it would probably take hundreds of years to find a way to harness the materials and resources here on earth (and perhaps on the Moon and Mars) to actually design, test and build a spacecraft that could [get] from here to the nearest galaxy in [an amount of time that wouldn't expend the useful lifetimes of the crew]. Such a mission would require tremendous leadership and drive from within; it would be critical that some of the original crew members be there to see it through. To me the idea that having kids in space and raising them to continue the flight mission, is a little out there. It totally ignores human nature. How would you feel if you were born into that and had no way out? We need to build a craft that will get us where we're going in the span of say, 5-10 years. Otherwise the human element of the mission will likely undermine it somehow.
I also think it's pretty likely such a beast would have to be built in orbit as well, because it would have to be fairly huge to support enough humans and their supplies and other needs over the course of several years. The idea of launching such a vehicle from earth is pretty much out of the question. Either from earth orbit, or orbiting one of the afore-mentioned colonies we might build. So that's another technical hurdle to overcome - building the orbiting hangar, if you will (it too would have to be massive).
Think also about our first space program and the relative simplicity of the problems that faced us then, and how many dark days there before we succeeded. Now think of the complexity of the problem of a large vehicle travelling at light speed (let alone beyond)...how many years of trials, errors and failures will that require? I doubt anyone here actually believes the first prototype will succeed or that we'll send people out the edge of the galaxy on such a prototype. If it took us 10+ years (if memory serves correctly) to get a reliable launch / orbit vehicle back in the 60's, it will likely take us 100+ to get a reliable light-travel vehicle of small stature (say the Sputnik of its day), let alone large stature (100 more at least).
Given enough time I think we could do it, but we don't have that kind of time at the rate societies are decaying IMO. Not to be fatalist but I think it's likely a partial or mass human extinction is more likely over the next 200 years than inter-gallactic travel is. Much more likely.
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
the optimist in me says yes.
devil's advocate says...
<sarcasm>
just look at what a great job we've done while colonizing this one
</sarcasm>
as long as we pack out our trash on the next one, promise not to give the neighbours smallpox... or start religious crusades, or seek lebensraum, or obliterate their ozone with SUVs.
our colonial record isn't stellar... ask the buffalo or 100's of other extinct species...
ask the aztecs and mayans about spanish tourism, or ask most of west africa how nice those friendly belgian slavers were when they first arrived, and how much better their lives have become vs. belgians since they met.
[[not to pick a fight with belgians, per se... just illustrating the somewhat ugly historical record...
we could substitute other examples and you could try to ask the north american equivalents, but i don't know if there are any Iroquois or Mohicans left]]
maybe we ought to specify some minimum conditions
[you must be at least this high to go on this ride]
as for sending out a colony ship of 'telephone sanitizers, used car salesmen, hairdressers, etc' maybe douglas adams had an idea there... hmmm
can we agree on at least two destinations? say one for exploitation and excess population, one for environmental and ethical stewardship...
i'm not keen to live on planet exxon or enron,
and everyone on board would have to participate... no wimping out like US on Kyoto.
explorers are by nature adventurous, but we'd want some set of "prime directives" about acceptable behaviour when survival affects more than our species. and if colonists misbehave... plank to vaccuum? you can get out here? flying leg kick?
must. resist. further. irony. find. strength. to. reply.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited for sp and layout by: curiousuburb ]
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]</p>
for those who are truly impatient to go
watch the ride leaving this planet from the onboard rocketcam of mars odyssey and more.
9 min to escape velocity of 18500 mph
now that's acceleration.
<a href="http://space.com/missionlaunches/rockets_red_glare_020704.html"; target="_blank">Rocketcam rides and launch videos</a>
(great detail of vernier motors and stage sep... not just a single flame out the back... and a few with more flames than intended)
speeding officer? how fast in a 55 zone?
oh... and for the anti-matter curious (from 2000)
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_873000/873836.stm"; target="_blank">Antimatter factory starts production</a>
<a href="http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/mars/technology/propulsion/aspl/plasma.html"; target="_blank">details on Vasimr plasma engine</a>
and a quick chart from nasa on propulsion. yellow boxes are active projects, not sci fi.
<a href="http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/sep.html"; target="_blank">ion propulsion from DS1 (incl video of engine test)</a>
or
<a href="http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/jpl_brophy_010808-1.html"; target="_blank">soup can sized ion engines to come</a>
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited - links added - by: curiousuburb ]
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]</p>
What you observe about technological advancement is true in a general sense. But we're not talking about the difference between a 1950's adding machine that could've filled up my garage and a Power Mac...we're talking about the difference between counting on your fingers and toes and a Power Mac...
...or the difference between looking into the night sky with a pair of old binoculars and the Hubble Space Telescope...
We're a couple orders of magnitude away from the type of math and science we need to accomplish these kinds of goals. We have to fully understand what anti-matter is and how it works before we can actually harness it in other words (to follow your example). [So far we] have a very limited understanding of the composition of the universe, space-time travel, advanced materials, etc.
To use a common anology, its almost like "you have to be born before you can crawl...before you can walk...and then run." We're just new-borns in that sense.
Asking our existing scientists to design and build a light-speed or beyond light-speed transport [in the next 50 years say], would be like asking the Wright Brothers to build an F-18. Ain't gonna happen without the passage of A LOT of time and trial and error first. And I just don't think we have that time / cooperative ability (all of human science would have to work together on this one - that much is a foregone conclusion).
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
<strong>The perfect plot for a porn movie</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>blah</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks for the links. They are an interesting read.
Of course.
It's only a general lack of understanding (or willingness to understand ) how important space will be in the future. There will come a time when we will wonder how we got along without it.
About other solar systems, the thing that makes most people sceptical about extra solar exploration is the distance between the stars ( most people out there don't even grasp this ). The distance between even the near by stars is vast compared to anything experienced in human exploration. Also there is the limiting factor of the speed of light. However our understanding of this limiting factor is changing every day.
Most people that don't believe we will find a way around the speed of light still fall back on Einstein's equations that were written early in the last century. It isn't that he was wrong : any mass that accelerates to the speed of light will aquire infinite mass therefore requring infinite energy to maintain that speed or to go any faster. A mathimatical impossibility.
However our ideas about the nature of space-time have changed radically since Einstein's time. He just didn't have all the pieces to the puzzel. We still don't. Earlier this year a pair of sceintists observed a a beam of light going from point A to point B without going the physical distance between. Not only that but it reached point B before it left point A. This goes against our common sense ideas about the nature of things. Yet it happened.
I have NO doubt that we will find a way around the speed of light. It may not happen in our lifetime ( travel between the stars will depend on a lot more advances besides just getting around the limiting factor of C ) but it will happen. Who knows what we might discover in a few hundred years. The bottom line : When I was a youth most scientists said finding a way around the speed of light was impossible. Today some scientists are exploring the possiblity.
Also many great advances in science happen by accident. We stumble on something. That's what makes knowing how soon we might make these advances difficult. Someone might discover something next Wednesday that radically changes our understanding of this problem by researching something else entirely.
To put it in perspective in the early part of the last century men thought if you were able to travel more than 30 miles an hour the blood would be pushed out of your brain and you would die. A little bit later that century men thought that the speed of sound was a physical barrier that couldn't be broken. Well, ideas change. It only takes the willingness to explore.
PS. I don't think we are rushing toward destruction. If you look at history people have ALWAYS thought that. All my life I've heard this and well........IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN FOLKS! We'll be here for a lot longer so get used to it. Say that human exsistance on the earth is going to end someday all the more reason to explore these avenues so humanity can survive. The only danger is being limited to one place.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>