129 réponses à ce sujet

[tanarri23]

Moon and Mars almost certainly, satellites of our system's gas giants probably, anything more highly unlikely. If we continue to develop the technology and understanding of physics that we have today, that is. Accidental revolutionary discoveries or catastrophes pushing people to leave Earth in spaceships that would travel for generations not accounted for.

Modifié par tanarri23, 23 février 2010 - 12:11 .

[Gaddmeister]

ToJKa1 wrote...

Gaddmeister wrote...

I doubt we will ever see intergalactic space travel. However, there might be a small probability for interstellar space travel (though I doubt it). And not as soon as 2148, more like 3000 if ever, but what do I know?

Intergalactic space travel? Impossible, even with FTL speeds. Nearest galaxy to Milky Way is Andromeda, that is ~2500000 light years away. Without FTL technology we'll never go beyond our solar system, perhaps it would be possible to reach some of the nearest stars (~4 light years away), but the costs and risks would be enormous. However traveling across the galaxy like in Mass Effect is impossible. Even with FTL technology.

Space. It's damn BIG.

I fully agree. And as you say, if nothing else will get in the way, then probably the cost for these projects will. Regarding interstellar travel however, I like the idea of the generation ship travelling att the constant acceleration of 1 G. Not that I think that it will ever be made, but it's kind of an interesting thought though.

[ZOMBO6F]

Imo I dont see generational starships as viable for humans,in 2 at most 3 generations everyone on board would be insane

[T1l]

There are many good reasons why humans will never get off this rock and you don't need to go searching very far to find them. This topic has been discussed to death and the only answer you're likely to find is that, currently, we don't have one. Space travel like you see in Mass Effect comes with a host of massive hurdles which humans can't overcome; not now and not in the foreseeable future. It’s pure science fiction.

As others have said, we're likely to kill ourselves off either by overpopulation and/or war before we ever figure out a way to either create fully sustainable stations capable of extreme long distance travel, or FTL travel which is a theoretical impossibility.

Read some books, do some research, and become disheartened and realise this is likely our only home and we're ****ing it at an extraordinary rate.

TL:DR - No.

[ace1221]

can anyone actually believe that we havent devoted more resources to exploring and exploiting space?

there are millions of asteriods in the belt rich with more minerals that all of the earth combined.

i believe we will finally get going in terms of space exploration when we make fusion power feasible

[T1l]

ace1221 wrote...

can anyone actually believe that we havent devoted more resources to exploring and exploiting space?

If people would stop throwing rocks at each other for a moment and work together we might have a chance.

But as long as people's arses point at the ground that's not going to happen.

[ace1221]

what makes our lack of space colonization even more ridiculous is the great possibility of a Earth ending catastrophe. everyone will be like sh!t, why were we fighting again?

[Icinix]

Yeah well, look, I'd like to believe we can...but...

The lizard people are going to hold us back. I'm sure it's nothing personal, they just want to harvest us or something, and they can't do that if we're spread all over the galaxy.

Sorry to burst your bubble folks.



<for those of you who may possibly be cocking an eyebrow now, please resume normal facial expression, as this is in no way serious. Didn't feel the need to specify, but some people have expressed concern over previous comments.>

[Gaddmeister]

ace1221 wrote...

what makes our lack of space colonization even more ridiculous is the great possibility of a Earth ending catastrophe. everyone will be like sh!t, why were we fighting again?

It's not ridiculous. If we could have, we would have, I'm sure of that. But space colonisation isn't easy. And in addition to technical difficulties I doubt we could do it if we used all money on Earth. The whole world economy would probably collapse.

[Gaddmeister]

ZOMBO6F wrote...

Imo I dont see generational starships as viable for humans,in 2 at most 3 generations everyone on board would be insane

That's a definite probability. But it's still an interesting idea imo, both from a scientific and psychological point of wiew.

[ace1221]

it took us 60 years to get from flying a few hundred yards, to flying 250000 miles into space. thats quite a significant jump, with less tech and resources than are available now. im not saying that we should go all out and turn mars into a new earth, but even a few below ground settlements would be good. do the same on the moon.

Modifié par ace1221, 23 février 2010 - 12:49 .

[medlish]

As far as I know there are already plans about "colonizing" Mars. Now don't think about terraforming or something but small little connected containers where people can live in.

Also, who know what future will bring us? Once we believed the Earth was flat, then we believed it's impossible to fly and now we fly with rockets to rocks in space circling a giant fireball in the black ocean of space. Maybe we'll find a way to trick E=mc^2.

[Jalem001]

Its a matter of priorities. We only went to the moon because we were trying to outdo the Soviets. The private industry will only be interested once there is a profit, and there's nothing profitable about space yet. If we find something profitable on the moon...well that would change things significantly (Asteroid belt is too far away currently).



Treaties which ban the weapnization of space are holding us back as well imo. The US government would, for example, invest large amounts of money (Along with NATO allies) if they develop space based weapons.

[Ill Logic]

Mass effect is real:   nextbigfuture.com/2010/02/mach-effect-propulsion-research-update.html    

[CrassKid]

I don't understand why so many people here have a U.S.A vs. the world mentality. Space exploration is expensive. Various space agencies across the globe already cooperate on projects. I can definitely see several organizations pooling together resources and setting up a permanent research station on Mars by 2103. Note, I said research station and not colony.



Any expansion of humanity beyond Earth will require some economically viable goal. An economic reason like, "CRAP!, we're almost out of platinum. Oh look, that asteroid has huge deposit of platinum." Once there's an economic reason and once someone has already blazed the path, then you'll get people who are interested in moving off world for no other than reason than "Earth sucks". Once enough people are open to the idea of living on space stations and on other planets, you'll start seeing things like Starbucks: L4 point station branch and Hard Rock Cafe: Mars. I doubt it will happen by 2103 and I doubt it will be a rapid development, but barring an Earth-wide ecological disaster or a global civilization destabilizing war I think it WILL HAPPEN EVENTUALLY.

[hexaligned]

We have the theoretical knowledge now to create warp bubbles. The issue? Estimated to require as much energy as our sun will put out in it's life time just to form one, let alone stabalize it and manipulate it in some useful way. So without some fictional energy source like eezo, or (whatever those crystals in star trek were called) just appearing from the blue, we will never see intergalactic space travel.



Mining near earth asteroids is probobly about as far as our space program will progress, maybe a short term colony on the moon. With the way our population is skyrocketing we are much more likely too see a massive die off and new dark ages before that happens though.

[tiagopestana]

relhart wrote...

We have the theoretical knowledge now to create warp bubbles.

Can you link a source for this? I'd be interested in reading about it, and if it's the same kind of ideas I heard about before.

[Karl45]

Spending billions on something that has no-little pay off doesn't make any economic sense at the moment for any country.

[hexaligned]

tiagopestana wrote...

relhart wrote...

We have the theoretical knowledge now to create warp bubbles.

Can you link a source for this? I'd be interested in reading about it, and if it's the same kind of ideas I heard about before.

Some new research I was reading about involving Dark energy. I'm at work atm, check back in a bit, I'll see if I can find a link.

[hexaligned]

news.discovery.com/space/warp-drive-spaceship-engine.html

Theres an article talking about it, couldn't find what I was looking at before.
It was basicaly just expounding on Alcubierre's theoretical work with warping space, only using Dark energy as a means of expanding space behind the bubble to "propell" it, so if you are familiar with that, you have the gist of it. 

Mathematics of the Alcubierre drive
Using the 3+1 formalism of general relativity, the spacetime is described by a foliation of space-like hypersurfaces of constant coordinate time t. The general form of the Alcubierre metric is:

where α is the lapse function that gives the interval of proper time between nearby hypersurfaces, βi is the shift vector that relates the spatial coordinate systems on different hypersurfaces and γij is a positive definite metric on each of the hypersurfaces. The particular form that Alcubierre studied[1] is defined by:


where


and

with R > 0 and σ > 0 arbitrary parameters. Alcubierre's specific form of the metric can thus be written;

With this particular form of the metric, it can be shown that the
energy density measured by observers whose 4-velocity is normal to the
hypersurfaces is given by

where g is the determinant of the metric tensor. Thus, as the energy density is negative, one needs exotic matter to travel faster than the speed of light.[1] The existence of exotic matter is not theoretically ruled out, the Casimir effect and the accelerating universe
both lending support to the proposed existence of such matter. However,
generating enough exotic matter and sustaining it to perform feats such
as faster-than-light travel (and also to keep open the 'throat' of a wormhole)
is thought to be impractical. Low has argued that within the context of
general relativity, it is impossible to construct a warp drive in the
absence of exotic matter.[3] It is generally believed that a consistent theory of quantum gravity will resolve such issues once and for all

There's Alcubierres theory, Like I said though, without some fictional energy source, never going to happen, at least not in the time span humanity has open to it.

Modifié par relhart, 23 février 2010 - 01:59 .

[tiagopestana]

Yeah, I'd seen Alcubierre's work before. If I'm not totally mistaken, one of the problems with it (apart from us not knowing how the actually generate the "bubble") was that the "bubble" was not stable within the context of General Relativity alone.



Thanks for the link, just from the news article it looks like those guys had some nice ideas on how to get around that. I'll try to give a quick read on the arxiv paper once I get home.

[FreshJuice]

Jalem001 wrote...

Its a matter of priorities. We only went to the moon because we were trying to outdo the Soviets. The private industry will only be interested once there is a profit, and there's nothing profitable about space yet. If we find something profitable on the moon...well that would change things significantly (Asteroid belt is too far away currently).

Treaties which ban the weapnization of space are holding us back as well imo. The US government would, for example, invest large amounts of money (Along with NATO allies) if they develop space based weapons.

there's **** load of profits on the moon pal . NASA actually does have a program thats in the early stages of moon colonization, the reason is helium3. saw a show on discovery science the other day.
but they're not working how to sustain an actuall colony there yet, they're just working on vehicles for navigating on the moons surface, that thing isnt flat you know
the biggest issue with actuall colonisation at the moment seems to be life support and transportation as i understand it

i say less developing of those goddamn ipods, DO something with all that money

[kraze07]

I'd imagine it would be hard living on a spaceship unless it's built like a cruise ship with plenty of things to do and keep people entertained. If you talk to anyone who's served in a navy they'd tell you how people start changing after so long away from civilization.

[Demigod]

If it is commercial viable then yes I can see it happening. Now that companies are starting to make inroads into space and take access away from the monolithic bureaucracy that is government I can see space development accelerating.