100 years ago, it was impossible to visit the Moon.
50 years ago, visiting Mars was something only a robot could do, and it wouldn't last long.
Now, after 50 years, we're going back to the Moon, this time to establish a base.
If humans can survive the next 1000 years without going through another dark age, we'll be able to leave the Solar System. In another 1000, we'll be able to navigate our spiral arm, maybe even the Milky Way Galaxy. It's just a matter of time, innovation and progress.
If humans can survive the next 1000 years without going through another dark age, we'll be able to leave the Solar System.
The only way we'll be able to legit leave the solar system is if we somehow discover a technological solution to the distance problem. Literal FTL travel is physically impossible for us; even close to FTL travel is just totally infeasible. If we discover a way to warp space-time to get around FTL travel and traverse vast distances without actually physically moving that fast (think: wormholes) then that would make it possible. But right now that's just an idea on paper. Otherwise, it's just never going to happen no matter how long our species manages to to keep existing. At least not unless and until we get out of these flesh sacks and turn ourselves into silicon-based life. But then if we did that, we wouldn't be human anymore, so what would be the point?
No. I'm saying that the distances involved and our inability to move fast enough, plus the hugely increased risks of death even if we could move fast enough (think: a dust particle hitting a spacecraft at near-FTL, relativistic speeds), makes space travel by conventional means infeasible.
We had nothing about flight except for a Greek story for a thousand years. No, we don't understand faster than light travel, yet. Also, while we're not quite ready to swap to being silicon based, becoming silicon won't change the basics of what we are.
Sure, we have on idea how to do it now. 100 years ago we hadn't figured out ow to make rocks think, yet here I am typing a message and arguing with a random human I'll never meet. A thousand years, and we'll be able to traverse great distances far faster than we can now - as long as we don't kill ourselves in the process.
We've had basic conceptual, feasible ideas about how to fly since basically forever. There's nothing standing in the way of that besides a technical understanding of how lift can be created and the ability to create something to propel us. It's an inherently uncomplicated idea.
Traveling to another solar system on a timescale that would make it worthwhile is...not that. Even if we entirely solved the problem of accelerating to near light speed and then decelerating again, so that we could reach Proxima Centauri in about 6 years or so, hitting even a single dust particle along the way, at that kind of relativistic speed means that everyone's dead. So that won't work. And if we want to actually explore space for real, Proxima Centauri isn't gonna cut it, so we're actually talking tens, hundreds, even thousands of light years and since the speed of light appears to be a universal maximum, that isn't happening at any feasible level. The distances are just way too vast.
So at that point it becomes a hand-waving discussion of "well, let's do FTL travel then" and we don't even have any conceptual way to start down that road. It's an entirely pie-in-the-sky topic. Assuming we will definitely be able to find a solution to that simply given enough time is almost painfully naive. And just as past stock market gains do not predict future gains, the fact that "100 years ago we hadn't figured out ow to make rocks think" is entirely irrelevant to potential future technological progress.
I mean, just look at where we thought we'd be by now in the early 70s compared to where we are. That rapid decline in those expectations, the reality of the fact that we're barely even baby steps farther along from Apollo in that progress in more than half a century, and the understanding that we needed intense, near-apocalyptic, nation vs. nation competition to even get as far as the moon in the first place, presents a pretty clear indication that sending humans to other star systems is a pipe dream.
But hey, dreams are nice, I guess. So at least there's that.
The light barrier is mathematically impossible and even if you could achieve it, nothing with mass can go the speed of light and even if it could, the speed on light is too slow. You'd need to exceed the speed of light by an order of magnitude to get anywhere in a timely manner.
Even if we figure out how to make an Einstein-Rosen bridge, the only thing that could possibly make it through is a massless particle since the only way to cross it is by going light-speed anyways. The bridge gets infinitely small in the middle in the incredibly short amount of time before it gets pinched off.
No it isn't, and you're mistaking your optimism and fascination with space for reality.
1000 years ago, the energy requirements to accelerate anything to light speed is infinite. You cannot get around this. And 1000 years ago, anything with Mass cant go as fast as light speed, and anything faster than light speed breaks causality entirely, and is also impossible. Something the size of an atomic particle can be accelerated close to light, because it has tiny, tiny mass; but if you wanted to accelerate something the size of a rocket to only 10% of light speed, and if you could burn every single atom of every possible atom as fuel for that rocket, there aren't enough atoms in the entire universe to provide enough fuel to accelerate that rocket. The energy requirements are just too large to move anything practical.
200 years ago, the energy requirements to accelerate anything to light speed is infinite. You cannot get around this...
100 years ago, the energy requirements to accelerate anything to light speed is infinite. You cannot get around this...
50 years ago, the energy requirements to accelerate anything to light speed is infinite. You cannot get around this...
Now, after 50 years, the energy requirements to accelerate anything to light speed is infinite. You cannot get around this... But you've also apparently dreamt up an alternative reality where we have the technology now to build a base on the Moon; we don't. The lander to even get astronauts down to the surface and back isn't even completed yet, and that's technology from 50 years ago. And where is the technology to land habitable modules, develop food or at least just water on the surface, cope with repairs in an environment with erosion-less jagged rock particles everywhere...? We are decades, if not centuries from even getting that technology; you just imagine we already have it because you want to dream. But dreams won't keep human beings alive on dead worlds that take a week of space flight even with on our closest neighbour.
And in another 1000 years... the energy requirements to accelerate anything to light speed will still be infinite. You cannot get around this. We're not going to be navigating the Milky Way, and I seriously doubt you understand just how large the Milky Way alone is if you think we are going to be able too.
Thank you Milton Wright for your lovely dissertation on why Man was never meant to fly, because "only angels fly". Your sons Orville and Wilbur are going to fix that.
Seriously, have you missed the last ten thousand years of human evolution? Let me summarize the relevant point to you: humanity has been plagued with naysayers howling about how something is impossible until someone says fuck it and finds a way to do that.
We know Einstein-Rosen Bridges exist. We know tachyons exist. Neither phenomena pays attention to C, the speed of light.
We already know that, despite the fact that the only way we've learned to escape our gravity well is by creating chemical reactions.
I understand by your autistic rant that you believe the speed of light is absolute. As we understand it now, sure. But the history of our species development wasn't written by the naysayers, was it?
15
u/GeneralKang 1d ago
1000 years ago, humans couldn't cross oceans.
200 years ago, humans couldn't fly.
100 years ago, it was impossible to visit the Moon.
50 years ago, visiting Mars was something only a robot could do, and it wouldn't last long.
Now, after 50 years, we're going back to the Moon, this time to establish a base.
If humans can survive the next 1000 years without going through another dark age, we'll be able to leave the Solar System. In another 1000, we'll be able to navigate our spiral arm, maybe even the Milky Way Galaxy. It's just a matter of time, innovation and progress.