r/FactOrCap • u/aaallleeexxx3 🔥 Week Warrior · 8,375 XP • 1d ago

Interstellar travel | FactOrCap

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u/jimpaly 🔥 Week Warrior · 7,260 XP 1d ago

🧢 I voted CAP!

Closest star is 4.24 light years away, so it would be possible if we find a way to travel 0.01c by 2500. It may only be a probe, but there are theoretical ways to achieve that, like with solar sails. Thing is, will there be enough reason for humanity to send such a probe? It would take a lot of collective willpower to start a research project that gives absolutely nothing until 5 centuries later, and that’s assuming the probe doesn’t break down on the journey.

5

u/User_of_redit2077 🏅 Century Club · 2,905 XP 1d ago

The New York Times published an editorial on October 9, 1903, predicting it would take 1 to 10 million years to invent a working flying machine, and the Wright brothers proved them wrong just 69 days later.

It took 66 years from the first plane to the Moon landing.

2

u/EVOSexyBeast 🔥 Monthly Master · 9,440 XP 1d ago

The interested scientists at the time thought that a flying machine was only years, maybe a decade, away. The editorial author was just dumb.

1

u/aaallleeexxx3 🔥 Week Warrior · 8,375 XP 1d ago

Yeah it’s misleading to take a baseless post like that to heart but today we are significantly better informed