Interstellar Ark

xantox writes "There are three strategies to travel 10.5 light-years from Earth to Epsilon Eridani and bring humanity into a new stellar system : 1) Wait for future discovery of Star Trek physics and go there almost instantaneously, 2) Build a relativistic rocket powered by antimatter and go there in 22 years by accelerating constantly at 1g, provided that you master stellar amounts of energy (so, nothing realistic until now), but what about 3): go there by classical means, by building a gigantic Ark of several miles in radius, propulsed by nuclear fusion and featuring artificial gravity, oceans and cities, for a travel of seven centuries — where many generations of men and women would live ? This new speculation uses some actual physics and math to figure out how far are our fantasies of space travel from their actual implementation."

Comments

Why "Fortunately for the human race"?

[Flying pig]

I venture to disagree, strongly. So far the explorers have only been fortunate, on the whole, for white men of Indo-European origin. Why is it fortunate for us that so much of the world has been conquered and overrun by the offspring of a small part of north-Western Europe? It has not exactly been fortunate for the American, Australian and South American original populations.

The lifestyle of hunter gatherers is not necessarily nasty, brutish and short. (I nearly wrote "British" there - Freudian slip.) Why is it that, when so many people get money, they want to spend it on living like hunter gatherers and nomads? Why do civilised people buy cars, and motorhomes, and boats, hunting licences, fishing gear? Why don't they want to spend their lives in cubicle farms before going home to be sold rubbish products on television?
The "Civilisation" that so many people seem to want to export to the rest of the Solar System and beyond is a pretty poor thing.

As a matter of fact this was very effectively satirised by C S Lewis long ago in his book "Out of the Silent Planet", and the likes of Stephen Hawking have never come up with any kind of rebuttal. If Hawking was not so badly disabled, it would be tempting to draw out the parallels between Lewis's scientist who wants to populate the Universe with people like him, and Hawking himself. As it is, Hawking can be excused his views on the grounds of the limitations he has to live with every day. But other proponents of the spread around the Universe of WASPs have fewer excuses.

Re:Why?

[StarfishOne]

Almost as exciting as being on an interstellar ark with hot women ^_^