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The Impossibility of Colonizing the Galaxy
OriginalArlen writes "The science fiction writer Charlie Stross has written an excellent and comprehensive explanation of why, thousands of SF books, movies, and games notwithstanding, human colonization of other star systems is impossible. Although interstellar colonization seems common-sensical to many, Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two. Nevertheless it would be interesting to see reasoned responses from the community who believe that colonization is not merely possible, but inevitable — and even, as Hawking has said, vital for the survival of the species. So, who's right — Hawking or Stross?"
Well it may be physically impossible but also essential for our survival. Thus int he end we're really screwed.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
You are comparing some sci fi writer with Hawking? C'mon.
human colonization of other star systems is impossible
Look how far humans have come in the past 10,000 or even 100 years. We went from primitive wheels to an International Space Station in that time alone. Give humans another 10,000 years and I doubt this will not have been accomplished (if we don't blow ourselves up first).
"So, who's right -- Hawking or Stross?"
They are not saying opposite things, one is saying that we can't colonize other solar systems, the other that we must. They are probably both true.
Using "the high frontier" and appeals to settler gumption and heroic individualism isn't the right paradigm; if it's going to happen we need to abandon certain cherished illusions (dwelt on at length) and start doing some hard thinking about what we really want.
And as soon as I settle the rebellion on the outlying planets in the Sprouticus system I will be bringing my Imperial Battle Fleet to explain the situation to Mr Stross. Perhaps I will banish him to one of my penal planets, he can amuse the inmates with his so called logic.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
It never ceases to amaze me at the perpetual and unwavering defeatist attitude expressed by people during every generation.
It is mere physics obstacles that need to be overcome, that includes dimensional hopping or more likely controlled black-holes or worm holes, to colonize the galaxy.
We will overcome the hurdles eventually, including the radiation, the vital resources, and spacial 'deserts'.
To even say it is impossible or requires a 'magic wand' is absurd.
author needs to revistit history and the countless times that silly notion was postured.
$10 says we see a McDonalds on Mars before NASA arrives.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Generation ships. Suspended animation. Bussard Ramjets.
Baby steps throughout Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.
This article is incredibly short-sighted and unreasonably pessimistic. He's using current technology, economics, and incentive to make specific conclusions about something that will most likely happen in the next few hundred years. Just consider how much science and technology has changed in the last 100 years - can you possibly imagine what will be possible 100 years from now, much less draw conclusions about feasibility?
I think that technology's march is not only inevitable, but accelerating. To outright dismiss these possibilities is completely unreasonable and irrational.
It ain't like "discovering" the Americas. For that, all that was required was some ships to get over there and some hard work when you arrived. What you needed to survive is available, get to work.
It's vastly different with "space colonisation". First of all, you gotta get off this planet. Not a trivial task. We barely get payload into orbit, and to leave the gravity of earth, you even need a bit more thrust. Then there's the distance. We're not talking weeks or months on the ocean, we're talking years and decades in interstellar travel. Air is limited and gravity isn't, problems that don't exist when "colonizing" on a planet.
And when you arrive, your chances to actually get a hospitable planet are slim to nil. You will have to bring air, food, water and so on along. At best you'll have energy in the form of solar energy at your hands, and that's all you got.
Colonizing the galaxy is possible. And I side with Hawking in the opinion that it is our destiny, if we want to survive as a species. But I wouldn't bet my money on a Star Trek like progress, where in merely 200 years we'll have colonies all over the galaxy. First of all we have to find a solution to the light speed problem. Until then, generation ships sound like the only way of colonisation, and that is for sure no way to create what we would consider today colonies. We could not keep in touch with them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He needs to envision new technologies and sciences to free us from this solar system. Who knows what will be invented and discovered in the next two or three hundred years? He certainly does not.
I wonder how many inventors etc that have heard that proclamation during the centuries, if we acknowledge this as the truth, the game is over even before it starts.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
I didn't read TFA, but (from the summary):
Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two
So, what's the problem? Science has given us dozens of "magic wands" the last century, why would it stop now? In 50 years will will probably have lots of amazing thingamajings that we can't even begin to imagine now, like perhaps some StarTrekish warp-drive.
I guess that's what America has to learn. "Go West" doesn't work anymore.
Not just them. It's just a physical fact. Acclerate for 1 G for a year and you reach speed c. How one does that is another matter; how to shield yourself from hitting a "penny" at that speed and turning into plasma is another. Light, infrared and radio waves hit head-on would violet-shift into x-rays and cosmic rays, so you have to shield for that as well. And then there's the matter of navigating when you can't see out.
The Singularity will hit us before any of the problems he describes would become tractable.
And when it does, the question of how do you launch a meatbag in a life-support coffin to go X distance in Y time will be meaningless.
Well, of course we will. But we wont have our bodies.
The first big tech is a brain/silicon bridge. Hawking is very correct on this. If we do create reconstructing nanobots and high-AI, we need good interfaces. In fact, we would at first need a device described in the Story of Manna, in which a glucose fuel cell, a computer hooked up to nerves, and a wireless link are installed on C2-C4 of the vertebrae.
Once we can maintain body computers, we can focus on yet even more miniaturization and also focus on near-Earth travel (Moon and Mars). However, it will come time that our bodies will die, yet our brains will live. That will usher in the time we have "Brains in a Jar".
And yet, our tech will not be yet complete for star travel. We will need to be able to completely pattern a brain for all information and encode it so a certain computer can run it... a human brain image. Only when we can completely digitize our brains can we even cope with any stresses of space travel.
However, when we are pure data, we can travel rather rapidly: we can spread nanobot spores that create factories (mini factories) on different planets and asteroids and can copy to the nanites what is received by maser or any other transmission method. When we can convert our brains to pure information, then we can transmit and travel at C.
Then again, who knows what the real physics laws are... It'd be fun to see how far physics comes in 20000 years.
PS: Btw that is the funniest NB I have read for a long time...
He states that to get a Mercury Capsule sized vessel to 0.1c takes about the energy consumption of the planet for 5 days. OK, sounds about right. He then states that this makes it impossible (accounting for inefficiencies). I'm less willing to buy that.
First reason: rockets are power hungry, yet we've done them before. When the Saturn V launched, instantaneous energy consumption in the US went up 6%. Sure, it's many orders of magnitude smaller, but the idea is the same: you store up the energy over a long period (antimatter, say), and then take it out in a hurry.
Second reason: energy consumption of the world is climbing, and will continue to do so. It may get briefly more expensive as we have oil problems, but renewable and nuclear sources will counteract that (if they don't, space colonization is pretty much a moot point). Wait a hundred years, and the energy requirement will merely read like the largest project humanity has ever undertaken, not something entirely ridiculous.
The basic error he's making is that he's arguing we can't do it with today's technology. Yup, I agree, but that's not the interesting question. I'll leave the question of whether things like generation ships can work from a social standpoint to others more qualified, but I'm confident they can *eventually* work from a technical one.
We can't colonize other planets now. However, given his fondness for analogies....
If you collapsed the whole of human history down to a single day, we were wandering hunter-gatherers for 11 hours and 56 minutes. Only in the final four minutes before midnight have we been farming for a living, and in those four minutes our scientific knowledge (and achievements) have increased exponentially.
In the last four minutes we went from spears and loincloths to long range missiles and synthetic fabrics. We are now the only species on the planet that can survive organ transplants, travel at hundreds of miles per hour, walk on the moon, and communicate instantly from opposite sides of the planet. All of this we gained in the last four minutes of our first day of existence as humans.
The kind of scientific momentum we have going right now is mind-boggling. Things that our ancestors couldn't even imagine are now common reality. Imagine what kinds of "magic wands" our scientists will make for us tomorrow.
I am not saying that interstellar colonization will be possible, I am just saying that a quick review of the history of science robs us of any grounds upon which to form an opinion of "it will never be possible."
Forget even what we can do in the next 100 or 1000 years.
There's not a "hypothetical" end of the planet as he suggests, it will happen with certainty, but not for a very, very long time. So... what will we be able to do in 1,000,000 years or so? Usually I'm not for this kind of "the future will be amazing beyond our wildest dreams" stuff, but when you're talking that sort of timescale, I really don't see how you can use the word "impossible."
The article make great points as for how colonization cannot happen, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways yet to be discovered.
One area he didn't discuss: move a mini-planet through space ala 'Dark City'. Or for a more obscure reference, read 'Wolfbane' where the entire planet is moved across the galaxy and sustained by an artificial sun orbiting Earth (ok, so there were complications with the alien race who kidnapped Earth...). However, these are all scifi ideas in and of themselves, not a setup for a future colonization setting.
He is right about colonizing the rest of Earth though. Or maybe even finishing exploring it.
Very bad summary, subbie.
The requirements to colonize other worlds are prohibitive for the time being, I don't think anyone denies that. But throwing out numbers as though they negate the possibility doesn't make sense.
We're doing things now that would have been impossible a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago they could do the math and decide that, say, flying into orbit, or building an electronic computer might be possible, but the gap that remained to be filled was the expertise it took to do everything involved sufficiently well. Right now, we have the same proof of concept for possible propulsion technologies (eg Orion), or space elevator technologies (eg carbon nanotubes) that they had back then for manned flight, but we can't do them sufficiently well, on a sufficiently large scale for economic space travel.
That's fine. The relevant technologies will advance without the need for any specific focus on space travel. The technology of space travel will be the synthesis of many different technologies that are going to happen anyway. So, if it's too hard to do immediately, fine. That doesn't discredit the idea. It just means we can't do it now.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I'd say wait on judging such a thing to be impossible until a well-established Grand Unified Theory comes together. Quantum mechanics could still be hiding plenty of "magic wands" that we don't know about yet. Interstellar travel certainly seems more plausible today than an atomic bomb must have seemed to Isaac Newton.
The rest is a matter of supplying enough non-solar power and enough of the non-recyclable material for the trip.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke
'nuff said.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
His argument in a nut shell.
It's really far away and it would take a long time to get there.
We don't need to save humans, if the humans on earth die then who cares about anyone else.
It would cost Earth a lot of money and wouldn't bring back a return on the investment soon.
Basically, he has an Earth centric view that outright dismisses the survival or our species and places money before the advancement of man in the bigger picture.
Some scientist always come out and says this or that is impossible and we have reached the end. Just 50 or so years ago the same minded scientist were declaring everything had been discovered with the four forces and they were made up of protons, neutrons, ...ect. We just needed to tidy up some ends. Everything had been discovered. Low and behold we find out that our universe is far more complex. The universe is made up of even smaller subatomic particles all the way to string theory.
The point is or lesson. The universe is not absolute. There is always a way. And no matter how improbably it may be at the moment someone somewhere will find a way. We will eventually make it out there. Provided we don't destroy ourselves first.
Well, you get close to c, but never actually get there. Problem is, how do you pack enough juice to accelerate at 1g for a year?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Cos just over the last 10,000 years we've evolved to be able to metabolise cow milk, over the last 100,000 or so we've evolved white skins in cool regions to improve production of vitamin D, our limbs have shortened in proportion to the rest of the body and become more muscular to aid with heat retention etc etc etc etc etc.
And that's all in the blink of an eye... On interstellar and galactic timescales... You're going to have to tell me what a human being is.
Deleted
You just touched on the real reason why this is a blessing in disguise.
The human race is simply too immature to be spawning across the galaxy.
Our reptilian sub-brain has to be nullified somehow before this is permitted. Until the tendency to believe in superstition is bred out of the race, there is no chance that any such thing could possibly succeed. I'm not just talking about Scientology, but Islamic medievalism and the identically reactionary fundamentalist Christianity, which refuses to believe the most blindingly obvious facts.
Even if we got there, it would probably result in the irrevocable damage to the galaxy, similar to what has been done on Earth.
was not that we can't colonize space, but more that the classic SF view of people setting up space stations orbiting the sun, domed or underground colonies on the Moon and other planets, and space freighters setting up some sort of interplanetary trade (space pirates optional), much less interstellar freighters shipping people and goods between star systems ain't gonna happen barring a miracle that breaks the laws of physics as we know them. Which is not to say it can't happen but there are interesting consequences to such feats.
A lot of the focus in the essay was on human beings settling off Earth. If we go with robots, heavily altered human beings and various other forms of transcended beings, then colonization of other worlds is perfectly possible, as long as we adapt the people for harsh climes. But that's not the point of the essay. Humanity for the most part was evolved to live on Earth and getting us to survive anywhere else is next to impossible or of dubious effort at best.
And then there is the fact that for the energy/time cost of manufacturing widgets on one planet in our system and shipping it to another part, it would be a lot cheaper/faster to simply send the schematic by electromagnetic transmission and then have some manufacturing facility on the destination planet build it there. Moving matter is expensive. Moving information is a lot cheaper. Space freighters, whether interplanetary or interstellar, don't make any sense. Just because it worked for sea ships doesn't mean it works for space ships.
Does Charlie Stross think we couldn't send sentient robots to Mars to build a colony of sentient robots? I doubt it, but that wasn't the point of the essay. The question is whether humans could settle Mars, and he's rightfully skeptical of that. So am I. If anything from this world settles Mars and forms a viable self-sustaining colony there, it won't be human as we conceive of it.
But we now know that it's not true. There is a class G star (like our own Suns class) only 5 light years away - a mere 50 years traveling at 10% C (it'll take about 34 days accelerating at a constant 1 G to reach 10% C).
There are 50 star systems (66 stars because of several binary systems) within 16 light years of earth. 50 of these stars are M class or red in color - about 80% of these are red dwarfs - probably not a great place to look for habitable planets.
It should be a fairly attainable goal to send out 20 ships to the 10 most likely close habitable stars, and expect to see a result in 60 or so years (50 years travelling + 10 years for radio message to be sent back)
..........FULL STOP.
Googlebot speaks!
Oh mighty Googlebot can you mass produce us a 4x4 to carry us Gliese 581c on one tank of olive oil before they set us up the bomb?
As Xenu proved by colonizing this planet, space travel already exists.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Tiny errors aiming at 4 light years out will give you a big miss on the other end. And we're talking tiny. At speed c minus a whisker of your choice, the stars fore shift violet and the field of view distorts to a point -- the stars aft likewise shift red and distort to a point. And the sensors are frying in high energy x-rays. The problem, you see, isn't aiming when you are accelerating. It's the *deceleration* that's the navigation problem. You spend a year running up to c, then flip tail-to-fore and decelerate at 1 g for a year. For that, you need to know exactly where your're pointing, exactly know your speed relative to the destination. If you are off in your aim, you can miss by light-months. If you can't gauge speed, you can stop light-months short or past your destination. The problem lessens as you slow down, but the bulk of the errors would occur near the midpoint of the journey.
Exactly. I've had the idea for a while that humanity is the Earth's attempt at creating spores of its biosphere (Humanity NT, NT = "Nice Try") From the perspective of a gene I believe our purpose as a species is not to spread our species, that's nothing but a human conceit -- our purpose as a species is to spread genes as terrestrial life, a functioning genome from which new species can emerge.
It's humbling to see ourselves as nothing more than fruiting bodies of an enormous slime mold.
We would be just as effective in this task by freezing a bolus of protozoa, bacteria, and algae spores and having a small probe disperse them across the atmospheres of non-biotic planets with compatible atmospheres, temperatures, and suns. Add water, atmosphere, and energy. Stir vigorously. Wait three billion years.
-Joe
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
He said "without a magic wand". Then he listed a couple of possible magic wands.
FWIW, he neglected (not missed, merely skimmed over) "MacroLife", which would allow glactic colonization without magic beyond nuclear fusion...but *wouldn't* be particularly economic. Perhaps.
Since the MacroLife concept isn't widely spoken of, let me elucidate:
1) You build a space-based factory.
2) You build a colony nearby to manage it.
3) People get comfortable living in the colony, and enlarge it, and make it self-sufficient.
4) There's a political dispute.
5) People living in the colony attach an engine, and depart slowly for "elsewhere".
6) You don't want a tremendously high speed, because you collect materials along the way.
This will require large numbers of technical advances. Closed cycle life support systems are only one of many, but the only one that approaches "magic wand" status is controlled fusion. (I don't think that fission would suffice. Refueling would be too difficult.)
Note:
1) This is slow.
2) This isn't something that one intentionally creates.
3) Most of the colonies will probably decide to stay put. That's fine, while in situ they provide a net economic gain.
4) Espect to have, perhaps, 5 colonies departing / century on an average, with a fairly large population of colonies.
5) The motives will be political or religious rather than economic. Those who leave must be prepared to suffer a considerable economic hardship.
6) The colonies need to contain a viable population. This probably means 5,000 people and a staic population...though various work-arounds are possible.
Conterindicators: Advanced robotics would probably mean that the space colony wouldn't be overseeing the running of the space factory, but it might be a way for an initially wealthy group to excape overpopulation, and the associated governmental restraints. Or there might be other motives. Or there might not. This whole thing could be a "could have happened, but didn't".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
He sounds like one of the mundane SF proponents. Mundane SF is the idea that there never will be nanotech, there never will be AI, there never will be space travel....you get the picture.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I believe the capability to traverse and colonize the universe is quite within our capability. As stated, it is "impossible" at this point, because, we don't have enough interest and resources dedicated to the cause, not to mention religious/social/political barriers impeding progress. The solution is simple: World War III. Seriously, consider the fact that Charles Lindbergh gave his autograph for one of Apollo 11's crew. Within a period of only about forty-two years, man had moved from having difficulty crossing the Atlantic ocean by a primitive airplane in 1927 to landing on the moon on sophisticated spacecraft in 1969. What lay between are these two events: WWII and the Cold War. These wars caused nations to practically transform overnight into industrial, scientific nations with one mindset: progress. Nations competed in science and technology, and as a result, devoted massive funds and national interest to progress in that respect. This competition resulted in many breakthroughs and wondrous achievements in science and technology. Given this, many lament that mankind would lose morals and other basic human traits in the midst of such competition and progress. True, man has touched upon many new technologies which he has had difficulty to tame and to foresee of its consequences. But the evidence that rational thinking prevails through such times our forefathers went through, is the fact that our we are well and alive today, not in a nuclear shelter with fifty feet of snow above our heads. With WWIII would come a second space and technological race, one which would see much progress through competition. When the period of euphoria comes after the conflict, hopefully the world's problems would have been resolved, and people would enjoy the new technologies developed through the conflict. Is WWIII really necessary? Well, yes, considering the inefficient leadership, mismanagement, and the huge amount of bitching and inaction we see in the world today. War would mobilize everyone, solve problems, and put gears into action. Afterwards, people would come to appreciate the progress. Hopefully, any of us here would see the first rocket, or should I say utility to traverse the universe, take off. Due to time dilation, I don't think any of us would live to hear the news of arrival and colonization, but then again, progress may see the extenuation of the human life. Who knows? Anything is possible.
The whole "that would be like a magic wand" line is basically a self-invalidating argument, especially when it comes to the energy involved in sending usefull ammounts of manpower and material to other planets/star systems. The overall energy used by mankind since the early roman empire has increased from 0.25 x 10-e8 to 0.17 x 10-e13 W, roughly a 75.000-fold increase as we tapped into wind and water power, fossil fuels (=> chemical rockets) and nuclear fission (=> inevitable fission powered spaceflight). I would like to remind this gentleman (the one from the article) that the considered time-period, roughly 2000 years, only ammounts to 1/20.000 of the total career of Homo Sapiens, whose overall existence has been defined by an ever-increasing ammount of usable energy. There is NO indication whatsoever that this trend is about to end, with still pentifull coal and oil desposits (there is even an entirely virgin continent left to exploit), quickly spreading fission technology and probable fusion power in the next 50 years. What i am trying to say (i'm a bit drunk though) is that weither or not we're going to the outer planets and to the stars is only a matter of how much a fraction of our overall energy production such a trip would cost : early transatlantic ships would have been impossible without a convenient way to use wind power, flight relied on internal combustion and fossil fuels, similarily practical spaceflight is gonna require more advanced energy sources that are not only probable, but providing we don't go extinct, inevitable. We can't do it now, but we soon will. From that perspective an upcoming "magic wand" (which wouldn't be magic at all but only the logical replacement of our present energy-harnessing techniques) is not 'highly unlikly' but rather 'highly probable'. Practical fusion power, space-based solar energy, giant tidal generator, thermoclinal conductors, cheap antimater production, you name it, the only question about them is "when", not "how". just look at the curves, we're getting there, saying that RIGHT NOW we couldn't do it is irrelevant, it's all a matter of how much energy we find ourselves able and willing to invest. Seems to me this guy is just trying to upset his fans (havn't read his work though).
Agreed on b) and c), but ideology, partecipating in a project bigger than oneself, could still be a big motivation, provided it does not interfere with other motivations, that is, povided it does not cost too much.
... you get the idea.
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So, the way i see it, there is only one solution, which is to dilate the time scale as well.
But, imagine space elevators will be common in 500 years, then some no-profit organization initiates an open-source design of a huge generation ship, something the size of los angeles or bigger, for example, that carries enough mass to shield from radiation, and it is big enough to generate some gravity by centrifual force, without rotating too fast. Eventually it could host lakes, trees, houses,
So, what do you do to keep the cost down ? you go slow, so the design takes perhaps 500 to 1000 years, then the construction begins, so either materials are sent into space, like one kilogram is sent each week, but this is tough, or we hijack a small size asteroid to build it, or both.
How long will it take, 10000 years ? so be it ! Assume perhaps other 10000 years to build the thing, and let's throw in other 30000 for debugging, testing, and because shit happens
then the ship sails, it goes one AU per year, maybe, but so what ?
The issue is not to get somewhere fast, is not to be there when the next civilization scale disaster strikes the earth
So, even if it takes 50000 years we can still send out 80000 ships within the next 4 bllion years before the sun wipes out the face of the earth
80000 it's not too bad, but hey, i'd be even happy with a thousands ships,
which gives roughly 4 million years to build each one.
I know, i am assuming a LOT, especially on the capabilities of human beings of caying out projects with such a bigger time scale, but, all things considered, why rule it out ??
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
You can also visit history and see the immense resources squandered on dead-ends, misconceptions, and wishful thinking: everything from alchemy to Stalinism. Having voices say "this is not nearly is viable a path as you think it is" can be very helpful when it comes to allocating resources and making choices for immediate research. Other voices that chime in, later, "maybe this is more possible than we thought in the past" are also helpful. I don't think it's possible to have a field of thought populated just by the "happy medium," either: the adversarial relationship between skeptics and dreamers might be far more productive.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The calculations: 2*10^18 J
Tzar Bomba - 50MT = 2*10^17 J
Meaning nuclear power equivalent to ten russian bombs would suffice to reach 0.1c
Meaning about 100 to reach what would be c if not for Einstein (but which is still between 0.6 and 0.8c and sounds like much nicer speed than 0.1c)
Releasing the energy gradually, accelerating at comfortable 1g you can reach newtonian equivalent of 1c in about a year. You can continue accelerating to make the trip less boring for the travelers due to time dillatation (for us, their speed won't change, for them - travel time will get much shorter) or drop into cruise speed for another 30 years. Then decelerate at 1g for a year again (or start deceleration halfway, keep the value of 1g all the time and you have the problem of artificial gravity solved). and you're 20 light years away from Earth in less than 30 years.
Sure nuclear power is just plain energy and you'd need more than a bunch of russian nukes, but the point is the energy is available and the time is not nearly as ridiculous as it would seem (and time dillatation can easily replace hibernation as a method of time compression for the travelers).
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Flagrantly stolen from Wikipedia: Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction: 1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
transatlantic voyages were impossible 1000 years ago. I guess my problem with this guy is that he's using today's technology to prove that something is impossible. If we were constantly doing that we'd just have to admit that everything that hasn't been accomplished is impossible. 40 years ago fantastic search engines that can basically answer any question you ask would have been considered impossible. In that analogy, you could say it took us two years to develop a chip that can execute X instructions per seconds, how can we possibly imagine a computer that can make 1 billion calculations per second? Who knows what kind of capabilities we'll have in 100 years? I don't. Is it possible that we develop some kind of nuclear fusion engine? Or a antimatter engine? I don't know, but I would never say something is impossible. I believe in the saying that when someone says something is 'impossible', they are usually wrong.
No Sigs!
Exponential growth levels out in nature because it reaches the limit of the resources.
This will by definition someday happen to human technological progress.
However, also by definition, we have no idea what the limits of the resources are.
In this case they are basically the resources constrained only by the physical laws of the universe.
Before we ever hit that barrier, out civilization could quite possibly reach heights that we today would consider a "Singularity."
While I agree with both of your points, that the universe doesn't care, and that ignorant project managers/engineering supervisors need to have a clue about basic raw physics when dictating project goals, you still havn't addressed the basic questions:
Is is possible that mankind can get to the stars?
I agree that physics is a significant issue here, and unless somebody can prove Einstein flat out wrong or at least introduce a new subset of mathematics to the laws of motion that refine Einstein's laws of relativity that allow superluminal velocities under some sort of extreme condition not recognized by Einstein previously, I don't see the classical "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" hyperspatial/warp drive ships ever becoming a reality. The USPTO notwithstanding (and the patents they have approved which supposedly claim this ability).
Still, there is much that can be done within the realm of current scientific knowledge that would suggest that travel to nearby stars is at least possible within a human lifetime. That it is right on the edge of the potential of what we understand about physics seems like an interesting proposition, and with many other very rich worlds begging for human exploration within our Solar System that are easily within the range of travel using today's technology that would be comparable to the ocean crossing voyages of the 17th Century, I don't see any pressing desire or even necessity to consider going to another star first. If mankind is already a well established multi-planet species who is well established on the Moon, Mars, Europa, and the Earth, not to mention O'Neill colonies and other such fanciful ideas and concepts; I don't see that it would be too much of a problem digging up the resources to consider going to other solar systems beside our own. But as a proposition to a society that debates if Virgin Galactic is even going to get out of the Earth's atmosphere at all, the question seems a fanciful academic exercise that is generations away from even being realistically asked in the first place.
This question is like asking King James I of England if descendants of his new colony at Plymouth is going to make a laptop computer cheap enough for 3rd world countries of Africa. Or if some of those same people are going to make it to the Moon. The question is premature and we simply don't know right now, nor is there any reason for going in the first place when there are so many inviting places to go at the moment that are much more accessible.
Hmmm... how about the technology we have for seeing and manipulating single atoms?
Could our man of 1907 have foreseen that light could be slowed and even halted?
Quarks?
Dark energy?
Bose Einstein Condensates?
Or even the humble laser, the basis of most of our entertainment these days? Quantum mechanics wasn't around in 1907.
Now consider some wonders that we could see 100 to 1000 years from now. A mature nanotechnology. Extended lifespan. Gravitational engineering. Nearly unbreakable materials bound together by the strong force. I don't think we have begun to explore the possible.
To those (many) people who are interpreting this as a battle between Hawking and Stross... your really just not paying attention.
;-)
Hawking merely states the obvious, which is that eventually, in the fullness of time, if we cannot survive without the Earth, then we shall certainly perish with it or because of some earth-bound, environmental/social calamity. This is self-evident, but does not equate to a belief that we will one day "colonise the galaxy." The chief variables in regards whether that happens or not are actually social or historical, not technological (as Stross rightly points out at the beginning of his article). The hope of galactic colonisation is perhaps built on the the same realisation that Hawking so aptly describes, but the two arguments are completely separate entities.
To those who's answer to Stross (and this seems to take care of most of the rest of the posts), is merely the invocation of some further "magic" technology... aside from the fact that this is just side-stepping the issues Stross brought up, it ignores one final fact about interstellar colonisation (sci-fi style), that Stross failed to mention, and that is the inherant biological limitations.
As biological entities on Earth, we must eat to survive, and the proteins and amino acids we eat are derived from the environment around us. We are symbiotic with our environment as a whole and inseparable from it. Even if we found an "earth-like" planet, and even if panspermia turns out to be as accurate a hypothesis as it seems to be lately, divergent evolution would mean that a "space-potato" from another planetary system would never be consumable by an earth person. Despite whatever nutritive properties the space potato had for the local fauna, our intrepid astronauts would starve to death. The amino acids would simply not fit. This applies to every plant or animal in that particular environment. The concept of interstellar trade in foodstuffs especially is nonsensical and things like "Romulan Ale" are fictions that can never be.
From the biological perspective, colonisation would mean either bringing the totality of our environment with us (terraforming all worlds with earth biology and destroying entire planetary ecosystems wherever we go), or transforming ourselves through genetics to "fit" the environments we find. Even then, such altered individuals would be as bound to their new world as we are to the old. Using Mars, (a local and rather famous example), we could not live there without turning it into a second Earth, or by turning ourselves into "Martians." Didn't anyone ever read "The Martian Chronicles"?
Thus no matter what, even with "magic" technology that eliminates all the gravity, time, energy and FTL problems, individuals from earth would still never be able to colonise other planets as they do in most sci-fi stories.
As many have long suspected, the concept of "colonising the galaxy" probably has more to do with the territorial ambitions of empire than with any logical view of a possible future, and will likely be as humorous to those very future generations as Medieval opinions about the "superlative" nature of their medical technology are to us today.
I considered this when I chose the example. Alchemy included a lot of wasted effort. It 'became' chemistry as a kind of by-product. A lot of wasteful research generates useful by-products of knowledge, and I suspect that if we devoted a massive percentage of our resources and effort to a failed attempt to colonize another system, we would probably still get some useful inventions and discoveries on the side. It probably wouldn't be the best use of our resources.
The author is a science fiction writer. Many people ascribe their choices of careers and fields of research to the science fiction they've read. The result of his essay may be this: someone is discouraged from a career in space exploration, and instead chooses one in nanotechnology or the bio-sciences, which could offer significant benefits now and later. The cost of not have a certain amount of naysaying would have been a huge opportunity cost: instead, this skepticism gives us a bright mind directed toward more promising lines of research. I don't think that's a bad thing.
(To work this out, compute how much momentum would be transferred to a 1kg object undergoing a 1g acceleration for a year, which I make to be about 309264480 kgm/s, and then solve the Lorentz equations to compute the velocity relative to the initial "rest" frame from the momentum. Trivial really.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
"If you took an educated man from 1907 and brought him to 2007, he'd be able to understand just about everything we have except for our computational devices. They even understood a bit about nuclear energy. "
He'd freak out. Too much social change along with technological change.
Flat-screen TVs. Gay, lesbian and transsexual rights. Cell phones (with mp3 and video), even for kids. A speed limit of over 30 mph!!! Airplanes that can fly faster than the speed of sound, faster than a speeding bullet. Permanent press fabrics. Microwave cooking. Fast food. Tofu. Sushi. Light beer.
Genetic screening. Debit cards. Credit cards. Routine heart transplants. Smoking banned in most places. Abortion on demand. "God is dead." Televangelists. No-fault divorce. Divorce on demand. Mickey Rooney and Liz Taylor (8 marriages each). Britney Spears and pop-tarts in general.
Photocopiers. Samizdat. Color printers. Glossy advertising printed so cheaply that it is literally thrown out. Remote controls of all sorts. VCR. DVD. USB fobs with the space for 1000 copies of The Bible. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, David Bowie.
Playboy centerfolds. Hustler. Downloadable porn. AIDS. China being the biggest exporter of consumer goods. "Average" houses worth 250,000 to 1 million. Tanning booths.
No spitting on the sidewalk. Poop and scoop. Deodorants. Ballpoint pens. Nylons. Artificial fabrics of all types. Polyester (okay - NOBODY understands polyester). Rap music. Parking restrictions. Jaywalking being illegal. State lotteries.
T Shirts. Jeans, capri pants and slacks for women. "Casual business attire." Disposable watches, calculators. The near-death of pencils and erasors. Surgery as fashion statement. Michael Jackson. Boy George. Madonna.
"You can't hit your wife." "You can't hit your kid." "You can't beat your animals." "You can't threaten someone." You CAN burn the flag. You CAN call the President an idiot to an audience - and you'll even get laughs.
Black and latino movie stars being the big box office draws, and a black woman - Oprah - being the #1 entertainer. "The Joy of Sex" This guy. Try explaining him to anyone in 2007 ...
He'd think either the world went crazy, or he did.
One or the other will save you, but paradoxically, the other will destroy you.
Errr....Wellll.....actually it doesn't matter if you accelerate the vessel or the whole universe except the vessel. The principle of no privileged reference frame means that these are identical statements.
[...]
To even say it is impossible or requires a 'magic wand' is absurd. One could argue that "dimensional hopping" or "worm holes" fall under the magical wand category. Of course, if you acquire such technology the story changes completely, but the things you describe are highly speculative, and even if we could create a wormhole, riding it and getting out in one piece is still not guaranteed.
Also, if you can control a black hole, there are much cooler things you can do, such as time travel. Again, I'm not saying it's impossible, as I cannot foresee the future without a time machine, but it does show you what we're talking about here. Yet, time travel causes so many paradoxes that I personally believe it's impossible. I know experiments are being set up to test retrocausality , but even the scientists who are running the experiment think it won't work. If it would work, the lottery will be out of business in no time. I'm sure much will be learned from the experiment, but more likely it will be knowledge about why it doesn't work.
The 2 x 10E18 Joules for an acceleration and deceleration of two tonnes to c/10 is correct - enter 1000kg * (c/10)^2 (E=m/2*v^2) in google and you get the same number, so it would require our knowledge of physics to be wrong to be able to get around that. Highly improbable (again, IMO). Just assume that there is no way around that number, and you would have to completely annihilate 10kg of mass, and turn the resulting energy completely in kinetic energy to get there. The only even remotely probable way to achieve that is to create and contain 5 kg of antimatter. Antimatter can be created, it would cost a lot and would probably require a machine the size of a small planet, but at least it won't require a complete new dimension or a time-travel enabling wormhole to get there.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Was it? I keep hearing such dismissive wisecracks, but I can't actually find any _scientist_ who said that, nor any actual law of physics from back then that said so. To the best of my knowledge, they didn't actually have any such law at any point.
There have been laymen jumping to such conclusions, and there have been _practical_ problems in getting there. E.g., you wouldn't accelerate a zeppelin (and we still don't) to such speeds because of the drag, and even by the end of WW2 we needed to redesign wings and engines for that. Yes. But that's just saying "it's very hard" or "it's not economical", not "it's impossible."
What we have here and now is that according to science as we know it, it's outright impossible to get above the speed of light, and there's a _lot_ of experimental confirmation for those principles of relativity. But we'll get to that in a jiffy.
Well, the thing is, Newton's laws of motion still apply within the domain they were created for. Relativity didn't come and say, "OMG, Newtonian physics don't apply any more, starting tomorrow apples fall upwards." Relativity just refines it towards one extreme (and quantum mechanics towards the other), but the pre-existing data pretty much still gives the same results with either.
If you calculate in how many seconds will an apple fall from 2m height, you'll get the same results with both, up to a ludicrious number of decimals.
As TFA noted, even at 10% of the speed of light, the relativistic corrections are noticeable, but you can still get in the rough ballpark with Newtonian mechanics. At 1% of the speed of light you could pretty much calculate it with newtonian mechanics, and it will only be off in the decimals. At 0.1% you're as good as Newtonian all the way, and that's already a hideously larger domain than what Newton ever measured.
What I'm getting at is that whatever new theory we'll discover, it will have to fit the measured results of relativity, for pretty much the whole domain we already measured. And that covers a _lot_ of the spectrum. Even if the new theory said you start to get a discount from 99% of the speed of light upwards, getting to 99% of the speed of light would still pretty much go by the existing mechanics, or close enough that the difference is well in the decimals.
Whatever new thing we discover in even more extreme cases, you first have to clear the already verified relativistic domain, before your situation is extreme enough for the future-tech refinement of it. And that's a heck of a gigantic, humongous and monumental amount of energy to get there.
Furthermore, let me throw some more cold water on your enthusiasm by saying: unfortunately a lot of the things we discovered lately was a bit more restrictive than before. E.g., newtonian mechanics said that getting to any speed is possible, then Einstein came along and said, basically, "no, you can't." E.g., in the really old days they thought it's possible to go to the moon without a spacesuit or capsule, because noone figured out that the atmosphere thins out to nothing. (See the ancient chinese guy, the name escapes me, who thought he could just go there by strapping rockets to his chair.) Now we know that there's one more problem in the way. E.g., even 50 years ago, noone thought it would be fundamentally harder to get a human to Mars than to get to the moon. Just build a bigger rocket and there you go. Now we kno
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The first interstellar humans will arrive at the next star in the form of embryos (or their virtual equivalents) to a pre-built space colony constructed by machines. It will take thousands of years. Today we can only begin to speculate about some the technology involved. Several hundred years from now our decedents will have more than speculation to work with.
Charlie Stross is correct within the narrow confines of his self imposed conditions. Physics tells us that the mass and energy involved in sending live people to nearby stars within a lifetime simply does not compute. Now, and perhaps never. Enormous generation ships have rather obvious problems also, the most intractable (after the flight actually begins, some time after the vessel is somehow built) would appear to be the inevitability of multiple in-flight, and possibly fatal, dark ages.
Given our very recent enlightenment about the frequency of extrasolar planets, it's rather likely that most brown/yellow dwarfs have, in addition to large planets, a vast collection of debris. This debris happens to be made of rather useful stuff including ice (water; hydrogen and oxygen,) carbon and metals (silicon, iron, etc.) in effectively unlimited quantities. The stuff is conveniently parked in stable orbits in condensed form with mass low enough to obviate concerns about atmospheres or escape velocity.
We already interact with space debris with fair competence. We fire bullets into comets [1] and skitter around on asteroids [2] with so little collective effort that most people are oblivious to it. Scaling that up a few hundred times may be within the grasp of humans today, never mind what we'll be capable of in 2507.
We know how to collect energy from stars [3]. We've even figured out how to beam it around with reasonable efficiency [4]. Given long enough intervals our ability to gather sufficient energy to refine arbitrary amounts of matter is assured.
Automation is a big missing piece at the moment. We can not yet build machines with enough intellect to operate unassisted in a complex environment. We have a long way to go on this one. However, I nurture a bit of faith on this. It's based on the possibility that we're not as smart as we think and, therefore, the challenge isn't a great as we assume.
Humans operate on the power obtained from plants, bits of meat and common gasses. The mass of the entire human nervous system is measured in tens kilograms and requires only a part of the available energy. The billions of years evolution has had to refine these resources into a competent system has produced complexity that we have only begun to fathom. Yet we progress at an astonishing pace. Contemporary machines can recognize speech, walk, fly, drive, swim, navigate and play games. The computational capacity to do these things must often be mobile and, therefore, small and low power. We are figuring out natures algorithms and I think that eventually we'll be able to produce low mass machines capable of orbital navigation, self-repair and refining operations all driven by enough goal seeking intellect to build habitats without human assistance.
My hypothetical mission profile looks something like this:
At some point during the next few centuries there will exist enough wealth, technical knowledge and stability to permit the building, in solar orbit, of a flotilla of moderately sized unmanned interstellar ships. This moment need not be particularly lengthy in duration or broadly coordinated; an important point given the volatility of our species. Once under way, the mission will not be subject to the fate of humans around the native star.
The flotilla will be launched in the direction of some likely star, powered by low thrust high delta-v engines and require centuries or millennia to arrive. Along the way some fraction of the machines will fail and require in-transit repair or recycling on arrival. The remainder will be sufficient. The builders will have high confidence in these devices b
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Yes as the article suggested shipping material is expensive, much more so than information. There are however other reasons than economic to colonize. For example if you believe in the lottery (or VC funding) while it maybe expensive to set up a colony, the reward may very well be ownership of your own eden (just the way you defined it), or ownership of your own planet. How much is that worth? Of course the chances are low you would succeed, but as technology marches on (and others go before you) your chances get better, and probably your costs lower.
Other reasons can also include access to resources you might not get here.. as an example maybe you do want to make your own kilogram of antimatter (goes with the rockets you want to build...) that would be impossible here (aside from the technical issues, what country would let you make it?) maybe set up solar arrays on mercury, store your energy as antimatter, ship it around the solar system (or out of the system). A few light seconds makes a lot of difference in rule enforcement.
As an observation, life just doesn't flourish anywhere.. it goes *everywhere* it can reach. If space is now reachable.. I would expect life to find niches there.. even if I can't imagine how exactly it would work economically, or exactly what reasons it wanted to go there. I would expect life would move out there, because it *could*.
Here is something else to think about.
Let say for a second that interstellar travel is too expensive, not worth the gain, and we just stay home and tend our little planet (hopefully making a nice place to live). What might we gain? or lose?
I guess we don't spend resources (time and effort, since all the rest of the resources are recyclable), however what if another civilization manages to accomplish interstellar travel. It doesn't matter how, perhaps it is only as a robotic seed ship. From history.. the culture that goes visiting always is at an advantage. If for no other reason than the meeting isn't at their home. You can do all sorts of things if you are visiting someone.. and not have to worry about the results back at home.. Especially if the people you are visiting think it is impossible to travel back to you.
Now ask yourself.. do you want to be the people traveling (or trying) or the people getting the interstellar visitors, who might be very ill mannered.
"Point 1: The Distances are really huge! If your hut was this sea shell, and the next city down the coast (which as we all know takes a full week to paddle to in our finest grass row-boat), is this pink rock I place one hand span away from the sea shell, then the Land Across the Ocean would be, -wait for it- fifty Aztec miles away! Think about that! It can't be done, durn it!"
Assembled audience: "ooooh."
Aztec Elder: "Point 2. Blah blah blah."
Assembled audience: "aaaah."
Aztec Elder: "Point 3. Blah blah blah."
Assembled audience: "Say, what are those huge boat-looking things on the horizon. . ?"
-FL -Who keeps leaving these circles in my durn field?!
Right now, our fastest space probes will take about 73000 years to reach the nearest star - and they've been using Jupiter as a slingshot, not really carrying any serious propulsion themselves nor the ability to stop once they get there. People here throw out fractions of c as if that's right around the corner when we've only reached something like 0.00005c, and only by exploiting stellar constellations which won't be any help going faster. Neither fission nor fusion rockets are even close to making a dent in that.
I don't think for one second that mankind will ever spread through huge ships taking hundreds of generations to move from one solar system to the other - it would require insanely reliable machinery but most of all I don't think people would stand it. Imagine being trapped on a small tin can with a small village-size population, never to walk around outdoors for your whole life. Even if we could forego all that and send frozen embryos or whatever to be raised on arrival, that kind of timeframe just wouldn't appeal to anyone.
So what do we need? Energy, energy, energy. I'm pretty sure the rokcet will be fueled by matter/anti-matter, which would be insanely efficient and make timely travel plausible but we still need a way to extract that energy and transform it. Right now we got a pretty good idea how much energy is in the ground (coal, oil, gas, uranium etc.) - in a century or three we'll have used it up and we won't be ready for interstellar flight by then. That leaves the renewable energy which we know will stick around for a few billion years. Either huge solar panels covering Earth, or giant solar sails in the sky which we almost certainly will need anyway.
Also my prediction is, that despite how gloryless it is we won't actually send people. We'll send frozen embryos to be raised by the computer. Why? One, because we don't need all the space, life support, air and water and waste recycling. Two, no humans would be killed if the probe is a failure. Three, it can land a *lot* rougher think Mars Exploration Rover-style, who can have the robots deploy solar panels, gather materials, build a pressure dome or excavate a cave so that we arrive at a ready-made base. Ok, we can technically send a robot probe in advance, but we could get people operating it a lot faster by raising them on site than waiting for confirmation before sending the colonists.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I would have expected Stross to be a bit more imaginative, given some of his stories emphasizing Transhuman societies such as Accelerando. However, lack of imagination is just as prevalent among sci-fi writers as it is in the general population. I've seen enough stupid sci-fi writer essays to be assured of that.
Humans per se aren't going anywhere. Within this century, the human body and brain will be made obsolete. Transhumans will have the intelligence to solve technological problems unimagined by humans. But even if interstellar movement remains non-feasible, Transhumans have no particular need to worry, since the only things a Transhuman needs to survive are an energy source, matter, nanomass, computing power, and knowledgebases.
And to a Transhuman, the survival of the human species is the last thing to be concerned about. The only thing of interest to a Transhuman is how do we get to that state without having to waste a lot of time and energy killing humans trying to prevent us from getting there.
Humans aren't going to colonize the universe or even the Solar System - that seems clear. Transhumans will.
Which makes Stross's analysis a waste of time. Considering that he admits he had a cold when developing this and thus couldn't think straight, I'd say that pretty much sums up the value of this piece.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Let's pretend that Jules Verne in 1895 was asked about the feasibility of destroying a city with a single bomb. His calculations would invariably conclude that he needed 7 million (?) tons of dynamite, or more dynamite than had been produced since it was invented, and enough to fill the 50 Roman Colosseums, presenting invariable logistic problems requiring 1,000,000 trucks bridges, ships, etc, OR, a "Magic Wand." The next 50 years saw the creation of powered flight, twinkies, and Nuclear weapons. In the following decades, we can now fit something like 100 mt of nuclear power onto an ICBM/bomber. (and the yield estimate he links to has to be way off)Mp>My point is that Magic Wands are the safe bet here.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Never bet against ingenuity.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
The problem with colonizing other planets, even within our own solar system, starts with the simple facts of distance and energy. The distances and energies involved with colonizing the continents of the earth were, pretty much, always within human ken. This is born out by the fact that, whenever europeans 'discovered' a new land, they found people already living there. Even a lone human, travelling on foot at normal walking speed, could circumnavigate the entire planet (given suitable land or ice briges) in a little under 2 years.
By contrast, humanity has only, in the last 50 years, even come close to controlling the amount of energy necessary to cross the gulfs between planets within our solar system, much less what is needed to travel to the nearest star. Anyone who compares the task of colonizing other planets to the european colonization of the new world, or the U.S. expansion into the west, is displaying the most profound ignorance imaginable.
The energy involved is important because it directly relates to the cost of the endeavor. The cost of colonizing distant continents was always within human grasp, so it is no surprise that it was done. The cost of travelling to other planets, however, is just barely within the grasp of the wealthiest nations, and there is no good reason to expect it ever to decrease very much.
The Fermi paradox has been used to imply that there is no intelligent life, other than us, in the galaxy, but there is another, perfectly good interpretation: maybe, even though it is possible to travel between the stars, it's just not economical to do so. Maybe the galaxy is full of intelligent life: life so intelligent, in fact, that it has long since given up the romantic, but entirely impractical, notion of interstellar travel.
I don't think that it is impossible to travel between the stars. In fact, I think that it is, basically, within human grasp at this very moment. I just think it is too expensive and dangerous to be undertaken by any nation (or similarly wealthy organized group) at this time. Give it a couple hundred years -- time enough to get the whole long-term-artificial-habitat thing, the safely-manage-tera-watt-power-generation thing, and the protect-ourselves-from-the-interstellar-medium thing down -- and I think it may be an option. At the moment, the best we could hope for would be unmanned probes to nearby stars. Even then, I doubt the transit time would be less than a half century.
just a ghost in the machine.
"The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead: strictly speaking, it should be of no personal concern."
A very quaint notion straight out of the 1960s. So why have children, or grandchildren? Why care about them? (Other than the bazillion years of natural selection forcing us to, that is.)
If Stross has children, perhaps he'd agree to rig up bombs to them that would be activated on the cessation of his heart. Since strictly speaking, whether they live or die should be of no personal concern. The survival of colonies of the entire human species is only an extension of that concept.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
In the Star Trek mythos, as soon as we invented a suitably advanced technology (warp drive), the aliens started paying attention to us and showed us how to do far more advanced things. That'd certainly jump-start our own efforts to colonize space.
Besides, there are severe limitations in our current understanding of physics. Who says we can't easily take a 4th-dimensional shortcut through 3-dimensional space? Or dilate time so that we effectively go much faster than the speed of light?
Perhaps our understanding that matter cannot travel the speed of light is based on an enormous experimental error; if the magnetic waves in a particle accelerator travel the speed of light, then it can't accelerate anything past the speed of light, and any attempts to do so will consume more and more energy with no apparent increase in speed. Hence our misunderstanding about "relativistic mass". Hey, I'm just saying that such an enormous error is totally possible! And others have pointed that one out too!
There are far too many comments on this article for mine to ever be seen, but what the heck, I figured I'd post it anyway. It may be as futile as, say, trying to colonize interstellar space, but I posted it anyway.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Hawking thinks it is possible; he's definitely distinguished, and he's getting on a bit.
Science is descriptive, not normative. However convenient it may be to picture whatever biological facts as an "imperative," you still can't derive an ought from an is.
Oh my god. Where do I start?
No, biology does not demand anything, you silly. Stop wishfully thinking that science justifies your sick cosmological fantasies, and engage biology seriously if you do so. (And for that matter, engage seriously the actual history of European colonialism, that you're glorifying there.)
Are you adequate?
Well, for starters, the title is hardly correct.
It shouldn't say "The Impossibility of Colonizing the Galaxy", it shoud actually say "The Economic Unfeasability of Colonizing the Galaxy, and the added Sociological Difficulties in Colonizing our Solarsystem".
That being said, I rest my case, because, well, I just said everything that needed to be said.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
The question then becomes: are artificially-grown (not quite our biology) artificially-taught (not quite our culture) things "human" enough to be compatible with our urge to reproduce and spread? If it's not human, what's the point of sending it into space anyway? Life will evolve somewhere else eventually, the whole point is we want to continue our species.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All