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Can We Travel To That Exciting New Exoplanet?
An anonymous reader writes "The news last week that exoplanet Gliese 581g may be in the 'Goldilocks zone' and could therefore hold liquid water and alien life got everyone all excited, with good reason. A potentially habitable planet — and only 20 light years away! But to put things in perspective, here are a couple of estimates on what it would take to travel to Gliese 581g. One scientist puts the travel time at 180,000 years based on current space flight technology, while another explains that it could be quite quick if we build a matter-antimatter drive, and can figure out how to bring along 530 times as much mass in fuel as is contained in the ship and cargo itself."
Project Orion could get us there.
How long would it take at warp 6, Ensign Chekov?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Just convince some corporation that it has unobtainium.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Kids today! When I was a lad, we would've killed for a Sulfuric Acid atmosphere. We had to make our own air!
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
may be there are far far away, with there babbys
Short version: "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
I am officially gone from
You were lucky. We had to cobble a planet together out of dust in an protoplanetary disk!
I am officially gone from
I would like to volunteer my ex-wife for service aboard one of your algae-ships.
I read somewhere that they might be intentionally ignoring us until we develop warp capability.
Probably the best bet is to copy it from visiting aliens, if any ever bother to visit.
Meanwhile in a neighboring star system,
"Probably the best bet is to copy it from visiting aliens, if any ever bother to visit."
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Man invented the horse?
Remember to maintain your supply of
Assuming it takes 100 years to build everything we need to make this flight, by the time you get there it will be 178,570 years after the group that took 1000 years to build the matter/antimatter ship finished their project.
This is what I see happening: The first colony ships will leave for a newly-found planet using then-state-of-the-art technology and when they arrive the first thing they'll see is a McDonald's putting up a sign advertising their new "Colonist Combo Meal Deal".
well, It's not like they dug a horse out the ground one day. That's just stupid.
Oops, you're right.
Here lies PoopFace. Died of starvation out past the Oort cloud.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
(he means Researched the Horseback Riding technology after Animal Husbandry)
What an odd way of saying "my ignorance allows for a greater degree of wishful thinking".
What's the benefit of stopping to pick them up when you can instead be the very first people to the new planet and get to place your armies in Australia?
Actually, the neighboring star system went:
"Before setting off to that place, make sure all the patents are current, and don't forget the DRM!"
I had a bad dream that I stayed in shape by eating boring food, exercising my tail off, skipping slashdot to go outdoors in order to live that long, only to have the reply be: "STFU!"
Table-ized A.I.
I wish I had mod points... parent is relatively correct..