Slashdot Mirror
Project Icarus: an Interstellar Mission Timeline
astroengine writes "What would the infrastructure supporting an interstellar mission look like? Considerations such as fuel sources, mining methods, interstellar spaceship construction activities and maintenance are being analyzed, all of which would be carried out before even reaching the ultimate interstellar goal. Project Icarus is currently unravelling the complexities of this operation and recently created a nifty animation of how one of the many fuel tanks may be recycled as communication relay pods en route to nearby stars."
I question naming the project Icarus... maybe you don't want to pick a guy who fell to his death for trying to fly too high.
I mean, isn't Icarus associated with failed ambitions?
1000 years ago: "Harrumpf! The world is flat! Sail on towards your oblivion, fools!"
100 years ago: "Harrump! If got meant for men to fly, he'd have given us wings!"
75 years ago: "Harrumpf! Faster than the speed of sound? Never!"
~50 years ago: "Harrumpf! There's no way we can get to the moon!"
40 years ago: "Harrumpf! Home computing? I think not!"
30 years ago: "Harrumpf! Who needs more than 64K?"
20 years ago: "Harrumpf! What good is this 'internet' thing for?"
ACs: shitting on everyone's ideas for 1000 years.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Unless the Human Race spreads to other worlds, systems, and galaxies, we are dead as a species.
God, I am so sick of hearing that tired old cliche. Even putting aside the time scales we are talking here, there is absolutely no calamity, short of any earth-destroying asteroid (nothing even close to which has been encountered since MAYBE the strike that may have created the moon) or the sun going all Krypton on us (sure, in a few billion years) that is going to make the earth LESS survivable than any other planet or body in this solar system, and likely any other solar system for dozens of light years out (which are essentially unreachable by man).
If we had a Yucatan strike today, we would be much better off tunneling deep underground than trying to mount a ship to some Mars colony. Even a post-strike earth would still have water, supplies of oxygen, survivable atmospheric pressure, much more cosmic radiation protection, etc. compared to Mars. And it wouldn't require an extremely resource intensive journey to get underground. The earth of the only planet on which humans can survive for any length of time in a self-sufficient manner. Every other planet in the solar system is a death-trap (and there is no reason to suspect otherwise for any other solar system within reach--which currently includes no solar systems besides our own, BTW).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.