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Louis Friedman Says Humans Will Never Venture Beyond Mars (scientificamerican.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Dr. Louis Friedman, one of the co-founders of the Planetary Society, is coming out with a new book, "Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the Stars," an excerpt of which was published in Scientific America. Friedman revives and revises a version of the humans vs. robots controversy that has roiled through aerospace circles for decades. Unlike previous advocates of restricting space travel to robots, such as Robert Park and the late James Van Allen, Friedman admits that humans are going to Mars to settle. But there, human space travel will end. Only robots will ever venture further.
“Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.”
Robert A. Heinlein
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
So not Ceres either then? The nice part of Ceres is that it's so easy to leave from there.
It was received wisdom that flying, let alone landing on the moon, was beyond the engineering capabilities of humanity. The most significant reason why scientists' input into the public sphere should be treated as no more than "probably good advice" is the complete lack of a historic perspective and humility so many seem to have. You'd think the number of times the consensus is one thing and one or two rebels make fools of the consensus would be a cause for open-mindedness in the current generation, but you'd be wrong.
Options for humans traveling outside of our solar system are what?
Some kind of FTL travel
Immortal crew
Prolonged stasis
Generations of crew
Not looking good for humans at this point.
"Never" is a very long time.
I don't think it is likely that humans will go beyond Mars in my lifetime (say the next 50 years or so), but never? Claiming that is just hubris. There is no way to state this with any degree of surety.
It is not a stretch beyond credibility to assume that humanity may be around for a few thousand years yet. Given all we've done in just the last 200 years, almost anything is possible given another 2000 years.
Mars is only relevant for studying long travel and habitat design. In the long run, we will build space stations with artificial gravity. Plans for them have been made since the 60s and they quite feasible, and at one point or another, large stations will become desirable or even a must.
I expect there to be thousands of gigantic space stations in the distant future. Materials will be mined from asteroids and moons using robots. Most of them will probably be near earth, but many might also be traveling or farer out, e.g. not too far away from Jupiter or Saturn but not near enough to make radiation shielding impossible.
Unless mankind somehow manages to revert itself to stone age culture, I consider all of this inevitable. Earths space and resources will deplete, and we could build a large rotating space station even with today's technology.
That's my opinion, and I'm an "expert", as is evidenced by my many peer-reviewed publications on slashdot.
That's because humans will evolve to something else beyond humanity.
They will no longer call themselves human.
"Never" is a dangerous word to use around people with an understanding of the scientific method.
It's not Scientific America.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
"Never" is a long time. More relevant are when humans will go to Mars, and when they will settle there. As for the second, the notion that you go to Mars and settle there like the pilgrims did to America is ridiculous. As for the first -- talk is cheap. Ie, it's nearly as ridiculous.
For Pete's sake, the moon is very similar to Mars and is _right next door_. Let's figure out how to go there for lengthy periods before babbling about going to Mars.
Man can only dream to fly... until he invents a plane
Or travel far until he invents a carriage or boat... or navigation
Or even carry large loads.. until he invents a wheel.
This thought process indicates we are no longer in the ridiculous breakthrough age that happened somewhere around ww2 onwards. But it does not mean the next revolutionary discovery won't mean the next step on this ladder bringing us from the caves and into space.
some old wrinkled creatures, some triple digit perfect balancers, some monkeys, virgins, gargoyles & some cheap labor.... hark hark hark,,, being ok here in the 'here after' is the real trick?
"West of Ireland there is only sea, and then the end of the world. Everybody to travel there is an idiot"
We will travel beyond Mars... but all in due time.
I'm sure many people have said humans will never fly. Humans will never visit the moon. If humans ever want to travel they better do so with a fit horse etc.
You don't know what you don't know, and unless the Herr Doctor is from the future he doesn't know what we will be capable of.
Every party needs a pooper and that why we invited you!
Party pooper!
Party pooper!
I am not even sure that Mars will be the primary off-world home for humans in 100 or 150 years. But I feel quite confident in saying it will not be the only one.
If anyone was seeking a scientific statement certain to be ridiculed in future years, they need look no further.
What is the current rate of progression (both technological and socialogical) of our civilisation, and what events affected the rate of change (upwards or downwards).
Would be more interesting to ask the question, once we establish a research/production/living on the Lunar surface and Martian surface (or subsurface) what effect on the rate of change in progress it will have.
It takes time to set up and establish, this is where automation comes into play, sent first to establish a base and production then we follow to settle (even for rotated short periods - for health reasons most likely).
Then establishing a transportation and communication network will also boost the possiblities and rate of progress.
Building ships on the ground is not the future, we need to build them in space docks.
Definitely should be enough for anyone
I recall some prominent physics professor who calculated that heavier-than-air flight was mathematically impossible only a few years before it was demonstrated on a beach somewhere.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I guess at the age of 70 there's a lot to be said about what humanity will never do.
Given, 1,3 parsecs to a neighboring system is an very long distance, but get a technology that can accelerate an object to the speed of light and build a large spaceship that can sustain a population for 100 years or put them into hybernation - suddenly it becomes plausible.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
His position is very sensible, and I honestly don't understand all the massive backlash against it.
I guess I can understand some resentment from people who've grown up on Star Trek, at being told it isn't going to play out that way. But seriously now. . . Star Trek was never even hard SF. It was a 1930s pulp sci-fi concept resurrected into a 1960s TV show, and it was fantasy from the beginning. Slashdot is supposed to be news for nerds. Nerds should know this. We should be smarter.
I also wonder how many of you read TFA? Let me help you out: "Some find this to be negative—an absolute statement of limits and thus of giving up. My job here is to prove the opposite: humans exploring the universe with nanotechnology robotics, bio-molecular engineering, and artificial intelligence is something that is exciting and positive, and is based on an optimistic view of the future."
He's not saying we can't explore space with human crews and colonies. He's saying it won't make sense to, because we'll have much better options. Human beings are very costly to keep alive in space, much more than machines -- so we'll send the machines. With uploading, we may *be* the machines.
In fact, I'll go further. I think we should *explore* Mars with manned missions -- because today's robotics technology is too limited, it would take centuries to explore Mars with robots at the pace we're going. But I think we should *settle* Mars with robots. In this case Futurama is probably a better guide than Star Trek. . .
Fry: So let me get this straight. This planet is completely uninhabited?
Bender: No, it's inhabited by robots.
Fry: Oh, kinda like how a warehouse is inhabited by boxes.
Yes. That's Mars.
If we have the means of going to Mars, why not Venus, or one of the gas giant's moon. It is not that much more difficult than going to Mars.
I'll get an argument that we'll never go beyond the moon, and that's if we go back on the moon as well as one that say that human space exploration will continue further and further, but Mars looks like an odd place to stop.
I was hoping someone would pack up the whole Kardashian clan and ship them off for a soft landing on Jupiter.
If you want the convenience of gravity similar to earth, you simply allow the craft to spin at the desired speed. G force is indistinguishable from gravity. Current craft ALREADY have the needed systems in place. They are used to set zero spin for the convenience of the cameras.
"The stars are not for man." Arthur C. Clarke called it.
I can see human expeditions and even colonies on some of the moons of the gas giants. If you can build a moonbase you can build a Ganymede base, for instance. All that changes is the delta-v required and the time to get there. Since building a permanent moonbase probably implies constructing or assembling spaceships in orbit, reaching a jovian or saturnian moon is just a matter of "adding more boosters". A 2 or 10 year trip is still well within the possibility of a single human lifespan and a society capable of a permanent moon installation will have also developed the ability for wholly self-contained ecosystems.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
While there are serious technical problems with traveling to nearby star systems in only a few years of ship time allowing feasible travel, there are no such limitations for our solar system. It's not even revolutionary technology either it's simply better ion drives and habitat aboard the ship. There are plenty of reasons to explore or settle there, say the moons of Jupiter/Saturn or in the asteroid belt which are behind mars. Hell, its likely to occur in under a hundred years - nearby stars it isn't so clear.
Personally I think there are better things to spend a few trillion on down here on earth.
No there aren't. Really, there aren't. I hear your argument a lot and as economic arguments go it doesn't even withstand superficial scrutiny. The return on investment for money invested in space exploration even in the most conservative evaluations is strongly positive. I challenge you to find ANY public spending "down here on earth" with that kind of economic and technological return to society that a space program demonstrably has.
But an orbiting station is not an end in itself - it needs a purpose other than just being the worlds most expensive funfair ride , and until we come up with a better space motor than chemical rockets humans ain't going anywhere further than the moon anytime soon.
No an orbiting station isn't (or shouldn't be) an end. You are correct about that. It should be a means to something greater but don't be short sighted about what "something greater" means. But remember that the goal isn't a crash program to get us to Mars next week. It's longer term than that. We didn't build the Hoover Dam to keep a few thousand guys busy for a few weeks. We built it to enable decades and trillions of dollars of economic activity that wouldn't have taken place otherwise. The value of a space station is really in what is learned and developed by doing one. What technologies do we develop and commercialize? What science do we discover? What do we learn about human physiology and living in zero-g for extended periods? What launch vehicles do we come up with? Etc. Sure, some of what we do seems pretty mundane on the surface and you can make an argument that we could be doing it better in some ways but unless you are willing to ramp up funding we aren't likely to do it much faster.
Since "never" in this context is equivalent to "life span of humankind" (which is a much shorter period of time), the prediction looks more realistic.
We're working hard on erasing ourself out of existence in some not too distant future. We might even succeed at that.
Barring oddball volcanic and "rock from space" events, humankind is geared up for a long time.
What won't happen, is much more space travel.
Over the not to distant future, socialism will shut down the western producing companies (leaving no production) and space travel will stop.
Some time after (and it doesn't matter how long) collapse will be far enough that new resources will only come from dumps, and man will no longer have the ability to wage industry to build sophisticated stuff. Resources (mostly rare earth metals but also just plain rare stuff) that was easy to get will be gone, and mankind will NEVER climb back into an industrial / information age again.
Mankind will fall back into city states, goofy assed religions (even more so than now), warring over small amounts of resources, salvaging stuff from the former civilization and subsistence farming. That will go on for 100k's or millions of years until one of any number of ordinary threats (disease mostly) will knock populations down to the point they'll get wiped out by a hard winter or drought.
Our chance to get off this rock is basically almost gone, and there won't be another one.
One day - when humans are exploring planets in proxima centauri - this quote will be guffawed at.
The Fermi paradox tell us that Interstellar Travel is impossible practically and not that there is no other life in the universe.
Over the not to distant future, socialism will shut down the western producing companies (leaving no production) and space travel will stop.
What? "Socialism" will shut down the "western producing companies"..? What is that meant to mean? Because at a glance, it looks like the ramblings of a mental case.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Over the not to distant future, socialism will shut down the western producing companies (leaving no production) and space travel will stop.
Socialism will be the end of space travel ?
I'm sorry, but what will kill human space travel will be the fanatics who decry that having taxes pay for such things as NASA when such expenditures do not return immediate benefit. Politicians now (in the US at least) consider the next presidential election cycle as being long-term planning. This ongoing unblinking focus on short term gain for long term pain, will be what stops humanity from space travel.
Consider this: Some of the groups that are doing the most in advancing space exploration include the Chinese and a partnership between European countries. Hardly anti-socialists (from an American perspective). Russia Japan India also have space programs, as well.
The only way human beings may move past Mars is through long term, negative profit,science-based programs. The kind of programs that are shut down by dollar focused, shareholder driven, anti-science political leaders we seem to be stuck with these days.
At least in the depths of the Cold War, the one-upmanship lead to positive gains in human space travel.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
This must be one of the "death to the infidels" psychedelic drugs guys the other poster above was talking about.
In other news, a famous authority reported that the idea of a passenger train traveling faster than 25mph is ridiculous, because everyone would die from not being able to breathe.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Sheesh you people.
There would have to be some significant earth-orbit testing of zero-g procreation first. If not NASA, ESA, etc. to fund it, I could see a popular reality-TV show outta this. Seriously, though. What kind of bone development could you imagine for a baby born and growing up with no gravity? Go out and play, kid!
Once long space journey technology is practical, Mars will become a vacation stop on a trip to other far away places.
I believe Clark's first law of prediction is relevant:
"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."
When I first met him at The Planetary Society in the early 90's I dis-agreed - even though I developed a Lunar Tele-operations Model. I still disagree. This month I will present in Pisa, Italy my updated presentation that I gave at a Mensa national annual gathering ten years ago. Simply put, it is both necessary and sufficient that humans will do interstellar travel, regardless of cost. The cost of not doing so is extinction.
His argument is that Mars is the most distant reachable place where humans could, by taking such steps as securing sustainable local supplies and digging in to avoid excess radiation, live basically as we do on Earth. But if we set up a colony in, say, the inner asteroid belt, could we live a lifetime in microgravity?
This assumes that the definition of humanity remains fixed. Just getting into space to the extent we already have has required a much larger degree of reliance on high technology. We are coming to see humans and robots as one system when operating beyond Earth. Inevitably, we will start applying genetic engineering to the human genome to make the human part of the man-robot system more adaptable to extreme environments: colder, dryer, thinner air. When we need a zero-G species to settle the Belt, we will invent one.
Options for humans traveling outside of our solar system are what?
Actually it is a lot simpler than that: we just needs lots of energy. If you can give a mass an energy equivalent to about 10 times its own mass then the trip to Proxima Centauri takes about 5 months ship time. So really all we need is a way to generate, and use in propulsion, huge amounts of energy (for perspective the total world energy generated per year at the moment is enough to do this to one 80kg person without any space craft). If we can do that, which is by no means trivial, then all the other problems of space travel go away. The only one left is that the trip will still take years in Earth's time frame but that is a problem which the early explorers successfully dealt with.
In "The Last Hero", Leonard has to build the first Discworld spaceship. When he lists what he needs to Vetinary he asks for hundred journeyman craftsmen. After Vetinary exclaims "But I can provide you with the best masters", Leonard replies "No masters my lord! I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible!"
Now, of course I also realize that the opposite stance [everything is possible; there are no boundaries of human ingenuity] can also be quite misleading and potentially very dangerous. Like the idea that we can screw this planet as much as we want because we WILL colonize space.....well, careful there, I always say....maybe we will need a few millennia of technological advancements to colonize. Or perhaps we can never circumvent c so then the best we can hope for is terraform Mars and Venus which is also a project that goes for 500 years or more [saw a rough calculation once about terraforming Mars with bacteria], whereas most of the problems we created for ourselves on Earth will hit us way sooner than that [and some already have hit with full force]...
... and computers will never need more than 540kb memory...
To be added to long list of visionary statements. Although he's probably right it won't in the next decades.
What other technological advances would we need? I can think of areas like manufacturing (how small can we make a "factory" that can act as the seed for the industrial infrastructury of a colony, i.e. it must be able to make copies of itself and manufacture useful stuff), molecular manufacturing (can we build a device that, given the description of a chemical, can assemble useful amounts of it from simpler molecules plus energy?), agriculture (can we come up with an ecosystem that's simple enough to work outside earth, but produces most of what the colonists need?), space propulsion, space launch technology (we need to come up with something better than chemical rockets at least for the first 100 miles of the trip), medicine (especially dealing with cancer, which will become a major problem when staying off Earth), etc.
Socialism never stopped any country from exploring space. Remember the Cold War? The one thing that could stop it is religious craziness. Centuries ago the Arabs invented chemistry and mathematics, and named the stars - but look at them now. In western countries, radical Green religion have the potential to put an end to technological progress in the same way.
Read their manifesto, and weep:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...
Artificial limitations... are artificial.
Moving on.
I would not say never. Reaching the stars will be very hard but so was reaching the moon.
The Planetary Society, making the Solar System safe for robots for thirty-five years.
TPS has never cared about manned space exploration (let alone colonization), it's always been about the robots and pretty pictures. Fuck 'em. And I say that as a former member.
I personally believe we'll "solve" aging by then, and it will likely drive a discussion of whether or not we should and not whether or not we can.
I'll make you a deal... let's "solve" aging.
I'll be in the experimental group, and you can remain in the control group, and then I'll happily discuss "whether or not we should" with you until you are dead, and then I'll go ahead and do it generally anyway.
He can predict the future of our species from now until the end of time. The words never and ever seem irresponsible in science.
I think he's correct, in the sense that by the time humans are going to the stars they won't be mostly unaltered human bodies. Cybernetics, a top level understanding of biology, or even the theoretical possibility of mind uploads all provide ways to get around in space without having to answer every last of the current requirements needed to be checked off to ship meat cross galaxy- and while these are future techs, they aren't empty speculation based on a poor understanding of reality, they are clearcut directions technology can and should take.
The radiation at the van allen belts and beyond would fry humans.
There are better things to be spending space research money on that yet another orbiting can.
A reasonable argument. Although I would argue that AMONG the most important things we need to study most are human physiology and the only way to really do that is to put people into space. A space station is a comparatively cost effective way of doing that though I will grant that it isn't cheap. There really are a few big important categories of stuff we need to study in no particular order
1) Life support systems including radiation protection
2) Low cost launch systems (escape gravity wells)
3) Propulsion systems (transit)
4) Self sustaining ecosystems
5) Self sustaining industrial systems (includes mining and large scale fabrication)
6) Terraforming and directed genetics (adapting to new worlds and/or microgravity)
7) Power and battery systems (esp fusion)
8) Artificial gravity systems
9) Medicine and physiology
10) Self sustaining economies
Space stations can help us with several of these. Unfortunately they are silly expensive until we address #2 though we seem to be making some progress there. I think it will take centuries before space travel becomes routine just like it took centuries for us to develop the technology to travel efficiently around the Earth.
Even our most advance ion engines still consist of chucking stuff backwards to go forwards. There must be a better way.
Maybe or maybe not. Physics is kind of a harsh mistress that way. Like you I'm hopeful we'll come up with something brilliant but hope doesn't equal success. Sadly even hope + hard work + a big investment doesn't guarantee anything. But if we don't look we certainly won't find anything so best to keep trying!
What science was this so called authority basing his idea on?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Dream on, Friedman
Saturn, we will have the incredible melting man then?
What a great B-movie that was! Ok, C-movie, then.
When it came out in 1977 and made it my local theater in a small town in the American South, it beat the previous record-holder for the longest lines at the theater box office - Jaws.I'll have to find the MST3K version of it!
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
the Doctor is just re-dressing their latest bizarro self-defeating agenda.
The Planetary Society used to be at least perceived of as a group advocating the spread of humans into space, to the PLANETS. Now they have, like some climate scientists, become so wrapped-up in a particular ideology that they have become warped. In this case, it's the idea of extraterrestrial evolution (something for which there is currently ZERO scientific evidence). They seem to think humans should be prevented from contaminating any place where some form of life might eventually evolve, and having become attached to this idea with a quasi-religious zeal, they have now become committed opponents of humans ever landing on Mars or any other planet. In effect, they have allowed a narrow ideological concern over a fantasy to cause a complete inversion in their purpose.
They are now the anti-human-spaceflight group, and deserve no support from non-luddites.
The thing these idiots will eventually realize, assuming any of them has any remaining reasoning capacity, is that if you cannot know everything about alien life then you cannot know what would harm or contaminate that life and therefore there is no way to be certain you have properly decontaminated a robotic space probe - therefore you cannot even send robotic probes. Even if they do not get to that logical conclusion however (a common failing of zealots), there is the problem that there is no point to spending billions of dollars sending robot probes if you have ruled-out ever following them with humans. We already know all we need to know about what is beyond the Earth if humans are never going to venture beyond the Earth; tens of thousands of years of history prove that humans do not need to even know anything outside our atmosphere beyond the motions of the sun and moon in the sky IF we are not going to be adventuring beyond the atmosphere. If humans are not going to ever colonize other worlds, then we could save a lot of money by filling our kids' textbooks with concept art from scifi film artists rather than photos from multi-billion dollar observatories like Hubble and Webb - the diffs between the paintings and the photos would not matter to the students and would not justify the costs of the missions.
Once you decide to thrust your head into the sand, the depth of the plunge hardly matters.
Some kind of FTL travel
http://www.space.com/17628-war...
It's a very nice thought; but I don't think so. Working through the relativistic geometry, just no--it isn't going to happen. (If you're considering a single observer and single destination; sure the physics seems to work, but when a third observer who is midway between the vehicle and the destination, everything falls apart.) And their math is just plain wrong since there is no complete theory merging general relativity an quantum mechanics which is required to actually design such an device.
To travel faster than you, you need to bend space so you're traveling through less of it but effectively moving further when you unbend it. We have proven as scientific fact that space can be bent and we know what particle does it. Plus we have a proof of concept model of FTL travel in that space is expanding so at the edge of the universe, objects are effectively becoming more distant from us at a rate faster than the speed of light. All that is established fact and this idiot thinks we'll never build the equivalent of a warp drive? We're probably less than 100 years out from it!
Mankind will fall back into city states, goofy assed religions (even more so than now), warring over small amounts of resources, salvaging stuff from the former civilization and subsistence farming.
Watch the news, get an education, we're there already. It's the end result of the Libertarian policies that have been in effect since the 1980s.
I suppose you could say that Mars already has a robot population....
One of my favorite Ob. XKCD links: https://xkcd.com/1504/
No, he meant in the future the socialist economies will be bankrupt and unable to afford space travel. Think Cuba or Sweden more than India or China. Besides, China does it for military/political reasons, and they have a large economy to fund such things.
> the fanatics who decry that having taxes pay for such things as NASA
So basically those people that want to spend it on social programs instead.
Even if us bunch o' monkeys "only" get to Mars, that would be a hell of a ride.
When do we go?
I agree it may never be practical to send humans beyond Mars, but humans are not always practical.
For example, maybe one day a religious cult will save up for a multi-generational trek to nearby stars. After all, the Mormons once sold almost everything they had to trek to Utah to avoid (perceived) persecution and establish their idea of a better society.
You never know. The required resources for a Project Orion-style* ship(s) seem huge by today's standards, but in the future it may be within the reach of large private groups.
* The original "Orion", not the capsule.
Table-ized A.I.
The Fermi paradox tell us that Interstellar Travel is impossible practically and not that there is no other life in the universe.
There is no paradox, just overly optimistic numbers.
Judging by the amount of organic materials found outside of our planet, life is highly likely elsewhere.
Judging by the number of civilizations observed the odds of that life evolving to a point where it creates civilizations, the odds of that life developing a civilization is highly unlikely. Just look at how many civilizations we have evidence of developing during the very long Mesozoic Era.
There is no paradox, only an overly optimistic delusion.
Actually, the Chinese have a far freer market than the USA.
I'm surprised at the total lack of vision expressed here. People seem stuck in a rut. All these posts are essentially the same: How would humans plow through a vacuum in three dimensions to get from one dirt ball to another, especially having never found a dirt ball more conducive to our life than Earth? Given what we think we know, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to travel through a hostile environment to get to another hostile environment. And once we invoke Einstein and time of travel compared to human lifetimes, well, it seems a hopeless business.
Of course the key phrase is "given what we know," but if we have learned anything in the brief history of science it is that new things we learn tend to encompass what we already know and grant us a much wider perspective. For example, Quantum Mechanics incorporates Newtonian Mechanics rather than contradicts it. And despite what the experts told us, humans can travel at speeds greater than 30 MPH and can actually fly in heaver than air machines. Naturally we scoff at these naive "limitations" of yesteryear and bask in our superior knowledge because NOW we know everything about reality and those old guys were the naive ones.
Yes, speculation is unproven, but what if we got it all wrong? What if you are NOT required to go from Point "A" to Point "B" by traversing the space between the two points, but could simply hop from one place to another? I mean, how does quantum entanglement work, anyway? Is there a glimmer of truth in there somewhere?
And if we can find it, then all these objections disappear as if they were thrown through a wormhole, irrelevant and completely missing the point. One thing is certain: Y'all won't find the way because you are too steeped in believing the reality of your own paradigm to venture past it.
But someone else may, someone who doesn't know such a thing is impossible. Quantum entanglement. How does that work again?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
The science of those days, obviously.
However with a little comon sense those guys (he was not the only one) had realized a ordinary horse runs faster than a train and the riders have no trouble to breath.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
To travel faster than you, you need to bend space so you're traveling through less of it but effectively moving further when you unbend it. We have proven as scientific fact that space can be bent and we know what particle does it. Plus we have a proof of concept model of FTL travel in that space is expanding so at the edge of the universe, objects are effectively becoming more distant from us at a rate faster than the speed of light. All that is established fact and this idiot thinks we'll never build the equivalent of a warp drive? We're probably less than 100 years out from it!
Nope. We aren't.
The physics used to model Alcubierre drive, is incomplete. It's incomplete because we don't have a complete theory merging quantum mechanics and Relativity. They key is complete, no String theory, (M-Theory, brane-theory) is not complete nor is Loop quantum gravity.
You're just revelling in the same optimistic delusion as the space nutters who keep putting bad numbers into the Drake Equation then claiming Paradox!
Send a robot with a test tube baby... No reason to waste gas sending a full grown human when small robots could get to the nearest star and birth test tube babies on the planet after it arrives and takes the time to grow food. While the probe travels to the nearest star, it can be upgraded with better and better firmware. Once at the star, communication with the remote humans is at light speed.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Wrong, the science of those days is the same as the science of of today. There never was any science that said riding on a train could kill you, this is completely unlike anyone talking about the difficulties of traveling beyond our inner solar system.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Dude, why don't you google a little bit around? ;)
It was a common meme under so called scientiests at that time that traveling that fast is dangerous and unhealthy.
If you never have heard about that it only shows your lack of knowledge in a topic called 'history'
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
To travel the stars, the human life span would have to be made much, much longer. To travel the stars, or radiation-vulnerable physical embodiment would have to be made far more robust. So either we develop a method of repairing damage almost instantly at the molecular level or we abandon wet ware in favor of firmware. Something evolves from us will travel the stars. We just have to invent what that embodiment of us will be. I'd happily walk the surface of an airless planet at whatever temperature ten thousand years from now and enjoy feeling the light of that sun on my external protective layer.
Only boring people are ever bored.
"The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke
Dude, did I say no one believed it? I said that there never was any scientific backing for the belief. And no, popularity as a meme doesn't count as evidence that a belief is valid.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
From our point of view in our days there was no scientific backing.
At that time there was. That was the only point Intried to make.
And no, popularity as a meme doesn't count as evidence that a belief is valid.
Ofc not. And that never was the point of the discussion.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
After reading your link... there are not enough facepalms in the world.
So again I ask what was their evidence for the idea that traveling at the speed of a train would be dangerous. If there was no evidence then, as I said, there never was any scientific backing for the claim.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches? - The Quarterly Review, March 1825.
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. - Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895
640K ought to be enough for anybody. - Bill Gates (1955-), in 1981
I admit that humans are going to Mars to settle. But there, human space travel will end. - Louis Friedman (1941-), Engineer, in 2015
Sigh, I give up.
Become a lawyer.
But well, that wont help you to grasp what I said and your opponents in court might say.
there never was any scientific backing for the claim.
Wrong. Today: with our knowledge, there [never was]Âis no [any] scientific backing for the claim.
And, you simply don't want to grasp it? At that time plenty of people wrote articles in science magazines that such fast travel is dangerous.
The discussion never was about the question of the science. The question was if scientists at that time where so "dumb" to in fact write that nonsense.
I pointed out they where.
No idea where you got astray and thought that they had evidence at that time, or needed or had not or what so ever.
They key point still is: you lack knowledge of history, otherwise we had not this discussion :D The talk is not about science, but about dumb scientists. There is a slight difference.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, the discussion is absolutely about science. Science is a methodology, it's nothing to do with people. Someone calling them self a scientist but making up theories without evidence isn't doing science. Science is how we know train travel isn't dangerous an me science is how we know travel across the solar system is unlikely.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
No, the discussion was about the fact that you did not know that around the invention of the locomotive scientists claimed that traveling so fast might be dangerous.
The rest of the discussion is you in your head with yourself.
I'm a scientist myself, so you don't have to tell me 'how science works'.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Nope, that's not what I said originally and you've failed to understand anything said since apparently.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Nop, you fail :D
Because after some one mentioned this "25mph is dangerous" thing you started up with "how science works". Instead of accepting that indeed at that time some "scientists" where idiots and indeed claimed this.
From that on you made a fool of yourself by insisting to know how since works and explaining it all the time, instead of simply accepting that you where not aware about that historical fact, and I guess most people reading our discussion enjoyed it ... hehe.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.