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The Three Possible Classes of Interstellar Travel (forbes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The stars call to us through the ages, with each and every one holding the promise of a future for humanity beyond Earth. For generations, this was a mere dream, as our technology allowed us to neither know what worlds might lie beyond our own Solar System or to reach beyond our planet. But time and development has changed both of those things significantly. Now, when we look to the stars, we know that potentially habitable worlds lurk throughout our galaxy, and our spaceflight capabilities can bring us there. But so far, it would only be a very long, lonely, one-way trip. This isn't necessarily going to be the case forever, though, as physically feasible technology could get humans to another star within a single lifetime, and potentially groundbreaking technology might make the journey almost instantaneous.
here is a working link thats not thru forbes. http://scienceblogs.com/starts...
Let's say a single lifetime is 100 years. Well above average, but whatever.
The nearest star to Sol is a little over 4 light years away.
So you have to go over 4% of c to succeed. Good luck with that!
1. Generation ships
2. Nuclear propulsion, antimatter propulsion
3. Science fiction (warp drives, transporters, etc.)
Anyway all of this seems moot to me. We can already freeze human beings for long periods of time. It's called 'embryo freezing' and it's commonly used.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
FWIW the only validated method is slower than light, and, due to energy considerations, at considerably less than 1G. There are, IIUC, speculative ways around the light barrier, but they're all quite dubious. Perhaps one of them would work, but not with any foreseeable technology.
That said, there could be some kind of breakthrough, eventually, but it hasn't happened yet. Were I to bet, I'd bet on ion rockets with around 100-200 pounds of thrust as the way most likely to succeed. And this might be doable with fission power, but may well require fusion. (Light sails require either an even lower thrust, or trusting someone back home to keep your engine running for several centuries.)
For various reasons I don't expect any group to set out aiming to reach distant stars, but rather aiming to live off the Oort cloud, and eventually deciding to make the jump to another one. Or via a series of loose planets. When resources are rich, build a second ship and then the two of you go your separate ways. Eventually some of them would end up on other solar systems, but this would just be because that's where resources were thickest, and nobody was defending them. (Sort of "life as a von Neuman Probe".)
N.B.: For various reasons these ships would need to be quite large. A question that hasn't been answered is "What is the minimum number of people required to maintain a technological civilization?", but presumably laser communications would be possible and cut down the minimum number. So say a stable population of 100,000 or more. And not too crowded, as that causes increased unrest...and it's already going to be stressed as there's going to be needed a firm limit on the size of the population. Virtual reality is also going to need to be well developed to defuse social stresses.
P.S.: Don't suggest suspended animation. Interstellar space is where these people are going to live. Planets will only be occasionally visited for special reasons. And will probably only be visited by robots.
Now give me a magic space drive and all this changes, but I'll believe it when I understand that it can actually be built.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Seems Forbes found out about getting around the clickbaits. The scienceblogs link now just has a longer version of the summary with pictures added, and a link to the clickbait version.
This poses some interesting possibilities...
Sci-Fi writers have been looking at these paradoxes from the beginning.
The short answer is that interstellar emigration implies that your back is against the wall. It is now or never kind of thing --- with a very good chance you will doing everything you can to conceal your true destination.
Methuselah's Children (1941, 1958)
Rescue Party (1946)
Battlestar Galactica (2004)