Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star

Post by kowdermeister » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #49

kowdermeister wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 4000 years we can build way way more faster ships and catch up to those poor guys launched a centuries earlier just because they thought they are fast enough :) On the serious side, we only need antimatter and the drive problem is kind of solved (yes, I might be the one in the good enough ship :)).

Good, the folks on the faster ship can arrive ahead of us 'poor guys' on the first ship and get stuck with all of the hard work of establishing the colony and performing any necessary terraforming before we arrive.

Post by diminish » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 6:28 PM UTC

1001101 wrote: post #67

alistproducer2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to show my nerd colors here but having a thought like this has almost ruined Star Trek for me. For me I often think about atmospheric pressure. There's no way that beings from so many different planets could exist on a single star ship set at 1 Earth atmosphere. Maybe someone knowledgeable in this space can tell me, but is a planet's atmospheric pressure reliably proportional to its mass?

Venus is 90 bar, Mars is 6 mbar. Maybe not from N=3 in our solar system. I feel you on Star Trek. It always kills me that 90% of species in the quadrant is a bipedal humanoid, although they did address this in "The Chase" (TNG:S6E20). But I digress.

Post by jamisteven » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

Post by dboreham » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

jballanc wrote: post #55

baron816 wrote: post #37

Ok, let's assume we find a warm, watery planet like Earth's within ~20 light years, and we figure out a way to travel >= 50% the speed of light, making it somewhat reasonable to get there. If the planet's gravity is greater than 10% different from Earth's, or its Day/Night cycle is much different from Earth's, wouldn't it still be a nightmare to live on. Anatomically modern humans have lived on Earth for 200,000 year…

Even at 50% the speed of light, adding in a fudge factor for acceleration/deceleration, you're still talking about a trip time of 50 yrs. Even if you go all Neon Genesis and send 15 year olds on the journey, they'll be at retirement age by the time they arrive. In other words, you'd almost definitely have to send a generation ship. Which means you'd have to have already figured things like artificial gravity, giving…

Post by njharman » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

radicaldreamer wrote: post #40

baron816 wrote: post #37

Ok, let's assume we find a warm, watery planet like Earth's within ~20 light years, and we figure out a way to travel >= 50% the speed of light, making it somewhat reasonable to get there. If the planet's gravity is greater than 10% different from Earth's, or its Day/Night cycle is much different from Earth's, wouldn't it still be a nightmare to live on. Anatomically modern humans have lived on Earth for 200,000 year…

We could try with a much more doable planet like Mars. We could find out if long term survival is impossible, very difficult, possible but difficult, or doable with the right technologies. It's shocking how little appetite there is for redirecting 50% of the budget which is currently allocated to the military to space exploration. I understand that the military is partly a large welfare program which doesn't compete…