171–180 of 305 posts
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150 years by what calculations? Are you also factoring in deceleration time?
An "EmDrive" is a pseudoscience device. Poor calculation rigor is not the biggest error component in that number.
https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-nasa-s-peer-revie...
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Maybe tech giants like Apple and Google should start using some capital to fund awesome ideas like this.
Unless they can explain to their shareholders what the benefit of that overwhelmingly long-term investment will be I don't see it happening. Maybe after SpaceX becomes a massively profitable company in the same vein as the tech giants, but not before. Bill Gates also made it painfully clear that he wants his money to go to issues we can resolve right now here on Earth like renewable energy, clean water, fighting dise…
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Europe is building one that's 40m: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope
Telescope names are becoming ridiculous... Very large, extremely large, what's next? Super duper large?
No, seriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telescope
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There's a bunch of ideas that the rocket equation doesn't apply to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Non-rocket... Yes, it's hard at our current tech level. But not nearly hard enough to explain the Fermi thing. I mean, take your scenario of solar system development: it'd be natural to exploit the Kuiper Belt and then the Oort, and the Oort blends into interstellar travel, as Freeman Dyson pointed ou…
The problem with thinking about it on geologic timescales is that humans (and civilizations!) don't exist on geologic timescales. It's going to be a tough sell to tell people "You need to pay an extra tax for your entire life so we can fund construction of an interstellar ship that your great grandchildren might witness the launch of, but won't arrive at its destination for a thousand years after that." It's hard to…
Of course this is speculation, but it's one chink in the case for the cost of travel stopping life from spreading. Personally I expect fancier higher-tech faster means in the actual future, like Forward's Star Wisp scheme.
I am flabbergasted that as a society we aren't rushing to build a 100 metre wide telescope mirror large enough for us to directly image the spectra of the potentially habitable exoplanets around us. A telescope this large could tell us whether any of these potentially habitable planets contain oxygen, and thus, biological processes. Yet thanks to funding cuts in science the biggest telescope we have in the pipeline r…
Why do you need to see a habitable planet soon? If you can't survive that trip, it means almost nothing.
This kind of precision sounds insane. It sounds like far more of an achievement than having found Earth-sized planets. Is there any layman explanation of how they do such a thing?
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>I am flabbergasted that as a society we aren't rushing to build a 100 metre wide telescope mirror large enough for us to directly image the spectra of the potentially habitable exoplanets around us. This is because most of society is still struggling with day-to-day tasks like getting housing, clean water, reliable food, healthcare and dealing with physical conflicts. Even people rich enough to not be stuck in the s…
>This is because most of society is still struggling with day-to-day tasks like getting housing, clean water, reliable food, healthcare and dealing with physical conflicts. It's been nearly 100 years since anyone struggled with that in the West. Nobody's expecting Eritrea to put a satellite in orbit.
You have go to be joking.
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I'd rather not have astronomers working on decoding dolphin calls. You imply there's a shortage of biologists, and if we just suspend space exploration and divert those minds to marine biology, things will get better.
No,not exactly. There is a shortage of funding and also of creative approach. We cannot ask a question "are we alone" unless we know exactly what a whale sings about (if anything) or what crazy complicated dolphin or beluga chatter means. Besides, if we are ever to encounter any sort of alien life, how can we decode any signals or messages if we cannot even decode our own earthlings signals?
I don't follow. You could say the same thing about any Earth-bound phenomena. There is an endless supply of interesting things to study on our planet. There's also an endless supply of space exploration waiting for us. To pick one to the exclusion of the other seems very shortsighted, given that we don't know what we'll find in either place.
Seems like pursuing all avenues of exploration is the best way to move us forward.
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>This is because most of society is still struggling with day-to-day tasks like getting housing, clean water, reliable food, healthcare and dealing with physical conflicts. It's been nearly 100 years since anyone struggled with that in the West. Nobody's expecting Eritrea to put a satellite in orbit.
Yes even most people in Pakistan/India have access to those, plus broadband internet. Yes I've been there.