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Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

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Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#21

Post by Steko »

cletus wrote: post #6

That's a good, grounded assessment of the scale of the problem. I too believe that the human colonization of space, even near-space (ie within the orbit of the Moon) is a long way off. The energy costs are simply too high and resources too cheap on the Earth to make it viable (in spite of typical SF fodder of asteroid mining). This is a problem because with 6.5 billion people we're using up resources. Fast. Anyway, I…

I think the main challenge is whether there will actually be any desire to colonize in the first place.

By the time we acquire the means to leave the solar system society will have transformed so completely that it's impossible to predict what our goals will be. Resources and population are not likely to be problems at all though.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#22

Post by wolfrom »

I agree with the notion that no human society will purposely invest money in a trek to another solar system, but I strongly disagree with the notion that humanity is stuck in this solar system for eternity.

There seem to be two common misconceptions about the colonization of space:

1. People will colonize other planets. The notion that future generations will desire to burrow into other planets is as strange as expecting people to build a new city by digging caves in a cliff wall. Just as we now build apartment blocks and ranch houses, we will someday build custom habitats that aren't continually ravaged by earthquakes, tornados and spring floods.

2. Reaching the next solar system will be momentous. People will populate neighbouring solar systems just as our ancestors moved from Africa to other parts of the world... gradually from one generation to the next, each one drifting a little further into the Oort. One day a habitat that has its own artificial star within will move from the most recent piece of raw material to the next, not realizing that the one orbits our distant sun while the other orbits another star entirely.

Barring catastrophe at home, this future is likely. It's just the same story that's been happening since Lucy's family left the Great Rift Valley.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#23

Post by scott_s »

cletus wrote: post #6

That's a good, grounded assessment of the scale of the problem. I too believe that the human colonization of space, even near-space (ie within the orbit of the Moon) is a long way off. The energy costs are simply too high and resources too cheap on the Earth to make it viable (in spite of typical SF fodder of asteroid mining). This is a problem because with 6.5 billion people we're using up resources. Fast. Anyway, I…

Simple probability dictates that it is only a matter of time before a sufficiently large body travels through the Solar System with sufficient velocity (including direction) to reach somewhere else in sufficient time (but not too fast that we can't perform an orbital intercept) that we can essentially build a colony on it.

Not really. You could also say that "simple probability dictates that it is only a matter of time before all of the air in the room is, at one point, in just one half." And, of course, you'd be wrong. When the odds are so staggering against something, it's more likely it will never happen than it will happen. We don't know how frequent such bodies are. But my guess is so infrequent that most solar systems in the universe will never have one travel through them.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#24

Post by scott_s »

wolfrom wrote: post #22

I agree with the notion that no human society will purposely invest money in a trek to another solar system, but I strongly disagree with the notion that humanity is stuck in this solar system for eternity. There seem to be two common misconceptions about the colonization of space: 1. People will colonize other planets. The notion that future generations will desire to burrow into other planets is as strange as expec…

Note that you didn't actually address his arguments.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#25

Post by thematt »

I'm actually okay with humans never leaving the solar system. Our robotics and technology is advancing at a fast enough pace to satisfy my curiosity about what's out there. Look at the amazing stuff we've gotten back from a couple of Mars rovers, without ever having set foot on the surface. Let's just send robots out. It's much cheaper, comparatively easier...and can certainly be done much sooner.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#26

Post by seanalltogether »

saulrh wrote: post #14

I agree with this pretty well, in that it's likely that flesh-and-blood humans will never physically travel to other planets en masse without some fundamental discoveries in physics. You'll note, though, that he explicitly disregards both starwisps and strong AI, and there's a reason for that: putting human-descended AI out into the universe is a much, much more feasible endeavor, and one that I personally believe we…

I would go so far as to question whether the first "person" to set foot on mars will be recognizable to us as human. We are simply too fragile.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#28

Post by wolfrom »

scott_s wrote: post #24
wolfrom wrote: post #22

I agree with the notion that no human society will purposely invest money in a trek to another solar system, but I strongly disagree with the notion that humanity is stuck in this solar system for eternity. There seem to be two common misconceptions about the colonization of space: 1. People will colonize other planets. The notion that future generations will desire to burrow into other planets is as strange as expec…

Note that you didn't actually address his arguments.

Please elaborate.

His arguments are related to interstellar travel as an endeavour that is undertaken as a gravity well to gravity well transit. My argument is that planetary colonization and travel from Earth to the close orbit of Proxima Centauri or any other star is not the only method by which humankind will reach beyond this solar system. Does that not address his arguments?

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#29

Post by nkassis »

Dove wrote: post #18
syncopated wrote: post #12

"That's the same as the yield of the entire US Minuteman III ICBM force." So you're saying there's a chance!

That's what I thought, too. I think the energy examples were supposed to scare me, and if he'd said something like total output of the sun, ever , they would have. But total power output of current civilization for five days garnered more of a "sounds doable" response from me.

Yeah I don't think it's impossible to build a bomb that big, as far as I understand it, no one felt like building bigger bombs than tsar bomba because it becomes useless, if I'm not mistaken after 400 megaton or so, most of the energy will just be sent to space.

From the Tsar Bomba article on wikipedia: "Since 50 Mt is 2.1×1017 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 39 nanoseconds[citation needed], was about 5.4×1024 watts or 5.4 yottawatts (5.4 septillion watts). This is equivalent to approximately 1.4% of the power output of the Sun.[8]"

That's a lot of power right there. Now to harness that :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#30

Post by Game_Ender »

cletus wrote: post #6

That's a good, grounded assessment of the scale of the problem. I too believe that the human colonization of space, even near-space (ie within the orbit of the Moon) is a long way off. The energy costs are simply too high and resources too cheap on the Earth to make it viable (in spite of typical SF fodder of asteroid mining). This is a problem because with 6.5 billion people we're using up resources. Fast. Anyway, I…

I think you make a good point in the foot print area, but isn't 2100 pretty close in human terms? We already have CNC machines, 3D printers, automated semi-conductor factories, etc. I for one would be very impressed if we could make a fully self replicating colony & factory in the next 90 years.

Also if you were hitchhiking you would need a massively plentiful source of fuel in the target environment because it doesn't have the sun pumping energy into it.

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