napkin future.
From an ongoing discussion on Utopia Dammit! BBS:
Our self-made and innate issues that are reducing our already slim chances of long-term survival are the same as those that make successful manned interstellar travel unlikely. First among those is that most of us, and we as a collective, are simply incapable of taking a long enough view of things, nor are we stable enough to engage in long undertakings.
Let's just take as given that we can develop technology to propel starships and probes at 6,000 km/sec. That's a modest 1/50 the speed of light -- our current fastest is 1/16000. Starships and probes. In order to even consider colonizing neighboring star systems, we'd have to send out a fleet of probes to every candidate star system identified by advanced local surveys (probably utilizing interferometers placed in orbit around the Sun among many many other instruments). There are 63 stars within 5 parsecs (16.3 light years). The closest, Proxima Centauri, is 211 years away using our as yet uninvented propulsion technology. The furthest, LP 944-020, is 810 years away. The great majority of these are class M stars -- red dwarves. Not the best candidates.
But let's say we find 6 candidate stars with planetary systems that look good. We need to send fleets of probes to each system. In the case of Alpha Centauri A, the nearest sun-like star (which is probably not a good candidate since it's in a triple system with dynamics that'd probably fling planets out, but who knows) the probes take 218 years to arrive, and we need to send a whole FLEET of them to semi-autonomously explore as much of the planetary system as possible. Remember, there's no meaningful short-term interaction between ground controllers and probes; barring faster-than-light communication, it's more than an 8 year round trip for command-response.
So once that initial fleet does its job let's say we find one good candidate about halfway out, at 10 light years. 500 year trip. Gotta send another fleet of probes for an extensive in-depth survey. So that's say 550 years for the initial robot flotilla (development, transit, exploration, analysis) and another 550 years for the next. 1100 years gone now.
However, the candidate system looks good for colonization -- oh, and remember, it's likely got to be FREE of life for us to colonize. Despite what 40 years of TV would have you believe, the likelihood of organisms from Biosphere X landing in Biosphere Y and one or both not suffering SERIOUS ill effects is probably almost zero. Think smallpox blankets. But we found a nice planet or moon that's devoid of life but suitable for terraforming and colonizing. Now we have to build a fleet of starships to carry humans, either frozen or as living "generation ships," and most likely additional automated starships to carry supplies and things. Let's say that takes 100 years, then a phased deployment of 100 years with 500 years flight time. We're now up to 1700 years when the very FIRST ships arrive. (Just a reminder -- 1700 years ago, notable world events included "The Council of Elvira declares killing through a spell a sin and the work of the devil." and the ESTABLISHMENT of Christianity in Britain.)
I'll leave aside for the moment the ethical and practical considerations of what to do if everybody shows up and it turns out the identified planet(s) are not suitable for colonization. (Build a space colony? Turn around and go home? Mass suicide?)
See how hard this is getting with technology that allows travel at 1/50 of the speed of light? Just with the first probe fleet alone, who's to say anyone will be listening for the data after 500 years of flight time? Then you expand the mission time to 1700 years just to get the first dude there, presumably after human society was stable enough to do two rounds of probe exploration at 550 years each and then cooperate on sending a HUGE amount of materials to the target star system.
Let's say you'd need to send enough material (this includes consumables to be used en route, spare parts, the ships themselves, as well as people and equipment and supplies) to build a city the size of Manhattan. That's not that much stuff, when you consider that we're permanently colonizing a star system and we will NEED prefabbed equipment and hard-to-make supplies to get the basic factories, mining, refining, and production operations up and running when we get there. Plus all the people and robots to run it. Now imagine digging Manhattan up and sending it 94,605,280,000,000 kilometers at 6,000 kilometers per second with living people inside.
Interstellar travel by definition involves taking a very, very long view of things and REMAINING STABLE to carry out huge plans.
Then you have to think about supernovae and gamma ray bursts. Long view, people. Humanity needs to colonize, napkin thinking here, a minimum of let's say a 1,000 light year radius to be reasonably "safe" in terms of very long-term survival. That's 50,000 years from end to end at 1/50 the speed of light, and considering colonization would occur in successive outward waves requiring a civilization be built at each stop -- say 1,000 years to do that, heh, and an average of 10 light years between stops -- that's 100,000 years in stops, plus 1700 years in survey and transit time to the next stop times 100 stops, so 170,000 more years. So taking all these figures as givens, that's 270,000 years for us to colonize a 1,000 light year radius from Earth.
270,000 years ago, we likely didn't exist as a species. Organisms on Earth have likely only used controlled the flame as technology for three times that long. 270,000 years ago, the constellations in Earth's sky were all different.
Good luck, hoomans!
Our self-made and innate issues that are reducing our already slim chances of long-term survival are the same as those that make successful manned interstellar travel unlikely. First among those is that most of us, and we as a collective, are simply incapable of taking a long enough view of things, nor are we stable enough to engage in long undertakings.
Let's just take as given that we can develop technology to propel starships and probes at 6,000 km/sec. That's a modest 1/50 the speed of light -- our current fastest is 1/16000. Starships and probes. In order to even consider colonizing neighboring star systems, we'd have to send out a fleet of probes to every candidate star system identified by advanced local surveys (probably utilizing interferometers placed in orbit around the Sun among many many other instruments). There are 63 stars within 5 parsecs (16.3 light years). The closest, Proxima Centauri, is 211 years away using our as yet uninvented propulsion technology. The furthest, LP 944-020, is 810 years away. The great majority of these are class M stars -- red dwarves. Not the best candidates.
But let's say we find 6 candidate stars with planetary systems that look good. We need to send fleets of probes to each system. In the case of Alpha Centauri A, the nearest sun-like star (which is probably not a good candidate since it's in a triple system with dynamics that'd probably fling planets out, but who knows) the probes take 218 years to arrive, and we need to send a whole FLEET of them to semi-autonomously explore as much of the planetary system as possible. Remember, there's no meaningful short-term interaction between ground controllers and probes; barring faster-than-light communication, it's more than an 8 year round trip for command-response.
So once that initial fleet does its job let's say we find one good candidate about halfway out, at 10 light years. 500 year trip. Gotta send another fleet of probes for an extensive in-depth survey. So that's say 550 years for the initial robot flotilla (development, transit, exploration, analysis) and another 550 years for the next. 1100 years gone now.
However, the candidate system looks good for colonization -- oh, and remember, it's likely got to be FREE of life for us to colonize. Despite what 40 years of TV would have you believe, the likelihood of organisms from Biosphere X landing in Biosphere Y and one or both not suffering SERIOUS ill effects is probably almost zero. Think smallpox blankets. But we found a nice planet or moon that's devoid of life but suitable for terraforming and colonizing. Now we have to build a fleet of starships to carry humans, either frozen or as living "generation ships," and most likely additional automated starships to carry supplies and things. Let's say that takes 100 years, then a phased deployment of 100 years with 500 years flight time. We're now up to 1700 years when the very FIRST ships arrive. (Just a reminder -- 1700 years ago, notable world events included "The Council of Elvira declares killing through a spell a sin and the work of the devil." and the ESTABLISHMENT of Christianity in Britain.)
I'll leave aside for the moment the ethical and practical considerations of what to do if everybody shows up and it turns out the identified planet(s) are not suitable for colonization. (Build a space colony? Turn around and go home? Mass suicide?)
See how hard this is getting with technology that allows travel at 1/50 of the speed of light? Just with the first probe fleet alone, who's to say anyone will be listening for the data after 500 years of flight time? Then you expand the mission time to 1700 years just to get the first dude there, presumably after human society was stable enough to do two rounds of probe exploration at 550 years each and then cooperate on sending a HUGE amount of materials to the target star system.
Let's say you'd need to send enough material (this includes consumables to be used en route, spare parts, the ships themselves, as well as people and equipment and supplies) to build a city the size of Manhattan. That's not that much stuff, when you consider that we're permanently colonizing a star system and we will NEED prefabbed equipment and hard-to-make supplies to get the basic factories, mining, refining, and production operations up and running when we get there. Plus all the people and robots to run it. Now imagine digging Manhattan up and sending it 94,605,280,000,000 kilometers at 6,000 kilometers per second with living people inside.
Interstellar travel by definition involves taking a very, very long view of things and REMAINING STABLE to carry out huge plans.
Then you have to think about supernovae and gamma ray bursts. Long view, people. Humanity needs to colonize, napkin thinking here, a minimum of let's say a 1,000 light year radius to be reasonably "safe" in terms of very long-term survival. That's 50,000 years from end to end at 1/50 the speed of light, and considering colonization would occur in successive outward waves requiring a civilization be built at each stop -- say 1,000 years to do that, heh, and an average of 10 light years between stops -- that's 100,000 years in stops, plus 1700 years in survey and transit time to the next stop times 100 stops, so 170,000 more years. So taking all these figures as givens, that's 270,000 years for us to colonize a 1,000 light year radius from Earth.
270,000 years ago, we likely didn't exist as a species. Organisms on Earth have likely only used controlled the flame as technology for three times that long. 270,000 years ago, the constellations in Earth's sky were all different.
Good luck, hoomans!