The long and blood expanse of human history offers the compelling argument. No matter how "civilized", when a culture meets one it wholly outmatches, various forms of tyranny take root.Waffle_Man said:
A Warp Drive Is Within Our Reach, Apparently.
- Thread starter RJ 17
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...um...Elect G-Max said:
...Eclectic Dreck said:
Why does everything have to be about Slavery? I mean, what would the point of slavery be when we have machines for all that? We don't NEED slaves... we will probably NEVER need slaves. And considering how much more inefficient a slave would be compared to a specialist Machine, NOBODY will want a slave!GTwander said:
Every single job that has a modicum of chance of still being performed by living beings by the end of this century, are jobs that are non-physical, and are highly Artistic or intellectual. And I highly doubt that Enslaving a being with those qualities would be a smart move, as it tends to lead to a successful rebellion.
No, I don't think we'll be peaceful to less advanced species, but that would be because we would be looking for Land, Resources etc. NOT LABOR. And that is stuff we could get from them on the cheap in exchange for technology!
Beyond that, it would probably end up being no worse than any other Authoritarian Government. Humans will come in, Impose our rules on them, and so long as nobody breaks those rules, everything will be peachy.
As for the rest of us, I'll be Hitch-hiking my way to the other side of the galaxy; And no-one will give a hoot.
...I'm sorry If I'm freaking out. I'm a bit touchy about Morality issues. I always want to assume that people will do at least the Morally Neutral thing, if not the explicitly good thing. Most of us are better people than society thinks, and we should should know better. The only time that ever seems to ring false is in cases of mental instability or having no other option.
Okay, I need to clarify..."Star Trek: The Original Series" used scientific concepts that were in line with the theoretical physics of the time. This is all I'm saying. Totally agree with the assertion concerning the rest of the franchise.Da Orky Man said:
Heartily disagree with the statement that "Battlestar: Galactica" and "Stargate" have any harder science than Trek. I'll grant you that about "Babylon 5", though based on its pedigree.
But Galactica? Love the show (we're talking the new series, right?), but the majority of the "science" was vague at best.
For instance, they never really explained the concept of their FTL drives or the physiology of the cylons (are they organic? cybernetic?).
RJ 17 said:
That or the Prime Directive. Hah, yeah, humanity sucks, we will definitely come in guns blazing and all "Sup Muthafuckas, give us the Gold, bitches!"
Possibly.Copper Zen said:
There's no particular reason why alien micro-organism would be any threat to humans at all. There are any number of terrible diseases which totally fail to have any affect whatsoever on humans, not because humans have developed immunity, but because the host species is something very different. Humans are immune to various crop blights, because humans aren't plants. Even different plants are often immune.
Personally, I think the hazards would be less likely to be a disease organism as such, but some sort of fungus like thing or noxious weed. Imagine a fungus that just happened to grow in places like human lungs, and created some nasty by-products. It has evolved to spread itself as a disease, but the effect might be the same.
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Generally, I see nothing wrong with humans not having to worry about biohazard, provided they thoroughly check it's safe to begin with. Alien food is almost certianly going to be right out, though, even if it's not poisonous, it's likely to be inedible.
The Cylons are clones with computer chips built into their brains that let them transfer their memories to the resurrection ship when they die. There is a series of e-books based on this that is free to download.It is called "Lords of Kobol" and is very good, with a lot of surprises and twists in the story.Zen Bard said:
Classy. Starting out with an insult like that. Really adds a sense of validity to your argument. Yep...SnowBurst said:
I am aware that Mars' surface temperatures are low and it's atmosphere is thin. It usually averages around −67 °F and 0.087 psi, or approximately 600 pascals, respectively. These two factors are why there is no surface water. The low pressure and low temperatures either caused it to evaporate or freeze in sub-surface reservoirs. (Note the ice caps)
It is currently believed that Mars has no rotating molten core, this is why it has a very, very weak (if non-existent) magnetic field. However, surface radiation is no where near as high as you seem to indicate it is.
You seem to be confusing what I mean by habitable. For a planet to be considered habitable, it must either be able to support life as is, or be easily (hyperbole) altered to be able to support Earth-like life. This is because we've learned that the likely of finding a planet exactly like Earth is unimaginably low.
And for the record: Mars is pretty damn close to Earth's environment. At least, comparatively speaking with regards to most other known worlds.
As for why "theres a reason were not there yet...", it's simple. Money. Space flight is hard and expensive, especially those first few hundred miles. And I don't know if you've noticed or not, but many of the space programs around the world, most notably NASA, have been losing a lot of funding.
This is why we're not on Mars yet. No one's willing to foot the bill. It's the same reason we've not gone back to the Moon either.
Regardless, I can see you have literally no intention on having a decent conversation. Even when I provide actual quantifiable facts that disprove your statements, you just simply insult me. You don't even refute my claims with actual evidence!
But, whatever. This newfound discovery on the feasibility of warp-drives is amazing news, even if you're unwilling to accept it.
If you'd like, I have the phone numbers of a few people who think aliens built the pyramids and that the moon landings were faked. I think you'd all get along swimmingly.
We had that one solved decades ago. Centrifugal motion is king. Hell, having a large rotating mass on board can actually help when navigating near gravity fields.OhJohnNo said:
It would if one had a rather shallow and simplistic view of human history. Believe it or not people don't just do shit for the hell of it. Wars and conflict are always fought over either material or ideological gain. Consider this: Even if we suddenly had to ability to harvest and transport resources from thousands of lightyears away, why exactly would we not go to the billions of other uninhabited planets very probably filled with the same resource? What exactly would we be angry enough at the aliens for that we would kill them? The lulz?Eclectic Dreck said:
Usually, people go to war in such an instance because they think something poses a threat to them. If we were the ones to initiate first contact, why would we be afraid of them? It's not like they could do anything to us.thaluikhain said:
Even in cases of race being a "motive" for war, there is always material or ideological gain. The beings could be the ugliest things in existence in our eyes, but would anyone honestly travel that far away and expend massive amounts of resources on doing various injustices to said extra terrestrials "just because?"
You know C.S. Lewis wrote an essay that touched on this. I'll leave his quote here, because it just about sums up my opinion.
"It sets one dreaming to interchange thoughts with beings whose thinking had an organic background wholly different from ours (other senses, other appetites), to be unenviously humbled by intellects possibly superior to our own yet able for that very reason to descend to our level, to descend lovingly ourselves if we met innocent and childlike creatures who could never be as strong or as clever as we, to exchange with the inhabitants of other worlds that especially keen and rich affection which exists between unlikes; it is a glorious dream. But make no mistake. It is a dream. We are fallen.
We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. Civilized man murders, enslaves, cheats, and corrupts savage man. Even inanimate nature he turns into dust bowls and slag-heaps. There are individuals who don't. But they are not the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassador to new worlds will be the needy and greedy adventurer or the ruthless technical expert. They will do as their kind has always done. What that will be if they meet things weaker than themselves, the black man and the red man can tell. If they meet things stronger, they will be, very properly, destroyed."
You can read the entire essay here, it's a good read.
scientificintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/04/religion-and-rocketry-by-cs-lewis.html/
"It sets one dreaming to interchange thoughts with beings whose thinking had an organic background wholly different from ours (other senses, other appetites), to be unenviously humbled by intellects possibly superior to our own yet able for that very reason to descend to our level, to descend lovingly ourselves if we met innocent and childlike creatures who could never be as strong or as clever as we, to exchange with the inhabitants of other worlds that especially keen and rich affection which exists between unlikes; it is a glorious dream. But make no mistake. It is a dream. We are fallen.
We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. Civilized man murders, enslaves, cheats, and corrupts savage man. Even inanimate nature he turns into dust bowls and slag-heaps. There are individuals who don't. But they are not the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassador to new worlds will be the needy and greedy adventurer or the ruthless technical expert. They will do as their kind has always done. What that will be if they meet things weaker than themselves, the black man and the red man can tell. If they meet things stronger, they will be, very properly, destroyed."
You can read the entire essay here, it's a good read.
scientificintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/04/religion-and-rocketry-by-cs-lewis.html/
Interesting how this "ring of exotic matter" that supposedly warps spacetime isn't clearly defined. How large is it? How massive is it? What does "exotic" mean? Degenerate neutron matter? Antimatter? Dark matter? Matter with negative mass? What mechanism does it use to tilt spacetime if not through sheer mass or energy? I'm sure they gave it more thought than just "we surround the ship in MAGIC", just that the article doesn't provide any more info than that.
And I agree that this doesn't make FTL travel "within our reach." It makes it theoretically viable and maybe even practical, but I'm not holding my breath.
EDIT: I also wouldn't count on meeting aliens with this warp drive. Colonizing nearby star systems - sure - but even travelling at 10c, it would take you six months to get to Alpha Centauri. That's actually awesome, but it doesn't allow space-opera-like colonization and expansion. You'd still need centuries to comb even the Local Bubble.
And I agree that this doesn't make FTL travel "within our reach." It makes it theoretically viable and maybe even practical, but I'm not holding my breath.
EDIT: I also wouldn't count on meeting aliens with this warp drive. Colonizing nearby star systems - sure - but even travelling at 10c, it would take you six months to get to Alpha Centauri. That's actually awesome, but it doesn't allow space-opera-like colonization and expansion. You'd still need centuries to comb even the Local Bubble.
Once it became feasible to do so, quite possibly.Waffle_Man said:
Sure, they'd be no material gain as such, but what if it was a vote winner? What if it was politically useful to bomb a country full of brown people, who just happened not to be human and live on a different planet?
Only half a year to Alpha Centauri!