BardSeed said:
A lab is supposed to be built on the Moon in 2020; with NASA's current problems, that could be sat back a little. It's possible to use materials found on the Moon to build lab, a large kiln-thing would need to be transported there though. Originally, NASA were going to have their labs transported on the back of walking robots named ATHLETEs.
Supposedly, we're sending people to Mars in 2035 but there's still debates about whether we should be concentrating more on the moon and solving it's mysteries first. Colonisation of Mars is probably 100+ years away; it'll have taken us 50-60 years to colonise the moon, after first visiting(allegedly *shifty eyes*).
There's talk of using the moon to train for the mission to Mars. A crew will spend a year or so(however long the journey to Mars will take) on the international space station, before moving to the moon. The crew will have to survive on the moon, with no outside help, for the amount of time that the mission to Mars(I just like saying it) is scheduled for. Finally, the crew will spend another year on the ISS before returning to Earth.
Life could be found at any time and, the moons of Saturn are suspected of possibly holding life, so it may be closer than you think.
I expect traveling to other solar systems will be hundreds of years off and may require Astronauts to produce offspring while on the mission. This is all assuming that we can develop light-speed travel. I doubt inter-galactic travel will ever be possible.
Someone else who is actually informed about the topic. I was starting to wonder. I agree with you, mostly. As I had also stated, NASA is already planning return trips in 2020, but with Obama's cabinet looking to cut funding to the space program, the future looks bleak for NASA. As for why return and colonize the moon, it's not just for resources (which are abundant up there), it's to provide a much more efficient launch site for other missions. The moons gravity is far less than Earths. Makes launching vehicles all the easier.
As for life, it's highly believed that Europa, one of Jupiter's larger moons, could very well support life in it's deep, water oceans. Trouble is, to find it, we'd have to drill through the ice covering said oceans. This ice could be a few miles thick, thus making it an even greater challenge. It's also likely that the only life we'd find would be bacterial or fungal in nature and would be centered around thermal vents near the bottom.
Inter-galactic travel may, one day, be possible. Granted, it's probably so far off it's not worth even speculating, but I wouldn't count it out. Our understanding of the laws of physics and the very nature of our universe has expanded exponentially in a very short period of time. We still know next to nothing, however, but that doesn't mean we won't one day understand enough to find a way to bend the laws of physics.
Dragonrabbit said:
Colonizing the moon could very well happen in 30 - 50 years, if anyone had a desire too actually do it.
As for Mars, I think it would come shortly after the moon.
As for those saying never another galaxy because it would take too long, technology, especially transportation, has been improving at a mind boggling rate in "recent" years. In the span of 200 years we've gone from horse back to automobiles to planes to freaking space shuttles, anyone who attempts to say that intergalactic travel in one lifetime clearly is in the wrong mindset... and needs to watch more Trek.
This is true. We have come a long way, technologically, but to be able to travel to another star will take more than making our current tech just a little faster. See, there's that pesky "light-speed barrier". Under Einstein's relativity, no matter but photons (light) can be accelerated to light speed. The energy required to do so becomes infinite the closer the object approaches light speed. The only way to go that fast (or faster) is to bend the laws of physics. Yeah, they sound far-fetched, but warp drives and wormholes are all theoretically possible. In fact, wormholes in particular were an unexpected outcome to some of Einstein and Rosenberg's theories and equations. The technology and knowledge we'd need to achieve something like that, though, is a long time coming.
odatnarat said:
i think this thread is a bit geeky, but its fun to read all your opinions about this.. haha
scary though haha
It's geeky to speculate about the future of humanity and to discuss real technology and what we're doing with it? You're on the Escapist forums, what were you expecting to find?
