Humanity's Limits

[viranimus]

Oh the naivete. Such idealistic creatures. They are always so cute when at that stage. It almost breaks your heart to see it when their idealism gets crushed under the weight of reality.

 

[Redingold]

If humanity suddenly said "fuck fighting each other lets do cool shit" I cannot fathom what we'd do. We'd be on Mars in less then 30 years and have FTL in a century.

Or not, because in all likelyhood FTL travel is impossible. Still though, we could at least fully inhabit the vast, unimaginable reaches of this solar system.

Also, lots of people would die. As fundamentally hazardous as space is there's no way we could start venturing out into it regularly without expecting enormous death tolls. It's just one of the many, many, many huge sacrifices we'd have to make as a species to make OP's vision a reality.

Actually, we already have concept designs for a (in theory) functional FTL warp drive similar in concept to the ones in Star Trek. The problem is power drain rather than FTL being truly impossible, we just cannot produce enough energy to get the sucker moving with current sources.

Yeah, but does it travel through physical space, or does it actually warp through the time-space continuum? If it's the first, then the first launch would be like a Tsar going off.

Technically both, and neither. The relative velocity and acceleration of the ship remains constant, its space itself that is moving.

The potential downside is that when the thing actually stops moving, according to calculations, a massive burst of energy is released in outward directions, particularly in front of the vehicle's path. It shouldn't harm the ship itself, but if we cannot find a way to offset this, a careless pilot could blow his destination to smithereens.

The other downsides are that the bubble produces Hawking radiation that would obliterate anything inside the bubble, and the inside of the bubble is causally disconnected from the edge, meaning you can't turn off or steer such a drive. Also, the drive requires the existence of exotic matter with negative energy, which does not necessarily exist. You also can't form the bubble without moving the exotic matter faster than light speed - in other words, you need an FTL drive to make an FTL drive.

The Alcubierre drive is a cute piece of mathematics as a solution to Einstein's field equations, but there's nothing to suggest that it's practical in the slightest.

 

[DeltaEdge]

Personally, I think that removing all of the aforementioned barriers would slow things down greatly, because the only way to do this would be to change everyone to become uniform. People naturally divide and congregate based on their beliefs and personalities, and to remove the division would eliminate the divisions that divide people and if everyone thought the same, then it would be much more difficult to solve problems as we would only be able to approach it from a singular mindset, and a singular perspective. Things would probably be nearly stagnant in my opinion.

 

[Fisher321]

snip

Sorry to disappoint, but there's no way that humanity will ever come together, its our nature to fight mainly because of opinion and because on a whole we are very self centered anyone who has a different view to you is wrong, and therefore you wouldn't want to associate with them. Furthermore getting rid of the boundaries mentioned would just cause more problems, for instance no politics means no government and no government means no laws which means total anarchy, people need to be told what to do/think and they need to be governed otherwise primal intrinsic will kick in and with no consequences you'll start doing whatever you feel like because it isn't right or wrong; this would also create a bigger wedge in society where people will group off and start their own 'utopias' with their own ideal laws.
And with no economy how do you expect for people to work for the common goal? Because no matter how good it is for all of us, no one will do it for free because everyone wants some short term return on their work.

Removal of political boundaries as in humanity uniting under one banner, not eliminate government completely.

 

[Dimitriov]

I completely disagree throughout history there are countless examples showing that competition is what drives progress and creativity.

GO BACK TO YOUR COMMUNE!

Seriously the reason we haven't been to Mars yet is because the Cold War ended. The world, excepting the Middle East perhaps , is far too cooperative!

 

[Heronblade]

If humanity suddenly said "fuck fighting each other lets do cool shit" I cannot fathom what we'd do. We'd be on Mars in less then 30 years and have FTL in a century.

Or not, because in all likelyhood FTL travel is impossible. Still though, we could at least fully inhabit the vast, unimaginable reaches of this solar system.

Also, lots of people would die. As fundamentally hazardous as space is there's no way we could start venturing out into it regularly without expecting enormous death tolls. It's just one of the many, many, many huge sacrifices we'd have to make as a species to make OP's vision a reality.

Actually, we already have concept designs for a (in theory) functional FTL warp drive similar in concept to the ones in Star Trek. The problem is power drain rather than FTL being truly impossible, we just cannot produce enough energy to get the sucker moving with current sources.

Yeah, but does it travel through physical space, or does it actually warp through the time-space continuum? If it's the first, then the first launch would be like a Tsar going off.

Technically both, and neither. The relative velocity and acceleration of the ship remains constant, its space itself that is moving.

The potential downside is that when the thing actually stops moving, according to calculations, a massive burst of energy is released in outward directions, particularly in front of the vehicle's path. It shouldn't harm the ship itself, but if we cannot find a way to offset this, a careless pilot could blow his destination to smithereens.

The other downsides are that the bubble produces Hawking radiation that would obliterate anything inside the bubble, and the inside of the bubble is causally disconnected from the edge, meaning you can't turn off or steer such a drive. Also, the drive requires the existence of exotic matter with negative energy, which does not necessarily exist. You also can't form the bubble without moving the exotic matter faster than light speed - in other words, you need an FTL drive to make an FTL drive.

The Alcubierre drive is a cute piece of mathematics as a solution to Einstein's field equations, but there's nothing to suggest that it's practical in the slightest.

That was in theory true back when the drive was originally introduced, when it was still slated to take approximately the entire mass energy of Jupiter to power. The design specs have changed a wee bit since then.

They're running tests in a lab right now on a miniaturized version of the drive.

 

[NightHawk21]

We could honestly colonize the moon and mars within a few years. In terms of space and tech we'd probably have more advances in the next century than there have been in all of written history. Biology wouldn't probably fair so well as its a dynamic system, but we'd have a lot more drugs on the market to combat whatever diseases we wanted. Then again though, I could be wrong, and as much as I hope for it, a world with violence and no money concerns can't really happen.

If anything a moon colony would come well before a mars colony considering the abundant Helium 3 that could be used for fuel there, and even that isnt worth the expense at the moment.

Oh, sure, no argument there. But moonbases aren't exciting anymore, has to be Mars for some reason.

...

Oh, and for the people claiming we'd have FTL in 30 or 100 years, we don't know if FTL will ever be possible. There's no way you can put a timescale on something like that.

Assuming FTL is faster than light. If that's the case it's already theoretically possible, and Nasa is working on it right now.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

At that point I think pretty much our only purpose as far as the universe is concerned would be to create robots who can innovate better than we can. Like just creating a better race to overtake us. We're a resource-consuming, fearful, not always rational, in-fighting, weak, temporary, vulnerable, procrastinating species. Robots would be able to reproduce to a point without necessarily overgrowing their environment, don't have to eat, can use solar power, don't need more than a warehouse or some other shelter to live in, at the most maybe some kind of power network, they act rationally, have infinite patience, can weigh up long-term and short-term decisions on their merits, can't be persuaded, can work in a greater variety of environments and more reliably, they're just a powerhouse of a species compared to us. I think that's the main thing we're going to contribute to the universe, robots that are better than us.

As far as humans working together in peace, I think conflict is part of what drives invention (competition at least). If we were somehow able to co-operate AND be absolutely motivated (oh and stupid people realised they were stupid and kept to themselves when funding for asteroid defence systems or gay marriage or something came up), we'd be a little bit less industrious than robots. Really robots is the endgame in my opinion. We're going to die somehow, whether it's procrastination about that asteroid or we don't fund NASA enough before the Sun implodes or we just all kill each other or we give guns to robots before they're advanced enough to have some common sense.

 

[Lunar Templar]

A shame that whole united thing won't be happening for a while. Considering we are so willing to kill each other because "They don't like what we like, lets shoot them!" mentality is all the rage these days.

>.> you make it sound like it sound like that ever stopped ....


OT: I have NO idea, at all. But it would probably be the single greats span of time to live in with all the constant advancements that would be happening.

 

[hobohazard]

Thing is, if we do that, we don't only get rid of political boundaries and conflict. Many of the behaviors that are suppressed by the fact that we as humans instantly see them as terrible would suddenly never be a problem. Cannibalism would be rampant in countries that fairly have any food. Every single little crime would instantly be punished with death. We would probably also downsize everyone that didn't help. Religious leaders, dead. Philosophizer, dead. Anything having to do with entertainment, most likely including games, killed. We wouldn't become a perfectly peaceful collective or even a Communism. We would become a hive mind. This is of coarse assuming all these things just happen instantly without any reason. If these things happen because of a reason (Bigger threat, a great philosopher, something else), then it would turn out like one of the other 2 options.

 

[Redingold]

If humanity suddenly said "fuck fighting each other lets do cool shit" I cannot fathom what we'd do. We'd be on Mars in less then 30 years and have FTL in a century.

Or not, because in all likelyhood FTL travel is impossible. Still though, we could at least fully inhabit the vast, unimaginable reaches of this solar system.

Also, lots of people would die. As fundamentally hazardous as space is there's no way we could start venturing out into it regularly without expecting enormous death tolls. It's just one of the many, many, many huge sacrifices we'd have to make as a species to make OP's vision a reality.

Actually, we already have concept designs for a (in theory) functional FTL warp drive similar in concept to the ones in Star Trek. The problem is power drain rather than FTL being truly impossible, we just cannot produce enough energy to get the sucker moving with current sources.

Yeah, but does it travel through physical space, or does it actually warp through the time-space continuum? If it's the first, then the first launch would be like a Tsar going off.

Technically both, and neither. The relative velocity and acceleration of the ship remains constant, its space itself that is moving.

The potential downside is that when the thing actually stops moving, according to calculations, a massive burst of energy is released in outward directions, particularly in front of the vehicle's path. It shouldn't harm the ship itself, but if we cannot find a way to offset this, a careless pilot could blow his destination to smithereens.

The other downsides are that the bubble produces Hawking radiation that would obliterate anything inside the bubble, and the inside of the bubble is causally disconnected from the edge, meaning you can't turn off or steer such a drive. Also, the drive requires the existence of exotic matter with negative energy, which does not necessarily exist. You also can't form the bubble without moving the exotic matter faster than light speed - in other words, you need an FTL drive to make an FTL drive.

The Alcubierre drive is a cute piece of mathematics as a solution to Einstein's field equations, but there's nothing to suggest that it's practical in the slightest.

That was in theory true back when the drive was originally introduced, when it was still slated to take approximately the entire mass energy of Jupiter to power. The design specs have changed a wee bit since then.

They're running tests in a lab right now on a miniaturized version of the drive.

Looking at the paper that claims to have reduced the energy considerations for such a drive, I notice a few things.

1. It's on vixra. This website was made to accept the stuff that was rejected by the moderators on other science websites. If you can only get on vixra, that doesn't speak well for your credibility.
2. It is claimed that the Higgs particle cannot be detected. This is wrong, because the particle was detected.
3. His way of getting around the fact that you need to move the exotic matter at superluminal velocities to form a warp bubble is to increase the Planck length. This is about as feasible as increasing the speed of light or the gravitational constant.
4. It is based on brane theory which has absolutely no experimental backing.
5. He still hasn't solved the problem of anything within the drive being destroyed by Hawking radiation.

The miniaturised version of the drive is being tested with light, on very very small scales, using things like the Casimir effect to get negative energy. The Casimir effect takes place on the microscopic scale and can not really be scaled up to anything practical.