Poll: Do you (still) believe humanity will ever get to travel the galaxy?

[Dfskelleton]

I used to, but then again, think about it. What if we did know what was beyond the boundaries of our galaxy? What if we found the reason of our existence? What if we found something horrible? What if we found nothing?
I doubt we currently have the technology to do so, possibly some other time. Still, think about it: do we really want to know what lies beyond?

 

[O maestre]

yes we will but i believe it will only happen in rapid pace after or during some cataclysmic event like world war 3, we have to face facts that humanity works best collectively when impending doom is close, and that we only seem to be able to rally together in the face of said impending doom.... but maybe im being too optimistic.

the other method would be if a new space religion gained fanatical devotion world wide.

Faster than light travel will be invented in 2071 by Zephram Cochrane. Don't you know anything?

QFT

 

[Blaster395]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Anything we consider impossible now will likely end up being possible in the future. Right now the best possibility for it is compressing space in front of the ship and expanding it behind the ship, nobody knows how to do that, but there is nothing that says its impossible.

 

[Blue_vision]

Not traditionally. A gradual expansion so that human civilization and Gaian ecology will exist across the stars. But no "galactic civilization" by any means. Just a bunch of different earths, planet/asteroid-scaled sealed colonies, and space stations. Hopefully we'll find some relatable alien civilizations to contact with and team up with to further our collective conditions, but that's about it.

So maybe (hopefully) we'll start getting some permanent colonies on the Moon mid-century. 40 or 50 years to get things sorted out down here on Earth, then time to turn our eyes skyward for eternity.

 

[Conza]

Faster than light travel will be invented in 2071 by Zephram Cochrane. Don't you know anything?

April 4th, 2063, Bozeman Montana will be the site of the first launch (nice reference dude).

Theres two options:

A: Travel the galaxy (solar system), with humanity being fruitful and multiplying
B: Not travel the galaxy, continued population growth of poor people, run out of food for all the poor people, shoot the poor people when they rise up to take food.

I suggest A.

Um...how does sending people into space prevent poverty on Earth?

Are you going to make a spaceship fuelled by poor people?

Well it will clearly stop over crowding, the people who can afford to move will and then less people will want to live on Earth... oh damn, that was Blade Runner, sorry.

If viable commercial flights from Earth become available, to other colonies in space, the population issue that causes a lack of food will diminish in two ways, there will be less people to eat the food currently produced on Earth, and there will be more food produced on the colonies to feed the colonists, so, more food, less people. Does that answer your question?

 

[Jumpingbean3]

I'm certain it will happen at some point but whether it will happen in my time I'm not sure. America may have cancelled the Constellation Project and pretty much given up on space travel but other countries seem to feel there's still some worth in the field so I suppose there's a chance (if only a very small one) that we may see it before Mr Reaper comes for us.

 

[The Night Shade]

I believe that we can reach space travel probrably in 1000 years but sometime we will

 

[Cpu46]

Technology has been advancing at an exponential rate ever since a man decided to smash two rocks together. The so called laws of physics are being redefined every day to adapt to our new knowledge. We are finding more ways to alter the world around us to suit our needs. Its only a matter of time before we turn our attention upward. There is no reason for us not to reach the stars one day besides a global catastrophe. I feel as long as we can reach and colonize mars there is no way we can be stopped because it means that a global catastrophe won't set the entire human race back to the stone age.

In my lifetime though... probably won't reach the stars but mars is a possibility.

 

[Jumpingbean3]

I used to, but then again, think about it. What if we did know what was beyond the boundaries of our galaxy? What if we found the reason of our existence? What if we found something horrible? What if we found nothing?
I doubt we currently have the technology to do so, possibly some other time. Still, think about it: do we really want to know what lies beyond?

There's an old saying: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Sure it may all go wrong and we could be worse off for it but at least we would have done it. We would have gone out there to seek what lies beyond our own worlds. We would have seen the wonders/horrors of other systems and if we didn't we would still keep looking in hope, chasing our dreams to the ends of time.

 

[Thaluikhain]

If viable commercial flights from Earth become available, to other colonies in space, the population issue that causes a lack of food will diminish in two ways, there will be less people to eat the food currently produced on Earth, and there will be more food produced on the colonies to feed the colonists, so, more food, less people. Does that answer your question?

That doesn't really work.

The current population increase on Earth is something like 80 million a year. That's about the total casualties of WW2 sent out every year just to break even.

Importing food from off-world? I really don't see that happening, at least till we are long beyond the singularity. The logistics of shifting any worthwhile amount of food out of a gravity well, through interplanetary space, and safely back down again...and interstellar transportation is right out.

 

[TehChuckles]

It will happen, not in my lifetime though. and if it doesn't it's good bye to the human race. its happened before and it will happen again. civilizations will fall due to over population. I do believe the only reason we survived for so long this time is that we crazy Caucasian people just happen to love killing people.

 

[necromanzer52]

Faster than light travel will be invented in 2071 by Zephram Cochrane. Don't you know anything?

April 4th, 2063, Bozeman Montana will be the site of the first launch (nice reference dude)

Damn. I seem to remember 2071 for some reason. It's been a really long time since I've seen that movie.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

I still feel like suspended animation could be possible. It will never work like Star Wars or Mass Effect, but I could imagine sending "frozen" humans and/or genetic information on a space ship for a 1000 years in a given direction. Would be hard to see the point, but I think it's possible.

 

[darkless]

Faster than light travel will be invented in 2071 by Zephram Cochrane. Don't you know anything?

Warp speed is NOT, in the strictest sense faster than light travel.

 

[gravitii]

I too used to believe, and believe we still can, it's just a more distant future dependent on if we ever fix the world we're on first, and don't kill everyone in nuclear war. yay optimism. All in all space travel just seems self-indulgent when there's so much we need to fix here.

 

[Ace of Spades]

As soon as we discover the Mass Relays.

In all seriousness, yes, I believe that humans will be able to travel the galaxy, but it will be long after I'm dead and buried.

 

[Conza]

If viable commercial flights from Earth become available, to other colonies in space, the population issue that causes a lack of food will diminish in two ways, there will be less people to eat the food currently produced on Earth, and there will be more food produced on the colonies to feed the colonists, so, more food, less people. Does that answer your question?

That doesn't really work.

The current population increase on Earth is something like 80 million a year. That's about the total casualties of WW2 sent out every year just to break even.

Importing food from off-world? I really don't see that happening, at least till we are long beyond the singularity. The logistics of shifting any worthwhile amount of food out of a gravity well, through interplanetary space, and safely back down again...and interstellar transportation is right out.

Sorry, you misunderstand me, let me use maths to clarify what I mean. We make 1000 pies for all the people, but there are 2000 people, so we only have half a pie each. If we continued to make 1000 pies, but there were only 1000 people, we would have double the food per person. Likewise, those people who left, would make food for themselves, not export it back to us.

Faster than light travel will be invented in 2071 by Zephram Cochrane. Don't you know anything?

Warp speed is NOT faster than light travel.

By this, do you mean that, the people inside the warp bubble aren't travelling faster than light? Yes and No. No in that they don't suffer any of the relativistic effects, but Yes because they benefit from the faster than light speed/s.

 

[Leemaster777]

This is my thought on the matter: We will either achieve some form of practical space travel... or we'll die out as a race.

Sooner or later, humanity is going to drain the earth of all it's usable resources. That, combined with the overpopulation problem that is only going to get WORSE (barring a massive disaster), means that space travel will be our only option for surviving.