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

[Thaluikhain]

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.

Ah, ok, I see.

That still requires a truly massive amount of people to constantly leave the Earth and go somewhere else, though, which is the main problem.

 

[Ham_authority95]

I believe that humans can achieve the things when we need to. When humans need inter-stellar travel, we will find a way. Necessity is the mother of innovation...

 

[Nosense]

Sure I still believe it, not much else beyond that however.

 

[Ham_authority95]

We just have to get to Mars and dig up that Prothean technology, then all will be well.

At the cost of an ancient, all powerful race of machines wanting to kill us all...

 

[Astoria]

I think that because scientists believe that we won't be able to really explore anything but our solar system they've given up on space travel. It's a shame because there could be so much to discover.

 

[Timedraven 117]

Well we dont have to actually "reach" light speed we just need to go close. but even that is only enough to explore our solar system not enough to travel between we will need "transporters" connecting each star systems for more practical travel think mass effect.
but hell i will be dead 5 6 times over before thats very practical.

 

[WayOutThere]

What's even worse is that humanity seems to have completely abandoned the dream of space,
setting even Mars, which isn't that far away, as a hard to reach goal and considering the
newest gadget which can access twitter "State-of-the-art technology". In fact, Obama
scrapped the whole Constellation Project and nobody gave a damn, people care more about
his god damn birth certificate.

We don't have to continue to explore space now in order to produce the technology that will enable us to start interstellar exploration. Developments here at home will do that. Say we discover a way to use electrical currents to create strong gravity fields a la Star Trek. We would then realize this could be useful in creating warp drive. It is only then that we would need to actually go into space. It isn't so bad we're not doing more to explore space right now. The important thing is that science marches on.

 

[Sir-jackington]

I wouldn't say never but i would say it'll be a very long, long, long.......long time before it happens. i can only really see it coming about in a few ways. The first being over population, in a crisis we pull together. Second, "everythings perfect, we're bored, lets go to space". Third, let get there first.

 

[Alade]

What's even worse is that humanity seems to have completely abandoned the dream of space,
setting even Mars, which isn't that far away, as a hard to reach goal and considering the
newest gadget which can access twitter "State-of-the-art technology". In fact, Obama
scrapped the whole Constellation Project and nobody gave a damn, people care more about
his god damn birth certificate.

We don't have to continue to explore space now in order to produce the technology that will enable us to start interstellar exploration. Developments here at home will do that. Say we discover a way to use electrical currents to create strong gravity fields a la Star Trek. We would then realize this could be useful in creating warp drive. It is only then that we would need to actually go into space. It isn't so bad we're not doing more to explore space right now. The important thing is that science marches on.

That's also another thing, would playing with that much energy really be wise in such a small space that is the earth? I mean we're talking about an energy source that could cause a large enough explosion to decimate the whole planet.

 

[Georgie L]

To those saying it won't solve any of our problems, you are wrong.
Space probes have shown that even the moon has large deposits of resources which are running low on earth available if we could get the equipment up there to mine it.

I believe we will get into travelling the galaxy, but definitely not in my lifetime, possibly not in my children's or grand-children's either, but I still think it will happen.
Why do we need faster than light travel to travel in space? Why not just treat it exactly like travelling the seas was back when wind power was only mode of power for boats? Take years to get somewhere and set up a huge colony, rinse and repeat.

 

[Traun]

I like how everyone is thinking of "Traveling across the universe" as strapping engines to a piece of junk and calling it ship. Matter, at sub-atomic level, can travel faster than the speed of light. Hell, there are particles that pop-up left and right out of nowhere.
While we don't know how to reach another system now, we also do not possess the knowledge to say whatever or not something is possible. So there, I'm going to remain optimistic about it, we don't know the answer either way.

 

[jovack22]

Of course the answer is yes.

Technology will develop, and overtime, as space travel becomes profitable, the technology will meet that demand.

Especially since our sun is 5 billion years away from red gianting on us, and is continuously getting hotter and hotter to the point in 3-4 billion years where the oceans will be vaporized.. so ya, we better figure out space travel or our (grand)^n kids are fukd

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

There is no way that the human race will ever achieve the level of technology needed to travel the stars beyond the solar system before we all kill each other, or our resources run out.

Unless we discover lost alien technology on Mars which then points us to a mass relay. THEN yes.


And never leaving the system might be a good thing. We can't even get along with other humans who happen to have different skin color/beliefs/political ideals. How the heck are we supposed to get along with any aliens we meet out there?

That and I'm sure any new livable planets we discover would be quickly gobbled up by rich companies, and then in the end Earth would be one giant slum for the lowest rung of humanity while the corporate elite would be kicking back their heels on New Earth 2.0, which they would be simultaneously draining of resources to sell back to earth at a MASSIVE cost.

 

[PrototypeC]

I'm still not sure how it was decided that rather than just taking the short (comparatively, guys) hop to Luna, we decided to build our space station in zero-gravity as an Earth satellite. Maybe people will finally start giving a shit about outer space once we actually start building that hypothetical moon base. I mean, what the shit, space agencies?! Nobody wants to claim the genesis of the first city on the moon? Come on!

I believe(d?) that the increasingly dire situations we face are merely growing pains as we finally start breaking free of our "shell" and go out into the cold, gigantic universe to begin our real maturity as a species. I feel like all this corruption, this violence towards our own, this overpopulation and mindless harvesting... is all temporary in the face of the new, true Space Age. Don't think that means war, racism and destructive politics won't follow us into space, especially when people start getting born off-world... but that's no reason to give up now.

If you asked me if I thought I was going to live to see all these great events... or any of them... I'm not sure I want to think too much about that; but I surely believe that it will happen, and sooner than we think.

 

[bigorexia]

One day we'll collectively realize just how silly putting all our eggs in one basket is and hopefully it won't be to late for something to be done about it.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

IMO people exaggerate the problems we have on Earth. I completely agree that we have a lot of problems of varying seriousness but I think we'll survive unless a star explodes too close or something. When people had to walk or ride horses to get around, the idea of flying was absolutely ludicrous, but now people fly all over the world, all the time. I think we'll eventually be sending people around the galaxy, but soon? Doubtful.

 

[Sulgoth]

I personally think it's entirely dependent on if they figure out what Dark Matter really is and also if they were right about it in the first place, ie it makes a very large bang when activated. Or hey if that fails and the Large Hadron Collider doesn't kill us we may be able to turn to that energy source instead. There are a whole plethora of ways that humanity will be able to travel the galaxy, most of which could probably disassemble Earth as well, so I imagine Government regulations will make it less than viable.

 

[senataur]

The more we learn the more it seems traveling the galaxy faster then the speed of light in the style of sci-fi always will be fiction. There may come a day when we make engines that are powerful and efficient enough that we can start sending ships out to distant places, but that day is far in the future, and will only be possible due to time dilation effects. It will still take hundreds of years to travel, but to the occupants it will have only been years.

Our current knowledge says this ^
Even with limitless energy (and it WILL require near limitless energy) we could travel to the galaxy, but coming home would mean that everyone you ever knew or loved would be long dead, perhaps even the human race itself.

Any other theory about instant space travel breaks the other holy grail of science and is thus extremely likely to be impossible. Newtons law of conservation of energy/matter. Or the "no such thing as a free lunch" law as I like to call it.

Think of a technology that somehow allowed us to get around the huge energy requirements of relativistic travel. Use it to raise a mass into high orbit, let it drop, harness the energy of the impact, raise it again, rinse and repeat for free energy. A clear break of the conservation law a thus almost definitely impossible.

Two of Arthur C. Clarke's saying are relevant here.
One as already mentioned,
"Any significantly advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic"
and the other
"If a scientist tell you something is impossible he is most definitely wrong. If he tells you something is possible he is quite probably right."

You never know, Higgs bosons, Zero Point energy or extra dimensions, you never know. Here's hoping.

 

[Caligulove]

Yes, though nowhere in my lifetime, as much as I would hope for it.
And it makes me slightly depressed to think about since it's my childhood dream.