Poll: When will humanity reach the stars?

[Thaluikhain]

PSYCHOLOGY) With our current tech levels, a trip from Earth to Mars and back ranges from 13 to 15 months (variance depending on how much time you want to spend playing golf in a rusty sandbox). That's quite a bit of time to spend in any area, let alone a spacecraft. Designed to be aerodynamic and efficient first, that doesn't leave a lot of dancing room for a crew of seven. More importantly, you know that guy at work you hate? The one with the goofy ties and the canned jokes that never go over very well, probably named Gary? Imagine having to live with that jerk for a year and a half.

And you have to stop and throw harpoons at any whales you come across?

Being stuck in a tiny ship for two years is hardly unprecedented.

...

Interstellar travel is serious business, but there's no way of telling what the world might be like in a hundred years time. Now, I don't really hold with the "all current science is wrong" way of thinking, but even with our current understanding of things, it wouldn't be impossible to reach the nearest stars given a few centuries.

What the people would actually do once they got there is another issue.

The GFC will pass, we'll have new and more exciting disasters to worry about in a few years time.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The urge for manned space exploration and interplanetary colonisation is a phase we will grow out of sooner or later.

But then maybe that's my wishful thinking of not wanting billions upon billions of dollars wasted to put a small little oupost on a dead planet which atmosphere has one percent the density of Earth's causing its colonists to die of cancer withing 6 months.

I honestly hope not. The thought that humanity will never reach other planets, other worlds fills me with a sense of hopelesness and despair. From my point of view it would be beyond horrible to live our whole lives as a species on this one planet. I'm not saying i hate earth, or that it's bad place, or that we shouldn't try to make it better and take care of it. I'm just saying we, as a species should not limit ourselves to one planet, one place.

We may not have choice in that regard.

When I hear people talk about colonizing a planet they always seem to compare it to colonizing a continent, and that the Earth is just a big rock in space that we can trade in for a new one. But the Earth is an entire world that ultimately shaped us into who we are now due to the many aspects of its environment over a course of millions of years. We might be the dominant species on this planet, but we're still "just a species" on this planet. Even with all our knowledge and technology, if the Earth's magnetic field would happen to disappear over the course of time then there's not a fucking thing we could do about that except die.

We hardly have any control over the planet we live on currently except for certain surface areas, how would we survive on a totally alien world which doesn't even have the luxury of a magnetic field or proper atmosphere? And who would own this planet if we did manage to colonize it? How many wars would break out for the right to own it?

 

[Thaluikhain]

The urge for manned space exploration and interplanetary colonisation is a phase we will grow out of sooner or later.

But then maybe that's my wishful thinking of not wanting billions upon billions of dollars wasted to put a small little oupost on a dead planet which atmosphere has one percent the density of Earth's causing its colonists to die of cancer withing 6 months.

I honestly hope not. The thought that humanity will never reach other planets, other worlds fills me with a sense of hopelesness and despair. From my point of view it would be beyond horrible to live our whole lives as a species on this one planet. I'm not saying i hate earth, or that it's bad place, or that we shouldn't try to make it better and take care of it. I'm just saying we, as a species should not limit ourselves to one planet, one place.

We may not have choice in that regard.

When I hear people talk about colonizing a planet they always seem to compare it to colonizing a continent, and that the Earth is just a big rock in space that we can trade in for a new one. But the Earth is an entire world that ultimately shaped us into who we are now due to the many aspects of its environment over a course of millions of years. We might be the dominant species on this planet, but we're still "just a species" on this planet. Even with all our knowledge and technology, if the Earth's magnetic field would happen to disappear over the course of time then there's not a fucking thing we could do about that except die.

We hardly have any control over the planet we live on currently except for certain surface areas, how would we survive on a totally alien world which doesn't even have the luxury of a magnetic field or proper atmosphere? And who would own this planet if we did manage to colonize it? How many wars would break out for the right to own it?

That's falling into the usual trap, the idea that once we go up we have to come down somewhere again. If you can build a self-contained environment in space, why bother going down onto a planet? Extracting what you need from comets and asteroids might work much better.

 

[Casual Shinji]

That's falling into the usual trap, the idea that once we go up we have to come down somewhere again. If you can build a self-contained environment in space, why bother going down onto a planet? Extracting what you need from comets and asteroids might work much better.

I doubt mankind will ever possess the 100% failsafe maintenance skills to keep a country-sized environment intact in such a chaotic and hostile place. Let alone, you know, building it.

 

[flamingjimmy]

I don't think we'll ever crack FTL travel, so when we go to the stars, it's gonna be in generational ships, probably not for centuries.

 

[Something Amyss]

That's falling into the usual trap, the idea that once we go up we have to come down somewhere again. If you can build a self-contained environment in space, why bother going down onto a planet? Extracting what you need from comets and asteroids might work much better.

Unlikely. Presuming that would be foolish and dangerous.

 

[necromanzer52]

Well, Zefram Cochrane will invent the warp engine in 2063. From there we'll make contact with the vulcans, and, well you know the rest.

 

[Thaluikhain]

That's falling into the usual trap, the idea that once we go up we have to come down somewhere again. If you can build a self-contained environment in space, why bother going down onto a planet? Extracting what you need from comets and asteroids might work much better.

I doubt mankind will ever possess the 100% failsafe maintenance skills to keep a country-sized environment intact in such a chaotic and hostile place. Let alone, you know, building it.

Well, yeah, that's why I said "if". Getting a colony to another planet and setting up shop on an alien environment requires all that anyway, plus some, I meant.

 

[Antari]

The chances of actual humans reaching for the stars. Not within the foreseeable future to be certain. With the advances of robots, any exploration will likely be done by them. Not us.

 

[Toriver]

I dunno, I'd think the hardest part wouldn't be getting funding so much as surviving the trip, either by increasing humanity's lifespan to a degree that could make spending that long on a starship possible, or developing a way for any matter to survive super-light speed, not to mention a living thing, which would then break physics as we know them.

Couple that concern with the obvious logistics and navigational problems to be incurred, and it seems pretty clear that manned interstellar travel is effectively impossible.

My answer is "never".