# AD 1,000,000: Who Will Make the Cut? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 5, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254 "2005-12-05T22:21:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/61 "2005-12-08T03:03:07Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Earth’s biosphere is a)really bloody huge, and therefore capable of absorbing a bit of abuse, b)stocked with resources that make it look (from the POV of human lifespans) like you can get away with unsustainable rates of consumption and c)supplied with a net input of energy from the sun; If you’re planning to take the Earth and sun with you on this interstellar voyage, we need to talk about your drive system; if you’re planning something that we can more realistically build, your problems of sustainability have not gone away at all. Why ? Nanotech should be able to recover every stray atom inside the ship given time ( much like plants scavaging magnesium ), losing only surface material from the vessel. If you start out with an asteroid sized vessel and scavenge comets and so forth as you go, I expect a net gain in resources, not a loss. This includes energy; I am assuming fusion is possible. > [@Mangetout](#): > > I don’t mean to argue from authority, but when you say you doubt the experts are right, what is that actually supposed to mean? I mean that one of the fundamental justifications for believing nanotech will work is life; life is a form of molecular machinery as well. Just as birds proved that heavier than air flight was possible, the existence of life proves that fairly sophisticated molecular machines are possible. The idea that smart paint is the best nanotech can do seems unlikely to me, since life can do so much more than that. > [@Mangetout](#): > > Stop _where_, exactly? Even if there was somewhere convenient to stop, _stopping, then starting again_ is the most expensive and difficult part of interstellar travel. Use a much smaller ship or drone; send it out to scavenge what you need and return. Use “solar” sails ( to pick one example ) powered by a laser from the main vessel to power the things and save on mass. > [@Mangetout](#): > > Do the sums; if you want to get there in a few thousand, you’re talking about a journey that is not at all leisurely and will require a great deal of fuel. What you don’t understand is that I’m not really talking about an interstellar colonization attempt; I’m talking about an asteroid or cometary colony that decides to leave the system; they may very well never even try to reach another star, but just travel relatively slowly from resource to resource in intersteller space ( like comets and rogue planets ). They aren’t really headed anywhere, so it doesn’t matter if it takes a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand years to get somewhere. Occasionally they will find a large enough object that they can build a new ship and populate it; over enough time this will allow the entire galaxy to be colonized. This idea isn’t original with me, BTW, but I find it plausible. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/62 "2005-12-08T03:05:53Z")
Well, I still think there’s a important distinction between _practically_ impossible and _physically_ impossible. A person can resasonably contrive of a series of advances which would allow for interstellar travel within the realms of science as we know it. Essentially it’s a momunental engineering problem. Travelling through the sun would require us to recind the laws of physics. Thats a different ball of wax. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/63 "2005-12-08T04:17:57Z")
I don’t see whats so hard about travelling through the sun. The sun has a radius of about 600,000 km. Get a massive asteroid, get it out of the solar system so you can get a run up, accelerate it at the sun at 0.01c and it would take about 400 seconds or less than 7 minutes to go through the sun. Assuming your asteroid is big enough, you should get through without even needing to turn on the AC. Why you would want to is another matter. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/64 "2005-12-08T04:37:31Z")
Um, there’s a slight difference between traveling through the sun and launching a giant rock through it, but still that wouldn’t work. Within the sun matter ceases to be solid. Unless you think this asteroid can somehow withstand the heat of a sustance nuclear reaction. That doesn’t even discuss withstanding the pressure inside the sun if you could somehow withstand the heat. Anything fired at the sun at any speed is going to cease to be something shortly after impact. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/65 "2005-12-08T04:45:06Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > The ‘fly through the sun’ device gives people the opportunity to intellectually grasp the concept of _something being so damned hard, it is actually impossible_ No, it’s an example of something that is **flatly physically impossible based on known science** – we know enough about the forces that hold matter together to know that you just **can’t** build a hull that will survive in the core of the sun (and there’s just no hint that it might be possible to create some sort of “force field” to bear the brunt instead). Thus, it’s a poor analogy to interstellar travel, which is merely difficult in practice but is not impossible in theory for any known reason. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/66 "2005-12-08T04:49:38Z")
Actually check that, it’ll cease to be something long before impact. The temperature of the outer atmosphere is 10[sup]6[/sup] Kelvin while the core is somewhere around 1.3 X 10[sup]7[/sup] Kelvin. Solid matter doesn’t live at those temps, the radius of it won’t matter. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/67 "2005-12-08T04:51:17Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > In any case, even if interstellar travel _were_ as technically reachable as people are arguing here (and I really think their impression is one based on a far too simplistic skimming of the whole thing), even if we _could_ do it, we won’t. > We won’t because we haven’t got a hope of organising and diverting (indeed _sacrificing_) the resources. Who’s “we”? I rather doubt that all the stuff in the Solar System will be collectively owned – that sort of economy has a crappy record of maintaining technologies, much less advancing them. All it takes is a bunch of people rich enough to buy their own rock and a drive to stick on it who want to get away from the rest of humanity for whatever reason. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Controvert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@The\_Controvert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Controvert)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/68 "2005-12-08T06:01:15Z")
I don’t think any of us will make the cut. Armstrong will be forgotten, as he didn’t ultimately do anything memorable. We remember Columbus, not the first sailors. JFK is similarly forgotten. But the next explorer that makes it to an extraterrestrial colony or the visionary leader that sent them there would be a good candidate. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/69 "2005-12-08T08:41:33Z")
> [@Steve MB](#): > > Who’s “we”? I rather doubt that all the stuff in the Solar System will be collectively owned – that sort of economy has a crappy record of maintaining technologies, much less advancing them. All it takes is a bunch of people rich enough to buy their own rock and a drive to stick on it who want to get away from the rest of humanity for whatever reason. That isn’t ‘all it takes’ by any stretch of the imagination; this is precisely the problem I’m having in this thread - entirely inappropriate underestimation by use of the terms ‘all it takes…’, ‘merely…’, ‘nothing to stop us…’, ‘just…’ etc. People here simply are not grasping the magnitude of the difficulties they’re glibly waving away. OK, you don’t like the ‘fly through the sun’ thing - fine - I hereby rescind it. I still say interstellar travel is practically, economically and politically so difficult as to be _beyond_ impossible. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/70 "2005-12-08T12:46:12Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > You are ignoring the speed of scientific progress ( as opposed to natural evolution ), it’s self catalyzing nature, and the fact that once we begin to improve our minds the rate of progress will increase faster and faster. Forget in a million years; well before a thousand, I expect we ( or our creations ) will have learned all physical laws and be as intelligent as physically possible. If it is possible to do something, we will be able to; our only limits will be basic ones like physical laws/energy/time, not ignorance or stupidity. We live in a unique time in human history. You can take someone from two thousand years ago and place him in society 200 years ago, and he would not be all that disoriented. But take someone from 100 years ago and place him in today’s society and he may as well be on an alien planet. We live in a time in which some people can remember going from the horse and buggy to shuttles and moon-buggies. Exponential technological advances are taking place before our eyes. It makes us feel as though this rate of change will continue forever and that anything is possible given enough time. I maintain that the technology curve will flatten dramatically after it has caught up to our brains potential. Our brains had the potential to understand and develop the technologies of today thousands of years ago, we are simply catching up for lost time. The speed of scientific progress is, indeed, self-catalyzing during this _catching-up to-our-potential stage_, but it too will cease to be so, once our potential has been reached. You can’t equate improving our technology and increasing our scientific knowledge with, as you say, _improving our minds_. I see no evidence for that, and no reason for that to occur. Packing our brains with more knowledge is not going to make our brains evolve into a super-intelligent being: that’s not how evolution works. And, I don’t believe that our “creations” are going to be magnitudes of orders more intelligent that we are today (to me, that premise is an illogicality). I don’t believe the premise that, _if it is possible to do something, we will be able to do it_. There are some things that an alien intelligence may be able to do, but we never will; and there are some things that are theoretically physically possible to do, but no life form will ever do…IMO. Our limits may be basic ones like physical laws/energy/time, but most of our limitations will be from our ignorance and inability to devise ways to overcome those limits. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/71 "2005-12-08T13:51:15Z")
Not to un-hijack the thread, but it’s worth pointing out that Julius Caesar was never an Emperor. He was murdered after making himself Dictator. His protege Octavian emerged on top after the ensuing civil war, made himself the first Emperor, and took the name Caesar Augustus to highlight his “legitimacy”. Emperors from that point on were called Caesars, mostly to emphasize their “right” to the title. But Julius wasn’t an Emperor. Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/72 "2005-12-08T13:52:53Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > I’ll bet they remember that f\*&king engineer who decided you could get away with storing the date with only 6 digits. If you don’t remember it NOW, I’m betting against this one. 😉 Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/73 "2005-12-08T14:12:51Z")
> [@Tibbycat](#): > > And, I don’t believe that our “creations” are going to be magnitudes of orders more intelligent that we are today (to me, that premise is an illogicality). Why not, as a matter of curiosity? It does not seem that unfeasible to me, particularly on such an extremely long timescale. I am also not convinced that many people from our current period will be remmebered a million years from now. Most likely any interest in the distant past will focus on the early steps from primitive hunter-gatherer to established civilization. Hammurabi up to the end of the age of exploration, maybe. After that it’s all just rearranging the same guff in different configurations with different weapons and speeches. First man in orbit/on moon might count, but could equally be forgotten in favour of first person on mars, first male to give birth, first person to break the speed of light, or whatever other marvels have been accomplished. Don’t forget that a lot of (educated, employed) people can’t correctly answer questions like “who first circumnavigated the earth”, “who was the first person to reach orbit” “who discovered bacteria” etc. That’s nowadays, never mind tens of thousands of generations further down the line. I was watching the (very fluffy and lightweight) BBC series “Egypt” and was fascinated by the fact that but for one Frenchman who was fluent in a nearly dead language called Coptic, hieroglyphs might never have been figured out and nearly all the history of the Pharaohs would have been lost, despite all the titanic efforts their subjects made to carve them out a place in eternity. Information can be very fragile, even if the data endures. [BBC linky](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/decipherment_01.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/74 "2005-12-08T15:20:09Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I still say interstellar travel is practically, economically and politically so difficult as to be _beyond_ impossible. You are still blurring the fundamental distinction between something that is precluded by known facts of science and something that merely requires a large amount of resources and engineering. “Impossible” is applicable only to the former. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/75 "2005-12-08T15:36:50Z")
No, I’m not any more; I’ve agreed to dispose of the ‘through the sun’ thing. In fact I don’t think we should spoil this thread any more by continuing the hijack any further; if you want to declare that as a defeat of my every objection, be my guest. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254/76 "2005-12-08T16:13:51Z")
> [@Tibbycat](#): > > You can’t equate improving our technology and increasing our scientific knowledge with, as you say, _improving our minds_. I see no evidence for that, and no reason for that to occur. Genetic engineering/ cyborgization/ copying to a machine is the method; competetion and the desire for self improvement the reason. If we had the technology, plenty of people would enhance themselves right now, including me. > [@Tibbycat](#): > > And, I don’t believe that our “creations” are going to be magnitudes of orders more intelligent that we are today (to me, that premise is an illogicality). Why ? That makes no sense to me; among other things, it seems to deny our own origins from animals. > [@Tibbycat](#): > > I don’t believe the premise that, _if it is possible to do something, we will be able to do it_. Given enough time to explore the possibilites, I do. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ad-1-000-000-who-will-make-the-cut/334254.md?page=3)