Not necessarily. If your plan is to start a colony, it may be possible to design your Orion spacecraft to be able to survive a one-time one-way trip down through the atmosphere of your target planet. (Maybe you can use the propulsion plate as a heat shield, and, if absolutely necessary, one of your H-bombs for deceleration thrust – keeping in mind that such a doing so would wreak havoc on the native flora and fauna in a 50-mile radius.)
But we aren’t about to build a ship that can only go one-way to one star system. The risk would be insane. Even with huge telescopes here that would allow us to image such a planet and determine that its atmosphere should be breathable, there are a million things that could be wrong that would doom the crew to death.
No, our first interstellar probes will almost certainly be unmanned. An unmanned probe is much smaller, which means it CAN carry lots of fuel. Many times its own weight. And it would be orders of magnitude cheaper, which means we could identify say, ten systems with earthlike planets and send a probe to each one at the same time, to ensure that that manned probe goes to the likeliest candidate.
When work begins in earnest on an unmanned interstellar probe, at that point I might say we were within 100 years of a manned probe, plus the travel time for the probe to our likely candidate. Might be ten years, might be 500. It depends where we find the planets.
We come in peace! Err…hello?
Excuse me?
The computer has been around since WW2 and the theories behind it date from the victorian era. Babbage.
It seems to me intrastellar travel should not be taken on in a clunky metal ship of some sort, but more along the lines of theoretical worm hole type travel and such. I’d be more inclined to pour money into that than into a vehicle with sleepers or nuclear propulsion. Sleepers are kind of irrational anyway as the cosmonauts would arrive and all the engineers who built the machines would be long gone.
I love the movie contact not only because it was written by a master theorist but because it posed questions about space travel that got away from clunky starships…
You are assuming such things are possible, and if possible, are possible on a macro-scale. Perhaps they are; but perhaps not.
This doesn’t seem to be such a problem. One solution is to teach the sleepers about the machines, and another is to have the sleepers include the engineers. Seems reasonable if you are sending a group off into space, likely never to contact other humanity again, to teach them how to repair and maintain their life boat to a maximum degree.
il topo, I agree. Arguments could be made for sleeper engineers, and would surly require a very thorough training program.
As for the worm hole idea. It would be something I would think is wishful thinking until it comes to fruition. Also I think Sagan’s theory about intrastellar travel should hold true if certain parameters are adhered to.
OK,
Let’s assume that we win the interstellar lottery. We complete a virtual telescope with a one AU effective diameter, and examine the region surrounding us and golly gee, there actually is a genuine earth type planet just twelve light years away. We lucked out having the moon be what and where it was, and the rest of the solar system being there, as well, why not one more coincidence?
So, twelve light years at .1c average speed is 120 years. Without even getting into the ethics of sending pregestation infants on an exlporing trip, lets just assume we send an adult or two in stasis, and a set of eggs and sperm with gestation equipment, and damn little else. I will ignore the argument about whether that is possible for a moment.
What are we expecting to get out of this, back home? These folks are going to be struggling pioneers, in an entirely unknown environment, for a century or so, beginning a hundred and twenty years from the time they leave, which is going to be no less than decades after we decide to send them. Assuming for a moment that they don’t develop a society that despises our very being for abandoning them to live out our daydreams without even a thought to their possible desires, what could they possibly do for us? Build a big laser and send back love letters? They have to gain orbital technology first, to make that possible, unless we sent one along with them.
The biggest barrier of all is that this endeavor is not likely to be attempted, because there is insufficient reason to try it. It can only be done by a world wide government, and would use up a huge portion of our resources for decades, at the very least. Then there would be a century long wait to find out if it worked, another multi decade wait for the “colony” to bootstrap its way up to answering us, and then the big payoff.
We get a radio message.
"Fuck you, you arrogant bastards! Five hundred of us died, and the survivors will hate you forever.
Signed, your abandoned children."
Ah, the noble dreams of man, realized at last.
Tris
How about the first step in assuring the survival of mankind beyond the time at which the sun expands beyond the orbit of the earth, incinerating all us earthlings.
Isn’t it safe to assume they would all be volunteers, Trisk?..and that their offspring would know of no other life, and so would not necessarily look back with envy upon those who stayed behind?
Indeed … travel within a single star (“intra-stellar”) would require huge gobs of heat shielding. 
Umm… What do you mean we don’t know how to warp space?
All gravity creates wells in the fabric of space-time, therefore warping the space around it. This explains how we can see stars that are hidden behind galaxies. We can use Warp technology to travel between the stars, I’m not saying we can do it now, maybe not in 100 years. Eventually though, we will have enough of an understanding of Gravity, and a sufficient power source to literally warp space around us.
I’m really thinking none of you have the slightest clue about warp technology. Honestly, have any of you read A Wrinkle in Time? The tesselation concept is exactly that of warp drive.
Wormholes theoretically exist, and can be used to transport. Another possible method for interstellar travel.
All of you who are writing off interstellar travel as impossible today, is like writing off space flight in the 1800s. “There’s no conceivable way.” Maybe not in our lifetime. Who knows what advances will be made in the future? Can you honestly tell me that we’ll be using nuclear fission for the rest of humanity’s lifetime? Exactly. More powerful sources of energy will be discovered. Sleepers and nuclear powered ships are horribly inefficient. If you save those resources and place them into advanced propulsion technologies, you probably will result in something capable of going faster than .5c.
The laws of physics may change. Our laws are based on data collected from our own world. We cannot verify with absolute certainty that these rules hold up in every case and situation. Hell, we can’t even define gravity. That just shows you the level of infancy we are still relatively in. Quantum mechanics is relatively new. There is no guarantee that Einstein’s equations will hold up in quantum mechanics. Muchless, the rules that govern the physical world can be bent and warped.
We are moving into an era of unprecedented technological as well as cultural advances.
My main point here, is to make you people understand, that while we may not witness interstellar space travel in our lifetimes, save for some miracle life extending drug, we cannot be certain that mankind will not reach the stars. To say so is simply ignorant and frankly stupid. So please stop posting, we can’t do it, because the laws of physics say so. If it can be done, it will be done…
“So please stop posting, we can’t do it, because the laws of physics say so. If it can be done, it will be done”
Errr… I meant to say,
"So please stop posting we can’t do it, because it’s impossible. I’ts improbable not impossible. If it can be done, it will be done.
Even if such a thing is possible, I doubt it will be cost-effective. (Take note of the “and a sufficient power source” clause above. If we have enough power to warp space, couldn’t we put that power to more efficient use fuelling conventional Orion-type sublight spacecraft?)
Why not just colonize the moons of Neptune, then? Neptune’s far enough away that having our sun go Red Giant would merely make it comfy. And I’m sure there’ll be enough natural resources locked in the rock and ice of Neptune’s moons – or within the gasses of Neptune itself, if need be – to power a human colony.
“Even if such a thing is possible, I doubt it will be cost-effective. (Take note of the “and a sufficient power source” clause above. If we have enough power to warp space, couldn’t we put that power to more efficient use fuelling conventional Orion-type sublight spacecraft?)”
Umm… You seem to be missing the point here. The point is once you can warp space, you can go faster than the speed of light… Why on Earth would you put that power source into a sublight vehicle when you can go beyond the speed of light?
Warping space ?
Are you people insane !?
Everybody knows that a ship that bends space-time goes directly to hell, and all the crew goes insane and starts cutting pieces of flesh from their bodies while chanting in latin.
I haven’t seen anyone mention it yet but I read a book on superstring theory. Superstring theory (the latest cutting edge physics theory) posits that there are either 10 or 24 dimensions and anyone who mastered the theory would be able to travel large distances using currently understood physical principles (no new principles required) and without the need to travel at great speeds or warp space.
Superstring theory is extremely weird but all real-world tests have shown that it is probably true. IIRC string theory envisages the idea of travelling inter-dimensionally rather than linear travel across millions of miles of universe.
Don’t ask me how you would go about building a Superstring Machine, though. Perhaps once we fully understand the theory, the actual mechanics of building one will become apparent. After all we had to understand the principles of flight before we could build a plane.
Linear travel is for donkeys. Why haul yourself across the vast emptiness of space to Alpha Centauri when you can get there instantly in one short inter-dimensional hop?
If we left our bodies at home it would solve a lot of problems. Put the body in a hibernation chamber then have an OBE and meet at a specified location then off we go. And I don’t think the etheral
Sounds like a great solar truck stop on the way to the stars. After all, won’t the sun essentially burn out some day? Any one know if any stars are being born now close to us?