# Will Man ever reach the stars? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 20, 2010, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829 "2010-10-20T22:20:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**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:** [October 21, 2010, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/41 "2010-10-21T11:19:25Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Has there ever in human history been a sustained colonization effort that wasn’t primarily motivated and driven by the desire for material gain? A single instance? Any time, anywhere? All the ones driven by the desire to escape a nation or religion. And why does “sustained” matter? ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/42 "2010-10-21T11:33:22Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Has there ever in human history been a sustained colonization effort that wasn’t primarily motivated and driven by the desire for material gain? A single instance? Any time, anywhere? I must have my American blinders on and am ignoring it despite myself, because not a single one comes to mind, I’m afraid. Liberia? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/43 "2010-10-21T12:53:13Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > All the ones driven by the desire to escape a nation or religion. That’s not called “colonization.” That’s called “fleeing,” or if you prefer, “migration.” I don’t see how interstellar population migration would ever be a viable prospect, unless men with money had already paved a road to the stars for the migrants to travel on. > [@](#): > > And why does “sustained” matter? If the massive expenditures of money, engineering and time going into a “generation ship” can’t be characterized as a sustained effort, then I don’t think anything else can either. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/44 "2010-10-21T13:02:55Z")
> [@Meurglys](#): > > Liberia? Granted, though from what I read of it, it seems the founders (and funders) of Liberia had mixed motives including good old fashioned imperialism. At the very least, though, I think the Southerners wanting to deport inconvenient freedmen had an interest in _preserving_ their society and the material wealth it gave them, even if _gaining_ wealth wasn’t the ostensible motive. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/45 "2010-10-21T13:10:43Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Has there ever in human history been a sustained colonization effort that wasn’t primarily motivated and driven by the desire for material gain? A single instance? Any time, anywhere? I must have my American blinders on and am ignoring it despite myself, because not a single one comes to mind, I’m afraid. Mr and Mrs Brian Norris of 37, Gledhill Gardens, Parsons Green? ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/46 "2010-10-21T13:24:13Z")
I voted option 2 because I am an optimist at heart. I know a fair bit about physics and everything I know says that FTL is not possible. However, I am an ignorant hairless ape, limited by this knowledge. Who knows what we will find when the next generation of space telescopes come online? If we find a viable Earth-like planet within a few hundred light years, we will almost certainly send a probe there. If we eventually come up with a method of uploading our minds into non-biological matrices, then those entities will be ‘human’ and will reach that planet. But then again, if we become non-biological, why would we limit ourselves to Earth-like planets. Of course, all of this is predicated upon the results of the coming mid-term elections in the USA, so I probably should have waited until mid-November to reply. ---
**Author:** ![BigDadWolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@BigDadWolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigDadWolf)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/47 "2010-10-21T13:45:12Z")
I voted _“No, because we will evolve culturally to the point where we need no such silly fantasies”_ but think that it will be more devolve than evolve. The modern mass consumption society will deplete resources so much and/or cause such environmental disruption in the next few centuries that I believe mankind is more likely to become pastoral by necessity than high tech in the far future. Either that or "_No, but not because of physics or engineering limitations; we’ll exterminate ourselves"_. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/48 "2010-10-21T14:23:49Z")
Nope, our technologies will never evolve anywhere near what would be required to travel those distances within a time frome tolerable by the human body. Our efforts would be better spent trying to preserve the life sustaining characteristics of this planet than pursuing the notion we’ll find a better world elsewhere with which we could engineer ourselves the opportunity to just start over. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/49 "2010-10-21T14:33:00Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Yes, we will reach the stars. The other option is extinction when the Sun dies. Men are amazingly tenacious creatures. I don’t buy this at all; if we have the tech to move large numbers of people interstellar distances when the sun dies, we have the tech to ignore the sun going out as a minor inconvenience. ---
**Author:** ![Electric\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9de0a6/32.png) [@Electric\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electric_Sky)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/50 "2010-10-21T14:35:10Z")
Like **Gagundathar** , I voted for option 2 out of sheer optimism. It’s a big universe. Seems a shame to waste all that space. I hope that we’ll be able to find our away _around_ the universe’s speed limit (whether through wormholes, something like an Alcubierre drive, or who knows what else I can’t conceive of) or, failing that, send slow ships with humans or post-humans, in stasis and/or uploaded. Unfortunately, I’d bet it won’t happen in my lifetime. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/51 "2010-10-21T14:36:39Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > I don’t buy this at all; if we have the tech to move large numbers of people interstellar distances when the sun dies, we have the tech to ignore the sun going out as a minor inconvenience. I think it more likely that, when Sol dies, whatever sapient species still remains on Earth will not be anything we’d recognize as human, or that would feel any more commonality with us than we do with [tribosphenidans](http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/mesozoic/jurassic/). ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/52 "2010-10-21T18:08:45Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > I can’t vote because my POV isn’t there. Physics is a cruel mistress, and we simply won’t be able to come up with a way to travel fast enough and/or long enough to even reach the closest star. Yes, this seems like a strange option to leave out of the poll. At any rate, as others have said, I think most of the “Yes” proponents are simply handwaving away the difficulties. Even getting a ship close to c, a ship that can support a human crew, would require absurd amounts of energy, more than a fusion plant can generate. The only ways we’ll do this are 1.) if we find new physics to work around the speed of light and other physical problems and 2.) if we evolve into a post human synthetic creature that can stand million year trips and require few resources to live. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/53 "2010-10-21T18:14:15Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > I can’t vote because my POV isn’t there. Physics is a cruel mistress, and we simply won’t be able to come up with a way to travel fast enough and/or long enough to even reach the closest star. I was thinking that POV was captured by the _FTL is impossible_ option, but I see you think it wasn’t. Do I take it that you think that _Even generation ships will never be able to do it_ should have been included? ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/54 "2010-10-21T18:16:49Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I was thinking that POV was captured by the _FTL is impossible_ option, but I see you think it wasn’t. Do I take it that you think that _Even generation ships will never be able to do it_ should have been included? I would have voted for that option among the available choices if it were available (I’m slightly more optimistic than that, but only slightly). ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/55 "2010-10-21T18:20:36Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Yes, we will reach the stars. The other option is extinction when the Sun dies. Men are amazingly tenacious creatures. We will find a way to leave this planet one day. Probably not within my lifetime, but it will happen. The sun won’t die for billions of years. We haven’t even had multicellular life for that long. Even if the natural selection is slower to produce change in humans (we shrug off selection pressures that would have profound impacts on other animals), it seems hard to believe that _homo sapiens sapiens_ will still be extant at that point. I doubt we’ll drive ourselves to extinction, but the normal processes of natural selection and speciation will eventually create sufficient changes that whatever animals are walking around are not human in any meaningful sense - and I don’t feel any particular obligation to nonhumans. If they don’t want to go extinct when the Sun expands into a red giant, well, they can invest in their own space program. 😃 You’ve hit on an important point, though - the end of the Sun is pretty much the only thing that could justify interstellar travel. Even interplanetary travel is a hard sell - the very least hospitable places on Earth are far, far more habitable than the nicest places on Mars, for example. But even if you wanted to go to space for, say, asteroid mining - we’ve got plenty of asteroids right in our own system. We might send probes to other stars, some day - slower-than-light probes, of course. And I think that would be worth doing. But interstellar travel is a deeply foolish idea. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/56 "2010-10-21T18:25:25Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I think it more likely that, when Sol dies, whatever sapient species still remains on Earth will not be anything we’d recognize as human, or that would feel any more commonality with us than we do with [tribosphenidans](http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/mesozoic/jurassic/). **Skald** , if you insist on beating me to my point (and stating it more concisely than I, to boot), I’ll have to insist on dispatching my own bees to your office. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/57 "2010-10-21T18:32:26Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I was thinking that POV was captured by the _FTL is impossible_ option, but I see you think it wasn’t. Do I take it that you think that _Even generation ships will never be able to do it_ should have been included? Yeppers. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/58 "2010-10-21T18:34:41Z")
I should also add, by the way, that even the Sun’s eventual expansion into a red giant could be dealt with, in principle, by the colonization of other planets, comets, or asteroids within the solar system, or through the construction of habitats in space. You’d still have access to (frozen) water and oxygen, without all the wildly, fantastically impractical mucking about in interstellar space. The sun’s eventual explosion as a nova might be survivable as well, in shielded habitats within the solar system. And once you survive that, it’s relatively straightforward to move your habitats or whatever closer to the surviving white dwarf - it may not be undergoing fusion, but it’s very hot and will stay that way for a good long time: billions of years. In short, whoever’s living on Earth when the Sun starts to die will need a very good interplanetary space program if they want to survive - but it’s unlikely they’d need interstellar travel. ---
**Author:** ![Loisseau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/2bfe46/32.png) [@Loisseau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loisseau)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/59 "2010-10-21T19:02:25Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > I should also add, by the way, that even the Sun’s eventual expansion into a red giant could be dealt with, in principle, by the colonization of other planets, comets, or asteroids within the solar system, or through the construction of habitats in space. You’d still have access to (frozen) water and oxygen, without all the wildly, fantastically impractical mucking about in interstellar space. The sun’s eventual explosion as a nova might be survivable as well, in shielded habitats within the solar system. And once you survive that, it’s relatively straightforward to move your habitats or whatever closer to the surviving white dwarf - it may not be undergoing fusion, but it’s very hot and will stay that way for a good long time: billions of years. > > In short, whoever’s living on Earth when the Sun starts to die will need a very good interplanetary space program if they want to survive - but it’s unlikely they’d need interstellar travel. This is a good summation, with the point that traveling immense distances is not needed. The red giant phase probably will happen in the space of 3-5,000,000,000,000 yrs.- Earth will be carbon and silicon way before that; and we will have evolved into some unrecognizable form, with more smarts than we have now, and left. The time scales are impossible to imagine, never mind the distances. ---
**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:** [October 21, 2010, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829/60 "2010-10-21T19:05:26Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Yeppers. Me too. I think many people who think we can do it are underestimating the magnitude of the task. We have trouble building machines to last a decade. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-man-ever-reach-the-stars/557829.md?page=4)