Human interstellar travel

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I think we'll go to the stars, but not any time soon.

Soon as in the time it takes mosquitoes to evolve into flying, blood sucking grizzly bears?
Personally I'm not going any fucking where till I get my motherfucking flying car!

Dammit! I just realized just how much of a Debby Downer I've become..  :trunksthing:

[Solitary]

I want to go to Kolob! They have the Azure Hotel there with a private beach. Solitary

Description in the Book of Abraham
Facsimile No. 2 from the Book of Abraham, which Smith said discusses Kolob. The part Smith said refers to Kolob is numbered by a "1" in the center.

The first published reference to Kolob is found in the Book of Abraham, first published in 1842 in Times and Seasons and now included within the Pearl of Great Price as part of the canon of Mormonism. The Book of Abraham was dictated in 1836 by Smith after he purchased a set of Egyptian scrolls that accompanied a mummy exhibition. According to Smith, the scrolls described a vision of Abraham, in which Abraham:

    "saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; ... and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest."

In an explanation of an Egyptian hypocephalus that was part of the Joseph Smith Papyri, Smith interpreted one set of hieroglyphics as representing:

    "Kolob, signifying the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God. First in government, the last pertaining to the measurement of time. The measurement according to celestial time, which celestial time signifies one day to a cubit. One day in Kolob is equal to a thousand years according to the measurement of this earth, which is called by the Egyptians Jah-oh-eh."

The Book of Abraham describes a hierarchy of heavenly bodies, including the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun, each with different movements and measurements of time, where at the pinnacle, the slowest-rotating body is Kolob, where one Kolob-day corresponds to 1000 earth-years.[8] This is similar to Psalm 90:4 which says that "For a thousand years in [God's] sight are but as yesterday when it is past" and 2 Peter 3:8 which says, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years". Additional, similar information about Kolob is found in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, constituting manuscripts in the handwriting of Smith and his scribes.

[trdsf]

I want to go to Kolob! They have the Azure Hotel there with a private beach. Solitary

Description in the Book of Abraham
Facsimile No. 2 from the Book of Abraham, which Smith said discusses Kolob. The part Smith said refers to Kolob is numbered by a "1" in the center.

The first published reference to Kolob is found in the Book of Abraham, first published in 1842 in Times and Seasons and now included within the Pearl of Great Price as part of the canon of Mormonism. The Book of Abraham was dictated in 1836 by Smith after he purchased a set of Egyptian scrolls that accompanied a mummy exhibition. According to Smith, the scrolls described a vision of Abraham, in which Abraham:

    "saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; ... and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest."

In an explanation of an Egyptian hypocephalus that was part of the Joseph Smith Papyri, Smith interpreted one set of hieroglyphics as representing:

    "Kolob, signifying the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God. First in government, the last pertaining to the measurement of time. The measurement according to celestial time, which celestial time signifies one day to a cubit. One day in Kolob is equal to a thousand years according to the measurement of this earth, which is called by the Egyptians Jah-oh-eh."

The Book of Abraham describes a hierarchy of heavenly bodies, including the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun, each with different movements and measurements of time, where at the pinnacle, the slowest-rotating body is Kolob, where one Kolob-day corresponds to 1000 earth-years.[8] This is similar to Psalm 90:4 which says that "For a thousand years in [God's] sight are but as yesterday when it is past" and 2 Peter 3:8 which says, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years". Additional, similar information about Kolob is found in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, constituting manuscripts in the handwriting of Smith and his scribes.

Funny how nowhere in there does ol' Joe give the right ascension and declination of this world, so we could, you know, demonstrate the truth of what he says by actually looking to see if there's a star there, then looking to see if there's a planet around it.

Also, a rotational velocity to give a 'day' of 1000 years is almost certainly unstable -- besides rapidly becoming unbearably hot on the near side and unbearably cold on the far (assuming it's in the vicinity of a Terrestrial orbit), it's awful damn close to becoming tidally locked and would become so in fairly short order.  Anything nearer than 100AU will have a day longer than its year, and Pluto is only 39.4 AU out.

And if you want this thousand year day to be the same proportion of Kolob's year that an Earth day is to an Earth year, you're at an orbit of ³/₈ of a light year.

Better wear a scarf.  :)

[GSOgymrat]

No surprise here.

"Remember Mars One? The mega-hyped, one way ticket to go start a colony on Mars assuming it could get a ship and funding and capable colonists and training facilities and the major technological advances necessary to make it all happen? Surprise! According to one finalist, the whole thing is pretty much a scam..."

http://gizmodo.com/mars-one-is-broke-disorganized-and-sketchy-as-hell-1691726224

[Youssuf Ramadan]

No surprise here.

"Remember Mars One? The mega-hyped, one way ticket to go start a colony on Mars assuming it could get a ship and funding and capable colonists and training facilities and the major technological advances necessary to make it all happen? Surprise! According to one finalist, the whole thing is pretty much a scam..."

http://gizmodo.com/mars-one-is-broke-disorganized-and-sketchy-as-hell-1691726224

It had farce written all over it from the outset.... 

[Cocoa Beware]

I must admit that human interstellar travel doesnt seem like a terribly practical idea at this point. I think we will have to know where to go first, and why.

I think that for the most part we will explore other stars in much the same way we have explored our own Solar System, using artificial (and most importantly, expendable) intelligence. This way you can travel to and explore as many places as you can budget for, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of different systems simultaneously. That way we can at least get straight to the point once we do decide to leave home.

We can also narrow down the list of candidates we choose to explore with these craft a great deal using space telescopes, whose magnification power as far as I can tell, is only limited by how large we choose to build them.

Of course I reckon populating any alien worlds is going to be as daunting a challenge as can be imagined.

Not only should it be impossible to travel faster then light for reasons such as causality as much as anything, but even when you arrive you are stuck with a whole new set of problems.

For example, even if we find a place where life as we know it exists, its extremely unlikely that we will be able to breathe the atmosphere, and I doubt we would actually be able to eat anything there. Alien life is just that, likely incompatible with our picky digestive systems.

But who knows. Much as our technology would seem god-like to people who lived a thousand years ago, our successors will probably seem that way to us. There is no way to imagine or predict which present impossibilities will become possible in the future.

Edit: this topic reminds me of the Monolith from 2001; I believe one of the theories was that they too were something like automated probes, while the beings who created them had long since ascended to another dimension. Or something.

[trdsf]

For example, even if we find a place where life as we know it exists, its extremely unlikely that we will be able to breathe the atmosphere, and I doubt we would actually be able to eat anything there. Alien life is just that, likely incompatible with our picky digestive systems.

I think more to the point, if we find a planet that's capable of supporting life, it will probably already be supporting life.  I suspect, given cosmological time scales, that anywhere you have a solvent (say, water) and an energy source (like the local star), you're going to have at least microbial life.  Remember, we still haven't sent a serious life-hunter to Mars yet, at least not to the places most clement -- say, the bottom of Hellas Basin where atmospheric conditions may reach the point where liquid water can exist occasionally, or the (unconfirmed) frozen subsurface ocean, or the permafrost, or the water ice locked up in the ice caps.

The one thing we know about life from the one data point we have right here is that once it gets started, it's difficult to eradicate and will find a way to continue making a living in the most difficult circumstances.  If microbial life started on Mars, then as long as the cooling and drying out was gradual rather than catastrophic, it's probably still there somewhere.

Similar arguments apply to Europa and Ganymede, and even to Titan, and even to the clouds of Venus, with varying degrees of probability.

So if we find another world that can support us, it's probably already supporting something -- or even someone -- else.  Abiogenesis isn't difficult when you realize the huge numbers involved.  Not only do you have hundreds of millions to billions of years of time, you have uncountable trillions, quadrillions, quintillions of random chemical actions taking place everywhere there's a solvent and a power source at every instant of those millions/billions of years, and only one of them has to work, and it doesn't even need to work well, because once it gets started, evolution takes over and will fix that eventually.

[stromboli]

Having a colony on Mars not dependent on the earth for support is a long time in the future. You would need to be able to produce food, oxygen, have sufficient water and so many other factors. Our efforts on earth of creating biospheres independent of the outside world have shown that. It would make just as much sense to develop an independent robot mining system on the asteroids, because the need for human habitat is obviated. Human habitat on a space ship is the big problem, along with nmaintaining human life either by providing for a living, awake crew or one in stasis or some form of suspended animation.

We are developing autonomous vehicles here on earth. We have robots on Mars. Wouldn't be surprised that the first encounter with an alien species would be their robot probe meeting ours somewhere in deep space. V---ger just might happen, a la Star Trek.

[Cocoa Beware]

I think more to the point, if we find a planet that's capable of supporting life, it will probably already be supporting life.  I suspect, given cosmological time scales, that anywhere you have a solvent (say, water) and an energy source (like the local star), you're going to have at least microbial life.  Remember, we still haven't sent a serious life-hunter to Mars yet, at least not to the places most clement -- say, the bottom of Hellas Basin where atmospheric conditions may reach the point where liquid water can exist occasionally, or the (unconfirmed) frozen subsurface ocean, or the permafrost, or the water ice locked up in the ice caps.

The one thing we know about life from the one data point we have right here is that once it gets started, it's difficult to eradicate and will find a way to continue making a living in the most difficult circumstances.  If microbial life started on Mars, then as long as the cooling and drying out was gradual rather than catastrophic, it's probably still there somewhere.

Similar arguments apply to Europa and Ganymede, and even to Titan, and even to the clouds of Venus, with varying degrees of probability.

So if we find another world that can support us, it's probably already supporting something -- or even someone -- else.  Abiogenesis isn't difficult when you realize the huge numbers involved.  Not only do you have hundreds of millions to billions of years of time, you have uncountable trillions, quadrillions, quintillions of random chemical actions taking place everywhere there's a solvent and a power source at every instant of those millions/billions of years, and only one of them has to work, and it doesn't even need to work well, because once it gets started, evolution takes over and will fix that eventually.

Thats a good point.

There also should be a very generous amount of water in the Universe, as we have already found plenty even in our own Solar System.

It makes a lot of sense too, H2O is such a simple molecule. That leads me to think that life should be fairly common.

[Mike Cl]

Thats a good point.

There also should be a very generous amount of water in the Universe, as we have already found plenty even in our own Solar System.

It makes a lot of sense too, H2O is such a simple molecule. That leads me to think that life should be fairly common.

I'm betting on Europa.  I only hope I'm around when they land on it.

[stromboli]

Thats a good point.

There also should be a very generous amount of water in the Universe, as we have already found plenty even in our own Solar System.

It makes a lot of sense too, H2O is such a simple molecule. That leads me to think that life should be fairly common.

H2O is a simple molecule, and they have found plenty of evidence of alcohol in distant areas of space

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/beercld.htm

So conditions of life potential are exhibited in extra earth and extra solar locations. Certainly not beyond possibility, and the concept of Panspermia here on earth has gained some credibility recently.

Exciting stuff. Hope I live long enough to see the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

[trdsf]

H2O is a simple molecule, and they have found plenty of evidence of alcohol in distant areas of space

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/beercld.htm

So conditions of life potential are exhibited in extra earth and extra solar locations. Certainly not beyond possibility, and the concept of Panspermia here on earth has gained some credibility recently.

Exciting stuff. Hope I live long enough to see the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

I'm not a big fan of panspermia.  It's possible, but it also dodges the question of abiogenesis by saying it happened elsewhere.  I think we should assume life started here until we have at least circumstantial evidence that it didn't.

And I agree, I will die unhappy if there's been no confirmed radio hit by then.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Jerry Pournelle assembled a trilogy of books called "The Stars at War", anthologies of essays and short stories, that explore what it would mean for mankind were we to discover some way to overcome the physics obstacle.

[trdsf]

Yeah, Relativity is a pain in the hinder for writing SF.  Joe Haldeman probably did the best job of doing space travel without ignoring Einstein in The Forever War.  I resort to positing both a law of conservation of time, and a five-dimensional universe so that there's a 'fixed' background for time to move against in the same way the three spatial dimensions move against time that seems to allow me to avoid the paradoxes built in to superluminal travel, but I haven't explored the math deeply enough to force me to admit it's complete bollocks.  No doubt it is complete bollocks, but as long as I can leave disbelief suspended, it works for me.  :)

[Cocoa Beware]

H2O is a simple molecule, and they have found plenty of evidence of alcohol in distant areas of space

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/beercld.htm

So conditions of life potential are exhibited in extra earth and extra solar locations. Certainly not beyond possibility, and the concept of Panspermia here on earth has gained some credibility recently.

Exciting stuff. Hope I live long enough to see the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

Yes the Beer Clouds! How could I forget about those.

As difficult as interstellar travel would be, at least we would have a lot of motivation to go to few places.

Of course, only if other aliens dont bogart them first.