Will it be ever possible to have long term space travel?

[YARN]

The very expensive Biosphere 2 project failed. That is partly due to design flaws ignored in the interests of financial economy. Even the cheap version was horribly expensive. The lesson thus far is, we don't know how to build a self-sustaining habitat. A generation starship would qualify as such, and any crew and descendants would be sentenced to slow death. Any such habitat or ship is in the same category as a cheap method of interplanetary travel: Scientific speculation, good for science fiction but no practical use.

If people can't survive an interstellar journey, could frozen embryos? Currently we don't have enough skill to make machinery that could reliably function through several centuries of extreme cold and radiation exposure. Nor do we have the slightest idea how to program robots and computers to raise children, even if we had artificial wombs, which we don't.

Interstellar travel would only be feasible for potentially immortal artificial intelligences, when such things are devised. Whether such strange creatures would want to go to other stars is impossible to predict, however. People with indefinite lifespans could aspire to interstellar travel I suppose but they could develop serious cabin fever along the way.

Blue sky speculations about an end run around special relativity are fun, and good enough for scifi, but they aren't to be taken seriously. Interplanetary travel is feasible but financially impractical. Notions about using other planets and comets and asteroids for resources usually involve some far-fetched assumptions about the ability to gather and process miscellaneous stuff without cost and with the very convenient ability to make pretty much anything you want out of the stuff at hand.

For example, a comet can, supposedly, be mined to produce greenhouses and grow food. Chlorophyll requires magnesium, however, and I don't think every comet can be expected to contain unlimited amounts of magnesium, even in the trace amounts needed.

Waste products from the manufacturing process seem to be ignored in these scenarios as well. In space it takes energy to throw stuff away but having junk floating around can be downright hazardous.

"Long-term" does not necessarily mean "interstellar," it just means that you are traveling for a long time.

We already have the technology for long-term space travel.

An ORION space craft traveling at a small fraction of the speed of light could make it to Pluto in a matter of days. ORION is technology that already exists -- you would just have to build the thing.

We have the technology to send humans on a tour of the entire solar system, if we so desired.

How long do you want them out there before you are willing to call it long-term?

 

[ngc7293]

Yeah but both the one I looked at and T-girl looked at said that it would reach 10 billion around 2050. <snip>

The whole thread hear has been about building a ship to another star system and the one ship everyone has settled on (no pun intended) is a generation ship. It has been roughly agreed upon that it should take about 300 years before we can build such a ship. Yet here are projections for Earth's population in the next 40 years. What about in the next 290 years? What will be the condition of the planet and the number of people on it by that time?

 

[sojourner]

It has been roughly agreed upon that it should take about 300 years before we can build such a ship.

Agreed upon by who? Not me.

 

[YARN]

It has been roughly agreed upon that it should take about 300 years before we can build such a ship.

Agreed upon by who? Not me.

And what were they predicting 300 years ago when heavier than air flight was science fiction?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Because transplanting them to artificial environments on the surface and/or undergrounds of the other 200+ moons and asteroids in the solar system is totally out of the question.

Yes, it is.

In order to make any kind of difference at all, you are talking about moving billions of people off of the surface of the Earth into artificial environments created at the cost of the most enormous and complex engineering projects in human history, utilizing energy that you can't even calculate.

I can calculate it just fine. It would require an unprecedentedly high frequency of rocket launches from every launch site in the country, plus at least five additional launch sites, plus the effort would also have to be sustained by China and India at roughly the same rate. Just to balance the equation it would require the ability to transport not less than 5,700 people into orbit every week. With current technology and launch costs, assuming an every weight of 170 pounds per person, that would cost about $160 billion dollars per week. With only slight improvements in rocket technology (which, at that rate of activity, would manifest relatively quickly) this could drop by a factor of ten or more, though probably not much lower than about $50 billion a month.

And that with CURRENT technology that is now available: it's hardly impossible, it's just really REALLY expensive. But fifty years down the road? Who knows?

And you can't think of half a dozen more practical and humane ways of dealing with population concerns?

Practical? Sure. Humane? Not at all. Population control is predicated on either compromising or discouraging citizens from exercising their right to reproduce, which for humans is an incredibly powerful biological drive.

What is wrong with skiffy fans that some think this kind of thing passes even the most elementary tests of logic and feasibility?

It's perfectly feasible, depending on how much you're willing to spend on it. As a measure of population control it's really just mind-bogglingly inefficient. On the other hand, a concerted effort to extract natural resources from other planetary bodies would INDIRECTLY address this problem, over the course of decades or centuries, by promoting the development of infrastructure that would make transport FROM Earth cheaper and more efficient. When those launch costs go down, the price of exporting human beings at the same rate as population growth would drop to something like a few hundred million dollars a week: low enough, probably, to become an industry.

Frankly, I think that people who are emotionally invested in the space program and fantasies of interstellar exploration are deliberately blind to all of the sensible reasons that most human beings put a much, much lower priority on it

The reason nobody puts a priority on space exploration is because nobody's making any money off of it. The only aspects of the space program that ARE profitable are launch services for defense and telecommunications satellites; the PUBLIC doesn't have to care about that, because those companies get their funding by doing good business, not from congress.

The game changer comes when somebody sends a crew into space and then returns with something that costs more than the rocket that launched them. You know, "There's gold in that thar moon!" All you have to do then is start convincing space workers to bring their families along for the ride.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It has been roughly agreed upon that it should take about 300 years before we can build such a ship.

Agreed upon by who? Not me.

And what were they predicting 300 years ago when heavier than air flight was science fiction?

They had science fiction 300 years ago?

Hell, it was barely a century between Jules Verne's writing about men flying to the moon and human beings figuring out how to do it for real. On the other hand, it'll be a bit longer still before anyone figures out how to reanimate a dead corpse (Marry Shelly's ghost will have to delay gratification).

Good ideas come along all the time. You never know when someone might stumble on a breakthrough.

 

[YARN]

Agreed upon by who? Not me.

And what were they predicting 300 years ago when heavier than air flight was science fiction?

They had science fiction 300 years ago?

I considering offering this observation as well, but decided it would be too clever and possibly obscure the point.

Your observation here, however, arguably makes my point even more compelling. 300 years ago they would not have even had a narrative genre to even speculate about such possibilities!

At any rate, I think we need an agreed upon definition of "long term" for the debate to be tractable.

In my mind, we could do long term any time we decide to build the ships.

 

[Deckerd]

Yeah let me look at my history and go back to that website.

Yep your right, its supposed to go up to 7 billion by 2011.
2025 its will be 9.5 billion
2050 it will be 12 billion.

So I stand corrected. But over-crowding is still going to be around, which causes over-use of land and non-renewable resources.
But yes it does look like it will slow, but not stop.

Nobody said it would stop. We said it would stabilise and then decrease. You seem to be cherrypicking little bits of statistics from here and there. It's exactly what conspiracy theorists do.

 

[scotpens]

And what were they predicting 300 years ago when heavier than air flight was science fiction?

They had science fiction 300 years ago?

That all depends on your definition of science fiction, of course. The fanciful travel tale True History or True Story, written by Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century C.E., is often regarded as the first science fiction story.

 

[Satyrquaze]

These next come from here; http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpop.php

2010...6.853.019.414
2020...7.597.238.738
2030...8.259.169.105
2040...8.819.679.806
2050...9,284.107.424

Is it bad that I read this and find myself agreeing with Ra's al Ghul's beliefs?

 

[T'Girl]

If people can't survive an interstellar journey, could frozen embryos? Currently we don't have enough skill to make machinery that could reliably function through several centuries of extreme cold and radiation exposure. Nor do we have the slightest idea how to program robots and computers to raise children, even if we had artificial wombs, which we don't.

From a biological point of view, freezing a Human embryo would involve all the same problems as freezing an adult human being. One alternative would to freeze or in some other way store Human genetic material. Sending sperm and ova to the stars. While not by any means simple, it would involve fewer complexities.

 

[MikeS]

I can calculate it just fine. It would require an unprecedentedly high frequency of rocket launches from every launch site in the country, plus at least five additional launch sites, plus the effort would also have to be sustained by China and India at roughly the same rate. Just to balance the equation it would require the ability to transport not less than 5,700 people into orbit every week. With current technology and launch costs, assuming an every weight of 170 pounds per person, that would cost about $160 billion dollars per week. With only slight improvements in rocket technology (which, at that rate of activity, would manifest relatively quickly) this could drop by a factor of ten or more, though probably not much lower than about $50 billion a month.

And that with CURRENT technology that is now available: it's hardly impossible, it's just really REALLY expensive. But fifty years down the road? Who knows?

Or about the price of a couple of imperial wars in the middle east. I know which option I'd prefer to pay towards.

 

[jcourtenay]

I think anything is possible because technology is advancing all the time.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I can calculate it just fine. It would require an unprecedentedly high frequency of rocket launches from every launch site in the country, plus at least five additional launch sites, plus the effort would also have to be sustained by China and India at roughly the same rate. Just to balance the equation it would require the ability to transport not less than 5,700 people into orbit every week. With current technology and launch costs, assuming an every weight of 170 pounds per person, that would cost about $160 billion dollars per week. With only slight improvements in rocket technology (which, at that rate of activity, would manifest relatively quickly) this could drop by a factor of ten or more, though probably not much lower than about $50 billion a month.

And that with CURRENT technology that is now available: it's hardly impossible, it's just really REALLY expensive. But fifty years down the road? Who knows?

Or about the price of a couple of imperial wars in the middle east. I know which option I'd prefer to pay towards.

Me too. And not least of which because the space-launch option has the potential to generate profit.

 

[Deckerd]

They'd need to generate a helluva lot of profit to pay for the initial outlay. How do you suppose that would happen? Wherever did you get the idea that wars don't generate profit?

 

[KJbushway]

Yeah let me look at my history and go back to that website.

Yep your right, its supposed to go up to 7 billion by 2011.
2025 its will be 9.5 billion
2050 it will be 12 billion.

So I stand corrected. But over-crowding is still going to be around, which causes over-use of land and non-renewable resources.
But yes it does look like it will slow, but not stop.

Nobody said it would stop. We said it would stabilise and then decrease. You seem to be cherrypicking little bits of statistics from here and there. It's exactly what conspiracy theorists do.

The slow but not stop was talking about overcrowding. But at least I admitted I was wrong, most people would be too proud.

 

[KJbushway]

They'd need to generate a helluva lot of profit to pay for the initial outlay. How do you suppose that would happen? Wherever did you get the idea that wars don't generate profit?

She's right.
A little un-justified war called Iraq.

 

[KJbushway]

The rain forest whether you see it with your own eyes is decreasing in size, if the problem was fixed or was being worked on I would have any news on it, I do so that should tell you something.

Don't forget the new Belo Monte hydro-electric dam, which will be the world's third largest dam, two-thirds of it's 700 square kilometer reservoir will be on top of Amazon rain forest, oops.

The land after being used doesn't go back to the amazing rain forest that once was, it goes to being only able to support grass and some bushes.

Why would Brazilians want it to go back? It took a good deal of effort to turn that forest into productive farms and grazing land. However if you're concerned about ecology, part of the land that was formerly rain forest is used to produce sugar-cane, the sugar-cane (some) is converted into methanol and ethanol, over five billion gallons a year and increasing, nine out of ten new cars sold in Brazil are "flex-fuel" vehicles. Alcohol based fuels produce only three quarter the hydro-carbons, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide of petroleum based fuels. Less carbon dioxide is good right?

If you're concern about world population, former rain forest land generates massive global exports of agricultural products around the world, two-thirds of the former rain forest is used for livestock, a third of all global meat exports come from Brazil.

Yeah but both the one I looked at and T-girl looked at said that it would reach 10 billion around 2050.

Actual my source of information (US census bureau) says in 2050 the population will be more like nine and a quarter billion. With a annual increase worldwide of 42 million births, down from this coming year's 76 million birth increase. The main source for the 10 billion figure would seem to be the United Nations, please tell me you're not going to that fiction factory for any kind of "facts."

These next come from here; http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpop.php

2010...6.853.019.414
2020...7.597.238.738
2030...8.259.169.105
2040...8.819.679.806
2050...9,284.107.424

I could care less about the productivity of the land that was once the Rain Forest. I could care less about the Bio-fuel that comes from it. I care about the beautiful bio-diversity thats destroyed. Which by the way isn't fulled explored yet, we don't entirely know all the bio-diversity that gets destroyed when the rain-forest it cut down.

I don't get my facts from some fantasy site. I got my facts from an information site, that took time to see if it was valid and not a blog. Just because your site differs from mine, doesn't mean that one I looked at is wrong. The calculations from both a really similar.

Oh and back to one of your earlier posts.
Not all wars are justified or should be fought. I don't know where you get the idea that the Iraq war was justified. No War that the U.S has fought since ww2 has been a justified war. Not Vietnam, not Korea.
Civil Wars in third world countries aren't even justified themselves. Its because of those cultural and ethnic differences that starts wars like those. Now it would be a good thing if everyone got along, then our rich cultural and ethnic history would be good. U.S citizens don't even get along with someone who is different than them. The 1960's wasn't that long ago. So until humans grow-up and become truly understanding, our rich cultural and ethnic history will always cause trouble.

 

[sojourner]

^Did you just say that the U.S. Census Bureau's website is a fantasy and a blog? Or are you saying that only sites that you use provide factual information and everyone else's sites are invalid?

 

[Deckerd]

I could care less about the productivity of the land that was once the Rain Forest. I could care less about the Bio-fuel that comes from it. I care about the beautiful bio-diversity thats destroyed. Which by the way isn't fulled explored yet, we don't entirely know all the bio-diversity that gets destroyed when the rain-forest it cut down.

You could maybe try not confusing us by saying you couldn't care less about all of these things you couldn't care less about. Otherwise it sounds like you don't really know what you're saying.