Would humanity ever become a space faring civilization?

[k81689]

Originally Posted by CAllenDoudna

While we could no doubt invent engines that might take us to 10% of the speed of light we DARE NOT go anywhere close to that speed. Collision with a grain of sand at 10% of the speed of light would be enough to wipe out a spaceship. We will need to keep our speed down to 1% of the speed of light--if we dare go even that fast. So with any forseeable technology we may develop it will be necessary to roam the Galaxy much as we did this Earth for thousands of years: Small bands wandering here and there, settleing a few centuries at a star or dark world between the stars to build a few hundred new O'Neil-like habitats, then break up and venture on.

An O'Neil Habitat is a spacestation large enough to have hills, trees, lakes and rivers, even weather. If built by robots from materials already found in space they can be quite economical. Each habitat would have a population of a few thousand and the economy of a small nation. Because of their slow speed the first ones would hardly be asware they're leaving at all. For the first ten or twenty years it would still be possible to make a quick trip to Grandma's house for the holidays--and after that who cares? You could still e-mail your cousins and carry on a Facebook account if you like. You would still get all the latest hits from earth and from the other JIPSI Caravans for several decades. (JIPSI: Journeying Investigation for Planetary and Steller Information). Only about 1% of the people in a Caravan would be astronauts or scientists; the rest would just be ordinary people doing orninary things running stores and restaurants and farms and factories because in a few centuries the scientists will miss those things.

What is the speed of Comets? Asteroids? Planets? Moons? Earth? Sun?
Yes, they get hit by many things and even engulfed by sun, but we all die no matter what.
Granted, we won't be able to move planets in foreseeable future, but Asteroids?

As to traveling speed?
How many people worry about the traveling speed of Earth?
Asteroids spaceships are just downsized Earth which are also called generation ships.
We live inside the Asteroids. With fusion power, we bring along our own sun.

Scientists often observed lonely planets moving fast in the middle of no where. I have a gut feeling that they maight be aliens' Planet Spacheships.

Stop wasting resources on green power, solar power... They will not save our genes. They will doom our genes on Earth with dead sun.

[sweat209]

Originally Posted by CAllenDoudna

With several private companies poised to begin providing launch service expect launch costs to drop dramatically in the next twenty years. Once off the planet transportation about the Solar System is quite cheap. When we begin using robots to mine the Moon and manufacture O'Neil-like orbiting colonies look for a major population shift into Space so that by about 2050 there should be wagon trains of settlers heading for the Asteroids. It is estimated there is enough material in the Asteroid Belt to build O'Neil colonies with a living area 3,000 times the land area of Earth. This may be technically correct, but we will probably never use 100% of the material in the Asteroid Belt for this purpose, but let's remember there's a LOT of material in the Solar System and over the next couple hundred years we will be able to develop tankers that retrieve the rich atmospheres of the gas giants from which so many things can be made. In a couple hundred years caravans of O'Neil habitats will be drifting out from what we know as the Solar System to take advantage of the comets and dark worlds of intersteller space unaware they are "leaving the Solar System". None of these things will be done as government programs; they will be done because by that time it'll all be just one more way to make money.

The cost I see are still very high.I don't think cost will ever be million dollar ticket per person on a one way trip to mars for upper middle income person that alone $500,000 ticket to mars for a middle income person.

[Vin7Star]

Even if we could send a manned spacecraft to the nearest star, what would we do once we get there?

The nearest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, supposedly has at least one planet in the habitable zone, and in theory that planet could support life. But that's not a guarantee. If there are any lifeforms there, it will be adapted to live on an alien planet with a red dwarf sun and be very simple. So no humans or animals would be able to live there. For example, a planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf sun is tide-locked, or non-rotating on its axis. One side of the planet is permanently affixed to the sun, while the other perpetually in darkness, because it doesn't rotate on its axis. The side facing the sun is always day and too hot to support life, the other in constant darkness and too cold to support life. There are no day and night cycles like we have on earth. Only a narrow band in between the dark and light sides of the planet would have the right temperature for water to exist as a liquid. So yeah, the chances of sustaining human life on such a planet are slim to none.

Assuming we could ever reach Proxima Centauri, it would probably be a one-way trip for anyone on-board the ship. Basically a suicide mission because there would be no going back to earth.

[J Andb]

People can't seem to stand each other, to be able to work together here on earth, and I don't see how we could improve on that by leaving earth.