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[orange]

Even at 10xc, it still takes 150 days to get to get to Alpha Centauri and I haven't seen much on FTL-comm.  Gliese 581 (a solid FTL exploration target), is 22-light years away.  Opportunity for AI probes to go there and survey and come back, maybe.

At 10x speed of light, 2.2 years away.    We could send a probe there and back, and spend another 16 years or so developing telescopes to see it arrive. Heck, we could easily send people there maybe? They might not be in great physical shape when the get back, but if you've got the ability to manipulate space to that degree, you could probably develop some form of artificial gravity as well (maybe not, but one can dream)!

Not disagreeing.  Pointing out "potential targets" for FTL exploration.  FTL mobility without FTL-comm has interesting implications for an interstellar connected species.  Even intra-Sol traffic changes radically, as hard media that can be moved by a messenger becomes faster than light-communications.

Until we have begun sending more people into space in general and for longer duration (more than 6 months) and grown beyond LEO, we will not have demonstrated the capability to also go to another star with utilizing this technology.

This is the type of research that needs funding, because not only would it help interstellar travel, but interplanetary travel within our own star system. New resources, new discoveries, all that. Maybe even a reason for everyone to work together...?

Interstellar war? @ 10xc?  You have to really, really, really want them dead or the unobtainum they are sitting on.  Space is big.

I don't think we're that stupid, but it's a possibility.

Best way to use the technology would be to send people out and spread humanity across the stars; I think that the colonization of the Americas would be a good analogy. Definitely room for an idiot to try and play missionary/warlord, but it's more likely we'd be at a serious disadvantage.

I'd rather look at the positives of such breakthroughs. The world would seem a whole lot smaller (and bigger at the same time, paradoxically), and the Galaxy a bit brighter. I know that if this were to happen in my lifetime, I'd want to try my luck somewhere new. I'd gladly give up the comforts of home for a new start somewhere else.

B162, SpaceX, Virgin, MarsOne, Planetary Resources, are all working towards goals that open up the solar system or defend the Earth from known hazards.  Their projects are all reasons "we should work together," and yet we failed to grasp the importance of their efforts, decade after decade as...




 

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

They're made out meat.

[Louella Dougans]

I like the tiny speech ballon saying "we could use that boat to attack the other side of the island".

what's the date on the picture ?

[orange]

They're made out meat.

Not necessarily meat that agrees with our biology.

I like the tiny speech ballon saying "we could use that boat to attack the other side of the island".

what's the date on the picture ?

July 1981

[Reyd Karris]

Heh, Lost. Classic J.J. Abrams and company.

[Lyn Farel]

That pic is awesome.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

They're made out meat.

Not necessarily meat that agrees with our biology.

It's a short story that tries to explain Fermi's Paradox, IE "If Drakes Equation shows that there are tonnes of alien civilizations out there, why haven't heard from them".

The answer, according to the story, is that WE are made out meat.  Who wants to talk to meat?  That's gross.

[Gottii]

We're not alone, just unpopular?

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Youtube Adaptation.  I highly enjoy this.  Americans might recognize one of the guys as the guy who does/did Cash Cab (Here in Canada we have Adam Growe)

[lallara zhuul]

The Gap trilogy described a future quite like the one painted here.

[Alain Colcer]

The problem is not real-state in space, nor the quantity of resources in said real state, but the "habitability" degree of it....

Unless we start developing real ecopioesis or a better way to apply RIS (resources in situ), we are stuck to other "earth-like" planets, which i bet are much less than the most optimistic value in the equation.

[orange]

They're made out meat.

Not necessarily meat that agrees with our biology.

It's a short story that tries to explain Fermi's Paradox, IE "If Drakes Equation shows that there are tonnes of alien civilizations out there, why haven't heard from them".

The answer, according to the story, is that WE are made out meat.  Who wants to talk to meat?  That's gross.

We have only had the capability to listen for ~100 years.  We have only been actively listening for ~50 years and concurrently stood on the brink of wiping ourselves out.

Now, another civilization has to have been broadcasting at sufficient power in our direction for us to hear them over the noise floor and have been doing so at a time enabling us to hear them while we were listening.  If another civilization developed radio while Rome was busy transforming from a Republic to Empire and wiped itself out* by the time Rome fell to the Goths, there is a ~500 year time span for us to hear them.  If they are ~1500 ly away, we have may have missed them.  If they are 2000 ly away, we should just now start to hear them.

I think it is fair to say that there are likely no radio emitting civilizations within ~50 light years of Earth, but we also do not scan the whole sphere of the sky in across the spectrum continuously.  So we aren't even listening all that well.

*There is an option for the civilization to abandon the EM spectrum for some other means of communication very rapidly and appearing to have been wiped out.

The problem is not real-state in space, nor the quantity of resources in said real state, but the "habitability" degree of it....

Unless we start developing real ecopioesis or a better way to apply RIS (resources in situ), we are stuck to other "earth-like" planets, which i bet are much less than the most optimistic value in the equation.

The term used in "Case for Mars" and at NASA is In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) and there has been a lot of effort put into ISRU of both Lunar and Martian resources.

There are those that argue we shouldn't actually crawl back into the deep gravity wells of large planetiods at all, carving out Asteroids and building O'Neill Cylinders (Lagrange point colonies).

Artificial worlds will be built and their inefficiencies will require trade.  Basic commodities like water, nitrogen, sodium, etc will become important raw materials.  These artificial worlds will either mine those commodities out of uninhabitable worlds or produce finished products from raw imports.

(I know a lot about this stuff...)

[Alain Colcer]

The term used in "Case for Mars" and at NASA is In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) and there has been a lot of effort put into ISRU of both Lunar and Martian resources.

There are those that argue we shouldn't actually crawl back into the deep gravity wells of large planetiods at all, carving out Asteroids and building O'Neill Cylinders (Lagrange point colonies).

Artificial worlds will be built and their inefficiencies will require trade.  Basic commodities like water, nitrogen, sodium, etc will become important raw materials.  These artificial worlds will either mine those commodities out of uninhabitable worlds or produce finished products from raw imports.

(I know a lot about this stuff...)

There has been quite the number of postulates or economic studies of the topic, i've read a few of them, but all base their basic starting point of the "unmeasurable gain" of having two inhabited planets, or several space stations, or whatever...

The point stands when you have that station inhabited by a few million people already, not when its starting with 100 and life is 99% survival.....so the real issue is how you make that first step? and the only answer i can see that puts us as species on the "space-path" is extinction....