What is Digg?140 Comments
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -3/+68*****, if only this article came out a week earlier... I gave up on interstellar travel 5 days ago.
- jsd8cc, on 08/22/2008, -1/+56Wormholes, Alcubierre drive, Infinite Improbability Drive... don't worry, we still have some options.
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -5/+33"They" also said we'd never break the sound barrier.
- suckanucka, on 08/22/2008, -0/+26Them.
- chrissku, on 08/22/2008, -1/+27Technological advancements move quicker then people realize. I bet if you asked the average American in 1900 if we would be capable of landing on the moon in 60 yrs 9 out of 10 would have told you no way.
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -0/+22Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?
- adam71o, on 08/22/2008, -3/+22they did? who?
- tgrayson, on 08/22/2008, -2/+16How do articles completely lacking in substance such as this one get digged?
- Nauru, on 08/22/2008, -2/+16This is digg... I don't exactly think we are the type that have jumped the band wagon on this quite yet.
- luigi1015, on 08/22/2008, -1/+13It's always science fiction until someone goes out and does it.
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -4/+16Have no fear. For our efforts to reverse engineer alien technology have already enabled us to overcome many difficult challenges, such as creating supersonic jets, building quantum computers, and convincing the American public to vote for Bush two times. Surely, we can manage to travel a few light years in the coming decades.
- chkdg8, on 08/22/2008, -3/+15We need interstellar travel so we can rip and dip on some hot ass alien bitches. They're out there and they're just as horny as humans.
- DuneChild, on 08/22/2008, -0/+12Well of course you don't see anything breaking the light barrier!
- KingGorilla, on 08/22/2008, -0/+12Those bastards!
- bsl4doc, on 08/22/2008, -1/+12Yes, because of that well-known communism scare in 1900...
- suckanucka, on 08/22/2008, -1/+10I use Herpex.
- mstrebe, on 08/22/2008, -2/+11Hell, 4 out of 10 would have told you that Jesus would never allow it. Oh wait, no progress there.
- Narishma, on 08/22/2008, -1/+9Those "scientists" are pretty short-sighted.
- Pusod, on 08/22/2008, -1/+9The part of "interstellar travel" that worries me the most is running into a ***** asteroid or comet or worse, into a star while cruising through space in such a high rate of speed! You can't steer the damned spacecraft because you'll move it off it's course! What's a space traveler to do?
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -1/+9I think its far more likely we'll end up using wormholes or 'spooky action at a distance' in order to see things very far away, much like very small remote cameras. This also might enable us to see into the past in the same way, similar to how they did in Arthur C. Clarke's 1999 book, The Light of Other Days.
- dododohead, on 08/22/2008, -3/+11or rockets to the moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right?
- thegrantman, on 08/22/2008, -1/+8#5 ...Herpex! (see greatest medication side effect ever)
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -0/+7The improbability drive seems the most likely candidate to me.
- RogerStrong, on 08/23/2008, -0/+6Nah. A New Testament of Scientology would involve the discovery of 10-trillion-year-old faster-than-light ships propelled by thought power and litigation.
- RogerStrong, on 08/22/2008, -0/+6"They" weren't taking an educated look at the problem. Those who did always knew that we could, and were racing to be the first.
Bullets, rockets and shrapnel were already routinely breaking the sound barrier before most knew it existed. We don't see *anything* breaking the light barrier, and we know why in detail. - SisyphusFragmnt, on 08/22/2008, -2/+8Shields..
- RogerStrong, on 08/22/2008, -3/+9The article is full of fallacies and BS:
>> 1. We are likely to develop new propulsion methods.
Yeah, but even with the best case scenerio - a 100% efficient reactionless drive - we're still looking at decades of travel time between stars. And that's with a HUGE amount of power available, for all that time. Reactors which need refueling after 20 or 30 years won't cut it.
>> 2. Humans could figure out ways to endure
>> long space journeys. (suspended animation)
Too bad your corpsicle will be absorbing radiation for all those decades without being able to replace and regenerate damaged cells.
>> 3. Earth is not the only source of fuel.
>> (Refuel at Neptune - it's "a good deal closer
>> than Alpha Centauri")
On a scale where Sol and Alpha Centauri are a mile apart, Neptune is only about 10 inches from Sol. It ain't going to help much.
Not that a planet drifting at the half way mark would help at all: You're aren't using your fuel to cruise - you're using all of it to accellerate and decellerate. If you burn fuel to decellerate down to 0, refuel, then burn it to accellerate again, you lost time and gained nothing but extra risk.
>> 4. We may yet discover a way to
>> achieve faster-than-light travel.
Even without discovering how to warp space, scientists have calculated how much energy it would take. We're talking the energy output of many **stars** combined here.
It may happen - I'd like to say it'll *probably* happen - but don't hold your breath. - stix213, on 08/22/2008, -1/+7I wouldn't say we have halted space exploration.... we just do it with a joystick now from mission control.
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -0/+5No, you're right. They just needed McAfee!
- InsaneOni, on 08/23/2008, -0/+5"Just as horny" - Come on, can't it at least be "way more horny"?
- RogerStrong, on 08/22/2008, -1/+5For what it's worth, I expect #2 "Humans could figure out ways to endure long space journeys" to be viable in a century - but not using suspended animation.
Mind uploading seems to be the way to go. When they figure out a lot more about how brains work, and then figure out how to read *existing* memories, etc. and simulate them in a computer, your mind can be uploaded into a computer.
Plug that computer into a ship, add 2 billion MP3s or a snooze circuit, and a centuries long flight doesn't seem so impossible. With enough computing power, you could send a large crew.
And if we get really good with nano-tech, perhaps some day we'll be able to grow a new body in a vat at Alpha Centauri and use the nano-tech to transfer a mind back into it from the computer.
Of course, in that case we wouldn't need to make the journey: Just send the vat, the mind transfer equipment and a receiver. When it arrives, start transmitting minds to it by laser.
The down side: HP, Lexmark or whoever provides the service would probably require you to pay for a whole new body every 10 years. - stix213, on 08/22/2008, -1/+5Lots of people did with Windows Vista
- RogerStrong, on 08/22/2008, -2/+6There's a difference between science fiction and fantasy.
A manned flight to Pluto is science fiction. That doesn't mean that anyone thinks it can't be done. We dont't know how to do it yet, but the idea doesn't violate any scientific principles.
Warp drive, star gates and hyperspace on the other hand are fantasy - they DO violate scientific principles. (Well, warping space might not, but the energy requirements - your ship needs the energy output of many stars - does.) - SisyphusFragmnt, on 08/22/2008, -7/+11I bet if you asked the average person in the 60's if we would stop going to the moon and pretty much halt most space exploration they would have told you no way.
- jj101, on 08/22/2008, -0/+4Anything is possible. Are there not theories that predict that as the speed of light is approached matter takes on the properties of light. If you were to travel faster than that you might well go straight through any obstacles without noticing. Its only hopeful bs untill someone does it.
- mstrebe, on 08/22/2008, -0/+4Oh, right! I was hearing "Where Nomad has gone before." Yours makes way more sense.
- inactive, on 08/22/2008, -0/+4The occasional dust particle at those velocities will tear a hole into the vessels hull. Star Trek has the general idea, you would need a deflector to push stuff like that out of the way.
And inertial dampers so you don't turn into mush when you go from 0-c in 5 seconds. - inactive, on 08/22/2008, -0/+4Considering we are still using glorified bottle rockets, yea, I think we can all forget about interstellar travel during any of our lifetimes.
- jeffdodson, on 08/23/2008, -0/+4Even at the paltry rate of travel we can muster today (i.e. 50,000 years to Alpha Centauri @ 4.3 light years distance), it would only take 1.3 billion years to completely fill every corner of this galaxy, and a scant 5 billions years to inhabit our local group of galaxies. A long time, yes. But 1.3 billion years is a scant 10 per cent of the life of the universe. Sounds do-able to me. And I believe it will happen eventually and inevitably: not by design, but by the same kind of chaotic endeavors that we've been up to since the dawn of time.
- RogerStrong, on 08/23/2008, -0/+3Yes, but that was merely a fair assumption before people really looked at the problem.
It was common knowledge (among those with an education) that the earth was round long before Columbus.
Ships appeared to sink as they went over the horizon. The Earth's shadow on the moon during an eclipse was always curved. There were different angles to Polaris as they travelled north or south.
A couple thousand year ago one Greek geographer and mathematician living in Egypt (Eratosthenes) even worked out the diameter of the earth by comparing the length of shadows at two different latitudes. - Spire3660, on 08/22/2008, -3/+6 The fact that the vast majority of the mass in the universe is completely invisible to us in almost every way says volumes of how little we really know. If people can hope for a god, I can certainly hope for FTL travel. The idea that anyone is writing it off as a possibility is just plain ignorant. Humans wield the greatest power the universe has ever known, the ability to think, to imagine, to disrupt the physical universe. How many said man would never fly? would never harness the power of a star? never land on the moon?
- IanPR, on 08/22/2008, -6/+9"In 1957 the launch of Sputnik amazed everyone, but by the end of 1969 two men had walked on the moon." [citation needed]
- Stormwern, on 08/22/2008, -0/+3Edit: On second thought, that's above the speed of light. Probably safer to go with 30 years or you'd start getting time discrepencies. Proves that the physical stress of the acceleration wouldn't be a problem atleast, well under 1G needed.
- DrDabbles, on 08/23/2008, -0/+3...you realize you YOU emit radiation, right?
Moreover, what organism do you know of that will fuse hydrogen, helium, and a few other sparse atoms into oxygen? You need a MASSIVE fusion reactor to produce oxygen (we call them stars), and they are quite uninhabitable as it turns out. - inactive, on 08/22/2008, -0/+3awesome book. clarke and baxter are outstanding.
- fasda, on 08/23/2008, -1/+4well if you point a lazer light at the spots the government says they put the mirrors you can get a reflection so either 1 astronauts put them there or 2 there just happen to be perfect mirrors there
- BrokenCircle, on 08/23/2008, -0/+3Congratulations are in order for RogerStrong the prick who just spoiled the upcoming release of the New Testament of Scientology.
- DuneChild, on 08/22/2008, -1/+4No, that's not atheism, that's scientology. Atheists don't really want to believe anything, hence the term.
- Airforcefalco, on 08/22/2008, -1/+4Wow that was awesome, i learned four new things just now.
- CobaltBlue, on 08/22/2008, -1/+4I don't think that Diebold needed alien technology to make a system that would drop votes against Bush.
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