International The Space, Science, Technology thread: America back in space

[WhiteMousse]

At the speed of light it's 12 years away but if we wanted to send a ship instead it would take around 50,000 years.

How old are you? I'm not insulting you, I'm just curious if we're the same age. If we are, you should remember the direction and speed at which society was moving before broadband. There was a very small period of time where 56k modems were nifty and people said "I got mail lol" and then everything blew up, and the trajectory changed.

There's no doubt that FTL travel is a bit of a holy grail and that at this particular juncture it is only a theoretical possibility, but the guy you're arguing with has an irrefutable point:

We cannot accurately make predictions about what we will be able to do based on current capabilities because current capabilities are changing and they are changing more rapidly.

 

[superpunch]

Make room on your mantel to display that Nobel next year.

Everyone talks as if the barrier to space travel is going faster than light speed, being able to recruit more energy than exists in the universe, etc. Those can't be done therefor interstellar and intergalactic travel is impossible. No, it's just the human lifespan. And that's easily remediable with technology that we can conceive of right now and will be able to engineer in the not even far off future.

I mean fucking Voyager I will travel the cosmos eventually. A solar powered computer with your mind transferred into it, a little bit of code editing to your mind to delete the emotion of impatience from your emotional repertoire, Voyager I, and a little bit of duct tape and you would be able to enjoyably travel the universe with 1960s space technology.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

I think it's more a budget thing. We spent the equivalent of $2 trillion 2020 dollars on the manhattan project in 1945. If we spent that kind of money on breakthrough scientific shit today, it'd get done in no time. Imagine a $2 trillion general AI research project. That would get it done in no time. A perfect example is the original Project Orion. It was meeting and exceeding all its milestones and deadlines. Would have had men on Mars in the early 1970s and into the outer solar system by the early 1980s. We'd have launched manned interstellar missions to the nearest star system by now. And who knows what unforeseen discoveries that kind of research would have led to. Cancelled for budget reasons after the defense/ space budget became controversial around Apollo and during the Vietnam War. Now we couldn't even launch a man into orbit until like 2 years ago.

There's a difference between technological and physical constraints. Einstein's theories pointed to the possibility of nuclear energy so they pumped all that money into discovering a way to unleash it's power. Those same theories put a limit of tens of thousands of years for travel throughout the Milky Way to millions of years for intergalactic travel. So maybe we can develop the technology to have self sustained spaceships but they would in effect be one way trips, if the destination was the far reaches of the galaxy or beyond, even if we could travel near the speed of light.

 

[superpunch]

There's a difference between technological and physical constraints. Einstein's theories pointed to the possibility of nuclear energy so they pumped all that money into discovering a way to unleash it's power. Those same theories put a limit of tens of thousands of years for interstellar travel to millions of years for intergalactic travel. So maybe we can develop the technology to have self sustained spaceships but they would in effect be one way trips, if the destination was the far reaches of the galaxy, even if we could travel near the speed of light.

Thousands and millions of years aren't a long time though. Just to human and other (current and past inclusive only) Earth based lifespans and perception. Not really. And we won't be (entirely) human or have a human mind limited level of perception for even more than a few more decades.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

How old are you? I'm not insulting you, I'm just curious if we're the same age. If we are, you should remember the direction and speed at which society was moving before broadband. There was a very small period of time where 56k modems were nifty and people said "I got mail lol" and then everything blew up, and the trajectory changed.

There's no doubt that FTL travel is a bit of a holy grail and that at this particular juncture it is only a theoretical possibility, but the guy you're arguing with has an irrefutable point:

We cannot accurately make predictions about what we will be able to do based on current capabilities because current capabilities are changing and they are changing more rapidly.

I remember the old days, using 2400 baud modems, hoping you didn't disconnect before your file transfer was complete or you would have to start over.

Unless I'm mistaken I don't believe FTL travel is theoretically possible. You'd need a loophole, like wormholes, that would in effect seem like FTL travel but not actually. I would be wrong to state a way will never be discovered but it would be just as wrong to assume a way is possible or will be discovered if we just tried hard enough.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

Everyone talks as if the barrier to space travel is going faster than light speed, being able to recruit more energy than exists in the universe, etc. Those can't be done therefor interstellar and intergalactic travel is impossible. No, it's just the human lifespan. And that's easily remediable with technology that we can conceive of right now and will be able to engineer in the not even far off future.

I mean fucking Voyager I will travel the cosmos eventually. A solar powered computer with your mind transferred into it, a little bit of code editing to your mind to delete the emotion of impatience from your emotional repertoire, Voyager I, and a little bit of duct tape and you would be able to enjoyably travel the universe with 1960s space technology.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. The environment is very harsh outside the protection of our atmosphere and magnetosphere. Add to that the complications of living in microgravity. Transferring your mind into something the equivalent of Data from ST:TNG might be a solution but I don't think that would be considered human anymore.You also have to consider what the Earth will be like tens of thousands or millions of years in the future if you are planning a round trip voyage.

 

[superpunch]

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. The environment is very harsh outside the protection of our atmosphere and magnetosphere. Add to that the complications of living in microgravity. Transferring your mind into something the equivalent of Data from ST:TNG might be a solution but I don't think that would be considered human anymore.You also have to consider what the Earth will be like tens of thousands or millions of years in the future if you are planning a round trip voyage.

I don't think it'll be a matter of transferring your mind. It'll be you slice out a chunk of brain and replace it with some computer here, do it again there. Do it a few hundred more times and there's no more brain left. Kinda like Luke Skywalker's hand bit but doing it finger by finger over a few years instead of just cutting off the entire hand all at once. Anyways, the point stands, eventually we'll all be post-biological and time limitations are mostly only relevant to biological life (as we know it). With no time limitations, there are no speed limitations, and with no speed limitations all the needs for infinite amounts of energy -- the real limiting factor that's impossible with current and near future technology -- and shit goes out the window.

 

[superpunch]

I remember the old days, using 2400 baud modems, hoping you didn't disconnect before your file transfer was complete or you would have to start over.

Unless I'm mistaken I don't believe FTL travel is theoretically possible. You'd need a loophole, like wormholes, that would in effect seem like FTL travel but not actually. I would be wrong to state a way will never be discovered but it would be just as wrong to assume a way is possible or will be discovered if we just tried hard enough.

At some point, there has to be actual reasons why nothing can travel faster than light. Reasons why c is 2.99*10^8. Reasons why G is 6.67*10^-11. Current science just says they're that because we see they are and thus they are. So they're just "constants". That's moronic. But we explain it that way, not because it's right, but because it's the best we can do while still implementing a logical framework.

Similar to how economics is a pseudoscience because it relies on (untrue) assumptions like all economic actors are rational. That's blatantly not true but, with current computational ability, you have to assume that otherwise you get a chaotic variable present in all analysis. And you can't have a logical framework with a chaotic variable. Just correlations only. (Chaotic variable being roughly equivalent to the +e error quotient in statistics). So economics is a pseudoscience because it has to assume something untrue to implement any resemblance of logic. Modern physics does that at the level of universal constants.

There's deeper layers to shit than we understand and once you know those you can change C, you can change G, you can create and destroy energy and shit. We're not there but the "it is because it is" shit is the caveman magic god and fire breathing dragon level of intellect. We define those as axiomatic (assumed) instead of theorem (proof from assumptions) level concepts only because we don't understand the deeper level axioms inherent in their theoretical nature.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

I don't think it'll be a matter of transferring your mind. It'll be you slice out a chunk of brain and replace it with some computer here, do it again there. Do it a few hundred more times and there's no more brain left. Kinda like Luke Skywalker's hand bit doing it finger by finger over a few years instead of just cutting off the entire hand all at once. Anyways, the point stands, eventually we'll all be post-biological and time limitations are mostly only relevant to biological life (as we know it). With no time limitations, there are no speed limitations, and with no speed limitations all the needs for infinite amounts of energy -- the real limiting factor that's impossible with current and near future technology -- and shit goes out the window.

What you describe may be possible but it doesn't violate the speed limit of space/time.

 

[superpunch]

What you describe may be possible but it doesn't violate the speed limit of space/time.

Referencing the speed limit of space/ time as a limitation for space travel is as relevant as discussing the need to have a toilet system to dispose of taking massive shits for R2D2 on interstellar missions.

We will be able to violate those things eventually anyways. But you don't even need to violate them for interstellar and intergalactic space travel. That's all doable with current theoretical and very soon engineerable solutions that get rid of the time limitations of biology.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

At some point, there has to be actual reasons why nothing can travel faster than light. Reasons why c is 2.99*10^8. Reasons why G is 6.67*10^-11. Current science just says they're that because we see they are and thus they are. So they're just "constants". That's moronic. But we explain it that way, not because it's right, but because it's the best we can do while still implementing a logical framework.

Similar to how economics is a pseudoscience because it relies on (untrue) assumptions like all economic actors are rational. That's blatantly not true but, with current computational ability, you have to assume that otherwise you get a chaotic variable present in all analysis. And you can't have a logical framework with a chaotic variable. Just correlations only. (Chaotic variable being roughly equivalent to the +e error quotient in statistics). So economics is a pseudoscience because it has to assume something untrue to implement any resemblance of logic. Modern physics does that at the level of universal constants.

There's deeper layers to shit than we understand and once you know those you can change C, you can change G, you can create and destroy energy and shit. We're not there but the "it is because it is" shit is the caveman magic god and fire breathing dragon level of intellect. We define those as axiomatic (assumed) instead of theorem (proof from assumptions) level concepts only because we don't understand the deeper level axioms inherent in their theoretical nature.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

Referencing the speed limit of space/ time as a limitation for space travel is as relevant as discussing the need to have a toilet system to dispose of taking massive shits for R2D2 on interstellar missions.

We will be able to violate those things eventually anyways. But you don't even need to violate them for interstellar and intergalactic space travel. That's all doable with current theoretical and very soon engineerable solutions that get rid of the time limitations of biology.

So I agree with your points on space travel, or at least don't think they're impossible, that don't require traveling through space/time faster than the speed of light. I'm not sure why you think we will eventually be able to violate that limit. Is it just because of progress or is there something specific that makes you think it's possible?

 

[Shinigami]

We are closer to finding Bigfoot and the Lochness monster than extraterrestrial life

Referencing the speed limit of space/ time as a limitation for space travel is as relevant as discussing the need to have a toilet system to dispose of taking massive shits for R2D2 on interstellar missions.

We will be able to violate those things eventually anyways. But you don't even need to violate them for interstellar and intergalactic space travel. That's all doable with current theoretical and very soon engineerable solutions that get rid of the time limitations of biology.

We have not even put a person on Mars yet and if we did they would be put there to die. We went to the moon over half a century ago. We will never send anything manned or unmanned outside of our galaxy. Ever.

 

[superpunch]

We have not even put a person on Mars yet and if we did they would be put there to die. We went to the moon over half a century ago. We will never send anything manned or unmanned outside of our galaxy. Ever.

We've already put tons of unmanned stuff on Mars and already sent unmanned things into interstellar space. Given that we won't even be "men" anymore in a few decades, we'll probably, in the future, define the interstellar civilization era as having begun the moment Voyager I left the solar system last year and the interplanetary era sometime in the 1960s or some shit. You're stuck on this "personhood" shit. What we grant as "men" with rights and things in the future will be just "sentiences". The concept of personhood will be replaced by the concept of sentiencehood. There will be no "men" when a merged mind machine for $100 amplifies your intelligence to a trillion human lifetimes of thought in a millisecond and grants you immortality. Biology is a near antiquated concept and applying biological limitations as limitations of space travel is (soon to be, at least) antiquated thought.

 

[superpunch]

So I agree with your points on space travel, or at least don't think they're impossible, that don't require traveling through space/time faster than the speed of light. I'm not sure why you think we will eventually be able to violate that limit. Is it just because of progress or is there something specific that makes you think it's possible?

Because whenever I asked the why on stuff like c and G it was just "it's a constant" "it is what it is". Faith, basically. Same shit that pissed me off about religion. Euclidian geometry assumes all things start from a point and the quickest way from point A to point B is in a straight line. We know that's not true. But men 3000 years ago had to assume, without evidence, that it was true because it was the only starting point they had to make a logically consistent framework of ideas and without it there'd be no theorems defining a line, and without that there's no math. That's why there are axioms and then theorems that exist based off the axioms. Thereoems are proved off of axioms and axioms are just recognized as assumptions that can't be proven but have to be assumed as true to put together a framework. That doesn't mean that axioms can't be turned into theorems; it just means that we don't know how to yet. Constants are axioms. They won't always be. When we get universal constants like c and G down to theorems, all the sudden our understanding of shit like "things can't go faster than light" will take a change because at that point you can literally just, locally at least, alter the speed of light or change the gravitational constant.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

We are closer to finding Bigfoot and the Lochness monster than extraterrestrial life



We have not even put a person on Mars yet and if we did they would be put there to die. We went to the moon over half a century ago. We will never send anything manned or unmanned outside of our galaxy. Ever.

Well the escape velocity of our galaxy is a formidable 1,230,314 mph, and the fastest man made object traveled at just 157,078 mph, but never say never.

 

[Shinigami]

We've already put tons of unmanned stuff on Mars and already sent unmanned things into interstellar space. Given that we won't even be "men" anymore in a few decades, we'll probably, in the future, define the interstellar civilization era as having begun the moment Voyager I left the solar system last year and the interplanetary era sometime in the 1960s or some shit. You're stuck on this "personhood" shit. What we grant as "men" with rights and things in the future will be just "sentiences". The concept of personhood will be replaced by the concept of sentiencehood. There will be no "men" when a merged mind machine for $100 amplifies your intelligence to a trillion human lifetimes of thought in a millisecond and grants you immortality. Biology is a near antiquated concept and applying biological limitations as limitations of space travel is (soon to be, at least) antiquated thought.

"We will never send anything manned or unmanned outside of our galaxy." <-- what I said. The solar system is NOTHING compared to the size of our galaxy.

"personhood" <-- I made no mention of this, you are fabricating shit.

"unmanned stuff on Mars" <-- I never said we didn't. I simply stated we haven't put a man on Mars yet and there was a sort of plan to have a group of people up there for a few years and never return

Problem is that I have read the science. I sort of understand the scale and distances we are talking about. I check out some pretty good YT physics/space guys too. I have read Hawking, Kaku, and NDT and etc. I was very obsessed with black holes and space and dark matter and still am. I even read the Fermi book on Thermodynamics. I have heard they may have found a 5th fundamental force.

Problem is you don't know shit about the universe. You think "well it has to be true we will go to Andromeda someday" because you don't know the science at all. Because I do and shut down your wish fulfillment shit you basically want to call me a science denier.
I am just a realist.

Point stands we have not landed on a moon or planet since we landed on ONE MOON OVER 50 YEARS ago. Shit, Europa looks interesting as fuck and we have to send probes on a suicide mission to get any good data back on it

At least check out this guy's YT and maybe learn something about the universe. You are like one of those people who never read the Bible and thinks he knows anything about Christianity.

Well the escape velocity of our galaxy is a formidable 1,230,314 mph, and the fastest man made object traveled at just 157,078 mph, but never say never.

ha, yeah for sure.

Just the scale of the universe is depressing .... we are just stuck in this galaxy. Even if we could somehow advance to a point where we could travel across galaxies I would think we would blow ourselves up if we ever got that advanced.

 

[superpunch]

"We will never send anything manned or unmanned outside of our galaxy." <-- what I said. The solar system is NOTHING compared to the size of our galaxy.

You keep talking about size. What. the. fuck. does. size. matter. if. time. doesn't. matter?

Problem is that I have read the science. I sort of understand the scale and distances we are talking about. I check out some pretty good YT physics/space guys too.

I don't want to say it this way because I don't want to turn this into a flamewar. But it doesn't matter what you've read if you can't think. Right now, f(t). Removing human limitations like time from the function inverts the function to an integral of itself, f^-1(t), relative to time. It's that simple.

 

[LangfordBarrow]

"We will never send anything manned or unmanned outside of our galaxy." <-- what I said. The solar system is NOTHING compared to the size of our galaxy.

"personhood" <-- I made no mention of this, you are fabricating shit.

"unmanned stuff on Mars" <-- I never said we didn't. I simply stated we haven't put a man on Mars yet and there was a sort of plan to have a group of people up there for a few years and never return

Problem is that I have read the science. I sort of understand the scale and distances we are talking about. I check out some pretty good YT physics/space guys too. I have read Hawking, Kaku, and NDT and etc. I was very obsessed with black holes and space and dark matter and still am. I even read the Fermi book on Thermodynamics. I have heard they may have found a 5th fundamental force.

Problem is you don't know shit about the universe. You think "well it has to be true we will go to Andromeda someday" because you don't know the science at all. Because I do and shut down your wish fulfillment shit you basically want to call me a science denier.
I am just a realist.

Point stands we have not landed on a moon or planet since we landed on ONE MOON OVER 50 YEARS ago. Shit, Europa looks interesting as fuck and we have to send probes on a suicide mission to get any good data back on it

At least check out this guy's YT and maybe learn something about the universe. You are like one of those people who never read the Bible and thinks he knows anything about Christianity.




ha, yeah for sure.

Just the scale of the universe is depressing .... we are just stuck in this galaxy. Even if we could somehow advance to a point where we could travel across galaxies I would think we would blow ourselves up if we ever got that advanced.

Yeah, that technology seems to be a long way off, and we should just be happy to imagine some day being able to harvest the resources in our own solar system. Missions to the far reaches of the galaxy, much less intergalactic exploration, would return to an earth far in the future with a civilization likely morphed into something unrecognizable.

 

[tramendous]

Not sure about that. What's so great about us that the rest of the galaxy should be compelled to put up with our shit? As a dominant species, our record as planetary caretakers is quite bad. I say we rethink it in a few centuries.

Do you have any evidence that the Galaxy can care about what we do? I always find it weird when people project these kinds of traits on largely dead barren worlds and stars that wouldn't be able to give a shit one way or another whether our entire planet and everything on it perishes or we spread from Earth to 1 million worlds.

I'm fence sitting on the moon landing conspiracy.

It's just weird that such a successful project, Apollo, that went to the moon 6 times can't be duplicated like half a century later.

Ug, do we really need to go back to the moon? Like is there a really good reason to go there other than to separate taxpayers from their money?

Yes we should go back to the moon. We should have never stopped going. The idea is to build a moon base that will make going to the moon easier and be used as a base to explore the rest of the solar system.