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The Impossibility of Colonizing the Galaxy
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jun 17, 2007 02:13 PM
from the let's-settle-the-gobi-desert-first dept.
from the let's-settle-the-gobi-desert-first dept.
OriginalArlen writes "The science fiction writer Charlie Stross has written an excellent and comprehensive explanation of why, thousands of SF books, movies, and games notwithstanding, human colonization of other star systems is impossible. Although interstellar colonization seems common-sensical to many, Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two. Nevertheless it would be interesting to see reasoned responses from the community who believe that colonization is not merely possible, but inevitable — and even, as Hawking has said, vital for the survival of the species. So, who's right — Hawking or Stross?"
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Both right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Both right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Both right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you sure about that? We're pretty blase about technology today compared to the eager visions of an earlier age.
Then there's the fact that finding new tricks is getting harder and harder.
Look at 1907 - The automobile, while not a standard item, was at least known. Trains were in extensive use, as were power tools. Automatic looms, various mechanical processes.
If you took an educated man from 1907 and brought him to 2007, he'd be able to understand just about everything we have except for our computational devices. They even understood a bit about nuclear energy.
What we've done is expanded our awareness and moved these items from the realm of theory to practicality.
The problem is, while we have many ideas; they get shot down left and right. I don't see a new source of energy orders of magnitude above previous ones, like what nuclear power provided. Sure, antimatter would work, but it's like non-nuclear hydrogen - it's only a storage method, not a generation method.
We're still advancing, but nowaday's it's hard, very hard.
Still, even with this, I remain optimistic - after all, we have thousands of years to reach the stars, if not millions.
Parent
Re:Both right? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.answers.com/topic/failed-predictions [answers.com]
The thing is: scientific development will continue. Just like you wouldn't be able to tell in the year 1900 I would be writing this post on a laptop with built-in multimedia capabilites, wireless communitaction and massive computing power, you can't predict what kind of funny effects you can create with space and time when given virtually unlimted amounts of energy. (from our 2007 perspective)
Parent
Re:Both right? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Both right? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see any way that we aren't screwed anyway. Unless everything we think we know about
cosmology and physics is wrong, the Universe is going to eventually experience one of two things: Heat Death [wikipedia.org] or collapsing into a Singularity [wikipedia.org]. Neither of those
scenarios seems to leave much hope for the continued existence of human life.
Assuming the cosmological theories are sound; the only way to even theorize about human life continuing perpetually requires going back to "magic wands" like dimension-hopping or something.
Bottom line, IMO, is that human life has a hard-coded expiration date, and in the end we're all dead and the universe is just a cold, dead, empty wasteland.
Parent
Assertions (Score:5, Informative)
They are not saying opposite things, one is saying that we can't colonize other solar systems, the other that we must. They are probably both true.
Executive summary (Score:5, Informative)
Using "the high frontier" and appeals to settler gumption and heroic individualism isn't the right paradigm; if it's going to happen we need to abandon certain cherished illusions (dwelt on at length) and start doing some hard thinking about what we really want.
I call BS (Score:5, Funny)
Clarke's first law (Score:5, Insightful)
Generation ships. Suspended animation. Bussard Ramjets.
Baby steps throughout Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.
Re:Clarke's first law (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Clarke's first law (Score:5, Interesting)
the biggest problem with cold storage of humans is ice expands when it freezes, bursting cells.
the whole basis of ice-9 was finding a new arrangement of h20 so that it wanted to become a solid when it touched other cells.. but it was a different 'stack' of molecules.
what if you could either 1-find a way to stack h20 so it stayed the same size (most things shrink when they freeze, water is an exception) or 2- find a substitute molecule that could replace the water in a human corpus... one that also doesn't expand when frozen....
Parent
Incredibly short-sighted (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that technology's march is not only inevitable, but accelerating. To outright dismiss these possibilities is completely unreasonable and irrational.
Leave science to the scientists (Score:5, Interesting)
He needs to envision new technologies and sciences to free us from this solar system. Who knows what will be invented and discovered in the next two or three hundred years? He certainly does not.
The question is moot. (Score:5, Interesting)
And when it does, the question of how do you launch a meatbag in a life-support coffin to go X distance in Y time will be meaningless.
Energy requirements (Score:5, Interesting)
He states that to get a Mercury Capsule sized vessel to 0.1c takes about the energy consumption of the planet for 5 days. OK, sounds about right. He then states that this makes it impossible (accounting for inefficiencies). I'm less willing to buy that.
First reason: rockets are power hungry, yet we've done them before. When the Saturn V launched, instantaneous energy consumption in the US went up 6%. Sure, it's many orders of magnitude smaller, but the idea is the same: you store up the energy over a long period (antimatter, say), and then take it out in a hurry.
Second reason: energy consumption of the world is climbing, and will continue to do so. It may get briefly more expensive as we have oil problems, but renewable and nuclear sources will counteract that (if they don't, space colonization is pretty much a moot point). Wait a hundred years, and the energy requirement will merely read like the largest project humanity has ever undertaken, not something entirely ridiculous.
The basic error he's making is that he's arguing we can't do it with today's technology. Yup, I agree, but that's not the interesting question. I'll leave the question of whether things like generation ships can work from a social standpoint to others more qualified, but I'm confident they can *eventually* work from a technical one.
Impossible? (Score:5, Informative)
Very bad summary, subbie.
Quantum mechanics (Score:5, Interesting)
Magic? (Score:5, Insightful)
that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two
- Arthur C. Clarke
'nuff said.
Define "the species" (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's all in the blink of an eye... On interstellar and galactic timescales... You're going to have to tell me what a human being is.
Re:No shit (Score:5, Insightful)
It is mere physics obstacles that need to be overcome, that includes dimensional hopping or more likely controlled black-holes or worm holes, to colonize the galaxy.
We will overcome the hurdles eventually, including the radiation, the vital resources, and spacial 'deserts'.
To even say it is impossible or requires a 'magic wand' is absurd.
author needs to revistit history and the countless times that silly notion was postured.
Parent
common sense is not reality (Score:5, Insightful)
If you collapsed the whole of human history down to a single day, we were wandering hunter-gatherers for 11 hours and 56 minutes. Only in the final four minutes before midnight have we been farming for a living, and in those four minutes our scientific knowledge (and achievements) have increased exponentially.
In the last four minutes we went from spears and loincloths to long range missiles and synthetic fabrics. We are now the only species on the planet that can survive organ transplants, travel at hundreds of miles per hour, walk on the moon, and communicate instantly from opposite sides of the planet. All of this we gained in the last four minutes of our first day of existence as humans.
The kind of scientific momentum we have going right now is mind-boggling. Things that our ancestors couldn't even imagine are now common reality. Imagine what kinds of "magic wands" our scientists will make for us tomorrow.
I am not saying that interstellar colonization will be possible, I am just saying that a quick review of the history of science robs us of any grounds upon which to form an opinion of "it will never be possible."
Parent
Re:Impossible...? (Score:5, Interesting)
The key question won't be the technology (whether it's generation ships, ships that can move near the speed of the light or faster-than-light vessels), but rather the motivation. At the moment, we can scarcely get most people to see the point of returning to the Moon, or of going to Mars. Where there's a military motivation (China's long-term space plans seem to have twigged the West) there's always a way, but unfortunately something as far removed from us in time and so egalitarian as Hawking's notion of saving the species as sending manned missions to other stars just doesn't get many beyond the dreamers heated up.
We've been sending stuff to space for half a century, and sending humans for less than that. It's so ridiculously premature to start judging whether or not humanity will reach the stars that I can't see the point of such an article. It's one thing to raise the technical difficulties (which are insurmountable with our current technology), but grand proclamations like this usually fall into two categories; blowhards who like to shock and disappoint or people trying inept forms of reverse psychology.
Parent
Re:Impossible...? (Score:5, Insightful)
My money is on Hawking.
Parent
Re:Can we get the tech to continuously accelerate? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent