/sci/ - Science & Math

>hotly debated to this day.
>faster-than-light travel

The feasibility of FTL travel is "hotly debated" between those with the most tenuous grasp of special relativity pretending they have total mastery of the subject, and their friends with no grasp of it at all pretending that the limitations of SR will be swept away by future discovery, discovery that will almost certainly happen in their own lifetime, maybe next week even, just as it has in their favorite sci-fi novels and tv series.

SR is here to stay. Light-speed limitations are here to stay. There are theories involving exotic matter, yes. But the distance crossed in technological ability between a cavemen painting on a wall and a robot being lowered onto the surface of Mars via sky crane is small compared to the distance that must yet be crossed in order to begin testing these theories.

*We* will change first. The things that make the light speed barrier a problem for human exploration, our lifespan, the fragility of our mind and bodies, we will overcome these obstacles while the light-speed barrier yet remains. And what will the barrier matter then? When you live forever, what is a few decades here and there spent traveling between stars? When the culture of your species has obtained total equilibrium and is utterly stable, why feel the need for constant contact? We will change first. Humanity will bend itself to fit SR. And if one day we discover SR can be broken, then of course we will try to break it. But the beings that may one day break SR will resemble us less than we resemble the first vertebrates.