/sci/ - Science & Math

I deny the possibility, as scientifically, there is no reasonable basis, for any form of FTL travel (for electromagnetic/massive matter)

BUT I SURE WOULD WANT THERE TO BE

Fuck, I would love carousing around the galaxy at like 1,000,000,000c, in a Star-Trek like craft.

I think our best bets for exploration are:

1) Robots. We're getting good at building better, more durable robots, and they require less resources than human beings to maintain for long periods of time.

Or if we HAVE to send people:

2) Working on new forms of suspended animation, to keep people frozen/asleep/suspended for centuries at a time to travel the great distances between stars.

I really don't think we're going to get robots or people to land very far in our era. It'll probably be a thousand years before we even make it to proxima centuri, with a robot or a person, and that's only like 4 light years away.

Bump.

Thanks for the responses, honestly I thought there would be more optimism D:

warping spacetime for ftl travel is theoretically possible, however the power requirements to actually create the warp bubble would be astronomical.

>>2012008

So, the problem is, we need a big enough battery?

/failjoke

I read something connect to "negative energy", does that have to do with anything? Supposedly, that's the space (the edge of the warp bubble) between the front (space contracting) and back (space expanding).

>>2012008
And "space-time warping" convienently ignores that in reality, any curvature of space-time requires mass.

In order to have a constant forward acceleration, you'd have to be constantly creating and destroying matter a certain distance in front of you. To have earth-like acceleration, you'd have to have an object either as massive and centered far away as earth to have the same curvature/distance, or a smaller mass at a closer distance, but acceleration differentials across the hull.

>>2012020
I was simply stating its theoretically possible, I realize its still extremely unlikely that it would work.

>>2012020
If we can discover, figure out the physics of, and master the manipulation of gravitons we could do that...

But yeah... long way away from that. First we have to find them.

What did you think when you understood that FTL travel is just a way of shortening tim? What if you could just completely eliminate the time-factor?

BECOME IMMORTAL-DON'T NEED TO BREAK THE LAWS OF PHYSICS

>Aquire hypergiant

>Collapse hypergiant in on its self

>Before it reaches a singularity put metal clamps on sides keeping it from collapsing in on its self.

>Put hypergiant in engine

>Travel starts and have sex with many aliens


U jelly hawkin

>>2012493


>Travel stars


Typo ...

>>2012493
>Tempretures on hypergiants around 3000k


Errm son about those metal clamps...

Travel faster than lightspeed
Bend space and time so you don't break the rules of lightspeed from an observers point of view.
Fucking easy.

Seafag here. Heard you spacefags still haven't found any new lifeforms. What's the holdup?

>>2012533

It's all those danged Republicans that don't want to fund our fleets of shiny diamond spacecraft.

Give it forty years and we'll have the nanotech explore the sea and space effortlessly.

I mean, you go ten feet near a hydrothermal vent and you suck ten new species into your impellers. They're everywhere down here. We're running out of names. You know what I just found on my last coffee break? "Boneria Scrotiosis." Named that myself. Discovered it by looking out a fuckin' window. Easiest grant money I ever earned.

You got rovers? We got rovers. Tracked, free floating, tethered, untethered. Got humanoid ones like robonaut in the works too.

>>2012542
>>2012546

Stop making me feel jelly you sibbly-wibbly seafag.

There's a fucking hexagon on Saturn's atmosphere. Your arguments are invalid.

I mean sometimes we'll have the rover off doing some shit and then glance over there and HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THAT THING. You know? You can relate, right? Just, coincidentally seeing a newly discovered lifeform, just another day on the job? Happens all the time in space I bet.

Nice space station. Seriously, that is nice. We've got something like it. It's a bit smaller, like one of the ISS modules on the sea floor. The main difference apart from being underwater is that it does real science.

>>2012542
You're a glorified technician. Your discoveries of terrestrial life contribute almost nothing to a cosmological understanding of life. Don't get me wrong, let me know if you discover something with a silicon-based genetic code; otherwise, STFU and GTF back in the water. I'm busy figuring out how reality works.

To quote Einstein here, "I want to know the mind of god. The rest is details."

Wonder if you'll ever get to walk on an alien planet that looks half this awesome. It'd be great if you did. We'd be happy for you.

>>2012558
FUCK YOU AND YOUR HAMSTER YOU ARE NOT SCIENCE OR OCEAN ASPLORER SO GTFO

>>2012569

>>Your discoveries of terrestrial life contribute almost nothing to a cosmological understanding of life.

Let me know when you find some examples and then we can talk about how much the study of extremophiles around deep sea volcanic vents and space analogue training for astronauts helped.

>>2012573

Hey, not my fault the ocean is easier to get to. Even this cat can do it. You'll probably never go to space though.

Even if FTL was possible it would be dangerous on the offchance you fly into a tiny little rock that punctures through the entire ship in an instant.

>>2012582

Not me, but something I build will!

>>2012587

>FTL

stopped reading there.


---

Seriously though, Mad Scientist, can't we all just get along between seafags and spacefags? Let's be like Charles Pellegrino, bit by bit.

Don't worry guys

Something like this, but for space, can't be more than a century or two away from market.

>>2012593

>>Seriously though, Mad Scientist, can't we all just get along between seafags and spacefags? Let's be like Charles Pellegrino, bit by bit.

Haha, of course bro. It's all in fun. I'd be shocked to learn any of that was actually getting under someone's skin.

We've got something sorta like FTL by the way. It's called supercavitation. Basically you eject steam from the nosecone of the vehicle and then ignite the rocket engines in back. It pushes through the water and the steam creates a gas envelope around it that maintains the right shape so that aerial drag, not water drag, is acting on the vessel. It essentially becomes an underwater missile and can reach speeds around 300mph. That's haulin' ass even on land. Sadly the ride would only last for a few minutes until the fuel burnt out. But I can see it being useful for a getaway or pursuit.

>>2012577
You can take your methane breathers and shove them up your ass. I'm talking about things like the creatures from Aliens or synthetic intelligences.

Will the tech you're working on one day save the world from death by asteroid impact? I think not.

You can have your shitty Earthsea. My eye is on designing planets, solar systems, and galaxies. My eye is on practical immortality and living in the zero-g vacuum of space among motes of dust in a galaxy rise of billions of stars.

What will you have for all your effort? Complaints about how people are fucking up your pond and killing off your fossils in the making.

Do you see Google trying to setup a network for undersea communications? No. That's because they're working on a harder problem: networking solar systems. Do you see google working on classifying all the life on Earth by trudging around in quaint little glorified bathtubs? No. They're working on a harder problem: artificial intelligence.

Real biologist are creating life these days.

Sorry, not possible.

>>2012628

>>I'm talking about things like the creatures from Aliens

They were inspired by deep sea creatures. The headcrabs anyway, based on horseshoe crabs.

>>You can have your shitty Earthsea.

Got our eyes on Europa's global ocean too.

>>What will you have for all your effort?

All the stuff you hope to get from space. New lifeforms, at least one of them of equal intelligence (dolphins) and many of them bizarre, beautiful or terrifying beyond compare. Unique geology, plantlife, humans living in harsh extremes and doing science, protected from nuclear wars, plague outbreaks, pretty much anything short of a meteor impact. Gotta concede that one, but it's probably not wise to hinge your whole position on a one in a trillion probability.

>>Do you see Google trying to setup a network for undersea communications? No.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/88268_google_expanding_undersea_cable_system/

>>That's because they're working on a harder problem: networking solar systems. Do you see google working on classifying all the life on Earth by trudging around in quaint little glorified bathtubs?

I see them investing in oceanic power generation so guys like you can keep slappin' it to star trek on imageboards as the oil runs out.

http://www.gearlog.com/2010/10/googles_undersea_wind_power_gr.php

>>Real biologist are creating life these days.

Thanks to lessons learned from some of the simplest, oldest and most exotic microbes on the planet, retrieved from hydrothermal velts.

>>2012650
*ahem*

NO U

Seriously not trying to step on toes. Just annoyed that we're not exploring the sea the the extent that we're exploring space. The Aquarius is a tenth the size of the ISS for fuck's sake, and it gets ten times as much useful science done. We know what we know about how the oil actually affects coral and coral species (not what BP or environmentalists claimed) thanks to Aquarius aquanauts. We're learning how to control herbivore populations to artificially restore reefs in spite of rising oceanic Ph, thanks to the efforts of Aquarius scientists. And astronauts train there, the last time was during the NEEMO mission, precisely because it's similar to space in most regards but cheaper to get to.

And I'm up for mankind's inevitable future in space I really am. But what happens when we find habitable planets? They'll have oceans, no? And by then we'll be accustomed to a standard of living that can be sustained only by sustainable exploitation of it's oceans. That'll necessitate habitat and sub technology designed here.

The thing is, that future is happening. For seafags. We don't have to dream about lunar or martian colonies. Actual seafloor colonies are being built. >>2012603 This is the guy doing it. And any ordinary person can, having saved a few years, afford a sleek sexy minisub, while you'll have to wait a couple of generations at least for a personal spaceship to come on the market.

It's everything most of us want, but sooner, cheaper and in most ways better.

Perfect example. Police minisub, high speed, used to pursue drug running semisubmersibles and take them out. There's no vehicle this cool looking in space today.

There are 2 god-tier engineering majors
Aerospace Engineering
and Ocean Engineering
Everything else is sub-tier, which is why I love this thread

>>2012692

Explore the sea to fix the environment.

Explore space to learn how to live without blowing up the environment.

Alternatively, we can solve the Space/Sea dispute by traveling horizontally.

EVERYBODY WINS!

>>2012726

>>Explore the sea to fix the environment.

>>Explore space to learn how to live without blowing up the environment.

It's a deal. Also, you get a new star trek based on movie canon, but that Brannon Braga doesn't get to be involved with. And we get a new Sea Quest series by the writers of Battlestar Galactica.

When people say space colonization will take centuries I put the blame on danged Republicans and danged Baby Boomers.

Some day... When we have the nanotech to do it costlessly and effortlessly... Some day, my beloved. Some day.

>>2012738

>It's a deal.

Well then time to get the President on the line.

And somebody has to hand over that martini to poor old tired Charles Pellegrino.

In the meantime, how about we mount Aquarius on a Falcon-9 rocket? It looks sturdy, dense, rigid and big enough.

Life support is going to be a bitch, are there any experiments on growing algae on a closed-loop system? Like Spirulina?

>>2011952
>Alcubierre, Michio Kaku and all those great physicists say it would work, so I trust them.

You got too excited and stopped reading at the point where they claim it's theoretically possible.

You did not continue reading and discover that it would require more energy than exists in the entire universe.

And until space is truly open to the common person, the deep blue will be their new frontier, a place anyone can explore for the price of a high end sports car.

>>2012503

Gonna be a LOT hotter than 3000K if you compress the motherfucker on itself, too.

>>2012692
We're barely exploring space either. All the money goes to militaries for blowing shit up.

>>2012750

Not to mention Negative Energy cannot be manipulated.

Fucking quantum restrictions and closed-source universe.

>>2012747

>>In the meantime, how about we mount Aquarius on a Falcon-9 rocket? It looks sturdy, dense, rigid and big enough.

My eyebrow just raised clean off my forehead

>>Life support is going to be a bitch, are there any experiments on growing algae on a closed-loop system? Like Spirulina?

Actually yeah, lots. A private citizen recently set a record for living underwater in a homemade habitat that used an algae biocoil to refresh the air.

Pic related, it's the dude and his biocoil.

>>2012663
It's not one in a trillion. Not even by a long shot. The Earth will be struck in the next hundred years. In two hundred years, we have to do something about a near-earth object that is on a collision course from space and is a planet killer. I don't give a fuck what you have to contribute from the ocean. You will not stop the Earth from dying by any iteration of your natural philosophy bullshit.

Nor will you transform man into Deus Ex Machina. You will not achieve the philosopher's stone, you will not escape the cave. You will not solve the world's ills. You can have your tidal generation. Stellar industry renders it quaint and obsolete.

Do people need to be altered to make hundred year trips to the bottom of the ocean? I think not.
Does space-time have to be folded or otherwise re-engineered to have any feasible hope of getting from A to B in anything less than geological time? No. Will exploring the depths of the ocean yield the laboratory necessary to experiment with terraformation or planetary engineering? No. A part, yes, but as a whole, no.

As for your hopes regarding Europa? Fuck you. No spaceship for you. Get the fuck off my ship via the nearest available airlock.

Holding your little drink up to the fires of stars, the depths of blackholes, the ravages of supernova as equivalent is deeply offensive and misleading. You can not compare the scale or challenges of the ocean to the scale and challenges of space. At parts, maybe, but in general, no.

And it matters not regarding the discovery life elsewhere. If upon searching all of the universe we find that humankind is the only civilization of it's type, we will have verified that we were the first. We will have re-engineered the cosmos itself in the pursuit of knowing the greatest mysteries. Will will have transcended each and everyone of our limitations as we go out to look upon the face of *the* deep.

Eventually, one will sit together with the void
until only the void remains.

>>2012770

Great! Now we just have to learn how to grow algae on cubic-meter cylinders along the walls of a spacecraft and under half an Earth gravity...

>>2012773

I'm saving this.

Lastly, any problem that an oceanographer can pose is a subset of the problems posed by cosmologist and theoretical physicists. Do you see cosmologists and theoretical physicists studying the oceans to see how the universe was made? No. They're not interested in the womb-world of the Ocean. They're interested in the world that existed before that womb-world.

If you want to remain in the dark safety of the oceans of this speck of dust, by all means. No risk, no gain. The greatest gain will come from the exploration of space not from the exploration of the oceans.

I had a FTL thought to use in a sci-fi story.

The idea is you have FTL travel by moving spacetime itself and you do this with a series of big directional explosions like in the Orion Drive. Launch explosive charge behind ship, it makes a big boom, ship rides the space-shockwave.

> Alcubierre, Michio Kaku and all those great physicists say it would work, so I trust them.

> My face when.

The alcubierre drive is an increasingly elaborate hacked together piece of math wank, forged using every fringe idea in GR thrown together into the same arena smash brothers style. It can only exist on paper, because:

- The energy requirements are enormous. A volume of 100m^3 being transmitted through even the "best" implementation of a warp drive (best defined as lowest energy reuqirements) would demand more energy than exists in the entire universe.

- It requires absurd quantities of exotic matter; to achieve even 10 times the speed of light it needs more exotic matter than the mass of all the matter in the observable universe.

- It requires the existence of negative energy and naked singularities.

- There are no known methods by which you could even create the space time bubble in the first place.

The following paper demonstrates that even if you could get one to work, it would just explode as soon as you started using it anyway:

http://prd.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v79/i12/e124017

Oh, and even if this was all ignored and you somehow got it to work, nobody inside the bubble could steer it, start it or stop it. It needs infrastructure (like an interstellar railroad) to provide those services for it, which means that the first trip is always STL.

>>2012773

>>The Earth will be struck in the next hundred years

It's struck pretty frequently. Just in remote areas and not by anything big enough to be problematic. Impacts the size we'd "notice" (i.e. a city wiped out) happen on average once per 30,000 years. Larger impacts even less frequently.

>>Do people need to be altered to make hundred year trips to the bottom of the ocean? I think not.

Another plus of ocean exploration.

>>Does space-time have to be folded or otherwise re-engineered to have any feasible hope of getting from A to B in anything less than geological time? No.

Another plus.

>>Will exploring the depths of the ocean yield the laboratory necessary to experiment with terraformation or planetary engineering?

More than you will admit. Undersea labs have, since the sixties, been where we tested new life support systems on Earth before using them in space.

>>As for your hopes regarding Europa? Fuck you. No spaceship for you.

What happens when an Earthlike planet with air we can breathe and a comfortable temperature is located....but it's an ocean world? Hope you brought snorkels.

>>Holding your little drink up to the fires of stars,

It is a little drink on a cosmic scale. But realize the cosmos is mostly empty. You get no benefit from empty, cold, radiation blast space. For space exploration to make sense you have to actually go somewhere. Planets, for the most part. And if those planets have life odds are they have water, likely in large oceans. And like Earth, most of their biodiversity will be located there. Guess how you'll need to explore it?

>>And it matters not regarding the discovery life elsewhere.

Oh, I disagree. Discovery of novel forms of life affects all areas of medicine including the use of a deep sea species of jellyfish that is effectively immortal in life extension studies. Pic related. It has the answers you want, and it's in the ocean.

How's that for a laugh? The secret to immortality, in the one place you refuse to look.

>>2012825

>>Do you see cosmologists and theoretical physicists studying the oceans to see how the universe was made? No

We do see them studying hydrothermal vents to see how life came about. And isn't it life that concerns us?

>>If you want to remain in the dark safety of the oceans of this speck of dust, by all means.

On any planet where there is an ocean, I want to explore it's depths. I'd put good money on the most interesting life being down there, wherever you go.

I have discussed the specific problems with the Alcubierre drive. But there are also general problems that it creates that are not specific to it.

There is a saying in SciFi communities that discuss stuff like this a lot - "Relativity, Causality, FTL". Pick any 2. This is because the three cannot all exist simultaneously. Under relativity, any FTL involved breaks causality. Alternatively, you can have Causality and FTL, but relativity cannot be used if this is the case. Mundanely, you can have Relativity and Causality, but not FTL. This is what real life has, by the way.

The reason relativity and FTL are at odds can be found here:

http://sheol.org/throopw/tachyon-pistols.html

(picture related)

There is also a general principle that gives us reason to believe that FTL travel is and will always be impossible. This is the correspondence principle. It basically says that although current understandings of the universe are incomplete, future theories must take the facts that we have already demonstrated to be true into account in their own theories.

An example would be that although Relativity is superior to Newtonian physics, Newton's laws still hold true where they were experimentally verified (i.e. relativity gives the same answers under normal conditions, and only differs when you reach extreme speeds and deal with enormous masses).

Now, GR forbids FTL implicitly, and says that FTL is basically equivelant to time travel. But what if Einstein was just a big idoit? Well, even then, it's still basically not gonna happen.

Quantum Mechanics does not have a light-speed limit. This is often brought up as "proof" that FTL is possible, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, all FTL phenomena in QM explicitly cannot be used to transfer information. The operational definition of information here is "the ability to affect a causal change". So although "things" can go FTL, they can never causally impact anything.

I think what it comes down to is accessibility to the everyman. Space is the final frontier, but not the next one. Ordinary people cannot live there. They cannot homestead.

An ordinary guy, hobbyist diver, built this habitat out of a shipping container. The main hurdles that held normal people back in the sixties was the cost, bulk and fragility of aircon, dehumidifiers, silicone, the (absence of) acrylic and so on. With all of those barriers removed, a regular guy was able to make livable space underwater on a budget. Not much, but a place to stand, to sleep, to fish for his lunch and dinner, and most importantly to breathe without surface support. Living underwater is rapidly becoming something anyone can do. Which means that the sea floor, not space, will be the next frontier that man colonizes.

Space is next, so don't get antsy, just wait your turn.

An example is quantum entanglement, which is instantaneous. However, no information can ever be transmitted through here (re: No-Communication theorem) because the changes that are made are indistinguishable from the normal random fluctuations in QM.

Theoretical treatments of Tachyons are also, ironically, purely STL. Although tachyons themselves are FTL, tachyonic "detection" and tachyonic "emission' are one and the same thing, meaning that a tachyon detector always produces a positive result, and you have no way of distinguishing "false positives" from "true positives", meaning that it can never send or receive any information.

So, top down we have GR explicitly forbidding FTL. Bottom up, QM has no rule forbidding it, but despite that, is complaint with the "No FTL rule", assuming you understand it to mean "information may never travel beyond the speed of light". There is no real reason why it should obey that if FTL travel really was possible. But it does. And it would be the strangest thing in the world if all scientific theories were conspiring to forbid us from going FTL, but then suddenly we found something that could do it no problems.

Picture awesome but unrelated.

Whoa back the fuck up, I was in this exact thread 2 weeks ago.

You're spooky.

>>2012935
Fear my 3 part post.

FEAR.

>>2012910


no you fucktard.

the no communication theorem, in laymans terms, means this:

the 2 isolated, distantly separated observers of an entangled state have no knowledge before hand.


there is no way to transmit information because no information is encoded to begin with.

you cannot say:

this state = 1, this state = 0

or

when I measure the state, that means you must perform some function...


because the 2nd observer never knows when the first observer makes his measurement.


thus the only way to KNOW that anything has happened simultaneously at 2 different places is to ask one another and measure the states seperately.

>>2012856
Wrong. I'd just as soon throw the Earth into a stellar furnace and cook me up a new solar system as go to another solar system. It's not what we will find in space that will surprise us. It is what we will make in the attempt to go to space that will lead to once in the history of the universe events like landing on the moon.

You're attempting to claim the ocean like it was some big unknown. It is not. It's measured in less than light years. The whole of the ocean could be measured in less than 1% of the mass of the Kuiper Belt.

The power available from a fraction of the sun absolutely dwarfs all the power available in all the currents and depths of the ocean combined.

Your quaint little example of "immortality" would not allow me to live in vacuum at extremely high or low temperatures with high background radiation in perpetual free fall.

I'm talking of immortality that will allow me to dance about the rings of Saturn. The kind of immortality that will drive us like lightning bolts along the paths of information, instant understanding, and almost infallible memory.

>>2012903
You dismissal of my statement that in the next hundred years the Earth will be struck is a gross misunderstanding of the statement. I take it as given that everyone knows we're hit by little meterorites and piss-ant debris almost constantly. I'm talking about struck as in by something moving fast enough with enough mass to redistribute the continents, wipe out island states like Japan, boil seas, level forests and unfortunate cities. The kind of struck that makes volcanoes erupt and the world quake.

Within two hundred years, we will have to deal with a planet killer. A asteroid large enough and fast enough to wipe out all human life on the planet. A hell of a stick of dynamite to drop in the drink if you know what I mean.

It does not go Ocean first, space next. It goes Space NOW. ASAP. We've been lucky that a planet killer hasn't wiped us out up till now. You make it sound like plausible space travel will be hundreds of years down the road. You are wrong. Deeply and emphatically wrong.

>>2012985
Yeah dipshit, which means that it can't be used to transmit information FTL! Which is what I said!

The reason you can't tell whether they've changed something or not without measuring both and asking the other guy is because the changes can't be told apart from the normal random shit that goes on anyway.

>>2012903
>>2013004
You see that picture? The one with the pretty little scribbles that you probably do not understand? Do see anything that was discovered in the ocean? No.

It's that kind of discovery that will make it possible to design, build, and operate the technology before 2050 that will get us into exodus, into space. The ocean categorically has nothing like that to offer. It can not offer us answers to the questions posed by the Hubble Telescope.

On the scale of individual people, you're right that the ocean has something to offer. People are shallower than the ocean in general. On the scale of the cosmos, your ocean constitutes, with mathematical accuracy, precisely almost nothing.

>>2012998

>>You're attempting to claim the ocean like it was some big unknown. It is not.

It is. We've explored barely 10% of it.

>>It's measured in less than light years.

Ten light years of empty space is just as empty as one lightyear of empty space.

>>The whole of the ocean could be measured in less than 1% of the mass of the Kuiper Belt.

You're comparing a region rich with life to masses of cold, radiation blasted rock in total vacuum. Which is more worth exploring?

>>The power available from a fraction of the sun absolutely dwarfs all the power available in all the currents and depths of the ocean combined.

With current technology? I'd like to see the math.

>>Your quaint little example of "immortality" would not allow me to live in vacuum at extremely high or low temperatures with high background radiation in perpetual free fall.

Some of the research done aboard the Navy Sealab I, II and III vessels that was immediately put to use aboard Skylab was study into the range of different gas mixtures a human being can breathe at different pressures. Prior to that we were using pure oxygen, which resulted in horrendous disaster on one occasion, after which it was modified.

>>I'm talking of immortality that will allow me to dance about the rings of Saturn. The kind of immortality that will drive us like lightning bolts along the paths of information, instant understanding, and almost infallible memory.

To do any of that, you will need a place to stand. A place to sleep, and to eat, and to excrete waste. A place to study, to work, to play and to live in general. Because livable space is hard to come by in nature we must become proficient at creating it. We must learn to fashion human habitats in harsh climes that are self sufficient, and the ocean is the cheapest, most advantageous place to do this as we get the added benefit of being able to do other types of research while we're down there.

liberate tutemae ex inferis

>>2013004

>>You dismissal of my statement that in the next hundred years the Earth will be struck is a gross misunderstanding of the statement.

I'll address that when you acknowledged that you were dead wrong about Google investing in oceanic communications tech.

>>It does not go Ocean first, space next. It goes Space NOW. ASAP.

We can't. Don't have the technology. If it has to be done now or never, then it's never.

>>We've been lucky that a planet killer hasn't wiped us out up till now. You make it sound like plausible space travel will be hundreds of years down the road. You are wrong. Deeply and emphatically wrong.

Your grandfather was told that yours might be the first generation born on Mars. Of course he was also told that there would be undersea colonies by now. The difference is, we're much closer to undersea colonies than cities on the moon or Mars.

>>2013039
>>You're attempting to claim the ocean like it was some big unknown. It is not.

It is. We've explored barely 10% of it.
>mapped all of the underwater ground via high-resolution submarine sonar in the 1960s and 70s.

>>2013039
Your failure of imagination and understanding frustrates me. I'm not talking about in a suit. I'm not talking about oxygenated push over protective bubbles. I'm not talking about your pop-sci-fi belittlings of the true grandeur of space travel. I'm talking naked as the day I come off the assembly line. What I will need is sun-light and soil at worst. Nano-tech fusion at best.

You ever read the Titan series or Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley? The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov? Voyage from Yesteryear by James P. Hogan? Anything from the Robert A. Heinlein multiverse?

>The power available from a fraction of the sun absolutely dwarfs all the power available in all the currents and depths of the ocean combined.
For most of the year, a satellite-based solar panel can collect power 24 hours per day, whereas a terrestrial station can collect for at most 12 hours per day, if weather permits, and only during peak hours—irradiance under the best of conditions is quite reduced near sunset and sunrise.

Distance and surface area are all that matters. Which means, we can build networks of solar panels from the silicon dust of space, forge them into our generators using the special properties of vacuum, free fall, and the intense solar winds, and collect all the power we'd ever need to absolutely rebuild our solar system and absolutely anything else we could consider.

Turn mankind immortal(which is actually more probable than FTL) or near immortal and you get the same result as with increased speeds. When you are immortal you will come to point where a thousand years look the same as one year.

Even for Scifi it wouldn't matter if the protagonists spend a few weeks in a story or 10000 years.

>>2013063
>I'll address that when you acknowledged that you were dead wrong about Google investing in oceanic communications tech.
I'll admit they're developing communication lines underwater. Not because they expect ocean colonies but because the infrastructure connecting the continents together is aging and inadequate for a planetary network.

That oceanic labs benefit is a side-effect. Google has two things in their state purpose: AI and stellar networks. Oceans are a subset problem which will be solved along the way almost as an uffish thought.

>>2013079
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die."

I will watch c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. I have already seen such things in my mind, and I know they are real. I know they can be built. Now. No compromise, no uncertainty, no question about it. We have the technology. What is lacking is the will to use it.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

>>2013079

>>>mapped all of the underwater ground via high-resolution submarine sonar in the 1960s and 70s.

Yes I know, and we've mapped Mars topographically too. Is that the same as exploring Mars? Should we not bother now that we have the maps?

>>Your failure of imagination and understanding frustrates me.

I'm about going to war with the army we have, not the army we want, as the saying goes.

>>I'm not talking about in a suit. I'm not talking about oxygenated push over protective bubbles. I'm not talking about your pop-sci-fi belittlings of the true grandeur of space travel. I'm talking naked as the day I come off the assembly line. What I will need is sun-light and soil at worst. Nano-tech fusion at best.

We don't have that technology. Therefore, we cannot do what you're suggesting on the "RIGHT NOW" timeframe you demand.

>>You ever read the Titan series or Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley? The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov? Voyage from Yesteryear by James P. Hogan? Anything from the Robert A. Heinlein multiverse?

Sure. They were works of fiction.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

>>For most of the year, a satellite-based solar panel can collect power 24 hours per day, whereas a terrestrial station can collect for at most 12 hours per day, if weather permits, and only during peak hours—irradiance under the best of conditions is quite reduced near sunset and sunrise.

We don't have orbital solar arrays. We do have oceanic geotherm and tidal.

>>Distance and surface area are all that matters.

You forgot money.

>>Which means, we can build networks of solar panels from the silicon dust of space, forge them into our generators using the special properties of vacuum, free fall, and the intense solar winds, and collect all the power we'd ever need to absolutely rebuild our solar system and absolutely anything else we could consider.

We don't have the technology for that.

See, the disconnect here is that you're tossing around technologies that would be feats even if we were many levels higher on the kardashev scale than we are as if they are shit that anyone could get done with some hot glue, duct tape and a quick trip to home depot. And you get irritated as shit when you're brought back down to earth and reminded that those are still incredibly difficult things to realistically consider doing, mosto f them totally reliant on technologies that exist only conceptually, as predictions of paths technological progress might one day take. And here, you're taking them completely for granted, as if they have not only been mastered but are easily affordable.

You speak denigratively of oceanic living and research, as if it's beneath you, as if only nigh-on technologically facilitated godhood is worthy of your time or interest. But who are you? Some nerd sitting alone in a darkened room, euphorically deluded as to what mankind can realistically achieve in the near term because it's all so easy in your mind.

>>2013127
>>I'm not talking about in a suit. I'm not talking about oxygenated push over protective bubbles. I'm not talking about your pop-sci-fi belittlings of the true grandeur of space travel. I'm talking naked as the day I come off the assembly line. What I will need is sun-light and soil at worst. Nano-tech fusion at best.

>We don't have that technology. Therefore, we cannot do what you're suggesting on the "RIGHT NOW" timeframe you demand.
We can develop the technology NOW. In this century at most, in the next couple of decades at least. This means this technology is easily within my life. I have no idea how old you are though I suspect you're youngish.

As for your comment about fiction? They are hard-science fiction. They are based upon the principles of science. Just as "From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne anticipated actual travel to the Moon, these stories anticipate real developments. Same goes for your faggy little submarines. Anticipated by Jules Verne in "20,000 leagues Under the Sea" almost verbatim to Navy standard submarines down to the physical dimensions.

We have cloaking devices, tricorders, flip-open communicators, tractor beams, and more. Many of these anticipated if not predicted by sci-fiction. This is why I reject fantasy as being part of the Sci-fi genre. Sci-fi and Fantasy fall under speculative fiction. The difference between the two is empirical referents vs magical thinking.

IF I had the time and resources, I would develop these technologies myself. I've got the AI part to knock out of the way first. It's literally the hardest and most complex problem to solve of the bunch.

>>2013136
Plans for self-replicating stellar industry were formalized and put forward in the 1980s by NASA. We could implement those same plans for a fraction of the original cost (following Generalized Moore's law for manufacturing). We only have to build the first set and get them out to space. They would build the rest of the fleet.

They are no more impossible than building your little tubs that visit the deepest points of the ocean on this little pebble.

They are only slightly more costly on the global economic scale. We have both the means and know how.

>>2013188

>>Plans for self-replicating stellar industry were formalized and put forward in the 1980s by NASA. We could implement those same plans for a fraction of the original cost (following Generalized Moore's law for manufacturing). We only have to build the first set and get them out to space. They would build the rest of the fleet.

If it's that easy, show me a self replicating machine. And no, not reprap. Something that mills it's own metal parts and makes not only a copy of a copier but additional machinery capable of useful tasks.

We don't even have a single von neumann machine at any scale. The plans could have been set forth in the 40s for all it helps us.

>>They are only slightly more costly on the global economic scale. We have both the means and know how.

Then show me an example. Show me a von neumann machine of any size.

Pic related, example of what those "tubs" regularly find. Got anything comparable found on other planets?

>>2013136
>We don't have orbital solar arrays. We do have oceanic geotherm and tidal.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/ssp-01a.html
>>Distance and surface area are all that matters.

>You forgot money.
>implying money matter in engineering problems
I didn't forget it. It's irrelevant to the constraints of the problem. It's only relevance would be in selling the solution to the people who have to implement it. Once again, it's not a problem of know how or fundamental capability. It's a matter of will.

We halted progress on NASA because we developed the Internet. It became the central focus of scientists and engineers across disciplines. The Internet project has become more important than your aspirations of exploring the Mariana trench and my aspirations of living out among the rings of Saturn.

As a global culture, we are effected by a malaise, a certain apathy brought on by our discontent with one another and with the content of our little puddles like our shallow social pools.

Nothing stops us from both exploring the entire ocean and leaping out to our solar system in a century other than the anchoring populations like those who control congress, those who tell us we need a job, need money, need these fictitious human things to matter. They tell us and our children this because they are afraid of us. They are afraid of what we might do, what we might become.

They sell us an inferior future so that we come to expect little and get even less than that. You want to explore the Ocean? I keep telling you, your ocean is a subset of a much larger and harder problem. We solve that problem, you get to solve your problems. We don't get proportional benefit the otherway. A implies B. B does not always imply A.

>>2013165

>>We can develop the technology NOW. In this century at most, in the next couple of decades at least. This means this technology is easily within my life. I have no idea how old you are though I suspect you're youngish.

27. And not as easy to bullshit as your usual crowd by the looks of things.

>>As for your comment about fiction? They are hard-science fiction. They are based upon the principles of science. Just as "From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne anticipated actual travel to the Moon, these stories anticipate real developments. Same goes for your faggy little submarines. Anticipated by Jules Verne in "20,000 leagues Under the Sea" almost verbatim to Navy standard submarines down to the physical dimensions.

Because at the time submarines existed and atomic power was being actively researched. They were both extant technologies.

>>We have cloaking devices,

We have projector cloth cloaks and digital projectors. We have nanomaterials that can render objects invisible to many wavelengths of light, but not visible light, not yet.

>>tricorders, flip-open communicators

We have cell phones, therefore transhumanist exodus into space in the next few decades?

>>tractor beams,

Capable of moving individual particles.

>>Many of these anticipated if not predicted by sci-fiction. This is why I reject fantasy as being part of the Sci-fi genre. Sci-fi and Fantasy fall under speculative fiction. The difference between the two is empirical referents vs magical thinking.

You're overstating our technological capabilities to the point that it *is* fantasy.

>>IF I had the time and resources, I would develop these technologies myself. I've got the AI part to knock out of the way first. It's literally the hardest and most complex problem to solve of the bunch.

Haha! I'll keep my eyes and ears open, maybe you'll the the next Nobel Prize winner! Hahahahaha!

Space Dude.

Ocean Dude.
Shut the fuck up.

>>2013237
Man fuck you and your kool-aid. Grown ups are talking about real shit here, so STFU and GTFO.

>>2013232

>>http://www.spacedaily.com/news/ssp-01a.html

By 2040 eh? Around the time that we'll have those flying cars? And just before the singularity, right? ;)

>>I didn't forget it. It's irrelevant to the constraints of the problem.

Hahahaha!

>>It's only relevance would be in selling the solution to the people who have to implement it.

Yes, and the price for which you can do so (and the ROI) is a huge factor in that!

>>Once again, it's not a problem of know how or fundamental capability. It's a matter of will.

Willpower doesn't pay the bills.

>>We halted progress on NASA because we developed the Internet. It became the central focus of scientists and engineers across disciplines. The Internet project has become more important than your aspirations of exploring the Mariana trench and my aspirations of living out among the rings of Saturn.

We halted the Apollo Applications project (which I would've hope you knew the name of) because the Apollo project was only ever intended to be political theater, and the partial test ban treaty signed in 65 prohibited the use of nuclear propulsion, which was necessary for everything we wanted to do beyond low Earth orbit.

>>As a global culture, we are effected by a malaise, a certain apathy brought on by our discontent with one another and with the content of our little puddles like our shallow social pools.

Oh, but you're better than all that, right?

>>Nothing stops us from both exploring the entire ocean and leaping out to our solar system in a century other than the anchoring populations like those who control congress, those who tell us we need a job, need money, need these fictitious human things to matter. They tell us and our children this because they are afraid of us. They are afraid of what we might do, what we might become.

Those are very real concerns. People need to eat, they need potable water, and these things are more important than your privileged out of shape white nerd fantasies. The reason exploration and exploitation of the sea comes before meaningful expansion into space is because that's where the resources necessary to do so will come from. The final push we need, materially, to establish ourselves beyond LEO. After that point we can start thinking about the long, ardruous process of building mining, smelting, refining and magnetic acceleration equipment on the larger asteroids rich for instance in rare earth metals, the sort of shit actually worth mining asteroids for in the first place. But the machinery will be prebuilt, delivered most likely by chemical rocket and take most of a decade to be made operational. This isn't Civilization. It's not a tech tree upgrade we can start to use immediately. This is real fuckin' life, and human beings mining asteroids for precious metals is not an easy proposition no matter how simple it seems in your head. It's a fucking engineering marvel that is presently beyond us, but it's the next rung on the ladder we're reaching for at the moment.

>>They sell us an inferior future so that we come to expect little and get even less than that. You want to explore the Ocean? I keep telling you, your ocean is a subset of a much larger and harder problem.

Precisely. We learn to walk before we learn to run. And we must learn to live in the sea before we live on other worlds, because the necessary technology is damn near identical and the ocean is a much nearer, cheaper place to do it.

>>We solve that problem, you get to solve your problems. We don't get proportional benefit the otherway.

Wrong, see above for why.

>>2013234
Closest sub tech at the time was the Ironclad. Verne actually laid out the blueprint for the modern submarine. Incidentally, he went with solar power instead of nuclear.

Similarly, he went with a large cannon instead of rockets, but he was otherwise accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMPfpFskdkc&feature=related

>Nasa self replicating industry
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Nasa+Self-replicating+stellar+indust
ry
There's a pdf which apparently can't be posted here.

Stop fighting you crazy cunts.

By 2040 we'll have molecular assemblers and we'll boldly go to the ocean floor and space AT THE SAME TIME.

Now take your bullshit down a few notches.

From our current understand a warp drive would sort of work, but there would be no way of stopping it. Once you warp the space time around a vessel, no force within the vessel or from within the bubble would be able to restore the space time. The influence would have to be external. That has the same problem that wormhole gates have.

But at least wormhole gates are a more reasonble solution, if they exist.

There is absolutely nothing interesting about the ocean. The sooner we get off this shitty planet the better.

>>2013344

>>There is absolutely nothing interesting about the ocean.

.Nothing interesting....about the ocean....

I don't even. I DON'T EVEN.

Who says that? How dumb do you have to be?

What do you even expect to find in space anyway? Alien life, right? Something exotic, weird and beautiful?

>>2013299
Human beings will never mine asteroid belts. Machines will do it in our stead. The human body is too delicate to take beyond LEO. Mechanization and cybernation of space travel will be the main way in which these techs progress.

The concerns of a random human being are very very low on the scale of complexity. Food, sex, and oxygen on earth is a simple thing to meet. There's a myriad of details that minorly increase the complexity, but they don't matter. The universe will blink and those with the concern will not be missed.

We have at this time enough calories produced every year to feed every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet. The US wastes 40% of this production.

As long as you concern yourself with the wants and desires of the majority, you will not progress to where you need to be for what you want.

As long as you hold the opinions of others as the defining factor of possibility vs impossibility, you will not accomplish what you have set out for in your lifetime. Engineering problems aren't about how much money does a person need to live? The answer is null set. A person can not live indefinitely on any amount of money. It lacks the nutrition they require to sustain themselves. Money is fantasy. Pure and simple. It is a fictious system of control imposed by people who are incapable of understanding the problems of the world let alone solving them.

I'll let a movie's quote stand in as a counter argument to your advocacy for the human concern.
"I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing."

Shit like this? Like we find in the ocean every time we go down there?

>>2013336
>By 2040 we'll have molecular assemblers
>molecular assemblers
What the fuck does that even mean? We assemble countless different molecules all the time using countless methods. Or are you referring to some sort of magical uber-tech that you don't need to explain from which your utopian predictions of the future are based on.

Stop being lazy and think. There is no utopia coming.

If you are less naive then I have assumed you are then ignore this post.

>Ooo, shiny.

You've got a very small mind if you are so easily captivated by some bioluminescent cnidaria but not the grandeur of space, my friend.

seafags will never find life that didn't originate on earth :P spacefags will. thats why i do what i do

>>2013396
Die in a fire. Machines are our servants not our replacements.

Now, I hate the ocean as much as anyone else who has seen Jaws, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting.

>>2013400

It means assemblers that can function on the molecular level.

I know it's difficult to grasp the difference between welding two macroscopic chunks of metal together and choosing exactly which molecule to put where, but-

Wait, no. It isn't difficult at all you semantics-humping cunt.

>>2013406

because there is so much evidence life started somewhere else.

or virtually none, but wouldn't it be SO COOL if we were, like, from SPACE?!

>>2011952
As for the FTL question? Yes! We can. Recall that even Aquanaut admitted nanomaterials which change the index of refraction. He was concerned that we didn't have visible cloaks yet, but what he neglects is the fact that we have the cloaks in the first place. It's a matter of brute-force at worst to develop visual cloaks, but I have a different concern.

Let's talk about the Casimir effect. The Casimir effect arises from changing the refraction index of medium so as to adjust the speed of light in the Casimir vacuum.

It is suggested by http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.0553 and http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0107091

If we can bend light around an object so as to render it invisible to a class of observers, we can bend spacetime around an object so as to render it invisible to a class of interactions.

The demonstration of cloaking implies the demonstration of warping space-time.

>>2013396

>>Human beings will never mine asteroid belts. Machines will do it in our stead.

There exists no machine at present capable of autonomously erecting a mining, smelting, refining and EM gun shipment infrastructure on an asteroid. Or even on Earth.

>>The human body is too delicate to take beyond LEO.

But we've done it.

>>Mechanization and cybernation of space travel will be the main way in which these techs progress.

Probably.

>>The concerns of a random human being are very very low on the scale of complexity. Food, sex, and oxygen on earth is a simple thing to meet.

You'd think. But you're treating the logistics as if they're magic and will take care of themselves.

>>There's a myriad of details that minorly increase the complexity, but they don't matter.

They do to people who weren't born with your level of privilege.

>>The universe will blink and those with the concern will not be missed.

Listen to yourself. Listen to what an arrogant shit you are.

>>2013400
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2010/nov/microreactor-speeds-nanotech-particle-production-500
-times

Anon both delivers and speaks truth.

>>2013417
What the fuck do you think carbon fiber is? 80% of materials science is about how shit functions at the molecular level and how to process it to the form you want.

>>2013441
That's wrong; spacetime interval is <span class="math">\sqrt{t^2 - x^2/c^2}[/spoiler] not <span class="math">\sqrt{t^2 + x^2}[/spoiler].

>>We have at this time enough calories produced every year to feed every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet. The US wastes 40% of this production.

Yes, and? Logistics. If you actually look at how food is made, packaged, marketed, distributed etc. you'll find that these are largely wastes that are inescapable while operating within a capitalist framework.

>>As long as you concern yourself with the wants and desires of the majority, you will not progress to where you need to be for what you want.

On the contrary, if we go into space, it will be for the sake of the species. You cannot speak of the importance of preserving them (which includes us) while simultaneously shrugging them off as worthless proles. You have some serious personality disorders that need treatment.

>>As long as you hold the opinions of others as the defining factor of possibility vs impossibility, you will not accomplish what you have set out for in your lifetime.

If by that you mean that I actually read books, I learn from them and build upon a knowledge base that represents the cumulative efforts of hundreds of generations, it's suspect that you'd make it out to be a weakness.

>>Engineering problems aren't about how much money does a person need to live? The answer is null set. A person can not live indefinitely on any amount of money. It lacks the nutrition they require to sustain themselves.

On the contrary. My central interest is habitat design, and the current focus is self sufficience. Replicate the original balance of an animal's habitat precisely enough and it can persist in a "closed loop", in defiance of what you've just said. Pic related, an example you're probably familiar with.

>>Money is fantasy. Pure and simple. It is a fictious system of control imposed by people who are incapable of understanding the problems of the world let alone solving them.

Know how I know you don't work?

>>I'll let a movie's quote stand in as a counter argument to your advocacy for the human concern. "I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing."

Did...you actually....just quote The Social Network in what was ostensibly your attempt at a serious argument? Am I being trolled?

>>You've got a very small mind if you are so easily captivated by some bioluminescent cnidaria but not the grandeur of space, my friend.

Oh I am, but the most beautiful images from space are places that are instantly lethal to humans or at best offer no reason to approach for a closer look. The real aim of space exploration is life and habitable worlds, we both know that.

>The concerns of a random human being are very very low on the scale of complexity
>I don't know how complex humans are
>I've never taken biology
>I think a machine that is mostly relatively homogeneous combinations of metals is more complex than a machine made up of trillions of self replicating smaller machines that each contain the information of how every other piece of machinery operates.
...
>DUR HUR

We humans WISH we could come close to matching the complexity that has developed on Earth before we got here. The most we could hope for is developing machines that match the complexity of life.

>>2013453

Molecular assemblers would be general-purpose factories capable of building any material molecule by molecule. Dump in some carbon and it could make you anything from graphene to diamond. Dump in a more complex mix of elements and it can make you a vehicle, or a pre-cooked turkey dinner.

>>2013417
Holy shit you are some sort super idiot. Quickly, turn on troll mode so we don't think you really are that retarded.

>>2013472

Resorting to bluff and bluster already, are we?

>>2013440
Your assumptions about my person are distorted. I am not arguing for some kind of privileged. Mine or otherwise. Simple logical truth. People do not matter in the grand scheme of things. A random person will eat, think, reproduce, and die. About 40% of all men, 80% of all women if genetic history is to be believed.

99% of all people who have lived, died before you or I were born. Do their deaths matter to problem of space travel? No. Some, an amazingly small minority, matter in so far as they contributed something lasting to the world they lived in.

Some cared more for the universe, for reality, for truth, for humanity as a whole, for something greater than themselves, that they did something with their lives. They discovered relativity, they proved that Boolean algebra was insufficient to answer all the questions that could be posed, they landed on the moon for all humankind, they died in a fireball when their rocket blew up on the pad, they lived crazy and alone feeding pigeons in the park to invent an entire century's worth of technology.

You didn't get it. I am Anonymous. I was born poor in the world. I was born without privilege or social value. I do what I do because it must be done. We must leave the cradle of the Earth.

Not we as in your or I. Not we as in the US or China. Not we as in humans. We as in life. The big we. The we which must resist it's dissolution.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

>>2013483
I'm not the guy you got into a hissy fit with, I'm just a bystander in awe.

>>2013485

Even if that were the case, it doesn't make bluster any more effective.

"Hey you guys, the solution to all our problems is a Dyson sphere! I saw it on TED talks, it's easy! Petty small minded "normals" hold back such technology but I, your enlightened philosopher king, will not be slowed by their lowly concerns!

I've got some PVC pipe from Lowes, what we do is dig a hole, erect the pipe vertically, and keep adding segments until it's beyond LEO. So we don't need a ladder we can just lift the whole stack and add a new section under that each time. There's a pulley with rope at the tip, PRESTO, SPACE ELEVATOR! We can use it to lift this SPACESHIP I've made from what might look a lot like a '78 Volkswagon rabbit but if you have a discerning eye you'll notice the sheet metal SPACE FINS and LED rope lighting for stellar nagivation.

Once out of Earth's gravity well, we can travel to the outer reaches of the solar system, where we'll start building the dyson sphere out of this paper mache. We have to hurry though it takes four hours to dry and we need to finish before youth group starts.

When you're ready, wrap this tinfoil around your arms and legs and put these silver painted cardboard boxes on. To master space and become stellar gods, we will need to be nano-enhanced transhumans."

>>2013489
Oh my bad, I didn't even notice. Troll mode already activated? Carry on then.

"Also I realize that's a picture of the smartcar that we made SPACEWORTHY yesterday, that's the one we'll be taking up into orbit to build an O'Neil Cylinder out of this pringles can. Sure it may not be obvious NOW how to enlarge it such that thousands can live along the inner wall but I'm sure science will come up with a solution to that sometime between launch and when we're in orbit."

>>2013495
You fail at life and madness, Mad Scientist. I wish I could count on you when it came time, but at this time, you are incapable of comprehension. I'm willing to bet this is because your livelihood depends on you failing to comprehend.

You get grants from some organization, you get money from some set of people, who you must continually impress to put food on your table each period of time.

You bought the bullshit at premium price. Bit into it hook, line, and sinker. I'll bet it ate years of your life to get your job. I'll bet with the recent change in public sentiment, you're on one of the first programs to be axed.

How much money did the pyramids cost to build? How much for Stone Henge? What about the snake mounds that are visible from space? How much did the first bridge cost? How about the first tool? How much did the first token of currency cost?

The future is not led by the will of the dead past, but by the will of the living present. Human kind can go no further than the moon without suffering excessive ills. The engineering problem of making a starship for the human body is insurmountable requiring tonnes of lead and intricate anti-radiation shielding at non-trivial costs to fuel and mass capacity.

The solution is to design the crew around the ship not the otherway. Humans are bound to Earth or Mars at the furtherest.

>>2013534
>Human kind can go no further than the moon without suffering excessive ills. The engineering problem of making a starship for the human body is insurmountable requiring tonnes of lead and intricate anti-radiation shielding at non-trivial costs to fuel and mass capacity.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article4799369.ece
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/12/future-spaceships-should-be-bu.html

>>2013534
>>2013534
>>2013534


>The solution is to design the crew around the ship not the otherway.

http://www.vimeo.com/15904733

DOES THIS MAN LOOK LIKE HE NEEDS A SHIP DESIGNED AROUND HIM?

Perhaps designed around the size of his testicles. But thats all.

You sound like a 14 year old.

>Humans are bound to Earth or Mars at the furtherest.

You should let NASA know about this then. Because the manned missions they are planning after they kill the ISS is to asteroids.

>>2011952
Incidentally, OP. The greatest constraint for space travel isn't actually propulsion. The greatest constraint is the human body itself.

It's infeasible to shield the human body adequately from cosmic radiation, house the life-support for travel to even the closest stellar bodies, and constrain acceleration to a viable threshold for human survival. Even with things like cryotech, liquid inertial holding environments, advanced shielding and materials, and self-sustaining life support. The physical cost to mass and fuel for thrust puts it beyond feasibility even in principle or theory.

Many people talk about the vast distances and long time spans of travel and fail to realize the health costs on the crew over those distances and times. We can't build the ship to adequately protect the person. It's a packaging problem with no solution. A no-go theorem. The only recourse, without teleportation or wormhole techs, is to redesign the crew. Which means either completely robotic crew. They would be limited in utility. Or we cybernetically, technologically, and genetically alter and/or integrate human beings for space-faring. Part of the ship, part of the crew.

The alterations to the human body would render a person unrecognizable as human. They might retain their genetic code. They would not retain their bones, flesh, muscles, or much else. I'm not talking about brain in a jar. I'm talking total metamorphosis into technological life.

>>2013575

>>I'm not talking about brain in a jar. I'm talking total metamorphosis into technological life.

I'm glad you think this is world shattering novel thought that I am only now being exposed to but I'm not going to sit here and watch you jack off.

>>2013574


>http://www.vimeo.com/15904733

that was dramatic as fuck. is that from a movie? what is the name of it?

>>2013431
You appear to be some sort of idiot.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25811/

Oops limited to .25 C.

>>2013574
First off, I don't have to tell NASA nothing. They know what they're doing. I've talked extensively about this subject with one of their senior engineers. He agrees with me.

As for the refutation by appeal to "building ships in orbit" and what not. You miss the fundamental problem.

Going to the moon is one thing. We use the orbital mechanics and the magnetic field of the Earth to shield the astronauts from the brunt of the cosmic radiation and solar winds. Going to Mars remains a "one way" mission with noted and known health hazards due to prolonged exposure to zero-g environments as well as a certain dose of radiation due to inadequate shielding during the trip their. Whatever astronaut decides to go will probably end up with cancer.

Not too much of a problem for intrasolar missions. Absolutely insurmountable for going beyond the inner asteroid belt and Mars. The shielding afforded by the Sun begins to drop off as we approach the Kuiper belt. We lose the protection afforded by the Sun as we leave the Kuiper belt. Human beings would not survive on missions to Jupiter, the Kuiper belt, or beyond the solar system; therefore, human beings are bound to the inner solar system almost exclusively.

>Don't mind me, just slipspacan around the know galaxy

>>2013617

/sci/ so mad.

>>2013583
Fine then as I've said: Fuck off with your quaint little 19th century vision of exploring the oceans, Aquaman.

Around 7% of the value of the US population visits 4Chan monthly. I'm not necessarily interested in your assessments. I'm not necessarily pitching this to you. You serve as a worthy opponent, sir.

I'm pitching this to the generation which has a chance at it. I'm pitching this to all the truly mad scientists and engineers out there who will grow up one day and realize the vision. For those of you who're reading this, I promise you this: when you grow up, I will be right here waiting for you. Until then, I'm making preparations. ETA on Complete Holographic Theory is 5 years and counting.

>>2013647

>>Fine then as I've said: Fuck off with your quaint little 19th century vision of exploring the oceans, Aquaman.

Man, if you think that's quaint, you're in for a lifetime of disappointment.

>>Around 7% of the value of the US population visits 4Chan monthly. I'm not necessarily interested in your assessments. I'm not necessarily pitching this to you. You serve as a worthy opponent, sir.

Nobody's changing anything here, I figured that was implicit. I just don't like your fucking attitude.

>>I'm pitching this to the generation which has a chance at it. I'm pitching this to all the truly mad scientists and engineers out there who will grow up one day and realize the vision.

You're pitching a heap of shit at a wall of shit, with an arm that is also shit. You assume access to technologies that exist only as concepts in an author's head and perhaps CGI special effects. You completely dismiss budgetary concerns. You have no sense of what goes into perpetuating modern supply infrastructure and seem in all ways like a sheltered kid with aspergers who reads a lot of hard scifi and watches Michio Kaku specials but has no real understanding of the world, of the practical nitty gritty hurdles you need to clear to make even modest ideas happen.

>>For those of you who're reading this, I promise you this: when you grow up, I will be right here waiting for you. Until then, I'm making preparations. ETA on Complete Holographic Theory is 5 years and counting.

Go get 'em, Jimmy Neutron. When you win the Nobel Prize for quantum sodomy I'll be able to say "Hey, I knew that fart commander when he was just a lowly fart lieutenant on 4chan, fucking the folded contours of a copy of 'Mining the Sky' and ejaculating onto his keyboard, shorting the keys in the order necessary to post only the purest, most painstakingly refined retardation imaginable for our review and consideration.

>>2013611
we are bound as long as we dont posess the technology needed.

first of wee need a sort of electric or nuclear drive. a compact fission reactor would do the job. then a shield reactor which produces a magnetic shield strong enough to block a good amount of cosmic radiation. a plasma shield to guard the ship against micro asteroids, and with engines which could accelerate the ship up to almost lightspeed would make the task of keeping the crew alive for a long period of time much easier. because of high speed, low time shit.

now some questions:
if the ship travels at almost light speed, wouldnt there be huge amounts of micro asteroids and radiation hitting the ship or the shields? if you travel at 1/8c and you get hit by about 250.000 micro asteroids an hour, this would be at almost c 2.000.000 of them but if we count the slo-mo science in it it would be multiplied by enourmous amounts, not only by 8 but also by the timespeed difference. then it not only 2kk, but maybe 2kkk of them. and the shields would have a fraction of the normal time to regenerate, so at a certain speed damage and regeneration would be even but then the ship would just be destroyed.

please correct me if im talking shit right now. im just a wannabe scientist wo was thrown out of school after the 11th grade of school.

inb4 post is too long to be submitted

>FTL travel a long way off

Yeah, but think aboutwhere humanity was 100 years ago, what we have today is basically magic to them. Shit even compared to 100 years ago our technology is crazy advanced.

A few hundred years from now, if we both survive and FTL travel is possible, I wouldn't be surprised if we figure it out.

>>2013689
Like I started out saying, you're a glorified technician who thinks he knows shit and thinks that he contributes shit. I'm a scientist who knows I don't know shit, and knows I don't contribute jack to the scientific world. I know what I promote's got a snowballs chance in hell, but it's worth it anyway.

Even if I'm wrong, we advance. Stephen Hawking made a career around proposing the most absurd trollish bullshit that was derived from good hard science. People proved him wrong, and we all benefit because of it. We got holographic principle out of the last round.

I'm willing to be wrong. I'm willing to make mistakes. Can you say the same? If I fail at making a living, I lose maybe 9k a year. If you fail at making a living, what do you lose? More than 9k a year? Probably.

Point and case, I assert it's possible to make FTL drives using metamaterials. Some dick of an anon delivers a counter case. I get two new research articles in my collection for consideration. One of which talks about FTL with quantum mechanics just the kind of thing I'm looking for.

As for my attitude? HAHAHAHAHAHA.
I'm a mad scientist, and you're claiming the name as a trip fag. Not only that, you're claiming the name as a trip fag to represent what? Status quo "Hey guys, we shouldn't go into space it's too risky for now. We should wait until it's easy and some neckbeard in his mother's basement has figured out the relevant details for us." Why? "So we can explore our oversized bathtub."

Hardly what I would call mad science let alone quality mad science. I've seen hamster cages with more mad and science in them than your entire argument so far.

If you aren't willing to be wrong, you have nothing interesting to contribute, you glorified overpaid bathtub technician.

>>2012902
On a related note to this post, I would just like to state for the record (since I'm a pseudo-expert on this subject), that any device capable of sending and object into FTL is effectively a time machine, and any device which is a time machine is a device which is time machine is a device which slams the said object into a "tachyon wall" of all other versions of itself through the entire time dimension (let alone any other dimensions or quantum Everett copies), and any such device which is a "tachyon slammer" is also therefore (due to the physics of tachyon annihilation thery) a perfect matter/anti-matter reactor.

And so I will posit that if anyone invents a device which they claim is a "time-machine" or an "FTL-drive", chances are they've simply invented a device which causes an object to annihilate with a multidimensional form of itself and will be used as such.

tl;dr : FTL machine = time machine = matter/anti-matter reactor

For the science tells me so

>>2013739
> Stephen Hawking made a career around proposing the most absurd trollish bullshit that was derived from good hard science.

>Implying that black hole thermodynamics is troll science

>mfw

>>2014130
The stark reality of space travel reveals the single inescapable truth of stellar travelers and engineers: you must live long enough to arrive wherever you intend to go.

At current no known and demonstrated propulsion system can get us to even .5c for any practical distance at which such a velocity would be advantageous. Once again the fragility of the human body becomes a liability. We can sustain approximately 1 G of acceleration over long periods of time severely limiting what we can do.

Any accelerative method of propulsion must remain below that threshold for anything but the briefest periods of moderately higher acceleration.

The problem that is almost never talked about in any FTL scheme is the problem of inertia. Any accelerative propulsion that reached FTL speeds would liquefy the crew without somehow absorbing the force due to acceleration.

No human bodies on board == high boost. Human bodies on board == 1 g sustained boost, 12 g max boost not to exceed safety parameters.

Mad Scientist, what is it you do for a living?

"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it."

"What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"

"Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please—this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time—and squawk for more!
So learn to say No—and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrW4jkQdmjI

You know what I want to see more of?
Not FTL but STL (slower than light)
I had an idea for a short story that would explore using slower than light methods of crossing the universe
sure it isn't as sexy as warming up your warp drive and jaunting across space but maybe that's not necessary if we could invent technology to lessen the length of a extraordinary journey from the perspective of the traveler you could explore all of creation without ever running afoul of physics so long as you're okay with everything you've ever known being long dead before your trips over.

Woah O_O

I never thought for a first thread I would get so much replies... thanks guise! :D (even though you're arguing about which is better, sea or space exploration)

>>2014999
So, OP who won the debate? Sea or Space?

bump

Needs moar arguments.

Bump

What about probability drives?

> discover new form of energy
> interacts with space and time in ways we cannot even imagine
> create bubble or "warp field"
> reach infinitely high speeds and travel instantly, anywhere

wat

>>2017714
They'll probably work.

>>2019312

Why do we need to sustain grownup human? You need but his genetic information stored in ship computer. Why sustain life when we can create it from nothing but lifeless matter and stored information. Why let something as erring, slow and unreliable as human brain to steer the ship. His thoughts and intentions encased in silicon shell will suffice. We have broken all these barriers long ago. We have the technology. Yet we still cling on terms as individual, soul and such. We are afraid of what we are. But that is only proper. We are to young. One day we will reach maturity and infect the space as the plague we are. For it is, our birthright.

>>2021044
Universal Manifest Destiny

>>2015015

Errrr... I'd rather not take sides, but I like space more than I do seas. I'm not really interested into water and all that, plus, I have a phobia of sharks Q_Q

Oh, and
>>2014999
first trips evar :D

>>2014247
It's cyborg time.

>The solution is to design the crew around the ship not the otherway. Humans are bound to Earth or Mars at the furtherest.

Too far fetched.

Real, and currently feasible solution is to create an artificial magnetic field around the spacecraft.

The experimental VASIMR plasma rocket, which is supposed get people to mars in one month instead of 6-12 months, also generates a large magnetic field around itself when online. It would be protect the crew from radiation, just like earth's magnetic field does.

>The solution is to design the crew around the ship not the otherway. Humans are bound to Earth or Mars at the furtherest.

Too far fetched.

Real, and currently feasible solution is to create an artificial magnetic field around the spacecraft.

The experimental VASIMR plasma rocket, which is supposed get people to mars in one month instead of 6-12 months, also generates a large magnetic field around itself when online. It would protect the crew from radiation, just like earth's magnetic field does.

>>2013534

>The solution is to design the crew around the ship not the otherway. Humans are bound to Earth or Mars at the furtherest.

Too far fetched.

Real, and currently feasible solution is to create an artificial magnetic field around the spacecraft.

The experimental VASIMR plasma rocket, which is supposed get people to mars in one month instead of 6-12 months, also generates a large magnetic field around itself when online. It would protect the crew from radiation, just like earth's magnetic field does.

>>2013705

Because guns, rockets, missiles, flying contraptions and engines were totally alien to our forefathers. Herp Derp. Read some fucking Chinese inventions and realize they had it first than you white devirs.

Shall we archive this thread?

Hmmm, I wonder if we'll discover bacteria around hydrothermal vents that are helpful for terraforming Venus...

>>Michio Kaku and all those great physicists say it would work, so I trust them.
>>Michio Kaku and all those great physicists
>>Michio Kaku

mfw

>>2021294
Once again, works for inner solar system journeys, but utterly fails to address the fundamental problems of sending people into space. Human beings put a non-trivial restriction on the amount of thrust we're allowed to exert in a given interval. Engineered lifeforms could live with sustained thrust in excess of 10 G acceleration.

Otherwise, regardless of what drive you have, you're limited to a max sustained thrust of about 1 G. Takes over a hundred years to get to the nearest star system with that acceleration.

posting in hopefully archived thread

great read guys thanks a lot keep up the thinking

>>2012618
are you done being a faggot?

>>2012020
Okay, OP. Now that I've chased the scallywags out the airlock, let's talk FTL.

We could modify spacetime using an "engine" of lasers and anti-lasers. The basic problem is creating a holographic light envelop around a given ship. Only two kinds of power stop us from doing this. First is power for the systems of the ship. The second is computational power for navigation, telemetry, and space-time distortion. No human being is going to be able to manually compute any of that on any appreciable scale without a supercomputer at hand.

Always pay attention to what gets hand-waved away in pop-sci. Star trek has three major conceits: anti-matter engine, warp drive, and the ship's computer.

Incidental problem to solve: matter reaching c is antimatter annihilation. Presumably, we would want to avoid explosions.

Obstacles: special and general relativity's restrictions on accelerative transmission of information (and physical systems as a direct consequence).
Viable hypothetical FTL methods:
Worm-holes/Folding spacetime
Teleportation
Casmir spacetime envelops

This gets a hell of a lot easier if the equivalence principle doesn't hold generally.

>>2024641
What about fuckin' LIGHT PRESSURE?

>>2024641

>laser
>antilaser

>antilaser

>antiphoton?

uh.. no?

>>2024664
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/antilaser/
My trap card, activated it you did.

>>2024660
Your question is too ambiguous. What do you mean by light pressure? If you mean radiation pressure, what surface do you particularly see it applying to?

>>2024660
I suppose you might think I'm describing some kind of crazy FTL light sail. You would be wrong if that is the case.

>>2024732
>>2024758
Cutting Edge Research. Shit is mind bogglingly fast, "Defies what we understand about physics" fast.

>>2024927
citations or it didn't happen.