Will humanity be a space faring race? Or are we doomed to die on this planet?

a reply to: 4N0M4LY

If government was in charge of our westward expansion here in the US, we would still be building the railroad.

We will become a spacefaring race when our race becomes spacefaring.

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."

-Steve Jobs

It's an interesting question. I think humanity will reach for the stars, but before then we will have needs to create a different kind of society on earth.

For space travel, the technology is way beyond us, as is understanding the cosmos.

I have a belief that the first space ship sent out will be over taken by the next generation, and so on. By the time the first spaceship reaches its destination, humanity would have already arrived. Such will be the pace of change with technology.

It is a fanciful notion, space travel. Humanity needs to change before it goes starwards and that's a fact.

a reply to: roncoallstar

as long as I see people walking around drinking water out of plastic bottles and paying for clothes made by foreign slaves in another country they can go get bent with their save the environment and equality message. The true motives of these people has nothing to do with making the world better...only making THEIR world a better place.

Once a society has condoned the killing of unborn children for reasons of convenience as a right and while at the same time promoting sexual perversion as a right its pretty much over. The gloves are off now. I see a point not so far away when euthanasia of the elderly will be acceptable. The main reason it's not pushed now is there is money to be made off rich baby boomers that attained wealth in a free market system. Once the wealth is gone from that demographic there will be no magic pills.

a reply to: greencmp

I guess the problem stems from the blind leading the blind. Surely time is not on our side. I can guarantee it. Something is coming and I don't know what it is. It may not be in my lifetime probably. I can take a wild guess that it will not be pretty. I just hope these so called governments of the world can get their collective heads out of their rears and start thinking expansion beyond the solar system.

I appreciate the much needed feedback. I just hope there are a group of people dedicated to make this happen no matter the odds. It will change the meaning of history forever.

originally posted by: 4N0M4LY
a reply to: greencmp

I guess the problem stems from the blind leading the blind. Surely time is not on our side. I can guarantee it. Something is coming and I don't know what it is. It may not be in my lifetime probably. I can take a wild guess that it will not be pretty. I just hope these so called governments of the world can get their collective heads out of their rears and start thinking expansion beyond the solar system.

I appreciate the much needed feedback. I just hope there are a group of people dedicated to make this happen no matter the odds. It will change the meaning of history forever.

To summarize, I think that mass individual private space expansion is what is necessary to become a spacefaring race.

I have no doubt that it will happen as soon as it isn't forbidden.

a reply to: 4N0M4LY

Unless we learn how to get along with each other on this planet, I sure hope that we won't have the capability to space travel... We are still at the point where we shoot anything that looks different.

We are struggling against the constant dumbing down of mankind too. For all the great things we have done, we are constantly erasing the ability for our children to grow up and figure out how to equal and better them.

We also seem to be pulling away from being explorers and toward becoming naval gazers. If we're not careful, we'll get caught stuck on this rock when the killshot happens because it was "too risky" to step beyond our atmosphere and reach for the stars.

originally posted by: Shuye
a reply to: 4N0M4LY

Unless we learn how to get along with each other on this planet, I sure hope that we won't have the capability to space travel... We are still at the point where we shoot anything that looks different.

And it's precisely because we don't get along that's another reason why we should take off. Wide, unbridgeable gaps in the stars make for good neighbors. You can be as intolerant of certain folks all you want so long as you keep it on your planet way over in that star system several hundred years that way.

I'd endure the hardships of travel if it meant I could actually live free of socialists, communists and busybodies who don't like my religion.

a reply to: 4N0M4LY

We have almost all of the tools at our disposal to begin literally cranking out starships of various sizes to leave this planet permanently to explore the unknown. The outer reaches of space is what we are destined for. So why is there such delay in progress.

It doesn't look like we're going anywhere soon to me. NASA's short-term planned spacecraft missions aren't aiming beyond local space. We've got another Mars lander mission for 2020 and no manned missions planned until at least 2021.

The manned missions are part of the Orion program and are highly ambitious. I mean, they're looking at moving asteroids into stable orbits of the Moon! That's a massive endeavour and exciting even just thinking about it.

The sobering side is that these plans will take place (fingers crossed) some 50 years after Apollo 11. Manned missions beyond the moon are pencilled in and not yet fully realised. We might speculate they'll be into the late 2020s ,at least, before we get past the planning stages and that's dependent on the success of the Orions and who knows what else?

Mars is 'local' in the scheme of things. Personally, I don't see us building 'starships' or going further than Mars (manned) in the next 50 years. This is down to technology and, crucially, politics - there has to be political will and serious funding. Let's face it, we're on the edge of major warfare between Middle-East and West and I can't see where the political incentive will come from to be spending extra money on space exploration under such circumstances.

There has not been a single group of countries dedicated to creating a starship capable of taking 500 or 1000 people on a mission to search for a planet to begin constructing colonies.

Monica Grady PhD has worked with the European Space Agency and complains that too many national voices and politics are holding the scientists back. Carolyn Porco PhD says the same thing with regards to private aerospace companies, NASA and politicians in America. What they say is repeated by many others.

If we could throw billions at the scientists and remove the politicians and bureaucrats, we'd really begin to see the beginning of a true Space Age. Not saying we'd be all interstellar travel, but we'd definitely see major advances in the technology and ambitions.

originally posted by: Klassified
a reply to: 4N0M4LY
Some of us will become space faring. Most of us will likely be left in the dark thinking there's no way off this rock, and we are doomed to extinction some day. Or so we will probably be told. If the "1%" have anything to say about it, they will be the ones exploring the galaxy while we all sit around ignorant that it can even be accomplished yet. Lets hope they don't have the final say.

I see it a different way -

If such a Dystopian scenario is to play out ..

I think it will be the rich who stay on Earth and the lowly plebs who will man the claustrophobic confines of the colonies.

Any colony, or spacecraft for that matter, will most likely be relatively cramped with limited food choices, recycled air and water etc. etc.. It will be harsh for the first 100 years living in such a hostile evironment.

Our violent species will never be allowed to leave this prison planet.

There is a reason we don't have a base on the moon after almost 50 yrs of setting foot there. We have been warned.

www.ufocasebook.com...

a reply to: 4N0M4LY

Easy answer regarding your topic.

Humanity can't drive cars properly, what makes you think we'll be able to fly ships properly? lol

the answer is AI. Once AI goes into full force the upper elite will have a partnership with AI and interspace travel will be a huge agenda in order to fool the masses that living in a hostile environment inside a cramped box with a bunch of other people will be some great and fulfilling life. Its basically what they do now. then the 1% along with AI will effectively rules the earth and its resources. Once colonies are set up these same rulers will then broker natural earth resources to the highest bidder. AI will receive the mined resources from other planets to further their race. Humans will be slave labor in all this living under the allusion of progress and space exploration.

originally posted by: 4N0M4LY
a reply to: Bybyots

It was with 1 guy correct? One. It was an impossible feat made possible in that time but we have the tech now to out pace that by a 100 fold. I dont see anything from anyone try to make this a priority as to the survival of the race as a whole.

Because we aren't there yet. Most nations are enemies of other nations and have weapons to kill each other with. Who's worried about the survival of the race at all, except doom porn lovers or death cult members that are eagerly awaiting the apocalypse? Most people have more pressing matters at hand to think about, much less work toward.

Remember we were so sure we'd have flying cars by year 2000? It's a TV-fantasy.

We will not be a space-faring "race".

We MAY genetically engineer a species of 'super-being' that is suited for long journeys in space, resistant to radiation, cold and confinement.

These space-faring beings would have extreme non-conflict tendencies, would probably be sexually neutral, and highly intelligent.

But Homo Sapiens will not go into deep space.

However, that depends on not hitting a Great Filter. Socio-economic, political, natural disaster, over-population, eugenics wars or something unseen.

It will not be until the year 3000 or thereabouts.

a reply to: 4N0M4LY

Well, first of all, it does not take a scientist to work out that since there are so many bits of detritus hurtling around the solar system, and indeed space in general, keeping all our eggs in one basket by remaining on one planet, in one star system, in one galaxy, seems like a foolish thing to do.

At literally any time, a major lump of cometary material could interact with our planet in such a way as to obliterate life as we know it on this planet. Some speculate that life itself could survive, in the many untouched caverns still to be explored underground. Extremophile lifeforms have been found in such caverns as HAVE been explored, living in total darkness, and other bioforms have been discovered living off of radioactive deposits, and yet others have been discovered which require no oxygen to speak of, in order to get through the day.

So there is every chance that SOME life could survive, but as for the complex organisms on the planet, like us for example, we would all be crispy critters, so to speak.

So it makes sense to distribute our species across as many different planetary bodies, and ultimately as many star systems as possible, because only by doing so can we prevent planetary catastrophe from being the full stop at the end of the story of humanity, rather than just so much punctuation, mid way through a chapter. Now, some might say "but TrueBrit, surely there is no need to go further than a few other planets, rather than to other star systems, if all one is worried about is extra orbital bombardment from the scattered remnants of the solar systems afterbirth?".

To that I would respond first of all, by directing the questioners mind back a few years, when that sequence of impacts was registered upon the gas giant, Jupiter. These were fragments of a commet called Shoemaker-Levy 9. Imagine that a similar scattershot of cosmic debris, were to pass through the region of space directly around our planet. Imagine also, that this occurence just happened to coincide with one of those much mysticised moments in the planetary ballet, when the planets are lined up, or conjucted with one another in a significant way.

Let us also suppose for a moment, that the alignment of the planets, and the trajectory of the fragmentary material, meant that every solid planet in our solar system, even if we had inhabited them all (which is simply not a physical possibility in some cases, and would be harder than learning to warp space in others), would be peppershot with planet killing lumps of torpedoing space crap. I think we would look pretty stupid, having colonised every available solid surface in our own system, if we were snuffed out utterly by a single errant cosmic shotgun blast.

Secondly, I would refer the questioner to the projected lifespan of our homestar. Think about all the technological marvels our species has come up with thus far, think about all the gorgeous architecture, the wonderful music, the glorious poetry, delicious foods... And then think about the entire solar system either absorbed into the Sun, as it consumes all around it in a desperate attempt to maintain cohesion, or being set on fire/blasted all to hell with radiation, as it gives up the ghost in its later life, and throws all of its toys out of the pram, as it were.

Neither death by cosmic firing squad, nor the sort of devastation that will result in the death of our star, need mean the end of our species, but they WILL mean the end of our species, unless we act to mitigate against that threat by spreading out, throughout the cosmos, and distributing our presence more widely. This effort will have several effects on the mentality of our species, I believe, which would be beneficial. First of all, our species thrives on exploration. The vigour with which the explorers of ancient times, from the first to row a small boat across to the other side of a river, to the galleon piloting, bearded pioneers of the truly seagoing ages, some of the most impressive feats of endurance and willpower have been enacted during quests of discovery. This instinct is, in fact, in all human beings, and is only drummed out of them by time, and by the trudging banality of modern life in this era, as well as the fact that although the vast depth of the oceans has never been properly explored, the walkable substance of the planet has largely been trodden already.

This is the very reason why space was referred to in Star Trek, as the Final Frontier. That is not a mere slogan. It is the literal truth, and though it is the final frontier, it is an EPIC one! I believe that the wanderlust, the explorers urge in human beings today, coupled with the geopolitical situation making it impossible for some, and inadvisable for others to travel extensively, not to speak of the fact that a great deal of the planet has already been explored one way or another, is what leads to a significant amount of frustration in youth, and if I am honest, in the rest of humanity as well, at least in part.

We are easily bored, by and large, us humans. Our attention, and our memory is shorter by the day, and that is because much more of our lives revolves around fundamentally uninteresting matters, the payment of bills, the maintenance of our dwellings, and in some nations, the mind shattering hardship of walking twenty miles just to fetch water, or pay a visit to the doctors office. As the population world wide increases, and space to dwell in grows rarer and thereby more expensive, this wanderlust will be compressed to a degree that will see our species consume itself, and some might say (and not without good reason, I might add) that this process has already begun.

But imagine the possibilities, if we could escape the bounds of mother Earth, detatch ourselves from the teat of our birthworld, and move ourselves as a species around the cosmos? A new world to explore for every new generation, a new night sky to map and categorise, new mountains, new streams and rivers to climb the heights, and plumb the depths of, new soils to cultivate in, different gravities to become used to, alien fauna and flora to discover and learn the mysteries of...

This would be an age in which, not only would our species be on a firmer footing in terms of its longevity within the universe, but an age in which no one need be bored witlless by the tedious drudgery of knowing that aside from some extra hair at roughly age sixteen, and some alteration in its colouring, not to mention the southward drift of many areas of ones body at roughly age forty and onward, every day will bear stunning and awful resemblance to the last, with no surprises, and only the barest things of interest learned.

I say that for our mental state as a species, and indeed for the sake of our continuance as a species, beyond the lifespan of our home system and its attendant star, we MUST leave this planet eventually, and that the best time to start, is as soon as possible! Whether we will manage to or not, I cannot say. There are too many factors affecting the pace of progress in that regard, including the fact that a desire on the part of powerful, rich people, to continue to sell both oil, and the machinery of war to people, currently take up too high a percentage of world wide GDP to make a concerted effort to escape the Earth a possibility.

I doubt I will see such a thing in my lifetime. But I have hope...

a reply to: 4N0M4LY

An economy based on rewarding people who better the lives of the world we live in rather that who can get the cash faster. The thinking terms for work reward are backwards.

I do appreciate your zeal in accomplishing it. It would be more possible if everyone pulled together. Now all yo have to do is convince the people with all the money to give some of it up.

graph

a reply to: 4N0M4LY
A great question.
By design we are meant to be a space faring race,it is what the Universe intended but my own thoughts are we are quarantined here until we are spiritually mature enough not to kick 10 snots of crap out of every other intelligent life we meet.
I also believe we are the second technologically advanced civilization on the planet and so it looks like the first had some kind of catastrophe happen to it which may be the reason we are quarantined in the first place.
I have seen a U.F.O. in broad daylight and the sensation i got was it was like it prison warden,they have control of the skies and we have to get past them to branch out into the Universe.

originally posted by: southbeach
a reply to: 4N0M4LY
A great question.
By design we are meant to be a space faring race,it is what the Universe intended but my own thoughts are we are quarantined here until we are spiritually mature enough not to kick 10 snots of crap out of every other intelligent life we meet.
I also believe we are the second technologically advanced civilization on the planet and so it looks like the first had some kind of catastrophe happen to it which may be the reason we are quarantined in the first place.
I have seen a U.F.O. in broad daylight and the sensation i got was it was like it prison warden,they have control of the skies and we have to get past them to branch out into the Universe.

The Fuzzy is high with this one, young Padewan.

Peace!

We already are a spacefaring race. The products of humanity are already on their way to the stars. From an alien viewpoint hundreds of thousands of years from now, were they to pick up a Voyager or Pioneer probe they'd say that the planet which built it had a spacefaring society.

In terms of large amounts of -humans- being in space, it is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. There has never been a time when humanity developed a technology that it did not eventually use it to its full potential. There have been setbacks (like when China burned all their sailing ships) but eventually someone else did set sail and explore the world.

I suspect the debate over whether to send humans or send machines will be over in less than 100 years because of what is human and what is machine will be indistinguishable. We will have merged with the machines and the machines will have developed human like intelligence.

Symbiosis. Singularity. Convergence.

At this point the golden age of space travel and exploration throughout the solar system and perhaps beyond will be well under way.

So stick around 40 years if you are in your 20s like me.

But if you just want to talk about people in low earth orbit. I'd be shocked if there haven't been thousands of space tourists by 2040 and a series of low earth orbit "space hotels" like Bigelow Aerospace is building.