Originally posted by Illustronic
Its 600 light years away. Does that mean anything to you people?
Voyagers have been traveling for 34 years and are not even out of our solar system.
Voyager 1 is currently about 10 billion miles away from the Sun. That’s about .00183 light years.
Voyager 2 is approximately 97 astronomical units or 8.6 billion miles away from the sun. It isn’t heading toward any particular star either. It should pass by Sirius in about 296,000 years.

Well, no one said it would be easy.

Personally, I think humanity will either accelerate its evolution or kill itself off before it has any real chance to travel much through space. I think we might have another 5,000 years left in us, tops. Then it will all be mutants or intelligent robots. Not us.

But, hey. Maybe some of the science fiction will come true. Nothing to bet on, though. More like wait and see. We'll all be dead by then.

Dont forget about time dilation, even if you cant travel FTL for an astronaut traveling a significant fraction of the speed of light 600 light years is doable in a human lifetime.
and
I often think that quantum entanglement may offer us a means of communication across light years.

Originally posted by iforget
Dont forget about time dilation, even if you cant travel FTL for an astronaut traveling a significant fraction of the speed of light 600 light years is doable in a human lifetime.
and
I often think that quantum entanglement may offer us a means of communication across light years.

Yes, Time Dilation is the key.

Time dilation is a very well known and proven physical phenomenon.

Of course, when the astronauts return to Earth, if they return to Earth, everyone that they knew will be dead a long time ago, and the planet will have changed a lot...

We need to give Kepler some more time and it will find for us nearer and more Earth like planets yet. These findings are extraordinary and promising towards our future in the universe but the real gems are still to come.

Originally posted by GLontra

Of course, when the astronauts return to Earth, if they return to Earth, everyone that they knew will be dead a long time ago, and the planet will have changed a lot...

True but I dont really think that will be seen as much of a detriment to the explorers themselves who surely must look at leaving what they know behind for the wonder of discovery.

Consider Voyager 1 has been in flight for 34 years and 3 months+ and is about 11 billion miles from the sun which is about 119 AUs. How many AUs in a light year? Just one light year is about 63,240 AUs. A light 'day' is 16,094,799,099.08 miles, so the distance Voyage has traveled can be measured in light 'hours', which is about 2/3rds of a light day or around 9 light hours. Multiply that by about 1,037,400 and you come up with something just shy of a quarter billion years it would take Voyager 1 to reach this star system if it was heading that way, which it isn't so lets call that academic, give or take a few million years in the rounding process and using the distance of 625 light years and not the 600 or so talked about. Someone better at math than me could chip away at that figure that I believe any time delineation also becomes 'academic' to discuss. Knowledge is useless if it can never be communicated.

Just to be sure, we're all talking about reaching a planet that's 5,676,438,283,548,480 kilometers away within a reasonable stretch of time, correct?