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DerStrom8

Joined Feb 20, 2011
2,390
On the topic of colonization, NASA has some years now been searching for planets similar to earth. There have been many finds and even some close one, only a few dozens light years away.

Except that a light year is a unreachable speed for us right now. Bummer...
Yup, with our current technology, it'd take approximately 38,321 years to travel one lightyear. The closest known potentially-habitable planet to the Earth is Gliese 581d, which lies approximately 20 lightyears away. Traveling at 17,500 miles per hour (28,163.5 km/h), the average speed for our current mode of space transportation, it would take about 766,420 years, which is probably not going to happen for a while :p
 

Sparky49

Joined Jul 16, 2011
833
The problem isn't only travelling at such speeds (ha ha), rather the acceleration and deceleration.

If one were to get even speeds of 0.1c, most of your time would be spent decelerating enough to not just zoom past your target.

My old form tutor was an English teacher. Every day we had to read a book from the stack of books in the corner of the room. I was amazed to find one from the 70s/80s which talked about the future of space travel. An amazing read.

The timeline had us colonizing the moon in the 90s, Mars was being terraformed in 2020, asteroid mining was commonplace by 2010 and in 2040, we had reached speeds of nearly 0.15c. 2100 saw the first voyage to our nearest star.

Amazing what this 'conservative' book thought was possible. Perhaps it would have been with cold war funding.

Alot more money should be spent in science. Not on banks.
 

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
Isn't it funny that we can see something and talk to it with a year delay but can't reach it in less than 38.000 years?

I saw a short anime once on the subject. The girl left at her youth to join an intergalactic army. The boy stayed on earth.
The army leaped through wormholes and did light-fast travels.
The girl stayed young, relative to the boy, due to the very fast travel speed. The text messages they exchanged did months or years to reach each other.

In the end, the situation was very uncomfortable and unsustainable.
 

DerStrom8

Joined Feb 20, 2011
2,390
Isn't it funny that we can see something and talk to it with a year delay but can't reach it in less than 38.000 years?

I saw a short anime once on the subject. The girl left at her youth to join an intergalactic army. The boy stayed on earth.
The army leaped through wormholes and did light-fast travels.
The girl stayed young, relative to the boy, due to the very fast travel speed. The text messages they exchanged did months or years to reach each other.

In the end, the situation was very uncomfortable and unsustainable.
Reminds me of the Twin Paradox.
 

maxpower097

Joined Feb 20, 2009
816
Isn't it funny that we can see something and talk to it with a year delay but can't reach it in less than 38.000 years?

I saw a short anime once on the subject. The girl left at her youth to join an intergalactic army. The boy stayed on earth.
The army leaped through wormholes and did light-fast travels.
The girl stayed young, relative to the boy, due to the very fast travel speed. The text messages they exchanged did months or years to reach each other.

In the end, the situation was very uncomfortable and unsustainable.
Huh? What your seeing in the sky and hearing is 38,000 years ago. Just as them looking at us, their looking at our planet with woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers running around. Loosewire was just wire with a cat chewing on it!
 

maxpower097

Joined Feb 20, 2009
816
That's what I said. But I put emphasis on the gap on speed between communications and travel.
Our communications are based at the speed of light using fiber optics. So I don't see how we can talk to this planet, and not travel there. Just to send a message to and from would be 75k years.
 

DerStrom8

Joined Feb 20, 2011
2,390
Huh? What your seeing in the sky and hearing is 38,000 years ago. Just as them looking at us, their looking at our planet with woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers running around. Loosewire was just wire with a cat chewing on it!
Only if the stars and planets are 38,000 lightyears away....

It only takes light one year to go one lightyear (hence the unit name), so a planet that is 20 lightyears away are only seeing us 20 years ago. It will take US 38,000 years to actually GO there.
 
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