[grabby]

More on the topic as related to peak oil:

The possibility is extremely remote that a usable planet would be found orbiting the destination star. That discovery would shatter the morale of the passengers, and there would not be enough fuel to go on to another star. Stars are separated by vast distances!

The high cost of water, oxygen, and food transport, along with other problems, will ultimately doom man's hopes for long-term earth-orbiting, or lunar, or Martian space stations. In fact, if attention is not given to basic problems on earth, such as inexpensive water desalinization, EFFICIENT transport methods, PRACTICAL substitutes for dwindling fossil fuels and DANGEROUS nuclear reactors, and stopping the wholesale destruction of trees; within a fewyears mankind, (whatever is left of it) will congregate near water sources, travel by horse-drawn wagons, use sailing ships, and worry about how to get enough food and the firewood to cook it.

Come to think of it, that is what is going to happen anyway.

The air pollution in the living quarters of the wheel could become terrific. There would have to be room for plants, animals, large numbers of people, and all their wastes. It has been estimated that 10,000 colonists within a giant wheel would require 60,000 chickens, 30,000 rabbits, and sizeable herds of cattle, to maintain a mixed diet of about 2,400 calories a day. The entire contraption, with all that was going on within it, would be a closed-up little world. Even with plants, gradually the environment could become off-balanced, with disastrous results. Over a period of decades and even centuries, even a large spaceship would have too small an area for environmental mistakes to accumulate.

Biosphere II in Arizona was closed down due to inadequate aereation, poor food, and waste disposal problems.


It is im-possible with SCIENCE to go to the stars but it is only possible in Fiction, hence the neame for the books some waste time on.

[seven]

Hawking is simply talking about what is required to ensure the long term survival of the species, and in that light his assertions make perfect sense.

We might still have enough time to at least start reaching out into space, but it would probably require the cooperation, pooling of resources and top priority determination of the entire first world. However, since most of us can't be bothered to make changes/ expend effort to benefit even the next generation, the idea of saving the human species from murky, disastrous eventualities probably won't catch on with the populace, either. As per usual, humanity will doubtless recognize the wisdom of having done so after it is too late.

I'm inclined to think that we don't deserve to survive, anyway.

[Novus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seven', '
')I'm inclined to think that we don't deserve to survive, anyway.

[Anthrobus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whereagles', 'A')re we alone in the universe?

For recent ideas on the subject, check this:

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0308078
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0605096

[Vexed]

Pave it all.

[grabby]

These are straightening outings :

1. If no mutations are good, evolution is dead. I do not observe it.

Half correct. you are alive. And no, we do not observe it...


2. Life is not a Windows software (thankfully). Most of mutations are not close to be neutral to survivability in fact most are damaging, and when crossed with a sister or cousin make some really damaged kids...

Life is more complex than windows software, therfore even more suscepptible to damaging mutaitions.

Nothing is more complicated than windows software.
also the average human pregnancy failure rate is 20 %.

3. ..
All known medical mutations are BAD. we haven't seen any GOOD ones. they are all limiting or damaging, a few help survivaility in some cases but cause desease. the human mutation for improvement is a fantasy..

4. "Radiation in deep space is too deadly to go to the stars -deadly."
True, radiation in deep space is too deadly to survive a trip to any star.

Water also is deadly if it get to your lungs.
space is too deadly for humans to survive long.

"Cosmic rays are plentiful"
Over 30,000 years traveling to alpha centauri they add up.

So what, those are usually charged particles and can be deflected by magnetic field generated by the spacecraft.
Solved.

Not solved. cosmic rays cannot be deflected or stopped, they are photons. they can go through 2 feet of lead.

5. "You C CANNOT GO TO STARS ON FUSION
it is a mathematical impossibility".

You cannot go to any STAR on fusion it is a mathematical impossibility

not enough fuel to go to stars on any kind of fuel.
our voyager will hit the first star around 30,000 years from now. it will be disintegrated long before then.[/b]


It is only important how much TIME

not exactly. you have to fix things that break and you cannot go to costco in space.
you want to spare.

One way travel to nearby stars (4-6 light years away) with 10-20% of speed of light is perfectly possible with fusion.

It is not possible with fusion.
you dont have enough reactants to take lead cows and sheep to 10% light speed,.

it is impossible.

you cannot house generations of people and animals and millions of loaves of bread. nor get a generation to 10% C
impossible.

6. "Antimatter is the only option..."

actually antimatter is not an option.



7. "...humans are not going to the stars"

Who told you that?
My calculator



_______________________________
Star travel?

it is >10,000 times more impossible than running the USA on ethanol.


First of all, we are talking about really huge distances here. Really, really huge. The closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 40,000,000,000,000 km away (24 trillion miles). And that's close, even by distances in the Milky Way, our home galaxy, which is 40,000 times bigger than this again. So, travelling to the stars is a bit of a chore, distance wise.

Secondly, even our fastest spacecraft haven't a hope of getting to the nearest star in any reasonable time. The fastest speed recorded for any existing spacecraft is 241,000km per hour. At this speed it would still take almost 19,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri. Put in perspective - peak oil will come before then.

Thirdly, the effort, cost and resources needed to go to the stars is impossible to imagine by our standards. To travel to the nearest star would require almost 3 million loaves of bread for one person alone; not to mention water, oxygen, vegetables, minerals, rocket fuel and other things necessary to make the trip as pleasant as possible for the would-be traveller.

Finally, technologically we are just not there yet. We have only just started to explore the moon, and there are now plans to put men on Mars in the next 20 years. The Mars trip alone will tax and stretch human capability (and money reserves) further than ever before, and all to go to a place which is, astronomically speaking, in our back yard.

And that won't happen either, we will descend hubbards peak first.

[grabby]

Technology is going into a stiff decline long before we go to the stars.
And In my opinion long before we even try to go to Mars.
After oil there is minimal surviving industrialization capable of building and sending anything to Mars, even a robot...

Peak oil descent is beginning soon and in my opinion we won't be wasting time with space, we will be in survival mode.

In other words in my opinion, whatever that's worth,
we are never even going to MARS.

PEAK OIL will probably prevent it.

Save this note for a few years from now and read it:
WE WILL NOT BE RUNNING ON ETHANOL AND PALM OIL.
you see, grabby knew ahead of time...

[CrudeAwakening]

Hawking may be a first class brain, but on this evidence he is also a first class ignoramus.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system"

[evilgenius]

Space is possible until we wage the next big war. After that there will be so much debris in Earth orbit that nothing will be able to get through it without terrible damage. It will take more than a lifetime for the debris to clear.

I would like to see man reach Mars. I don't really believe I can afford to be that optimistic.

Maybe man will get there in a couple of hundred years. Maybe what we will become as a result of going through what is coming will make getting there into a good thing.

[Loki]

Traveling to other stars is the techno-optimist's ultimate wet dream. Let's save a tiny (ultra-rich) minority of the human population while the rest of humanity goes down the shitter. What a beautiful dream.

If humans screw up Earth so bad that it becomes uninhabitable, we don't deserve to survive as a species.

[Anthrobus]

i just wanted to reiterate my point, that it might be totally wrong to associate progress with some sort of space travel or other technological fantasies (especially if they involve the use of huge amounts of energy). Exactly the opposite may be the case. Sending some half intelligent probes to the planets in our solar system and maintain the SETI-Program is indeed fascinating but may be the utmost we might achieve in this discipline.

Most of the greatest achievements (imho) of mankind were made by indiviuals using their brain, a pen and a piece of paper (sauf maybe the internet). And this can and will be continued even in a post peak everything society.

rant on/: I just can't stop ranting about the folks who consider the great people mankind had brought forth in the past (prophets, poets, philosphers, writers, other brilliant minds) tedious to read, boring, outdated but consider it more advanced to drive our spaceships ,aka cars, through the universe. Go on, guys, try to think harder! Take some months off and browse through a big library, if you really want to know progress. A life is to short even to deal with the very best, mankind has produced. Sitting in front of the tv is, in this respect, like premature death. /rant off

Thanks for this thread, it really helped me to define my position in this subject.

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system"

And lets' not forget the tiny fact that we haven't even seen another planet remotley like Earth. Honestly, even without the distances involved this is some crazy talk, with them the stupidity is of literally galactic proportions.

We have been given one planet.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', 'T')hese are straightening outings :

1. If no mutations are good, evolution is dead. I do not observe it.

Half correct. you are alive. And no, we do not observe it...


2. Life is not a Windows software (thankfully). Most of mutations are not close to be neutral to survivability in fact most are damaging, and when crossed with a sister or cousin make some really damaged kids...

Life is more complex than windows software, therfore even more suscepptible to damaging mutaitions.

Nothing is more complicated than windows software.
also the average human pregnancy failure rate is 20 %.

3. ..
All known medical mutations are BAD. we haven't seen any GOOD ones. they are all limiting or damaging, a few help survivaility in some cases but cause desease. the human mutation for improvement is a fantasy..

[gg3]

The empirical truth is that we do not know, and we have no way of knowing, whether humans some centuries or millenia from now will discover the means to travel to the stars successfully.

Our responsibility is simply to not f--- up the planet to the degree that will deny them the opportunity to try.

That is all.

[Mesuge]

It's quite realistic to assert that the new contraptions like those large light speed particle colliders/accelerator at CERN which is now near completion I think in Switzerland will reveal some new revolutionary insight into the origins of matter..

My take is that this research will probaly lead us pretty fast to some advanced energy storage solution at the minimum, so solar and other renewables could be scaled up as a backbone of industrial society..

But, the scale of our current consumption is enormous and todays solar factories are able to produce only few GW of panels yearly, the same applies for wind turbines etc. So the road for solar/fusion economy would be bumpy at best.

So, even in the most optimistic scenario with new fundamental breaktrhoughs in physics there will be a dark period of the 21 century due to PO, GW, and overpopulation that's given..

Looking through the rear view mirror the chances we will make it again this time are pretty slim and frankly to get the boost by going up the energy ladder again far beyond conventional fusion but with our current psychological/social attitudes would mean further overpopulation and environmental holocaust..

Just imagine some scoundrel, descendant of the bushevik clan going on hunting spree holidays in the under ice ocean of the moon Europa in his personal spaceship while 25bilions out of 30bln living on the Earth in 2160 are compressed in 1m x 2m appartment boxes and on nutrient pill diet.. No, I think I don't like the prospect of such a future, thank you..

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'T')he empirical truth is that we do not know, and we have no way of knowing, whether humans some centuries or millenia from now will discover the means to travel to the stars successfully.

Our responsibility is simply to not f--- up the planet to the degree that will deny them the opportunity to try.

That is all.

[MonteQuest]

We have been over this ground before.

Life on Earth evolved under the very special set of conditions that exist only here. The fact remains that humans are not constructed or evolved to live unsupported anywhere but on this tiny blue speck in a vast universe. Our species is marooned in space, on spaceship Earth. Any space colony would have to be supported by earth from earth forever.

http://peakoil.com/fortopic15090.html

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'L')ife on Earth evolved under the very special set of conditions that exist only here.

[grabby]

There are some pretty real video games out there that should entertain most people, ...plus you can program really interesting scenarios diamond mines etc, to keep the fantasy world population entertained enough.

Fusion is insufficient to get any human to even the closes star, it would take 40,000 years. That's pretty slow. We might have trouble keeping our equipment running for 1,000 or 2,000 years!

Next to finally, people are never going to the stars, robots are the denizens of space. WAY CHEAPER! One of the reasons is the imminent explosion of robotics and artificial intelligence that I think is about to occur. We're just this year getting microcomputers powerful enough to support entry-level machine vision.

Robots don't eat and you can turn them off.

Finally,
Star travel will NOT be happening in "YOUR lifetime.

Peak oil WILL be happening in your lifetime.

My prediction is that you will never make it to space much less a star sustem other than ours, you will always be stuck here. It will not be you that makes any trip into space...

Peak oil is our biggest worry.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', ' ')Any scientific evidence for that?