@Fasces

Anything between 1-100 Lightyears seems equally hard to me.

"Can someone explain to me why anyone would seriously advocate the hindrance of technological development."
You will have to ask someone who supports the hindrance of tech dev.
Private>Public
I don't want to scrap the budget just cut it

and in the long run we're all extinct anyway, its an estimated 5 billion years until our sun goes nova, and when our sun goes redgiant in the later years of its existance earth will become unhabitable. Assuming nothing else gets a first we have a few million years before the solarsytem becomes unhabitable for us anyway.

"@Fasces

Anything between 1-100 Lightyears seems equally hard to me."
Agreed, going the fastest recorded speed we have been able to accomplish is 58,536 km/h. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons and it was a probe not a manned craft) That would take us 18,000 years to travel 1 light year with current technology. (assuming we are able to continually fly that speed).

And the costs in terms of fuel of getting a large manned ship to get to that speed as well as slow down once it gets to ACB (assuming that is the star we need to get to) is simply an unrealistic feat.

and I am not even mentioning the cost of food. We may one day be able to send a probe or a rover to an exoplanet, (knowing the probe will get there 50,000+ years after launching) since the cost would be significantly cheaper.

Food wouldn't be that bad. 18,000 years of McDonald's wouldn't be that expensive and it wouldn't go bad.

"it wouldn't go bad."
lmao

"Food wouldn't be that bad. 18,000 years of McDonald's wouldn't be that expensive"
How many people are we talking, previous missions have all been 2-4 astronauts but that wouldn't be enough to get us to ACB since they would all die on the way there.

Remember we are talking about 600 generations / light year. Assuming $4/day in costs it would be 80 million / ly / astronaut. Which I guess its cheaper then I thought it would be.

Bear in mind all this storage would probably increase the cost of fuel to get us that speed and also not to mention we need some sort of O2 generator so we can breath for 18,000 years.

Not really sure why we are talking about this lol, since I think we both know it is unrealistic.

On the Mars note:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiCDQ_91Pks

My point is that food will be the easiest/least expensive problem to solve.

In terms of post-Sol survival, the only feasible solution I see is a colony fleet able to sustain itself by mining asteroids it passes. If they eventually find a planet, great. If not, they live in space forever.

In terms of short-term expansion, I still think moons and Mars are a good idea, if for no other reason than they will prepare us for when we actually need to leave Sol.

"Not really sure why we are talking about this lol, since I think we both know it is unrealistic."

Isn't it fun to talk about something other than politics and religion for once...

"My point is that food will be the easiest/least expensive problem to solve."
But still, if the Malthusian Catastrophe does happen (The economics behind a sudden shortage of a good due to exponentially increasing demand. Malthus used it for food, it has since been used for oil and since then been proven to be completely false) and our population does spiral out of control to the extent that we have no food to sustain life on the planet, maybe 18,000 years of food going towards a space mission wouldn't be the best idea.

I don't think we have enough food for that right now as it is, so we would have to consciously save up.

But I will grant you that the contruction of a spaceship possible for this mission as well as the cost of the energy required to get us out of the solar system would be far bigger budget concerns. As well as the need for O2.

"In terms of post-Sol survival, the only feasible solution I see is a colony fleet able to sustain itself by mining asteroids it passes. If they eventually find a planet, great. If not, they live in space forever. "
Who get to be the lucky hundred or so? I'm also glad that someone is optimistic that humans will outlive sol.

"In terms of short-term expansion, I still think moons and Mars are a good idea, if for no other reason than they will prepare us for when we actually need to leave Sol."
And Mars (I think) will last a few thousand (if not million) years longer then Earth. Since Earth's surface will be incinerated when the sol starts the red giant phase of its life cycle. Of course I'm only taking the distance between here and the sun into account and ignoring the fact that our atmosphere being thicker may man that we outlive Mars.

But as I said, this is millions of years away, I'd rather focus on fixing problems on earth then preparing us for an apocalypse that far into the future.

"Isn't it fun to talk about something other than politics and religion for once..."
naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I'll grant you that its a nice alternative to religion since I have gotten rather bored of debating with Christians but economics and politics are more interesting then astrophysics.

That said if I thought the topic was boring I wouldn't be responding, would I?

I think you're making the food problem far bigger than it actually is. At the end of the day food is just an energy source, and if your humans are powered down, frozen in stasis, or however you want to call it, you're not going to need much in the way of food at all.

As for the energy needed to escape the solar system, it also isn't that much. It's not as if we have a standing start like we do escaping Earth's pull. We're already travelling at pretty impressive speeds around the Sun to the extent that we're in orbit. You'll need a fair bit of energy to get up to speed, granted, and then a similar amount to slow down again at the other end, but the amount of energy required for the majority of the journey will be next to nothing.

Colony fleets with active populations wouldn't work. Too much energy demand, too much resource demand, not enough stuff about to meet that demand. Not enough entertainment to stop the people going mad. If we're going to travel large distances at sub-light speeds we're best off doing it cold and dark.

"I think you're making the food problem far bigger than it actually is. At the end of the day food is just an energy source, and if your humans are powered down, frozen in stasis, or however you want to call it, you're not going to need much in the way of food at all."
I'm not a subsriber to the frozen in stasis since it causes so many health complications.

"As for the energy needed to escape the solar system, it also isn't that much. It's not as if we have a standing start like we do escaping Earth's pull. We're already travelling at pretty impressive speeds around the Sun to the extent that we're in orbit. You'll need a fair bit of energy to get up to speed, granted, and then a similar amount to slow down again at the other end, but the amount of energy required for the majority of the journey will be next to nothing."
We've had objects leave the solar system before, what I mean is do it at a reasonable enough speed so it doesn't take millions of years to get there.

"I'm not a subsriber to the frozen in stasis since it causes so many health complications".

And a long space voyage doesn't? Clearly the technology is very much in its infancy at the moment, and those poor fools who've had themselves frozen now don't have a hope of coming back to life, but give the research some serious funding and I think it will be very doable. Far far easier than keeping society going through the grim darkness between the stars

Gravitational catapults ftw.