Light speed travel - we wont make it in time.

In the fastest rocket at our disposal we can reach no where near the speeds needed for travelling long distances into space. it would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach the nearest galaxy outside of ours.

With the current scares on earth surrounding terrorism, viruses and global warming how long will it be before our planet is destroyed and the people of earth will have to look for another planet to make our own?
The thing is we are no where near getting rockets to travel fast enough to get us to "earth 2" It would take years and years of experiments and test flights before we had a craft capable, then our new planet would have to be chosen and the elite of mankind would be picked and taken.

My question is how long do you think it will be until we need to start looking for a new world? and do you think there is enough time left for mankind to design the technology to save the people of earth?

you do not know what the secret military is doing
so how can you be so sure we don't have light speed
face it none of us know what they can do...but they claim to do miracles
(see boyd bushman from Lockheed, many times I paste his information)

I myself remain hopeful about the human spirit although its letting me down when I see the world stage and the manipulation of the populace

I agree completely that we dont know what the government could be doing and im sure they have tried light speed flight but something as big as that would be a landmark in human history, would they really want to hide the fact they had achieved what know one thought possible?

Give me a brake . all the hidden UFOS and now hidden light speed teck.
For god sake the stelth was on wallmart shelvs befor thh gov admited it even excisted.
If we realy got dozens of high teck craft hidden away in bunkers then please explane why we still even us the stealth as these craft are so much better.

Firstly I believe we have enough space and resources on this planet to last us another 500 years at least.
We can terraform deserts, inhabit the poles, and move to pressurised habitats on the ocean floors.
We can even build subterranean cities.
All this in the next couple of hundred years. Simultaneously we can have sizeable populations on uninhabitable environments like the moon, the asteroid belt, and orbiting facilities.
Finally we can begin moving major portions of the human populace(eventually upto 30% IMO) to terraformed regions of Mars. I believe that in a 200-300 years hundred years we can terraform most of Mars, and maybe even start moving people to terraformable moons like Europa and others(yet to be discovered?).

In during these 500 years, we give ourselves enough time to fine tune technological abilities like planet-wide terraforming,permanently inhabiting harsh environments (atmosphere-less moons, asteroids, zero grav installations) and other generic techs related to interplanetary activities.
Also our astronomical cartographing will become so advanced that we should be able to detect and observe inhabitable planets orbiting distant stars in great detail :
oceans,landmasses,atmospheric composition,mineral composition, and possibly life; even intelligent life.

So if and when we do stumble upon radical new discoveries like FTL , we having the supporting infrastructure and know-how to build an interstellar colonial/diplomatic mission.

So IMHO we're going to be confined to this solar system for another 500 years at least; and its not going to be extremely easy, but it isn't going to be unbearably hard to live during these years.

A lot of good advancements will be made in this time. There's a lot to be achieved before we even think about technologies like FTL et al.

So we can talk about us killing the planet and ourselves, and we can also talk about governments hiding 'super-techs'..
Maybe its true OR maybe we're just bored with our existence and want something exciting and ground-breaking to happen in our lifetimes.

But in all probability neither is true and we this does not mean the end of the human race.We have a glorious future to build and we're going to be here for a long time; irrespective of the reality behind these modern-day mythologies..


unless we nuke ourselves to near-extinction!!


...Then we lose another 100-200 years..


[edit on 18-5-2007 by Daedalus3]

You don't travel the speed of light, you travel thru light (and space, atmosphere).

Light speed is not achieved through propulsion, it is done by grabbing the fabric of space (which includes light) and pulling yourself through it.

A 'ufo' itself acts like a gravity turbine (pulling with one end and repelling with the other). That is how they move so fast, they are not moving, just rapidly moving the space around them past them.

we need new laws of physics to go FTL.

realistically we could acheive 1/10th light speed and we need to invent some artificial gravity device so it keeps the crew healthy.

2 possible workarounds.

1. generation ships- it would take 50 years to get to alpha centauri at 1/10th Lightspeed. People make babies on the trip and they become the settlers of the new planet.

2. Invent some sort of suspended animation device like in the alien movies.

p.s travelling outside our galaxy isnt necessary.


[edit on 18-5-2007 by yeti101]

Why are we still on lightspeed? Even if we were that advanced light speed would not serve much of a purpose because of relativity.
Besides the relativity issues Lightspeed is not actually really fast in respect to the distances.

say we find a habitable planet 300ly from here and send an awesome hyperadvanced spacecraft to it for colonization or research.. it will take them 300 years to get there at lightspeed (many multiples of 300 years for the people waiting back home (relativity). Not to mention 300ly isn't actually far (relatively) the visible universe is billions of lightyears across, the milky way galaxy 80000 to 100000 ly across.
Apart from that lightspeed requires an infinite amount of energy and accelerating to lightspeed will take decades.

Not going into this further this has been talked about extensively and there are numerous scientific articles to be read about it.

lightspeed never has been and never will be a solution for spacetravel.

Originally posted by David2012
Why are we still on lightspeed? Even if we were that advanced light speed would not serve much of a purpose because of relativity.
Besides the relativity issues Lightspeed is not actually really fast in respect to the distances.

say we find a habitable planet 300ly from here and send an awesome hyperadvanced spacecraft to it for colonization or research.. it will take them 300 years to get there at lightspeed (many multiples of 300 years for the people waiting back home (relativity). Not to mention 300ly isn't actually far (relatively) the visible universe is billions of lightyears across, the milky way galaxy 80000 to 100000 ly across.
Apart from that lightspeed requires an infinite amount of energy and accelerating to lightspeed will take decades.

Not going into this further this has been talked about extensively and there are numerous scientific articles to be read about it.

lightspeed never has been and never will be a solution for spacetravel.

good point, lightspeed really isnt that fast in relation to those distances. The only chance we have would be extradimentional travel. I have absolutely no idea how that works but apparently thats how E.T's get around the universe.

[edit on 18-5-2007 by hikix]

First of all, i don't think the government has secretly discovered the ability to travel the speed of light. There is so much distance to cover between our current fastest speed and 186,000 miles per second. I'm sure they would let us in on a few things, like pilots being able to stand more of a g force than what is currently possible for example

Originally posted by The Cyfre
First of all, i don't think the government has secretly discovered the ability to travel the speed of light. There is so much distance to cover between our current fastest speed and 186,000 miles per second. I'm sure they would let us in on a few things, like pilots being able to stand more of a g force than what is currently possible for example

Our governments don't have light speed ship because lightspeed is impossible.
It needs more energy then our sun will put out in it's complete lifespan.
Look up infinite in your dictionary
You will never reach 100% lightspeed anyway, always some fraction below. If you'd actually fly at 100% time would stand still for you.

Even if we could create an infinite (more energy then the galaxy combined) energy source it would not be practical because of relativity.
Imagine you get on a ship travelling to the nearest star 4.2ly away.
You will travel 4.2 years to get there.. stay say 6 months, then travel back 4.2 years. you will have aged 9 years, but all your relatives who stayed back home died of old age. because for them you weren't away just 9 years but many multiples of 9 years.
(and actually you'd probably be busy accelerating for a hundred years to reach the speed )

A tenth of lightspeed would be a lot more feasable for travel within our solar system but interstellar? No, there is no theoretical solution for that at this point, either because of energy requirements or relativity.
The best most elegant solution is warping space. Relativity won't come into play since you didn't actually move/have speed. But the same problem arises as with lightspeed. It requires an infinite amount of energy.

My point, if we ever manage an infinite energy source, we probably will start interstellar travel. But it won't be using lightspeed travel really lightspeed is far from the best solution even if we had that energy source.

[edit on 19/5/2007 by David2012]

So if lightspeed seems like a no go area for travelling the relative distance to save the human race then how would we ever be able to manage it?That would mean, in however long we have got left, we would have to first come up with an idea and then research, develop and finally execute. It would take years...and years!

i dont know exactly how long we have known about lightspeed but im sure it was quite a while ago now and were still no where near hitting those speeds. So how are we meant to invent a new method of travelling far distances in a short space of time then find the means to do it and develop the neccesary equipment to do it before our time runs out?

Originally posted by David2012
say we find a habitable planet 300ly from here and send an awesome hyperadvanced spacecraft to it for colonization or research.. it will take them 300 years to get there at lightspeed (many multiples of 300 years for the people waiting back home (relativity).

This is not correct. You mixed something.

If a spaceship travels light speed, relative to earth, it takes the same time light takes. When the light takes 300years for the distance earth -other earth, so it takes 300 years for the ship as well ..seen from the earth.

Now how long takes it for the astronauts in the ship to travel the distance?
This will surprise you : No time! (except of course the acceleration and decceleration time). (See twin paradox)
Remarkable: For the ship, the outside distance (the universe) shrinks to zero in flight direction, or lose one dimension if you want so at light speed and it takes them no time for the non-distance left.

Well back to the OP:
The point is if leaving the planet is really the right thing we should do?
If we destroy this planet we destroy the next one as well.
This is not the way. The way to survive would be to learn and change our behaviour so we do not destroy our own beautiful home!

About light speed.
Yes I agree with the poster somewhat above. Space travel has to happen with a completly different if you want to get somewhere. You can not archive light speed by accelerate a mass through space the conventional way. (requires infinit energy)

However if you mange to play with the space-time-matter 'fabric' 'somehow cheating' you out and in again this would be an elegant way. But no one has a clue how to do that. However we are slowly progressing in sience and somewhen...

We have to bend time and space somehow... like producing a black-hole and contain it into a magnetic field so it doesn't affect things around it... Something like that. Mass bend space and time... we need to create a black-hole. We'll have more discoveries about that in november when the LHC comes online!

If there is an atom or black particle or whatever evrywhere, then that means we are connected to everything. When we figure out how to travel from particle to particle (subatomic not sure?) then we will travel far fast.
Get where im going?

Probably a mind traveling thing.

one thing is that the faster an object travels the larger its mass gets. so it would be possible for us to travel at the speed of light but we would be dead long before we reach it. if mass is doubled then volume is quadrupled thus blowing everything up. only reason particles can travel at that speed is because they dont have mass, they are energy

actually the newest release refutes that pagan heritic information
speed of light is not about pushing its about falling.
BUT even with a push system anything over 57.7% of the speed of light creates a antigravity beam so the socalled mass limit of speed no longer applies

The field equation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has never before been solved to calculate the gravitational field of a mass moving close to the speed of light. Felber's research shows that any mass moving faster than 57.7 percent of the speed of light will gravitationally repel other masses lying within a narrow 'antigravity beam' in front of it. The closer a mass gets to the speed of light, the stronger its 'antigravity beam' becomes.

In the 'antigravity beam' of a speeding star, a payload would draw its energy from the antigravity force of the much more massive star. In effect, the payload would be hitching a ride on a star.

"Based on this research, I expect a mission to accelerate a massive payload to a 'good fraction of light speed' will be launched before the end of this century," said Dr. Felber. "These antigravity solutions of Einstein's theory can change our view of our ability to travel to the far reaches of our universe."

More immediately, Felber's new solution can be used to test Einstein's theory of gravity at low cost in a storage-ring laboratory facility by detecting antigravity in the unexplored regime of near-speed-of-light velocities.

see how fast old ideas die

sev.prnewswire.com...

so if i understand correctly, your saying that because of the anti gravity beam generated in front of the payload , the payloads mass doesnt matter any more and so it will not increase? but thats still leaves the mass relative to the payload. the mass is still under extreme speed and so will expand accordingly.

I don't believe humans will ever transport themselves to another habitable world and it should be a relief for all other lifeforms out there. The only thing humans are capable of doing and have done already is sending their bacteria out into space in hopes that it will someday land in an earth-like environment and evolve into a similar repulsive creature. But with luck the bloating sun absorb any chances for that to happen.

Originally posted by yeti101
we need new laws of physics to go FTL.

realistically we could acheive 1/10th light speed and we need to invent some artificial gravity device so it keeps the crew healthy.

2 possible workarounds.

1. generation ships- it would take 50 years to get to alpha centauri at 1/10th Lightspeed. People make babies on the trip and they become the settlers of the new planet.

2. Invent some sort of suspended animation device like in the alien movies.

p.s travelling outside our galaxy isnt necessary.


[edit on 18-5-2007 by yeti101]

A while I back I think I read something on Wikipedia about Orion engines being able to reach 10% the speed of light. I might be mistaken though, either with the name or the speed, or just totally off my mark. Either way, it seems to me that interstellar travel should be something more than possible for humanity to achieve at some point. However I don't know that we'll do it in the next few decades, or the next few centuries for that matter. Colonizing the solarsystem is a big enough endeavor in itself and it will be able to sustain us, in all likelihood, for the entirety of the Sun's life.

In regards to travelling outside our galaxy... I wonder. Is it neccessary? Maybe, maybe not. Though I suspect that somewhere down the line, maybe thousands or millions or even billons of years from now, that somebody will try.

There was once an idea that somebody might go to the moon in a brick 'habitat' suspended under a balloon. Silly and unpractical as it might be, perhaps someday our decsendents will look back at our primitive and silly ideas for space travel and laugh as well?