Starship Asterisk*

geckzilla wrote:I think the comparison of crossing an ocean on earth to crossing the cosmos creates a false dichotomy. The argument is as follows: Humans once thought crossing an ocean was impossible, but then they did it. Now they think crossing a galaxy is impossible, but because they crossed an ocean that was thought impossible to cross, so too space travel across vast distances must be possible.

Space is not an ocean. Just like we aren't going to build a submarine that can travel around in the Sun's plasma, we probably aren't going to build a ship that can take us quickly to the next star, let alone the next galaxy.

kenkilgore wrote:
Isn't the Andromeda galaxy about 2.5 [million] lys away from us? If so, the Fornax cluster of galaxies would be OVER 20 times the distance to Andromeda, not "almost"....

heehaw wrote:Will humans ever go to the Fornax galaxies? ...

darksky2500@gmail.com wrote:>>>>>
The Fornax galaxy cluster is said to be 62 light-years away
>>>>>

62 *million* light years away. Not a trivial error. Your point stands rstevenson.

geckzilla wrote:Just like we aren't going to build a submarine that can travel around in the Sun's plasma, we probably aren't going to build a ship that can take us quickly to the next star, let alone the next galaxy.

K. Trout's Cousin wrote:

geckzilla wrote:
Just like we aren't going to build a submarine that can travel around in the Sun's plasma, we probably aren't going to build a ship that can take us quickly to the next star, let alone the next galaxy.

It's not probable that we'll survive anther century, but it's possible. It's also possible we'll learn to harness dark energy to make the interstellar/intergalactic trip regardless of the probabilities involved or the method that dictates.

http://alienencyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive wrote:
<<The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion by the Imperial Galactic Government’s research team on planet Damogran.

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course long understood – and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess’s undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.

Many respectable physicists said they weren’t going to stand for this, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they never got invited to those sorts of parties. Another thing they couldn’t stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralyzing distances between the farthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea… and turn it on!

He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long-sought-after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air, which passes through every point in the universe simultaneously so there is no telling what species you will be before Normality is restored. It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Academy’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smart-aleck.

The drive's first installation in a spacecraft, the Starship Titanic, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any part of the ship, went horribly awry because the engineers did not realize that with the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately. The ship underwent total existence failure almost immediately. After being perfected, the drive was successfully installed in the starship Heart of Gold, where it mostly worked fine aside from the occasional tendency to, against all probability, pick up unexpected passengers by itself.>>

K. Trout's Cousin wrote:

geckzilla wrote:Just like we aren't going to build a submarine that can travel around in the Sun's plasma, we probably aren't going to build a ship that can take us quickly to the next star, let alone the next galaxy.

It's not probable that we'll survive anther century, but it's possible. It's also possible we'll learn to harness dark energy to make the interstellar/intergalactic trip regardless of the probabilities involved or the method that dictates. If you don't consider possibilities you won't even try to find a way. What point robotic missions to the other planets in the solar system if not to examine the possibilities they hold for us? What point science?

1) We don't know what dark energy is.

2) We don't know where dark energy is, except that it seems to be everywhere.

3) Assuming that we do manage to identify the nature of dark energy and its exact whereabouts, we wouldn't know how to concentrate it in or around our own spaceships, so that we could use it as propulsion.

4) Assuming that we do manage to identify its nature and its exact whereabouts and concentrate it to use as propulsion, we wouldn't know how to make dark energy push us towards other stars or other galaxies, when we know that its nature seems to be to expand space and push galaxies away from each other.

5) There is the little problem of making anything made of matter travel above, at or near light speed. Throwing dark energy into the mix doesn't seem to solve any of those problems.

geckzilla wrote:I think the comparison of crossing an ocean on earth to crossing the cosmos creates a false dichotomy. The argument is as follows: Humans once thought crossing an ocean was impossible, but then they did it. Now they think crossing a galaxy is impossible, but because they crossed an ocean that was thought impossible to cross, so too space travel across vast distances must be possible.

Space is not an ocean. Just like we aren't going to build a submarine that can travel around in the Sun's plasma, we probably aren't going to build a ship that can take us quickly to the next star, let alone the next galaxy.

geckzilla wrote:I don't think this forum would even exist and we wouldn't even bother to ask the question in that case... The tides, seasons, and all sorts of things might never make any sense to us at all!

bruceyoung57 wrote:I don't see any foreground stars in this picture of the Fornax Cluster of galaxies. If not all the blips of light in the background would also be galaxies. Is this the case?