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by knaekhoved 1321 days ago
Doomer fatalism is nearly as dumb as sci-fi optimism. It's 100% physically plausible, using technology we have today, to make humanity star-faring. The costs would be exorbitant at this point, but within the reach of human productive capacity (assuming we're willing to ditch the partial nuclear test ban).
2 comments
TheOtherHobbes 1321 days ago
The costs are not the problem.

We can barely get to the Moon and have no realistic prospect of making a self-sustaining Mars colony any time soon.

How is it credible to claim we can build starships that can cross lightyears without technological or sociopolitical problems?

The engines - which we're nowhere close to creating - are the easy part.

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loup-vaillant 1321 days ago
Getting to the moon only takes another JFK. We have the tech, we have the people, all we lack is the budget and a 5-10 year deadline. Also, another hard part is getting there safely enough. A 5% chance of dying out there is probably not acceptable nowadays. We probably need to go below 0.1% to attempt it again, and that's not trivial, especially with the possibility of solar flares beyond the magnetic protection of the Earth.

The real question is, is it worth making it a priority?

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petre 1321 days ago
> is it worth making it a priority

It will follow by itself once space mining kicks off.

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knaekhoved 1321 days ago
I was responding to "physical realities in this area are pretty rough" - obviously there are other blockers
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411111111111111 1320 days ago
> It's 100% physically plausible, using technology we have today, to make humanity star-faring.

That kind of claim needs an actual source, because it's not.

The distances are so many orders of magnitude too high for any of today's technologies, making this a pure daydream.

The best we could plausibly do is travel within Sol, and that's not starfaring.

It would have to be a multi generational journey in which any refueling/restocking is impossible and any slip up would cause a full wipeout.

Starfaring is far beyond us... and that's unlikely to ever change for humans with a biological body.

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knaekhoved 1318 days ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion
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