[ghostunit]

I find this dogma of "Eventually we will conquer space and make it accessible to all mankind" dangerous in the extreme to the actual, all-too-present predicaments we have here on real Earth such as climate change, environment devastation, fossil fuels/minerals/water depletion and the accelerating destruction of the web of life that makes possible your even being able to breathe.

You are all prey to the "religion of progress".

Your dogma is that space travel is not only possible, but a given, something the universe has put somewhere for us to find and make ours.

Except that, basic hard laws such as the speed of light, the laws of thermodynamics, etc. say NO. And it's only your religious thinking that allows you to handwave all that with a "we always find a way".

For all we know, in this universe it may be impossible to bypass or even bend those laws. Yet, you're betting the future of the species on old Star Trek fantasies.

As you said, the conditions and difficulty for modern space travel are in the extreme and pushing all of our sciences to their limits. And for what? just to get to... the moon. I don't want to scare you, but if that seems far to you, see how much bigger the distance to anything else in the solar system is, nevermind anything outside it.

[seanflyon]

> basic hard laws such as the speed of light, the laws of thermodynamics, etc. say NO

This is not true. For travel within the solar system the speed of light is no more than a nuisance delaying communication. The laws of thermodynamics don't stop space travel. No one is saying "we always find a way" to do the impossible. We are saying "we always find a way" to do that thing that we already know how to do and have demonstrated lots of times, only this time we need to make it cheaper.

[ghostunit]

a) Travel within the solar system? where do you want to go live, Mercury, Venus? Mars is almost as worthless too, its gravity is 1/3 Earth's. Can't live there for long.

b) We just need to make it cheaper? how, exactly, are you going to get up there except by burning obscene quantities of solid (fossil) fuel, as we do now?

That's where the thermodynamics things comes in play: you have to pay the energy cost, there's no elegant "oh, we're just going to fold space" or some such bs. And fossil fuels are finite by definition, need I remind you.

It's not "we just need to make it cheaper". It's coming up with new breakthroughs in physics that no one can assure even exist.

[seanflyon]

a) Mars.Your notion that humans cannot survive for long in 1/3 gravity is interesting. While it has not been proven that we can live long and healthy lives in 1/3 G, many very intelligent and informed people believe we can. Do you have a particular reason to believe we cannot?

b) You have to pay the energy cost but that is not the hard part. Fossil fuels are finite, but we don't need to use fossil fuels and even if we did setting up a civilization on mars would take a tiny portion of earth's fossil fuels. We are not going to run out of hydrogen as long as we have the energy to split water and plenty of energy hits the earth in the form of sunlight every day, not to mention fission or fusion.

So no, the laws of thermodynamics are not the problem. We "just" need to make it cheaper.

[colordrops]

While we are off topic, this post is a fine example of "concern trolling".

[ghostunit]

Someone has to point out that you have fallen into dogmatic thinking when it comes to our "space future". There is nothing promised, nothing that can be taken for granted, nothing shown to be possible (beyond the current limits of our physics which are: getting to the moon at enormous fuel expense, and 1-way ticket to die in Mars)