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Selfless- t1_j10omr7 wrote

People will live and die in the solar system they are birthed in. Everything else is robots.

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ScrotiusRex t1_j10vpk6 wrote

It took 35 years for Voyager 1 to escape the solar system so passengers on a generation ship would indeed get to leave the system that birthed them but after that they'd only see void for the rest of their lives which is entirely a bleak thought.

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TangoKlass t1_j10ylka wrote

honestly the trip to the edge was mostly 35 of bleakness. So no different.

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ScrotiusRex t1_j119mb0 wrote

True but at least there's the dim light of a nearby sun.

Kind of like that moment before land disappears over the horizon at sea and you realise you're just surrounded by nothing.

Except it's a whole lot more nothing.

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Bipogram t1_j10wfr5 wrote

Voyager 1 was the business end of a terribly large mass-fraction consisting mostly of a Titan Centaur combo.

Thus, it was able to leave cis-lunar space with a stupidly high C3, allowing the Grand Tour.

A generation ship will be orders of orders of magnitude more massive. And probably has to be built at L4/L5 (or similar).

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ScrotiusRex t1_j10yjyk wrote

That's a good point alright, though I would like to think if we did get to that stage we'd have advanced past current gen chemical rockets but would presumably also involve multiple gravity assists to send it on its way.

>And probably has to be built at L4/L5 (or similar).

The bulk of the easily attainable resources would be out in the asteroid belt so would that not be an ideal place to build?

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LoneSnark t1_j11cm4x wrote

We are already past chemical rockets. Ion Thrusters are a thing and can get you going 100 times the propellant velocity of a chemical rocket. I presume the ship would have a nuclear reactor rigged and sized to work for the journey with solar panels to power most of the propulsion. The ship will first thrust deeper into the solar system to get more solar power and set up gravity assists with Venus to reach Jupiter and then a grand alignment with multiple gravity assists on the final way out of the system to get itself going the right direction. As they leave the system and solar power falls off they'll have to throttle down. Maybe they'll have electro-static collectors to collect stray hydrogen on the way that they can feed into the Ion engines using whatever spare nuclear power they have each day. Then reverse the process upon arrival.

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nyg8 t1_j10vdbr wrote

Cryogenics / worm holes are still a possibility!

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CrazyC787 t1_j10x7ok wrote

Hypothetically, light speed might cause time dilation that makes the trip seem far shorter for the passengers than the people on earth.

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nyg8 t1_j10zxtf wrote

While true, time still passes for the person inside the space ship, if we need to travel 80 light years, you will have to survive 80 years

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echaa t1_j1120jj wrote

The people outside your ship will need to live 80 years if they want to meet you again. You'll only need to live for 50 or so

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pbecotte t1_j11fthh wrote

The dilation is exponential. The closer you get to c, the higher the dilation factor. With enough energy, from the perspective of the travler you could practically travel anywhere instantly...so long as you didn't mind the rest of the universe moving along without you.

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Bipogram t1_j10w24q wrote

Cryonics.
Cryogenics is an extant art/science.

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boundegar t1_j112jqj wrote

True, and maybe the galaxy will be settled by Tardigrades.

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sowenga t1_j11bvrr wrote

Extant, but not in a way that doesn’t destroy cells and thus the body during the process of freezing.

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Bipogram t1_j11g64k wrote

You misunderstand me (or I wasn't clear).

Cryogenics is the engineering of low temperatures. I've worked in departments that specialized in cryogenics (we tested foam thermal conductivity at low temperatures for clients).

Here

Cryonics, a different word, is the study of how to cool biota, the cellular preservation mechanisms, and so on.

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sowenga t1_j1365jt wrote

Oh sorry, you are right! I totally misunderstood.

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Lelouch25 t1_j117uyz wrote

in high school I read something about bending atoms near the ship to create a warp tunnel or something. I think we're only just starting to explore that idea 20 years later with dark matter.

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Ryiujin t1_j10ty19 wrote

It would be kinda interesting to have a galactic empire human run but entirely interacted with by robots due to the lack of faster than light travel.

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SparseGhostC2C t1_j10usbd wrote

I feel like I've seen that movie and it ends with a dead human race and a new race of super-intelligent robots.

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Zinkobold t1_j115qpv wrote

You might be right but we don't know the science to come. I know there is unimaginable distance...

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Tacticool_Hotdog t1_j117cyt wrote

You could "colonize" our galaxy with robots in a measly 50 million or so years (IIRC, could be whatever).

Even if we managed to colonize another world, I don't think it'd be logistically even remotely possible to uphold any sort of galactic civilization. Imagine trying to decide on policy when it would take hundreds of years to broadcast it anywhere else.

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