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Utopia Talk / Politics / Voyager 1
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murder
rank | Mon Jan 12 23:08:02 Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977. It is the most distant man-made object from Earth. This November it will reach a distance of 1 light day from Earth. And it will have taken > 49 years to make it that far. And back on Earth clowns are talking warp drives and faster than light space travel. |
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murder
rank | Mon Jan 12 23:15:15 Forget interstellar travel, someone prove that you can catch Voyager 1. - |
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Rugian
rank | Mon Jan 12 23:19:32 100 years ago, the idea that you could send anything man-made 1 light year into the universe would have been treated as pure science fiction. Baby steps. |
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Pillz
rank | Tue Jan 13 00:13:34 Okay, I was having a discussion with an AI engineer, and they said that, ultimately, we're going to pump out all of the magma from the earth and replace it with hydrogen gas. And we need all the magma so that we can have the raw mineral resources required to create Elysium-style space stations on earth. Oh, also, we need to begin mining the moon. We will shortly, according to them, in the next ten years, we'll have industrial operations on the moon. Then we'll begin building giant space stations, and in the next century, there should be trillions of human beings occupying space station and space stations and moons across the solar system. This, I have come to realize, is an actual belief that engineers have, and they are actively trying to get us there, and fuck me, siphoning all the mineral resources out of the earth to replace them with hydrogen. I hope Putin nukes something soon. |
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murder
rank | Tue Jan 13 01:17:50 "100 years ago, the idea that you could send anything man-made 1 light year into the universe would have been treated as pure science fiction." Light day, not light year. It'll take close to 18,000 years for Voyager 1 to reach a distance of 1 light year from Earth. "Baby steps" Yes, which is why it's ridiculous that con artist try to convince people that we're going to skip right over all the steps between where we are and achieving even 1% the speed of light. - |
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Sam Adams
rank | Tue Jan 13 07:53:51 The ocean is too big and stormy, no one could possibly cross that. -aztecs |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 09:46:31 18000 years to reach one light year is entirely respectable. We, as a species, just die too fast. Might as well have day-flies wanting to travel to Alpha Centauri. The fix, if we absolutely want it, is biological. For example, send frozen material off to join that very different time line. 100k years give or take does not matter. |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 09:47:19 I am not going to cross the Atlantic Ocean unless I can do it in 10 seconds. -Sam Adams. |
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murder
rank | Tue Jan 13 14:09:17 "The ocean is too big and stormy, no one could possibly cross that." If we launched a Voyager 3 today, it would take about as long to reach the same distance from earth as Voyager 1. Almost 50 years and there's been no significant development in propulsion. |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 14:52:00 Murder That is not really true. Or rather, a voyager optimised for speed would have been faster 50 years ago too. It is a function of fuel that decides how much acceleration the vehicle is given. So bigger booster gives more speed. Assumption that friction = 0, so nothing to slow down the cruising glide. |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 14:52:48 Note. Not anything like fractions of light speed. More 50% faster or whatever. |
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Rugian
rank | Tue Jan 13 15:22:39 murder We already have the technology to travel at ~0.1c. We have just never attempted to use it. |
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Sam Adams
rank | Tue Jan 13 16:26:20 ”Almost 50 years and there's been no significant development in propulsion." Ya cause the murders took over. ”I am not going to cross the Atlantic Ocean unless I can do it in 10 seconds.” You entirely missed the point of my post. |
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Average Ameriacn
rank | Tue Jan 13 16:48:55 "Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977." We should launch Trump 1 on September 5, 2027. "It is the most distant man-made object from Earth." With a better engine, Trump 1 could quickly overtake Voyager 1. |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 19:03:37 Ruggy Do we have that techology? What happens to that technology hitting a speck of stardust at 0,1c? I thought so. Sammy I understood the point. My point however is that you think "we" should go interstellar. That profoundly misunderstands both time and space. Interstellar expansion = divergence. What goes forth will not only enter a different timeline (lagging multiple thousand years behind what remained behind), it will also fast become a species distinct from what evolved differently in that timespan on earth. There is no "we" in interstellar expansion. We will create an eery competitor to ourselves that knows where we are without us knowing where they are. |
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murder
rank | Tue Jan 13 19:06:50 "Ya cause the murders took over." Because progress doesn't happen at the speed that science fiction fans think it does. - |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 19:10:28 That is the great thing about the age of Trump incidentally. It can easily happen if it can be imagined. Imagine Musk happy that he has uploaded a version of himself and is ready to send off his decendants sharing 97% of his dna (breeding principles and his multiple offspring allow for this. I checked). His best move is to nuke the rest of us on the way out because otherwise, what remains behind is a huge threat to the viability of whatever he is thinking of doing. So yah. Defund Musk. Tremendously important. |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 19:11:20 (decendants in embryotic format btw). |
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murder
rank | Tue Jan 13 19:13:23 "We will create an eery competitor to ourselves that knows where we are without us knowing where they are." That's probably nothing to worry about. Millennia stuck in ships in space with limited populations and limited resources is bound to doom them to much slower development. And from the 2nd generation on the ships would be manned by slave labor, so moral won't be terribly high. |
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jergul
rank | Tue Jan 13 19:15:38 Murder Whatever goes out will go as shelf-stable embryoes. Your assumption that development will be linear is a bold one. We may yet again be 50k pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers. If we are lucky. |
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