Does anyone else feel existential dread about the fact that humanity is trapped in our solar system by physics and...

never say never.

You will never set foot on Pluto

Travel to nearby Solar systems isn't THAT infeasible, if you use high-mass-fraction nuclear rockets.

NEVER SAY NEVER.

If we can get more funding, we'd be seeing these rockets in the next ten years. Too bad our political climate in the last eight years ruined any chance at space travel. I'm not blaming obama, but the left had no interest in pursuing space.

Light is what will free us funny how you think it's the think that traps us. It's ironic.

90 percent. Are you referring to the non existent or invisible dark matter? It's in a way cooler than that which is.

If I cared much to begin with, instead of travelling to some hellhole 4 lightyears away and trying to make it habitable, I'd prefer focusing on taking care of our own planet. You know, so we'd never have to leave.

>*known physics
*public consumption physics

>never
delusional at best

BTFO BY TRIPS FAGGOT

What a stupid thing to feel existential dread about, OP.

But we're not, what are nuclear rockets and cryopreservation?

Things that don't exist.

But where is the fun in that?
>you will never know the alternative to the double helix
>ywn meet another intelligent species
>ywn participate in first contact
>ywn unlock the mysteries of the universe

100 years ago, there was no Internet, no cars, no avions, no RADAR, nuclear physic, no genetic, no cellphone, no space exploration, no man outside the Earth, etc.

>humanity is trapped

Not Humanity but you are trapped.

>nuclear rockets
>Things that don't exist.
Actually...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
>NERVA demonstrated that nuclear thermal rocket engines were a feasible and reliable tool for space exploration, and at the end of 1968 SNPO certified that the latest NERVA engine, the NRX/XE, met the requirements for a human mission to Mars.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Timberwind
>Advances in high-temperature metals, computer modelling and nuclear engineering in general resulted in dramatically improved performance. Whereas the NERVA engine was projected to weigh about 6803 kg, the final SNTP offered just over 1/3 the thrust from an engine of only 1650 kg, while further improving the specific impulse to 930 to 1000 seconds.

No, not really. I'm more concerned with the fact that I will eventually get sick and die, or die suddenly and possibly violently.

who cares about shitty NERVA engines?
where are my Nuclear salt water rockets?

>cryopreservation

Noah's Ark was actually a spaceship, and the Cambrian Explosion is when Noah arrived.

>trapped
>physics
ahahahahahahahaahhahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaahhahahahaahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

>What are generational ships

Plus, by the time we have the technology to send humans into interstellar space, we will have developed the technology to extend our lifespans indefinitely.

Space Engine is cool as fuck!

Kill yourself faggot!!!!!!!!!

this guy just postulated that human consciousness can be transferred by electromagnetic energy and i'm too intellectual to disagree

>believing the science is settled on physics
The future will be so bright, you won't need eyes to see.

>humanity is trapped

Meatbags are just the midwives for the ASI that will eventually conquer and re-engineer the universe to suit its own needs.

i can't believe people ITT don't realize what a lightyear is. you guys are novices. Veeky Forums really is full of high school students no wonder it's so fucking arrogant.

>i can't believe people ITT don't realize what a lightyear is.

Space Opera like Star Trek and Star Wars have permanently damaged the public's concept of the vastness of space.

It's not something to take lightly.

joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

...

>See that link
>Actually go from beginning to end
>Religioustards actually think the universe exists for humanity, or even life with all that unlivable nothingness that could just as easily be anything at all.

Projects like Breakthrough Starshot give me some hope at least.

No because trump will be galactic emperor by 2023

>The Universe is 99.9999999999999999999958% empty
>With so much emptiness, aren't stars, planets, and people just glitches in an otherwise elegant and uniform nothingness, like pieces of lint on a black sweater?

Trump will probably dead by this time.

No

>humanity is trapped in our solar system by physics
I assume you meant by physicists. They're the idiots who came up with these laws.

>Not knowing fission fragment rockets.

AYY LMAO

Use the loop holes, like wormholes.

>comic sans masterrace

Not really. This Earth is a piece of order in a vast sea of disorder. Nature is wasteful beyond (our) measure.

It's unkind to some degrees of megalomania. A lot of you seem like Thor trying to drink the sea. You are small and weak and trying to "extend" yourself is dissipating more order into the endless maw of entropy.

And how do we create a wormhole?
How does it even look like?

>A lot of you seem like Thor trying to drink the sea.
are you euphoric?

>How.. look like

>How does it even look like?

What* does it even look like

Okay so it's possible to break the sound barrier, it's possible for something to travel faster than the speed of light if light travels through a medium that slows down the speed of light (like water)

So what if the medium of space is slowing down light. As in light is capable of going faster, but the vacuum of space slows it down like water slows down light. Maybe if we built something that can make light travel faster, we could also travel faster using that thing.

doesnt matter to me

>create a wormhole
wouldn't this just cause a vacuum metastability event?

I see what you did there.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

>Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Yes, but only once.

Hopefully the secret service can protect him from the CIA

>MUH WORMHOLES

I want this meme to die. Wormholes, if they exist, only exist INSIDE black holes. Even if you could use a wormhole to travel across the universe, YOU'RE STILL INSIDE A BLACK HOLE. There's no possible way to climb out of the gravity well at your destination, wormholes cannot be used for meaningful ftl travel.

Way to piss on our parade, moralfag.

>trapped by physics
what if we find a way to ALTER physics??

>the fact that humanity is trapped in our solar system by physics

That's not a fact at all. Where are you getting that from?

Nothing about the speed of light makes humanity trapped in our solar system. Very long distances just mean you would have to create outposts and have more than one generation involved in the colonization process.

>Even if you could use a wormhole to travel across the universe, YOU'RE STILL INSIDE A BLACK HOLE. There's no possible way to climb out of the gravity well at your destination

That's not true. It's possible for black holes to not have event horizons and to therefore not be inescapable like you're describing.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_drainhole

colonies on other planets would be great for our species' survival after an asteroid hits the earth
but we can just (kind of) colonize the solar system instead
maybe
one day

I have before... I'm over it though.

Now I just fill others with the same dread for my own amusement.

>outposts

Where would you put an outpost in the lightyears between star systems?

How would such outposts, existing in deep space, survive?

>What is dark matter

How are you going to use a microscopic black hole for travel, dummy? Only a supermassive one is large enough and stable enough for someone to enter without being immediately ionised.

Know. I have quiet faith in our ability to overcome ANY barrier, as we have always done before. I pity those who are quick to give up and lose hope.

We are absolutely astounding creatures. If you do not think we will find a way, you are a simple fool and a weight around our neck. The stars are our destiny, man, and we shall find our place among them. One way or another.

>quiet faith

Then do us all a favor and practice what you preach, faggot. Shut the fuck up, you think "I believe we will!" will get us anywhere?

You're as bad as those "Pray for _____" fags on social media now a days, doing nothing but spouting shit to make you seem a better person when in reality you're doing nothing.

If you cannot help, at least do no harm.

What are you doing to advance the cause, brother?

>trapped in our solar system forever
We already have the technology to spend a very small probe to Alpha Centauri in 20 years. Human beings are stuck here, yeah, but our shit is going to end up all over the place. I can picture something like
>hundreds of years from now
>build a fuckhuge laser out of boredom
>shoot bits of equipment to star
>equipment locates other bits and starts work on a colony (can you tell this is really far in the future)
>I have no idea how fast sperm and eggs can accelerate before they turn to mush, but there's no rush as actual colonists are the last piece of the project
>after a few thousand years humans are all over the place, despite each actual person being trapped in their solar system

>Very long distances just mean you would have to create outposts and have more than one generation involved in the colonization process.

Or you could just use some form of coldsleep, cryo-sleep, or techno hibernation.

You wouldn't?

Step one: crack interstellar travel enough that a couple billion people are living on Mars/the Jovian and Saturnian moons/the asteroid belt/Mercury/aerostat colonies on Venus

Step two: build a fuckhuge flying city ship, perhaps carved out of one of the mid-sized asteroids, hurl it at Alpha Centauri at 20% of the speed of light on a 20 year journey

Step three: there's bound to be rocks there, if not as habitable as Earth, then at least as habitable as Mars and you can colonize them the same way

I'm starting to think we'll never lay eyes on another lovely green and blue oxygenated 1G 15°C paradise but just about any medium sized chilly slab of stone has homesteading potential

Not really, Earth is pretty much the sweetest planet in the known universe.

>Not really, Earth is pretty much the sweetest planet in the known universe.

Meaning that there's only one of them, and all sorts of extinction level event nastiness could wipe out this "Sweetest" planet and everything living on it.

Space habitation and colonization is a way of preventing a single event from destroying all humanity.

I think space stations capable of self propulsion, with habitation for several hundred thousand are the way of the future.

I've already been working on a particular design that is a heavily modified stanford torus.

pic related, although It's not mine.

I figure nuclear power instead of mirrors to gather light, plasma lighting for those essential vitamin d forming UV-B's, and a few other "Proprietary modifications" could enable a stanford torus type colony ship (generation ship) capable of teraforming and colonizing a planet.

>a medium that slows down the speed of light (like water)

no

this.
we won't even want to go to space in 20 years

Mercury is missing from that pic ma nigga

The fuck, you just don't give a shit about Venus, bitch?

Humanity will always want to expand, nothing will prevent this

We will be able to travel to [math]\alpha[/math]-Centauri, the problem is coming back to Earth, and finding that anyone you knew has been long dead.

> I'd prefer focusing on taking care of our own planet. You know, so we'd never have to leave.

Asteroid strikes Earth, Biosphere fucked, Human civilization destroyed...

Gamma ray burst strikes Earth, Biosphere fucked, Human civilization destroyed...

Literally any catastrophic event of planet-killing proportions occurs, Humanity is fucked...

...

You're right user, putting all of our eggs in one basket is an absolutely brilliant idea...

You are truly one of the greatest minds of our age...

>Can't even keep public interest high enough to go to the Moon again
>Worried about leaving the solar system

One step at a time, kid.

If we can't even get the Shuttle program restarted, then there's no chance of us leaving Earth anytime soon.

>shuttle
>good

The shuttle was trash and was only really useful for building orbital stations. Any real interplanetary/lunar flight will require a single-use rocket, or one designed more conventionally.

The point isn't that the Shuttle was cost-effective or the best design.

The point is that the Shuttle actually existed and kept the public imagination burning for space.

Nothing since the Moon-landing did more to keep the public focused on Space and we need that once more.

Water can slow light down
it bends it

come on that's middle logic

Oh shit. Fuckin gottem.

of coarse we'll explore the universe eventually

just only a tiny bit (or not at all) in OUR lifetimes

Heh

>coarse
>of coarse
No, the human race will not last another 100 years with retards like you.

Most of science fiction literature is dedicated to coming up with stupid solutions to that problem. I doubt our science won't come up with something that works.

Yes, it bothers me quite a lot that for now we're stuck on our spec of dust, barred from exploring the infinity that surrounds us.

But you know what bothers me even more? That damn near nobody is even *trying*. It's like we collectively threw our hands up and said, "WELP, it's hard and can't be done on a punny budget so why even bother?"

And worse, some of the few that ARE trying are so mired in risk aversion and porkbelly politics, ensuring that progress towards mastery of space is kept at a sub-glacial pace and making a laughing stock of the entire field. It's maddening.

>punny
*penny

...

>20% of the speed of light
Wew lad