Why do people even think humans have a future in space travel when we can never break the speed of light?

Why do people even think humans have a future in space travel when we can never break the speed of light?

Most of the habitable planets are hundreds or thousands of light years away.

Even if you consider sending generation sleeper ships where people just hibernate for hundreds or thousands of years till they reach the destination, there are probably several different things that can go wrong with the ship in the interim such as engine failure, hibernation pod failure, micrometeorite damage, rogue black holes etc.

Just memes alone are not going to cut it.

TFW the planet is already inhabited by humans who had superiod tech and started 500 years after your generation sleeper ships.

You don't understand relativity. Look up time dilation.

It is (theoretically) perfectly possible to travel billions of light years in what would appear to you as one day. You just need to get really close to the speed of light (relatively to your starting point & destination).

this topic has always interested me
if the person in a spaceship going nearly lightspeed sees themself as going faster than lightspeed, who's to say that their perspective is wrong and the perspective of the Earth is right? maybe they really are going faster than lightspeed but only in their own frame of reference

>It is (theoretically) perfectly possible to travel billions of light years in what would appear to you as one day.

this makes no sense. so you are travelling at FTL speeds after all?

>if the person in a spaceship going nearly lightspeed sees themself as going faster than lightspeed
They don't. It's been a while, but I believe it is due to length contraction.

Also, it will appear to YOU as it was just one day. For an observer on earth, or at your destination, it will take billions of years.

time dilation is a problem. I want to travel efficiently in space not get lost in the future.

>we can never break the speed of light?

We don't know everything. C may not actually be a problem.

>get really close to the speed of light

Which can't happen

I agree that it's very unlikely as it takes a lot of energy. But can't? Is there any limitation I don't know about?

I'm just tired of people saying "It's thousands of light years away. And since we can't travel faster than the speed of light we'll have to survive thousands of years in a spaceship in order to reach it".

>can never break the speed of light
Why do we still believe that? We are literally still primitive as fuck

I'm not an expert in this field, but it seems to me that if you're going at 0.9 lightspeed and a stationary planet observes you passing it at about 0.46 lightspeed then it should follow that you observe the planet passing you at 1.73 lightspeed right?

Not true, OP. Space is still a very mysterious Phenomena and We have yet to determine it's intensive or modifiable properties. But I guarantee you it's is possible to manipulate it; and when that day occurs where we find a way, distance and time will be obsolete. and we'll instantaneously be able to exist at another point in an instance of a parsec.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I'm going at 0.9c and a stationary planet (at 0c?) observers me passing it with 0.46c? And where did those 1.73 come from?

Speeds don't just simply add up.
[math]v = \frac {v_1 + v_2} {1 + v_1 v_2 / c^2}[/math]
But for speeds that are not close to the speed of light, [math] v_1 v_2 / c^2[/math] is basically 0 it becomes unnoticeable.

The faster you move, the slower causation can "catch up" to you. Therefore, time moves slower in your reference frame. Because of that, in "absolute time" it may be taking you hundreds of years but in your reference frame it only takes a month or so.

It's not impossible to break "relative" lightspeed like that.

For instance, put two flashlights back to back and turn them on. The photons emitted from them are traveling away from each other at double the speed of light.

>generation sleeper ships where people just hibernate for hundreds or thousands of years

You could send a sleeper ship full of hibernating folk, or you could send a generation ship full of awake folks living in space for generations.

The terms are not interchangeable.

Light ships yo

more than one way to skin an egg in hyper space bro

Nigger, you never see "yourself" moving at any other speed other than zero. You are your reference frame. Thus, you can only see things moving relative TO you.
That's is pretty much the whole idea behind special relativity.