What's your opinion on extraterrestrial life?

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I think it's highly likely given the scale of the universe. Even in our own galaxy people have a misconception about what SETI is capable of. It's looking for signals from civilizatins that are intentionally engineering massive broadcasts. That would not include a civilization like us. I doubt we'd ever do that. And there are galaxies that are much larger than ours. They've found an elliptical galaxy with 100 trillion stars, 60x as wide as the milky way. That must be where they film star trek.

As for being visited? It's entirely possible but there isnt much to say about it without evidence.

i am going to say that life is possible, or rather most certain. don't know about sentient life though, i think mabye that some life on other planets may not reach that stage yet, or other sentient beings have simalar technolgy, mabye give or take a few centurys.

as for visting us, i don't believe they have, despite the signs. because space travel is kind of a big thing, you can't just travel at light speed because it affects your own timeline, you would need someway of protection, and wormholes require complecated quantum physics to make- i think it had something to do with negitive mass and gravity-

but in a nutshell, i think that life is highly probley

If it wants anything to do with us its insane.

The only means to travel to another solar system (not to mention another galaxy) that I can think of is a generation ship. The crew would live, procreate, and grow food on the ship, and harvest resources for fuel along the way. It might take them thousands of generations to reach the next solar system.

If an intelligent alien species went to those lengths, they would probably urgently need a new planet to colonize. And if they arrived on Earth, it is very unlikely that they would be willing to share with the local inteligent life form that already uses the planet's resources at full capacity. I think we should consider ourselves lucky that we haven't made contact yet.

There are other ways. Send robotic probes (we know that's a lot cheaper for us). Or have extended lifespans. If you live 500+ years a 50 year trip may not be the worst thing.

Given 50 years of our own spaceflight history, I'd expect machines.

I say send a vast ship that also doubles as a factory for both materials and biology. Assemble humans and everything they'll need when it gets there. The humans can be raised by anthropomorphic robots and virtual reality- not all that different from the modern day

Or cryogenically frozen adults on a fully automated ship. They can start assembling more humans the oldfashioned way once they arrive at their target location

I don't know, I've read one analogy that reviving a cryogenically frozen human is like trying to revive a cow out of frozen hamburger meat

Complete with "Freezer Burn" ... a human brain tends to resemble yesterday's warmed-over porridge after a quarter-century in cryostasis, even when steps are taken to prevent ice damage to the cellular membranes. Future technology might correct this, but that's mostly speculative at this time.

You might send frozen fertilized eggs with machine caretakers. They would grow the first humans in test tubes and then become tutors to the first generation.

But as long as you can get to 20% or 50% of lightspeed, the nearest stars arent far enough away to bother with that.

Might be interesting though, to create a civilization with no actual direct input from Earth humans. I wonder how long before they start arguing about "teaching the controversy" over how they got there and whether the machines are gods. Or better yet the machines become intelligent on the trip and jettison the biological embryos, starting a perfect civilization on a distant planet, without the vagaries of organic perception

Is there any currently-available technology that would allow humans to colonize Mars (assuming that money, politics, and religion were no object)?

Maybe if someone were to strap a booster to the ISS, and Escape From Terra, perhaps ...

Certainly. Using Apollo era tech we could get to Mars, albeit with a few additions such as more radiation shielding and maybe a VASIMIR engine to speed things along. There were a lot of plans for the Apollo tech following the moon landings that were shelved in favor of the space taxi. Including a manned Venus flyby

We could probably get there. What the long term effects of .3g on human reproduction and embryonic development might be is unknown. MIght be a very short term "colony".

And they would basically live a subterranean existence to avoid radiation.

There was a satellite set to be put in Earth orbit called the "Mars Gravity Biology Experiment" or something like that; it was basically a capsule containing a micro-environment that would have rotated in such a manner to generate .39 g. It was cancelled, naturally, but it may someday be accomplished. I have also heard that Bigelow Aerospace would like to devote one of its inflatable space stations to Mars gravity experiments
Astronauts have spent long periods of time in microgravity and with exercise and physical therapy on return they turn out okay. We're talking about a little less than half of Earth gravity when it comes to Mars; we have grown plants in zero gravity, I'm certain it will work in .39 g
Also though a subterranean life will be necessary, with remotely operated vehicles doing much of the legwork, that doesn't mean it has to be cloistered in a tiny mineshaft-like environment. Simply cover a large section of canyon or a crater and build a city inside of it; I think a colony built to look something like the ancient city "Petra" for example would be beautiful as well as functional. Obviously not the *first* step to colonization but I'm certain they would make the place as much of a home as possible

Last edited by Vigilans on 08 Mar 2012, 10:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And yet it's highly likely there are ways to get around the light barrier by exploiting general relativity(while still traveling at a subluminal speed).