Colonization of the solar system

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And if a single fairy tale were true and it were magical in origin, it is logical to assume fairy godmothers exist. Many things become logical, once the correct precepts are chosen.

Unfortunately, I live in the reality-based community; I hope that someday we find a loophole somewhere in the equations regarding relativity, but I'm not going to look for my hope from some bumpkin who claims that aliens crossed hundreds of lightyears of space so they could sexually molest his anus. I just don't see humans as being so irresistibly sexy to other sentients.

Alright, here you go,

Time_spacecraft = Time_(distance/rate) * SQUARE.ROOT( 1 - (velocity/speed.of.light)^2))

not necessarily. If one flies close to the speed of light, then time goes slow in the space vessel compared to what it is on the ground.

ruveyn

Here is the issue though, unless one finds a way around the light barrier, travel to other solar systems is pointless.

While next to no time for you may have passed, it could be centuries for everyone that you knew. They would all be dead and long gone by the time you reached your destination. Heck your species may have forgotten about the mission you were sent on (assuming they still exist) by the time you get back.

Unless there is a way around the light barrier, space travel outside of a solar system just isn't worth it and too dangerous to attempt.

Actually, if you get a spacecraft up to about 96.8% the speed of light, it would make a trip to Alpha Centauri in one year aboard ship. That is one way though, however, a round trip would last about 8 years for an observer on Earth.

Alpha Centari is a system with 3 stars, I don't recall any planets being discovered in that star system. Additionally you can't maintain that speed due to the lack of inertial dampeners a ship with people on board couldn't accelerate fast enough to reach that speed until some point midway through the journey and then they would have to decelerate. Additionally if they ran into any small speck of dust we could see the ship being destroyed (no shielding to protect hull of ship from intersteller debris).

So if any alien culture has visited our planet one time or repeatedly they would need the following: energy based deflector shields, Inertial Dampeners (so inhabitants of ship isn't turned to puddy), Structural Integrity Fields (so ship can survive strain of acceleration and deceleration), and extremely powerful reactor (either a Quantum Singularity based Generator or a matter/antimatter reaction chamber), and some sort of Faster than Light Drive.

The closest star system is 4.3 Lightyears away and I don't think it has planets.

Additionally the longer the time duration of the trip the more hazardous it becomes. A 20 year trip on a ship that has a living crew would be extremely dangerious, then you have to factor in food or if you are using suspended animation you have the crew unable to react if something happens.

I would say if any alien race has visited us, then they probably have a FTL drive which would eliminate many of the dangers as well as bypass the time-dilation effects of traveling near the speed of light.

Much as I agree with many of your points the concept is that an alien race starts from another planetary system. It might be there are space dwelling civilizations that are quite mobile and move at less than FTL speeds amongst the stars. It's as believable as any other conjecture.

Why would you need to jump all the way up to 98% of lightspeed all at once? Gradual acceleration would do just fine - at 1 g acceleration, you'll reach relativistic velocities in less than a year, ship time. Just reverse thrust at the halfway point, so when you get there you're pretty much dead in space relative to your destination...

Given current methods of planetary detection, the failure to find a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri tells us only that if Alpha Centauri A or B has planets, their orbital plane is inclined with respect to our own, and they don't appear to occlude their own sun at any point in their orbits (and that there are no transJovian planets, dwarfing Jupiter in mass, orbiting close to either star to cause a notable wobble in its path). It should be remembered, though, that the effect of either planetary transition or planetarily-induced wobble might be lost in similar effects caused by the fact that the two stars orbit each other, albeit at sufficient distance that each star has its own "life zone". (Proxima Centauri, being a red dwarf orbiting the other two in their effective Oort cloud, can be disregarded for this purpose.)

If we're going to just start shooting spacecraft willy-nilly on the off-chance they'll find a home at their destination, I'd recommend sending a backup mission to Tau Ceti - at 11 ly, it's still close enough for relativistic travel, and it's a single star comparable to our own Sun.

However, I do think that Alpha C was used in above examples merely to illustrate the difficulties in reaching even the nearest star to our own, much less the problems inherent in a trip to, say, Gliese 851g or 47 Virginis.

You keep saying its dangerous. Why do you feel that it is any more dangerous than in-system travel? If something goes wrong you are as screwed as if you were just outside the atmosphere when you are dozens or hundreds of light-years away. Space doesn't get MORE dangerous as you get further away. It stays just as dangerous (very).

People spend a lot longer than 20 years in quite confined circumstances on Earth, say whilst in prison, and the only thing that makes THAT dangerous is the fact its full of criminals. Its probably a fair guess that any long range space mission would be crewed by people psychologically profiled to be suitable for spending a long time in limited areas, who aren't criminals or nut-jobs. Various Navies seem to do quite well with very long trips in confined areas, so maybe long range space crew should be drawn from them rather than Air Force officers for the short term stuff?

As for suspended animation crews not being able to react to problems: does that not rather depend on a) how long it takes to get OUT of Sus-An, whether its a problem that can be solved by the crew, and c) whether you thought to keep the crew on rotation. Some in, some out. Seems like a sensible way to make the trip safer and more pleasant.

If the earth were going to be hit by a humongous asteroid or comet sufficient to destroy life, then finding another place to live might be worth a try.

ruveyn

Aside from quite a few idiotic uninformed jerks or a couple of scientists paid by the oil companies there is no doubt that the disasters of global warming are real and impending and yet you cannot persuade the major controllers of power to face the situation and act energetically to provide for the inexorable disasters. I have heard that funding for the watch on dangerous astral bodies that may strike and destroy life on Earth has been cut down or eliminated. Human society has all the intellect of a nest of beetles whatever its rare high IQs and the likelihood of a sector providing the massive funding for establishing some sort of extraterrestrial colony that could be self sustaining is just about zero. Humans, whatever their hubris over superiority are as dumb as the dinosaurs and they lasted for over a hundred million years. Humans will be lucky to make it to three million the way they are behaving.

The longer the mission the more likely something onboard the spacecraft will break down or cease to function, what if that happens to be a critical system that can't be replaced. Without a part back home, you'd essentially be in deep trouble.

To contemplate interplanetary colonization, not to speak of interstellar adventures, humanity has to get comfortable in space. It is nowhere near that at the moment. An interplanetary colony would surely benefit from the construction in Earth orbit of a huge space habitat complete with self sustaining food supplies and manufacturing capability. Once that is worked out and functions in Earth orbit for a decade or so it can be shifted at a comfortable velocity into an orbit around a possible habitable planet and will always be locally available if the planetary attempt requires rescue and evacuation. A much larger version of that such as depicted in Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" could provide a possible interstellar effort.

That is why we have airlocks on space wessles.

ruveyn

Same applies in near earth orbit. Multiple redundancy is designed for this. There is more than one door on a Space-shuttle, for example.

Well since they are retiring the Space Shuttle, I'm not sure if they will still be able to do this in the advent of an emergency, but in the advent of damage that is severe enough a shuttle can't re-enter safely a shuttle has enough reserves for the crew to survive long enough for another shuttle to be launched or a Russian Spacecraft to be scrambled.

Some things can't be fixed in a space walk because you may not have what is needed to fix it. Say something happened to our mars mission while it was in Martian Orbit odds are they may not be able to survive long enough to get to them.