What century do you think humanity will achieve interstellar travel?
-------------------------------------------------------
answers:
roberto say: back in 18 & 37 some US congress bearded guy w pot belly & a funny suit sponsored a motion to close the US patent office,because in his pinhead ego,'we have invented everything it is possible to invent'
top speed of the fastest train back then was????? guess....
37 MPH,,,,,,send michael j fox back in his spacesuit with the walkman blasting congress guy fatso with eddy van halen guitar DBs and riffs.
congressman,,,there will be a vast civil war in the 60s,a hundred years later there will be a war where trains fly at 600 miles an hour,most americans will own small trains that run on rubber wheels,going 70 miles an hour,
YOU SIHHRRRRR,,speak of imPOssibilites! do not be so prepOSTEROUS with me again,else I should summon the capitol guards,,, coffcoffcoff.
the short answer boys,,never say never.
-
Al say: never
-
Little Big Man say: I can't see it ever happening my friend.
-
nineteenthly say: Never. If we ever did that, the chances of being alive at this point in time when the Galaxy has been colonised would be tiny. Suppose there are only a million planets in the Galactic "Empire" each with a population of a million over the whole term of their existence, which is likely to be a dramatic underestimate. It's been estimated that there have been 75 thousand million people who lived up until the point I was born in 1967. Divide a million million by that number and you get 7.5%, which is quite a low probability already. And that assumes really low numbers. Therefore the fact that we are alive right now on a planet which has not achieved interstellar travel more or less guarantees that we never will.
-
Manuel say: Sooner than you think.
-
Ronald 7 say: It may never happen
Then again they once said the World was Flat
Some still do
You might as well try and herd Cats
-
Dallas John say: I cannot fathom a reason that it should ever need to happen. We may send automated probes to other solar systems in the future, but sending people would make no sense since the trip there and back would take so long unless we somehow drastically exceeded the speed of light, which, the last time I checked, isn't possible. At best the probes may find so-called Goldilocks planets and develop human life from scratch on them... and even that seems like extreme science fiction since the only purpose would be ensuring humanity never goes entirely extinct.
It would be more reasonable for us to develop planets and moons within our own solar system. If humanity is still around when the sun goes super nova, then we'd have evolved to a point scientifically where we could certainly prevent it from happening if we so wished.
-
Paula say: That is not able to be predicted.
There is a problem - We have no destination.
We do not know of any earth-like planet apart from our Earth.
We are not like the Robinson family in "Lost In Space".
We can not set out until we confirm the existence of a suitable planet to go to.
I presume we will send a robot probe to likely solar systems - and get on the spot information.
But we are not yet even able to build a robot probe that could go to another star system.
So my guess is interstellar travel won't happen for a thousand years at the very earliest.
(because it will take 1,000 years or more to send a probe)
(ignoring pie in the sky schemes such as the Russian billionaire)
Sadly, it is something for future generations.
-
Starrysky say: In 1976, after one of his lectures, Carl Sagan answered my question about when would people visit another star system. He said never. Only radio messages would be exchanged. But what did he know anyway?
I think it might happen, but at great sacrifice by all the tech savvy nations, and all their brains to send a few hundred colonists to Proxima Centauri B. Could be only a couple hundred years, maybe even sooner if everything goes perfectly.
But when has that happened recently?
-
My Avatar is a Vulcan say: I imagine we might launch our first interstellar probe within the next hundred years. As for people traveling to other stars... maybe another five hundred years unless we develop radically new technology. Ironically, by the time those first waves of astronauts actually reached another solar system, we'd probably of developed vessels so exceedingly faster that there'd already be humans there to greet them.
-
The Awakening say: For civilians, probably within 50-100 years honestly. Why? Because the extraterrestrials that have been visiting us are going to make themselves known and the reverse engineered technology will be made known to the public. But it's already happened, in secret, with reverse engineered extraterrestrial evidence. Multiple highly credible whistleblowers have come forth. The government has a secret space program, and yes humans have likely traveled to other star systems and perhaps even to parallel universes.
-
StewFeed say: Boy, everyday we are traveling to the future.
-
Elizabeth say: I think we will be able to send microprobes to the nearest stars this century.
These little sensor systems could act as a swarm with mesh networks coordinating their operations and allowing them to synchronise data transmission as if they were a larger dish. The mesh might even provide them with a group intelligence to process the data they collect and make group decisions on the mission they should carry out.
They'd be propelled to an appreciable fraction of light speed using sails that ride high powered laser pulses from earth. I'd love it if they overtook the Voyager probes and took a photo of them!
-
Mr. Wizard say: Best estimations, given NASA successes with space exploratory missions concerning long term habitation experiments on both the Moon and Mars---along with discovering more evidence of Earth-class planets out there that ARE showing evident signs of intelligent cohabitation, puts my guess humans achieve interstellar travel likely 700 years from now.
We definitely won't see this within our lifetime--or any preceding human generations, for that matter; we can only forge forward in space exploratory ventures for future generations.
-
JSG say: I don't know.
-
Rob say: Really soon probably next week. At the latest
Mathew Mcconaughey told me
-
goring say: There may not be any need to do that .Traveling long distances is vely vely expansive
-
bubby say: You'd be amazed at what humanity can achieve when the sun starts swelling.
-
quantumclaustrophobe say: Right now, it's too far over the horizon to know... it may never happen, or a breakthrough in research may come in the next few years.
-
say: there is that russian billionaire dude who is investing in a sail-driven ship capable of reaching proxima within getting up to 0.2c - which means that it might ultimately be there in 15-20 years. The problem would be - slowing down.
-
maldb2004 say: never. not possible
-
Das say: Never.
-
John P say: As unmanned space vehicles, probably in the 21st century. As manned flight, extremely unlikely during the 21st century.
-
cosmo say: In 1000 years, our cybernetic successors will be colonizing the Milky Way.
-
Sharon say: 2300s
-
Phillip say: Aproximately the 100th Century.
-
Bill-M say: Never going to happen.
Mars will be the limit for manned space travel.
-
the illuminati say: It will never happen, there would be no point. Even if we had the technology we would need a good reason to use it, the only possible reason is finding a habitable planet. Even if we had Star trek level technology the chances of casually cruising around and finding another Earth are for all practical purposes zero. Even if we detected radio signals from intelligent life it would just be a big buzz for a couple of weeks and we would lose interest. Governments and private enterprise plan up to 20 years ahead not 2000.
-
Chris Ancor say: Well we can go there right now! The trouble is it's far too slow!
-
ReductioAdAstronomicus say: Never. Too late now.
We lost the chance for that when we squandered all the (essentially) free energy from oil on hedonistic consumption. What's left must be diverted to supporting the 8 billion people on the planet who only survive thanks to the remaining fossil fuels.
As the resources run out and the conflicts, genocides and famines begin, our civilization will indeed collapse, maybe in flames. Afterwards our distant descendents will wander through the ruins of our civilization, much as people wandered through the ruins of Rome in the centuries after it collapsed. They will wonder about the ancients who built the present civilization and some may be aware of the dreams of travel in space that were lost through greed and stupidity.
It's sad really when you think what we could have had, and what we got instead.
-
wobafetty say: We're well on our way to understanding ways to do it... well on our way to developing super intelligent robotics...
Put the two together and time no longer matters.
-
I like memes say: Not gonna happen lol
-
oneofmagi@rocketmail.com say: If we can do time travel.
-
drake say: This century with starshot breakthrough
-
say: darpa has perfected the warp engine . they are working to terraform mars right now .
-
Liar say: Tough to say. If you asked a person fifty years ago to describe the future of computers, they'd tell you about calculators reduced to the size of refrigerators. There would be no way for them to predict personal computers, laptops, cell phones, or an age where virtually everything has computing power greater than anything of the 20th century was capable of.
If you ask me, I'd say humanity may never have interstellar travel. Or, at best, we may develop ships that can travel to other stars but they're so slow getting there that it wouldn't be worth it. I cannot fathom the massive leap in technology from what we have right now that would be necessary.
-
ioerr say: maybe in a 100 years. maybe in 500 years
on the other hand it's probably more likely it'll never happen. because even if there is some way to actually do it, there's all kinds of ways our whole high tech civilization could collapse in flames long before it gets around to finding out about that
-