Do you beleive in aliens?????

[Zero Revolt]

Ok so maybe it's the percocets talking but like why would the supreme being create all these planets and make only one race to inhabit one of these many planets? Think hard about it.

[nakedgunner]

i belive in aliens i think

[YabaYabaDoobie]

Aliens ARE real. There is no doubt.

[Jaxx]

I believe in aliens, but not a supreme being... go figure
If there's one planet that has life (maybe two if the Mars bacteria thing is true) theres got to be another planet that can support life in such a big universe imo

[Nullific]

Maybe I dreamed it, but I think one or more of Jupiters satellites could support life. Not that it does, or that it is 'intelligent'.

[Kramerica]

Of course there are aliens.
Who do you think invented computers?

[Zero Revolt]

Of course there are aliens.
Who do you think invented computers?

Did'nt know steve jobs was an alien. :confused:

[Mojavpa]

I think there probably is life on other planets, considering how many galaxies there are in the universe, but intelligent life? I dont know. It depends on what you mean by intelligent. Humans are intelligent, but all mammals are quite "intelligent", however they comprise a very small percentage of life on earth. Plus, mammals evolved relatively recently. If scientists do one day discover life on another planet, I would imagine it would be something along the lines of bacteria.

[Nullific]

Apple was one of the most successful, but Steve Jobs didn't push out the Apple 1 until 76, Apple II came in 77. In 1975 the IBM 5100 Portable was out, but too expensive for most people. IBM threw the 'PC' on in 1981 when they introduced the IBM 5150 PC.
Way before this were other computers, back in 1955 there were the GENIACS and even a decade prior computers were used to crack codes during WWII.

This really has nothing to do with anything. I hate computers.

[djaio]

someone who says we are the only life in the universe just doesnt have a good perspective of things.

the universe is big. really big. its so mind-explodingly huge you cant even begin to think about comprehending how little you realize about the sheer fucking size of the thing. think its a long walk to the Arby's downtown? no.

imagine every grain of sand that has ever existed on earth. now imagine each grain of sand is a galaxy. and inside each grain/galaxy is a bajillion miles of empty space. if you can do that, youre well on your way to understanding the size of what we know of the universe.

and if you can imagine that, you already know that the mere thought that we are the only life in the universe is laughable.

im done.

[Zero Revolt]

someone who says we are the only life in the universe just doesnt have a good perspective of things.

the universe is big. really big. its so mind-explodingly huge you cant even begin to think about comprehending how little you realize about the sheer fucking size of the thing. think its a long walk to the Arby's downtown? no.

imagine every grain of sand that has ever existed on earth. now imagine each grain of sand is a galaxy. and inside each grain/galaxy is a bajillion miles of empty space. if you can do that, youre well on your way to understanding the size of what we know of the universe.

and if you can imagine that, you already know that the mere thought that we are the only life in the universe is laughable.

im done.

Yeah.....What he said :confused:

That's what I wanted to say but I'm too fucked up to think clearly at the moment.

Good Job.

[ezjim]

yes

[onwardthroughthefog]

yes

The greatest answer ever given to a question on these boards! And those photos are irreputable proof!!!! Especially the really scary one on the righ!!! :eek:

[Stedric]

There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in the Sahara desert. Chances are at least one of them is orbited by at least one planet capable of sustaining life. Do I believe in beings that traveled light years to give us a rectal screening? No, I think thats a bit of a stretch.

[Hektik]

I do. Me and my friend swear that like 15 years ago we saw a spaceship. It was just us 2. Outside in the backyard at night messin around. And this thing flew past above us, looked like a saucer with lights. we got freeked out and ran in the house. lol good times

[robert42]

If its possible for us to exsist or god to exsist its possible for aliens to exsist.

[Hydrizzle]

Fuck yeah there's aliens!!!! Ive seen them while i was driving! He was on the side of the road fixing a space-flat. Here's a pic of the alien i saw:

[Torog]

Ok so maybe it's the percocets talking but like why would the supreme being create all these planets and make only one race to inhabit one of these many planets? Think hard about it.
Howdy ZR,

I believe that God has many children throughout the universe..what I would like to know is,do those other 'children' acknowledge a Creator ? Or did they become secularist and begin believing that they were in fact,Devine ? Have they turned their backs on God..like many humans have ? Do they practice amoral relativism,as the Left continues to demand that we all engage in ? Have they cast aside their humilty and gratefulness,as some liberals,secularists and aetheists have ? Is there any compelling reason for aliens to be moral and compassionate ?

As a veteran,I view the aliens as a threat,as long as they keep sneaking around and violating US air-space,they should be shot down,if possible..the hardest problem is gittin a target lock on em. If I had been in Phoenix when that big slow-moving,large,triangular craft went over the city,I would have shot at it with a 30-06 or something larger caliber,like a 50 cal. If one of our THEL lasers could git a lock,I'm sure that would freak out the aliens,but I'm thinking that a Tesla weapon or EMP pulse,would probably disrupt their drive system.

I'm also curious as to whether the aliens are gonna interfere with the use of any nuclear weapons,in case we have to hit Iran or NK with some RNEP's..from what I've read,the aliens are opposed to nukes,because they cause alot of sub-space damage,and there are life-forms in sub-space,that are devastated by their use and because nukes cause alot of other damage as well,that we may not even understand yet.

Have a good one !

[Nullific]

Yeah...im sure any aliens that come the thousands of light years to Earth will abruptly change course at the sight of you.

[Lily420]

yep i belive there are other beings in the universe. I doubt that we will have contact with them from earth though.

[nakedgunner]

is it true about there is as many universes as all the sand on the earth. that makes me scared. how do u know this is true ?

[Lily420]

"1 In the name of Allah, the beneficent,
the merciful
2 Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds;"
Al-Fatihah, 1:1-7

[nakedgunner]

i think aliens did make computer there is no way humans could do this with just the stuff we had on our earth. think about it. once we starded out on earth there was nothing but natural things such as rocks trees and stuff like that how could a human think of wat things to put together to make plastic and shit like that

[Nullific]

Stars. Who knows if there are more universes, after all there could be up to twelve dimensions.

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM75BS1VED_extreme_0.html

[nakedgunner]

thats fucking crazy. i also think aliens invitented medice

[Nullific]

A belief held in spite of invalidating evidence is known as a 'delusion'. :rolleyes:

[koshea]

thats fucking crazy. i also think aliens invitented medice

nah, that was the chinese



but i believe in aliens for 2 reasons, coincidentally me and my boy talked about this the other day while smoking, we believe aliens are real, we believe they have been here, and we believe they are completley uninterested, i mean, they look at us how we look at them, they dont wanna take over our planet, they dont wanna do any of that stuff, they found us, checked us out for a while, they know we exist, how we work, everything, i also think they think its comical how we act, our agression, our love, everything, and i asked my boy i said "if you ever came face to face with one would you be scared?" and he said he'd be scared shitless, so then i asked if he thought the alien would be scared and he said "no becuase it would KNOW its superior" which is true, it would KNOW its superiority and wouldnt be scared, but lets say aliens are true and for the past 2000 years people have really been seeing aliens, if theyve been around that long and have had the intelegence to get her, do you think they know english? or any earth languages? i think so, after all theyre supreme life forms if theyve visited


p.s. that same night me and my boy were watchin the sky and we saw a star moving...but it wasnt a shooting star, it was going in all loopy directions, it was bigger than a normal star and had a flashing light pattern, i got a picture of it on my phone as did my boy, if i ever find out how ill transfer it onto the comp and show yall

[Zero Revolt]

Do you all belive in the theroy of Back-Engineering? It is the belief that americans and other countries have recovered alien artifacts and taken them apart and put them back together again to create our own new technology. BTW Torog I always thought that in our first defense againts an alien attack we would implement nukes or Electromagnetic Pulses in order to stop them. Good idea.

[koshea]

what do you think would happen in a war of the worlds type situation, honestly i dont think we could stand a fuckin chance

[Edgar]

I think the chances that we're alone in the universe are very very slim. The universe is just too vast. However, I'm not so sure that they ever came in contact with us.

[Nullific]

Some psycho called into Art Bells radio show on Coast to Coast AM in 1997 when he was doing a show asking current or ex Area 51 employees to call in.
He claimed to be a former employee of Area 51 and warned that "they've infiltrated a lot of aspects of the military establishment, particularly the area 51...the disasters are comming...the government knows about them and theres a lot of safe areas in this world that we could begin moving the population to now...they want those major population centers wiped out so that the few that are left will be more easily controllable."
Art Bell gets a lot of nuts like this, the difference this time was that the satellite transmitting to all the eager listeners lost earth lock and Coast to Coast AM along with about 50 other channels went off air for a duration of about half an hour.
http://www.metatech.org/Art%20Bell%20Area%2051%20Call.mp3

[NextGen]

Some people are freakishly smart. It all started with the lightbulb. With another 400 yrs of computer science There should be someone smart enough to create a life engine total AI.

this is cool
http://www.io2technology.com/dojo/196/v.jsp?p=/home

[Beeblebrox.420]

I don't think the people who believe that we have been visited by members of a civilization from a distant star have a sufficient grasp of the sheer scale of the problems involved with interstellar space travel. The nearest star is about 4.3 light years from us, which means at the speed of light, a journey would take 4.3 years, one way. The problem with this, is that the speed of light is is impossible to actually reach. Einstein realized that when he wrote his theory of Special relativity, wherein he introduces the famous equation, e = mc^2. It was known since Newton's time that moving objects had energy, and that this energy could be calculated with E-sub-k = 1/2mv^2. Einstein went one step further, and realized that since mass and energy were equivalent, that moving objects not only gain energy, but mass, as well. And this mass could be calculated with a rearrangement of e = mc^2: m=e/c^2. He could then plug this into his equation and see that as the the velocity, approaches the speed of light, the kinetic energy, and therefore the mass, would increase exponentially towards infinity. As a result, it becomes a practical impossibility to drive a ship much faster than about 9% of c, or so. We know there are no planets of significant size around Alpha Centauri because we have not detected any gravitational effects, and, in fact the nearest known extrasolar planet is about 15 light years away.

Another problem is a technological one. We have difficulty manufacturing complex systems which can operate continuously for very long periods of time without extensive maintenance and availability of replacement parts. There needs to be a huge exostructure in place to supply parts and labor to keep something even only as complex as a Boeing 737 operating over a period of years. In average service, such a plane needs millions of man-hours of maintenance, several engine overhauls and a few complete engine changes, as well as tens of thousands of replacement parts for all the subsystems necessary to keep the plane flying. On a space ship, you can have none of this. Eventually, you reach a point where so much of your fuel is being used to merely move the store of replacement parts or support an army of maintenance personnel that it becomes practically impossible to take the journey. Very advanced civilizations may be able to partially overcome some of these obstacles, but not by much. The laws of physics apply equally everywhere. Parts don't wear out because they aren't made well, they wear out because of inherent physical limitations. Moving parts undergo friction - it is unavoidable. Microelectronics suffer thermal breakdown over time, because there is no such thing as a static atom or molecule. They move and bounce off each other, breaking some bonds and forming entirely new ones. These things are true for all real-world materials. Even ones we can't imagine yet

A third problem is life support. There are essentially two ways to make such a journey. One is to keep the crew fed and supplied with water (or suitable intake chemistry). This again means more mass and more energy consumed. The more people, the worse the problem becomes. Compounding this issue is the law of entropy. Entropy says essentially that the amount of disorder in the universe will always increase, on average. This becomes even worse in closed systems. Free energy proposals all violate this principle. If you remember the failure of the Biosphere experiment, you'll have a good grasp of the nature of the problem. Again, a sufficiently advanced civilization may be able to extend this beyond our current capabilities, but not by all that much. The law of diminishing returns applies here, too.

The other way is to freeze everyone, or induce some other sort of "suspended animation". This seems to me to be the most likely method to work for journeys to nearby stars, but it's not without its technical challenges. The problem of technology failure over time I mentioned earlier still applies, and the amount of energy needed to accomplish it may even exceed the energy requirements to keep a crew awake and alive - I haven't worked out any numbers. In short, I think a sufficiently-advanced race of intelligent beings might be able to make a 15-20 light year journey successfully, but going significantly further will become increasingly problematic.

I could write a book, but I'll just end it there.

[Euphoric]

of corpse, theres aliens. that ones easy! a supreme creator tho? probably science fiction.
this concludes The Euphoric Hour. Stay tuned next week when i answer the meaning of life and how to tie your shoe laces while smoking a bowl.

[Beeblebrox.420]

As a result, it becomes a practical impossibility to drive a ship much faster than about 9% of c, or so.
Ack! That should read 90%, not 9.

[ermitonto]

I bet there is other life out there. Probably intelligent life too. Considering the sheer size of the universe, the billions upon billions of galaxies, it would be naïve to assume that we are the only planet with life. However I doubt we've been visited by any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. Somehow I think they would make their arrival a little more noticeable to the planet's inhabitants than burning a few crop circles into England and sticking some anal probes in some rednecks.

[Nullific]

Maybe they found a wormhole, or a way to open their own.

[OR Freebird]

Yes. The aliens are coming. Brush up on your Klingon and wrap your head in foil.

But seriously ... I highly doubt were alone in this universe. Just waiting for some definitive proof.

[ermitonto]

i think aliens did make computer there is no way humans could do this with just the stuff we had on our earth. think about it. once we starded out on earth there was nothing but natural things such as rocks trees and stuff like that how could a human think of wat things to put together to make plastic and shit like that
Well, over thousands and thousands of years, through trial and error, people slowly figured out the various properties of materials and their combinations. People invented alchemy, then early chemistry, and now modern molecular and quantum physics. Just like your hypothetical alien race would have to, before they then overcame all of Beeblebrox's problems of interstellar travel, went to Earth, and snuck their inventions into human society.

[unmeg]

Howdy ZR,

I believe that God has many children throughout the universe..what I would like to know is,do those other 'children' acknowledge a Creator ? Or did they become secularist and begin believing that they were in fact,Devine ? Have they turned their backs on God..like many humans have ? Do they practice amoral relativism,as the Left continues to demand that we all engage in ? Have they cast aside their humilty and gratefulness,as some liberals,secularists and aetheists have ? Is there any compelling reason for aliens to be moral and compassionate ?

As a veteran,I view the aliens as a threat,as long as they keep sneaking around and violating US air-space,they should be shot down,if possible..the hardest problem is gittin a target lock on em. If I had been in Phoenix when that big slow-moving,large,triangular craft went over the city,I would have shot at it with a 30-06 or something larger caliber,like a 50 cal. If one of our THEL lasers could git a lock,I'm sure that would freak out the aliens,but I'm thinking that a Tesla weapon or EMP pulse,would probably disrupt their drive system.

I'm also curious as to whether the aliens are gonna interfere with the use of any nuclear weapons,in case we have to hit Iran or NK with some RNEP's..from what I've read,the aliens are opposed to nukes,because they cause alot of sub-space damage,and there are life-forms in sub-space,that are devastated by their use and because nukes cause alot of other damage as well,that we may not even understand yet.

Have a good one !


Damn TOROG that was deep,Thank you for your service no one seem s to thank Vets or God anymore.Me I allways thank the Vets first & God second thank you again TOROG for deffending against all life forms. :cool:

[unmeg]

Ack! That should read 90%, not 9.
How do you feel bout Hawkings worm holes then? just curious :eek:

[Dick Justice]

For questions like these I like the Mark Twain quote:

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

Ten points to the next book dork to name the source.

[koshea]

yeah, i bet the reason we havent succeded in space travel is because we had the wrong dream, our dream was to accually fly from earth to planets and moons, but if we stopped that dream and started to work on wormhole physics and theorys of space time continuom and learn how to create a wormhole and controll it, we could travel via wormhole in a matter of seconds

[Beeblebrox.420]

How do you feel bout Hawkings worm holes then? just curious :eek:
Well, nothing in the current cosmological models suggest that such wormholes are impossible, per se, however, we can be reasonably confident that such things represent a practical impossibility. The problem, again, is one of energy.

Current theory indicates that the energy that would be necessary to open such a wormhole to a practical size would be huge. It would, according to the equations, take the energy equivalent to converting an the mass of an entire star the size of our sun to energy to accomplish this feat. Maybe - maybe - a sufficiently-advanced civilization could concentrate that much energy at once, but surely such a civilization would have colonized the entire galaxy by now. Cosmologists have estimated that a civilization capable of traveling long distances through space to other star systems, at velocities we are currently capable of, could colonize our Milky Way galaxy in around 5 to 50 million years - an insignificant amount of time, on a cosmological scale. The fact that this clearly has not happened puts the question of the existence of such a race in doubt.

[XTC]

Howdy ZR,

I believe that God has many children throughout the universe..what I would like to know is,do those other 'children' acknowledge a Creator ? Or did they become secularist and begin believing that they were in fact,Devine ? Have they turned their backs on God..like many humans have ? Do they practice amoral relativism,as the Left continues to demand that we all engage in ? Have they cast aside their humilty and gratefulness,as some liberals,secularists and aetheists have ? Is there any compelling reason for aliens to be moral and compassionate ?

As a veteran,I view the aliens as a threat,as long as they keep sneaking around and violating US air-space,they should be shot down,if possible..the hardest problem is gittin a target lock on em. If I had been in Phoenix when that big slow-moving,large,triangular craft went over the city,I would have shot at it with a 30-06 or something larger caliber,like a 50 cal. If one of our THEL lasers could git a lock,I'm sure that would freak out the aliens,but I'm thinking that a Tesla weapon or EMP pulse,would probably disrupt their drive system.

I'm also curious as to whether the aliens are gonna interfere with the use of any nuclear weapons,in case we have to hit Iran or NK with some RNEP's..from what I've read,the aliens are opposed to nukes,because they cause alot of sub-space damage,and there are life-forms in sub-space,that are devastated by their use and because nukes cause alot of other damage as well,that we may not even understand yet.

Have a good one !


LoL, Man I had a good laugh after this post Leave it to Torog to think that Aliens are liberals. :D

[Etrain]

Yeah, well try out DMT and then see if you believe in Aliens. :)

[Torog]

Damn TOROG that was deep,Thank you for your service no one seem s to thank Vets or God anymore.Me I allways thank the Vets first & God second thank you again TOROG for deffending against all life forms. :cool:
Howdy unmeg,

Thanx for your kind words :)

Have a good one !

[Torog]

LoL, Man I had a good laugh after this post Leave it to Torog to think that Aliens are liberals. :D
Howdy XTC,

Well..I figured that if modern liberalism is contributing to the decay and destruction of our society,that it would only be logical to wonder whether the same thing happened with alien society. :D

Have a good one !

[Torog]

"1 In the name of Allah, the beneficent,
the merciful
2 Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds;"
Al-Fatihah, 1:1-7
Howdy Lily,

I can't help but wonder,are you muslim ?

Have a good one...

[Nullific]

It doesn't matter Torog, you can't kill her if you don't know where she lives. Sorry.

[koshea]

haha, yeah she is muslum, however i dont see how that quote answers a question presented in this thread

[Don Dimitri]

... they are under the North and South poles..

[ermitonto]

... they are under the North and South poles..
And they're hanging out with the Nazis (http://web.archive.org/web/20020728101655/http://141.163.200.10/~moosie/ufo/txt/misc/080.htm) too.

[NextGen]

I don't think the people who believe that we have been visited by members of a civilization from a distant star have a sufficient grasp of the sheer scale of the problems involved with interstellar space travel. The nearest star is about 4.3 light years from us, which means at the speed of light, a journey would take 4.3 years, one way. The problem with this, is that the speed of light is is impossible to actually reach. Einstein realized that when he wrote his theory of Special relativity, wherein he introduces the famous equation, e = mc^2. It was known since Newton's time that moving objects had energy, and that this energy could be calculated with E-sub-k = 1/2mv^2. Einstein went one step further, and realized that since mass and energy were equivalent, that moving objects not only gain energy, but mass, as well. And this mass could be calculated with a rearrangement of e = mc^2: m=e/c^2. He could then plug this into his equation and see that as the the velocity, approaches the speed of light, the kinetic energy, and therefore the mass, would increase exponentially towards infinity. As a result, it becomes a practical impossibility to drive a ship much faster than about 9% of c, or so. We know there are no planets of significant size around Alpha Centauri because we have not detected any gravitational effects, and, in fact the nearest known extrasolar planet is about 15 light years away.

Another problem is a technological one. We have difficulty manufacturing complex systems which can operate continuously for very long periods of time without extensive maintenance and availability of replacement parts. There needs to be a huge exostructure in place to supply parts and labor to keep something even only as complex as a Boeing 737 operating over a period of years. In average service, such a plane needs millions of man-hours of maintenance, several engine overhauls and a few complete engine changes, as well as tens of thousands of replacement parts for all the subsystems necessary to keep the plane flying. On a space ship, you can have none of this. Eventually, you reach a point where so much of your fuel is being used to merely move the store of replacement parts or support an army of maintenance personnel that it becomes practically impossible to take the journey. Very advanced civilizations may be able to partially overcome some of these obstacles, but not by much. The laws of physics apply equally everywhere. Parts don't wear out because they aren't made well, they wear out because of inherent physical limitations. Moving parts undergo friction - it is unavoidable. Microelectronics suffer thermal breakdown over time, because there is no such thing as a static atom or molecule. They move and bounce off each other, breaking some bonds and forming entirely new ones. These things are true for all real-world materials. Even ones we can't imagine yet

A third problem is life support. There are essentially two ways to make such a journey. One is to keep the crew fed and supplied with water (or suitable intake chemistry). This again means more mass and more energy consumed. The more people, the worse the problem becomes. Compounding this issue is the law of entropy. Entropy says essentially that the amount of disorder in the universe will always increase, on average. This becomes even worse in closed systems. Free energy proposals all violate this principle. If you remember the failure of the Biosphere experiment, you'll have a good grasp of the nature of the problem. Again, a sufficiently advanced civilization may be able to extend this beyond our current capabilities, but not by all that much. The law of diminishing returns applies here, too.

The other way is to freeze everyone, or induce some other sort of "suspended animation". This seems to me to be the most likely method to work for journeys to nearby stars, but it's not without its technical challenges. The problem of technology failure over time I mentioned earlier still applies, and the amount of energy needed to accomplish it may even exceed the energy requirements to keep a crew awake and alive - I haven't worked out any numbers. In short, I think a sufficiently-advanced race of intelligent beings might be able to make a 15-20 light year journey successfully, but going significantly further will become increasingly problematic.

I could write a book, but I'll just end it there.

I see your points and understand everything quite well. Very nice beeble :)

Ok my head is thinking right now.
Think small sleek and very very very powerfull. Like a bullet from a gun but much faster and big enough to hold 1 person. Can we do this? We'll shoot them from outerspace so we get no gravity lag. Make it so the guy wont fry. Think it's possible? I'd say he'd get pretty far.

[Kramerica]

If the aliens are conservatives, they'd already be here to liberate us...
:) :P :O

[Beeblebrox.420]

hink small sleek and very very very powerfull. Like a bullet from a gun but much faster and big enough to hold 1 person. Can we do this? We'll shoot them from outerspace so we get no gravity lag. Make it so the guy wont fry. Think it's possible? I'd say he'd get pretty far.
Well. I can poke quite a few holes in that, but I'll settle for three major ones:

First, there's the matter of life support. No matter how much initial energy you impart to your hypothetical craft, you can never get much faster than about 90% of the speed of light. So, we're talking about a minimum of several years of life support. That means bulky equipment and a power source to run it all. This doesn't even address the issue of food stores, and the inability of closed systems to remain stable over significant time.

Second, in order for the voyage to make any sense, the craft must be able to slow itself to orbit around the star and locate locate potential planets to investigate. In order to do that it needs to burn off the same amount of kinetic energy it was given at launch, and that means large fuel stores, engines and support systems.

Thirdly, once you get that complex, you need multiple personell available for maintenance. Or at the very least, a small army of maintenance robots, and some sort of human crew all of which require resources. Which means more space, more power demands, larger food stores and other engineering headaches we can't even begin to imagine.

Getting out there will require a MASSIVE effort. But I think, one day, if we survive long enough, we'll make it. But not in my lifetime.

[OPM]

For all those into the question of aliens:
http://notweird.com/bugsport/

[4252]

What about the improbability drive in the Heart of Gold? If you could brew a really hot, strong cup of tea......

Maybe intelligent life "as we know it" is the limiting factor. It's not so hard to imagine life evolving up to and beyond our current technological level. And I don't think technology is the limiting factor. Someone asked the question of how we developed from rocks and trees to plastics and semi-conductors, and someone else gave a pretty good answer. The first powered flight, at least by the conventional standards, occurred in 1903; today we're sending vehicles to Mars, and farther. That's a lot of advancement for 100 years or so, who can say what progress will happen in the next 100 or more?

Torogs comments made me realize that in beings like ourselves, sheer bloody mindedness and stupidity would hold them back. They may have the technical potential to reach the stars, like we do, but may not survive to make the trip, being bent on self destruction, as we seem to be. An alien society which has overcome the technical and social challenges might not be interested in meeting us; sort of like the way I avoid the noisy, obnoxious neighbors down the street.

42

[4252]

Sorry Torog, when I re-read the above and realized I wanted to edit it, it was too late. I didn't mean to imply that you're bloody minded and stupid, but your point about their thinking as we do set off a process of considering our own weaknesses as a race. Hope that sounds a little better.

42

[NextGen]

Well. I can poke quite a few holes in that, but I'll settle for three major ones:

First, there's the matter of life support. No matter how much initial energy you impart to your hypothetical craft, you can never get much faster than about 90% of the speed of light. So, we're talking about a minimum of several years of life support. That means bulky equipment and a power source to run it all. This doesn't even address the issue of food stores, and the inability of closed systems to remain stable over significant time.

Second, in order for the voyage to make any sense, the craft must be able to slow itself to orbit around the star and locate locate potential planets to investigate. In order to do that it needs to burn off the same amount of kinetic energy it was given at launch, and that means large fuel stores, engines and support systems.

Thirdly, once you get that complex, you need multiple personell available for maintenance. Or at the very least, a small army of maintenance robots, and some sort of human crew all of which require resources. Which means more space, more power demands, larger food stores and other engineering headaches we can't even begin to imagine.

Getting out there will require a MASSIVE effort. But I think, one day, if we survive long enough, we'll make it. But not in my lifetime.

"I'm thinking" of making a-line of space stations and airports to each of the planets at least. Someday when we mine some of these diffrent planets we'll be able to have some quality materials (strong as titamiun light as feather minerals) or something like black matter fuel.

Someday I guess in due time, at least this is a little more realistic :rolleyes: we might destroy our own planet too. So who knows if we'll ever get there. :(