The article said that reaching another STAR within a human LIFETIME is virtually impossible. That is not really big news. The distances involved are so enormous!

However, that does not mean that we do not have a future in space. We do not need to reach another star within one human lifetime in order to have a future in space. It's essential for good science fiction, but not for a future in space.

I believe our future is in space. I think that within my own lifetime there will be people living on bases on the moon and possibly Mars and some asteroids. Eventually we will learn to use resources in space, and those outposts will become self-sustaining colonies. Once we learn to live in space in a self-sustaining way, our future in space is secured. There so much ROOM and so many RESOURCES in our own solar system that we may never need to leave it in order to survive into the far far distant future. The earth can only support so many peoiple, and we may have already passed that number, but our solar system could support hundreds of times as many people if necessary.

The solar system is vast, and astronomers are finding more and more very large planet-like objects far out beyond the orbit of pluto --- they are distant members of our solar system, not planets around other stars. But this cloud of objects may extend halfway to the nearest stars for all we know. It may be that we eventually reach distant stars not by flying there in one super-fast rocket all in one shot, but by successive colonization of ever more distant objects out into the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud over hundreds or thousands of generations.

Or we may develop super-advanced propulsion systems based on technologies that aren't even theortical yet. We went from sailing ships to nuclear submarines in less than 100 years.

It's fine for scientists to say we don't know how to do something now, or even theoritically how we would accomplish it in the future, but it would be stupid to say we will never know how to do something.

As for the take-care-of-earth versus the go-to-the-stars debate --- it is a false choice. I feel we absolutely must take care of our earth. We have a moral responsibility to ourselves, future generations and the other species that share our planet to preserve this world. But we also have the same moral responsibility to ourselves, future generations and the other species of earth to press forward into the void. We can't leave all our eggs in one basket. We need to take care of the basket, but also find other baskets and hide a few eggs in other places too. The danger to earth is not just that we humans might destroy it (which is about a 50-50 shot), but that a comet or asteroid or other cosmic calamity will destroy it. And we know for certain that eventually the sun will become so hot that it will vaporize this world, so at some point we will have to be a long way away if we want to survive.
dragonrider Reviewed by dragonrider on . NASA: All hope is gone, were f*cked Rocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars Many believe that humanity's destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System. At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused humanity's interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that Rating: 5