Quote Originally Posted by NextGen
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.
Beeblebrox.420 Reviewed by Beeblebrox.420 on . Do you beleive in aliens????? 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. Rating: 5