Newtonian ships or not?.

[JurijD]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Right. That's what I was trying to say in my Last post. I am in no way trying to say we will colonize the galaxy in 4,000, 15,000 or even a million years. I was just trying to put into numbers that even at sublight speeds it should be possible in an extremely short amount of time as compared to the life of the galaxy. The fact that despite this teh galaxy is not colonized doesn't prove anything, but it certainly gives weight to the probability that there are huge factors making interstellar travel hard. Factors beyond just needing some faster propulsion system.

Yes yes, I agree. It is VERY curious that we have not been overrun by aliens by now. I´ve been wondering about this simple fact for some time now.

I don´t think that we can explain it away with "technical problems" because one way or the other we can colonize other worlds its just a matter of time for the right tech to develop.

To be honest I really cannot think of a good reason why we haven´t been visited by aliens before... EXCEPT if I dip into the border-line things some others have come up with:

Maybe we were visited eons ago but our planet was already populated so they moved on... say they have a sort of "prime directive": don´t mess with other life forms until they develop warp drive or a VCR that lets you set the clock easily or whatever..

In any case I wouldn´t be at all surprised if we find out the galaxy is full of colonized worlds... and in reverse I wouldn´t be surprised if we find is scaresly populated.

[Baron Munchausen]

Geo:

Yes, now that you have rammed it into the thread we are talking conspiracy theories. I however did not intend to referance any conspiracy theories or any political subjects at all. I am talking about the problem of why we aren't over-run with aliens if intelligent life is possible on other planets. The publicly know facts of science plus the rumor that the Moon missions were cancelled for more than budgetary reasons allow for a speculation about space flight being more difficult than we currently believe. Not about political conspiracies. You had to find political conspiracy theories in it. If you are obsessed with conspiracy theories (and insisting on debunking them is just another way of being obsessed with them) that is your problem, not mine.

[ March 28, 2004, 18:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[PvK]

Roughly 100,000 light years to travel across, colonizing (actually we're about 30,000 LY inside, but there will be slowing factors such as having to branch the colonizers to multiple planets, regions where there are directions with no direct hop of sufficient shortness, systems without usable planets, etc.), so say 100,000 LY to cross. With the assumption we can achieve 10% the speed of light effective travel speed, eventually, and with the IMO huge assumption that we can set off for a system and expect to find a planet which we'll be able to land on, survive there, settle, build a usable infrastructure on, and be ready to send out another identical ship within 100 years...

200 years per 10 LY covered. 100,000 LY / 10 LY / 200 Years = 10,000 * 200 years = 2 million years.

So, yes not a lot in astronomical time. I just wanted to clear up the idea from a human perspective, that we could wrap this puppy up in 4000 years. Note too it'll take another 70,000 years to send the virtual postcard back to Earth with the words "game over". Also, expect lots of break-away republics, lack of willing volunteers, and so on to put some cramps on steady adherence to the master plan for 2 million years straight.

Continue that line of thought, and notice that the more difficult assumption is probably that people really want to go trying to set up another planet in every system in the galaxy. What is the chance that a planet full of humans with space flight tech might get envious or mean and stop playing nice, and/or even become hostile? After some thousands of years at least, colonies which actually found useful planets (part of the assumptions above) would develop their own cultural identity, and not just be possessions of Earth.

So even if we manage to colonize the whole galaxy in 2 million years, the result is a populated galaxy with perhaps billions of potentially independent self-interested governments in it.

In SE4, it usually makes perfect sense to colonize absolutely everything. In the real universe, perhaps not everyone wants to do that.

Therefore, aliens advanced enough to be able to travel around the galaxy, may also be advanced enough to have no desire to go conquering and disturbing natives everywhere. Some kids and entomologists like to play with ant hives they discover, but most ant hives get ignored by humans unless they happen to be in an inconvenient place.

If an alien race were based on my own personality, and had existed for a few million years, I think I'd send exploration ships out to see what's in the quadrant, carefully and humbly at first in case there was something dangerous or more advanced out there. First we'd focus on sustaining and making nice the homeworld, and then play on the home system planets a bit, and perhaps eventually set up communities on some planets that were empty but very similar and pleasant compared to the homeworld, if any. But probably they'd be limited to a very manageable number, rather than spreading like an inconsiderate plague everywhere. An exploration/science process might involve spreading out over the galaxy over the course of a few million years, but it would be done cautiously and without colonizing everywhere. Knowledge of the galaxy is perhaps desirable, but I wouldn't want to over-procreate and thus create a huge number of communities with the potential for lots of unhappiness. Discovering a planet like Earth with 21st Century humans on it, I'd be inclined to allow scholars to study them but wouldn't make contact, since a preliminary psych study would no doubt show that humans are still very uncouth, selfish, violent, and probably wouldn't react in a desirable way to news that they were way behind the science of an alien race. It might depend though on the number of such planets in the galaxy. Some or all would probably eventually be talked to and helped out, once it was certain they had achieved a place where they wouldn't be harmed or otherwise act negatively.

PvK

[geoschmo]

That's a very positive scenario Pvk. There is no reason not to believe it, and I do hope for it to be true.

My own suspicions are a little more pessimistic. Not quite as negative as Atrocities though.

I think we are going to find it's exceedingly difficult to travel between the stars. I do have some hope that we will someday make contact with other intelligent races by radio, or some similer means of long distance communication. I could easily see a vast communication network of intelligent races sharing information about themselves. Of course even at light speed it would be slow, but the mere fact someone is out there talking to you would be fascinating.

Over time you could get enough information about one another to take "virtual" trips to one anothers planets.

[JurijD]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
I think we are going to find it's exceedingly difficult to travel between the stars. I do have some hope that we will someday make contact with other intelligent races by radio, or some similer means of long distance communication. I could easily see a vast communication network of intelligent races sharing information about themselves. Of course even at light speed it would be slow, but the mere fact someone is out there talking to you would be fascinating.

Over time you could get enough information about one another to take "virtual" trips to one anothers planets.

I hope you see what you are doing here you are exchanging one fantasy (the idea that we can travel among the stars using space ships)- an idea you find improbable, with another fantasy: namely that we'll be able to decrypt ALIEN Languages withouth ever making physical contact with the aliens. I don't know why you think that is more probable that the first "fantasy". For me its very unlikely that we'll be able to make any sense of some gobbly gook we get over an antenna... if we'l even be able to identify it when/if it comes.

don't you see what we are doing here... its like 2 pesant from the Dark ages would start arguing weather one could build "ships" that would fly like the birds.

Pesant1: I think we will find it exeedingly difficult and since it would require enormous energy to sustain such ships in flight even if we could do it it wouln't be practical in any way. And besides it would be very dangeus to fly. No... I think people will never go far from their place of birth, why should they... if we want to talk to other people on other continets we can just send them a mail. Sure it takes a while to get there but its better than nothing.

Pesant2: I think its gonna be inevitable that we develop such flying ships... the same as our ancestors developed the wheel and then the ship. Its just another step.

Pesant1: no no... listen why would you want to be flying around and making new "countries" all over the place?? they'll just end up goint to war with one another.

Pesant2: Nah you're crazy old man, I wonder why I even bother talking to you!

Pesant1: Your mamma!

Pesant2: Now why did you have to bring my mummy into this. Now'll have to hurt you...

... it got ugly then

So my point is that we don't know what the hell we are talking about. We just don't have any real experiance in how difficult or how easy space flight is. Its silly to argue if its possible or not.

[ March 28, 2004, 20:52: Message edited by: JurijD ]

[geoschmo]

I don't really consider this an argument. It's a discussion. Perhaps a debate at some points of disagrement, but that's kind of the reason for having a public forum, to discuss one anothers opinions, see things from a different perspective, and learn new things.

Your point we don't really know any of this stuff that we are talking about is kind of redundant. I think it's pretty clear from my comments that I don't diasgree with this. I'm not sure if you haven't read what I said, or if I wasn't clear. Or it could just be that you are restating it in your own words. That's fine too. It's all part of the discussion.

As far as comunication between alien cultures being a fantasy. I totally disagree. Difficult? Of course. But not impossible. It's not likely to be something we crack in a manner of weeks like the book Contact or anything. But the book does have a pretty good idea about one way we could possibly learn to communicate with each other through mathematics. Even if the time frames are unrealistic. Probably it will take generations of work on both ends before we get beyond anything more complicated then just being aware of each others presence.

[Baron Munchausen]

Of course the underlying assumption(s) to all of this speculation is that any 'intelligent' race would want to expand across the cosmos. And further that civilizations would remain stable enough to do so. Why do we assume that? Maybe most races are content to remain on the planet where they evolved -- or at least in the same star system -- and solve all of the riddles of mathematics and philosophy. Or play video games...

Or maybe they are all like us and too busy competing with and killing each other to cooperate long enough to even get out of their own atmosphere...