The Human Race 'Must Colonise Space Or Face Extinction'

For the human race to escape the planet it will only take one man and one woman.

Ideally it would be 32 men and 32 women to avoid genetic problems.

Why would we need to evacuate the entire planet in order to preserve the human race? Have you not seen The day the earth stood still?

And?


I certainly wouldnt put you in charge of it.
 
Complex physics, mechanics and electronics are drone work?

fixing, maintinence, etc are not necessarly comprised of complex physics.

No we use humans for this because it's the whole point (than and anything smart enough to do it would be our master not our co worker) of space exploration.

technically we send unmanned drones into space as it is, because they 'live' longer than a human would do in the same conditions.
 
Wasn't there a report a couple of years a go saying that by mid 2030 we would need another planet for resources?
 

wiki said:
Potential future applications
VASIMR magnetic field

VASIMR is not suitable to launch payloads from the surface of the Earth due to its low thrust to weight ratio

You can't launch tens of thousands of tons with it though, although it may be more efficient for long range spaceflight. For an interstellar ship using that you would require huge nuclear power plants which would be very heavy.

Technological costs have always been reducing due to experience with materials and development speed of computers.

The one thing that has not got significantly cheaper (even accounting for inflation) is the weight per cost of putting mass into space. We need a solution to this. Space elevators probably will never work and scramjet tech is taking forever, orion would likely be the fastest route for making it cheap to put big things into space.
 
You can't launch tens of thousands of tons with it though, although it may be more efficient for long range spaceflight. For an interstellar ship using that you would require huge nuclear power plants which would be very heavy.

Technological costs have always been reducing due to experience with materials and development speed of computers.

The one thing that has not got significantly cheaper (even accounting for inflation) is the weight per cost of putting mass into space. We need a solution to this. Space elevators probably will never work and scramjet tech is taking forever, orion would likely be the fastest route for making it cheap to put big things into space.

Yes, I was thinking more from the perspective of the mission vehicle being constructed in space, in a 'Star Trek' style.
 
You mean millions of more years on Earth? At the current technological boom rate humans will be casually planet travelling way sooner.

Current technological boom rates? The technological boom rates are only along certain trajectories. Miniaturisation really. This is key - the main technologies that are expanding are those that respond to miniturisation. That's not space flight.

There isn't a technological boom rate in space travel, less manned space flight. The manned space flight trajectory is negative. At this rates there won't be a human in space within a few decades. The ISS will fall out of the sky before a replacement goes up. Every man who walked on the Moon will be dead before anyone else does...
 
Yes, I was thinking more from the perspective of the mission vehicle being constructed in space, in a 'Star Trek' style.

How do you get space tugs big enough to put asteroids into orbit around the Earth though? And then how do you get the space production industry started without lifting heavy machinery from the Earth? It would bankrupt the Earth to do it with conventional rockets.
 
The manned space flight trajectory is negative.s...

That's not true at all. There is still a lot manned space flights and even if there isn't doesn't mean the technology is not being researched and developed. There is a lot of stuff going into manned missions to mars.

First we have to actually leave our planets atmosphere. How about the first task is to get a robot to the moon.
:rolleyes:
 
An interesting read here.

Stephen Hawking has a point, but I am inclined to take a pessimistic view. Switch the TV on and look at what's going on around the World, how we treat each other. I think we are going to fail as a Race, either by killing ourselves, or by some other means (asteroid impact or similar). We don't have the technology to escape the planet (as an entire Race) either, and I don't think we will - it's just not practical.

If we all stopped fighting and put all our resources into curing disease, colonising space etc. there is nothing we could not achieve. Just look at how well the US does with all the states under one government. Unless that ever happens and we all stay split up into competing countries, as a race we are doomed.
 
i think you could put all of the money in the world into curing disease and still not cure all diseases.. and then what about hunger and alternative energies etc?

Unless that ever happens and we all stay split up into competing countries, as a race we are doomed.

well technically it was the 'space race' due to competition of the US and Soviets that forced the development of the technolgy to get us into space and to the moon really...

so history does actually disagree with your proposal and assumption...

and well i guess the germans were going to do it too, not to compete but because they were brutal in their determination to own everything. greed is a great business driver.

collaboration = too many politics.
 
I think this puts it into perspective....

"The nearest known star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.23 light-years away. The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet sent, Voyager 1, has covered 1/600th of a light-year in 30 years and is currently moving at 1/18,000th the speed of light. At this rate, a journey to Proxima Centauri would take 72,000 years."
 
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