For those interested in the science but not in becoming a scientist...this guy has a series of good videos that are easy to grasp:
BARELY outside our solar system and it's taken almost 50 years to get there! We aren't even a light DAY outside of our Solar System, let alone a light YEAR, let alone the approx 4.2 light YEARS to reach Proxima Centuari. And like I said, that has taken us 50 years from date of launch to get to this point.
Someday possible if humans continue to advance in technology? Yes. Though without faster than light, it would be more like colonists who will usually spend their whole lives on a ship, or perhaps a modified asteroid. In our lifetimes? Very unlikely.
I love how this guy proposes using dark matter as a propellant, while ignoring that nobody knows what dark matter is. Besides, dark matter doesn't appear to react with other matter. Without it being reactive with matter we DO know, why would one ever think it is useful as a propellant?
While I agree with almost everything else you said, it is utter foolishness to speculate about the "remote" future. If we are to survive, as a species, we will have to leave "this rock;" and once we do, it is inevitable, that will ultimately lead us beyond our solar system. We are talking about the distant future (one must believe), even for putting a substantial presence on any extra terrestrial real estate, but our species is overgrowing our planet, even if I am in sympathy with your sentiment, of taking better care of our home. Still, it is vulnerable to potentially catastrophic collisions, from celestial objects with near Earth orbits; we have potential terrestrial threats, as from the eruption of a supervolcano; and of course, eventually, our sun will grow and swallow Earth. I am sure we will find a way, eventually, to make it work (hopefully without the situation becoming as dire, as it's become, with Climate Change). Interestingly, there sometimes seems to be more of a fascination with the potentials of space, than an interest in doing right, by our own environment.
The real question is what we need to do in the next thousand years, or whatever. That would still give us another ~7 billion years before the sun is a problem. So, I agree with what you are saying, but ... The important thing today is to take better care of Earth.
Of course, I agree, and that had been, I'd thought, one obvious point of my post. But I'd been addressing someone who had contended that we would never leave our solar system-- which seems definitely a mistaken notion; that is, we eventually will, unless we don't take care of our planet at all since, as I'd also stated, this reality seems likely to be a thing of the distant future. That said, nor can we go along, with the conception that we have 7 billion years to get around to this. In summation, both things are needs; the more pressing one, clearly, is caring for our current home.
I only commented in that when I've said "distant future" people have tended to miss that the issue is a few BILLION years, not a few thousand years.
Actually, if I had to make a bet eventually we will go extinct like all other previous dominant life on the planet. As a species, humans are amazingly short sighted, and learn absolutely nothing from either their own past, or the past of the planet. And they are highly arrogant, thinking that they can and do control everything. OK, great. They say that someday scientists can detect and move any potential ELE causing space rocks. Whoopie! Yes, no more mass extinctions. Well, other than the fact that is actually not a major cause. Most mass extinctions tend to follow things that happened entirely on the planet with little to no outside influence. Like the multiple mass extinctions caused by microbes releasing poison gas into the atmosphere. Or volcanic events, like that at the Deccan Traps which really killed the dinosaurs. Oh, the image of a giant asteroid smashing into the planet is "sexy", but that is not what put paid to the dinosaurs. Our planet has had many such impact events that barely made a ripple in the biological diversity of the planet. But massive volcanic flows that dump over a million square kilometers of lava on the planet, that will do it almost every time. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidb...extinctions-new-study-claims/?sh=64cd91686fe0 And for some reason, because our civilization has almost entirely risen in an incredibly stable period of time, people seem to think it will never happen again. Just the image of the Yellowstone Caldera going off again gives them the yellow wobblies. Yet, geologically speaking that is nothing. Imagine the impact of the state of Washington once again being covered in miles thick flows of lava (let alone an area the size of France), and most seem to think that can and will never happen. Naw, if I had to place my money on a bet, I would put it on another mass extinction happening far before more than a handful of humans ever leave this rock we call home.
Only if "we the people" can nominate persons for Space Travel My list would nominate Hillary Clinton Not to ignore Maxine Waters nor Nancy Pelosi. Moi William Shatner the original Cap't Kirk and too!
Well, as a former resident of Seattle that lava idea would make me sad! However, WA is one of 50 states and the entire USA is only about 4% of the world population. We do have gaps in our survival thinking, though. We have had multiple assaults by SARS, including COVID. And, we don't even have enough care to protect ourselves from THIS attack, let alone the many that will continue to come - let alone new threats percolating in Africa and Asia as well as the fact that our antibiotics are wearing out. And, those who think we will move to some other planet in the next few thousand years are dreaming. We depend on Earth. A Mars colony would depend on Earth. Some stupendous space ship would depend on Earth. So far, planets we have found that could be livable are WAY far away, requiring super long travel times even at the speed of light.
Only to those waiting on earth for you to return! To the person traveling at such speeds it would be minutes to weeks. That is why it would be possible to travel to the future.
The way it works is that if you find a planet that is 10 light years away, then it will take you 10 years to get there even if you travel at the cosmic speed limit - the speed of light. The closest planet to Earth is Proxima Centauri b which is more than 4 light years away. It's called habitable, because it is at a distance from its star that means liquid water is possible. However, that star is of a time that sporadically emits radiation that would probably sterilize the planet. It's more likely that we would travel at a fraction of the speed of light, and thus need huge supplies, meaning achieving speeds within any significant fraction of the speed of light would seriously problematic. Maybe we could dodge the trip duration problem to nearby exoplanets by taking along some babies to train as astronauts. However, years of zero gravity is likely to result in adults who can't live on Earth.
