Post #190,345
1/16/05 2:08:33 AM
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Stretch
As I've said before, Von Neumann demonstrated decades ago that spacefaring civilization is (given the current known laws of physics) very likely to wind up consuming virtually all resources in a rapidly expanding sphere.
That is a psychological or political issue, not necessarily a physical one. A civalization may want to explore "deep" more than it wants to expand wide.
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Post #190,919
1/20/05 12:41:30 AM
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Consider this...
Populations of all kinds tend to expand on an exponential curve until they encounter natural limits. That comes from the fact that the rate of population growth is proportionate to the existing population, and not due to some quirk of psychology.
But societies can only expand in a sphere expanding as fast as they can travel, which is guaranteed less than the speed of light.
Therefore desired resource consumption tends to grow exponentially while actual resource availability grows like x cubed. But in that pattern the exponential consumption will eventually exceed available resources. Following that point, we get the situation that I described, ie virtually all resources are consumed in a sphere that expands as rapidly as they can spread. Assuming an advanced civilization, that is going to be pretty rapid (while still being less than the speed of light).
Which is the situation that I described.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #190,921
1/20/05 1:14:48 AM
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Would tend to be highly punctuated, though
As long as we assume slower-than-light travel, we're still measuring "pretty rapid" in celestial time scales.
Within a couple of generations I believe it's possible (not likely) we could have resource extraction from other bodies in our solar system. Once you get beyond the outer reaches of our solar system, you're on a huge plateau as far as expansion goes. Taking the next step, visiting bodies outside the solar system, will be prohibitively expensive in terms of effort, not to mention money.
I don't know that it will ever be feasible until/unless someone comes up with a way to travel at some significant fraction of light speed. Or until conditions here are so horrible there are people willing to commit to a one-way trip that their great-grandchildren may live to see the end of.
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Post #190,964
1/20/05 10:52:58 AM
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It doesn't take the whole species...
...just one group who feels persecuted enough, with the resources to go places.
"Here at Ortillery Command we have at our disposal hundred megawatt laser beams, mach 20 titanium rods and guided thermonuclear bombs. Some people say we think that we're God. We're not God. We just borrowed his 'SMITE' button for our fire control system."
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Post #190,967
1/20/05 11:31:19 AM
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Rules out any space travel by daemon
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"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
-- H. L. Mencken
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Post #190,968
1/20/05 11:33:33 AM
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Pass me a screenwipe.
Peter
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Post #191,065
1/21/05 9:38:15 AM
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That is the appropriate timescale
Travelling at 1% of the speed of light, you can cross the Milky Way in 10 million years.
As for means, have you gotten around to reading Indistinguishable From Magic by Robert L. Forward yet? We've already done feasibility studies on methods of transport that can hit the necessary speeds. Their projection is that there is no point in considering interstellar travel until we have them because our technology will progress faster than the ships - the first generation ship would get there well after a later generation that was launched faster.
The motivation is a little trickier, but I think that Von Neumann nailed it. His suggestion was that we'd invent self-reproducing machines (which are now called Von Neumann machines) that would land in a solar system, settle down somewhere, build a factory, and then start shipping resources back to Earth. With current financial markets people have proven capable of placing a concrete value on something that doesn't pay a dime for a century. It is not to hard to imagine an extension of that which would allow us to finance something based on the hope of generating new resources a few centuries later.
Of course first prototypes would not be as simple as that. But with projected progress (of course all such projections are risky) a surprisingly small set of solar panels on Mercury running an anti-matter production facility would allow for sufficient commercial amounts of anti-matter to make interplanetary travel routine, and interstellar travel to be at a similar price range to Columbus' voyages or current space travel. So I don't think that it is unreasonable for us to send the first few probes.
The bigger barrier, of course, is commercialization across that distance. Both our current barrier of commercial space travel and the second one of commercial interstellar travel. If we can pass those barriers, then we're likely to colonize the galaxy in just a few tens of millions of years.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #191,079
1/21/05 10:56:47 AM
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I can think of a reason
Their projection is that there is no point in considering interstellar travel until we have them because our technology will progress faster than the ships to get some of us off planet in case a disaster happens that wipes us out before our technology progresses far enough. Darrell Spice, Jr. [link|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ArtisticOverpass|Artistic Overpass]\n[link|http://www.spiceware.org/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #191,080
1/21/05 11:00:25 AM
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Today, interplanetary, _TOMORROW_ the stars...
first things first... *grin*
[link|http://forfree.sytes.net|
] Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
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Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #191,089
1/21/05 12:06:02 PM
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Imric already said it
Removing our reliance on Earth preserves us from any likely disaster that looms in the next few millenia.
Removing our reliance on the Sun takes care of any disasters that are likely in the next billion years.
First things first. :-)
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #193,739
2/8/05 10:05:56 PM
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Outsource the glory to a robot?
The motivation is a little trickier, but I think that Von Neumann nailed it. His suggestion was that we'd invent self-reproducing machines (which are now called Von Neumann machines) that would land in a solar system, settle down somewhere, build a factory, and then...
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oop.ismad.com
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Post #193,838
2/9/05 7:32:23 PM
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Why not?
Look through the Solar System.
How many places did we first send a human?
Have we ever been adverse to automating commercial operations in dangerous or difficult to reach environments?
Combine these two with several millenia of progress and Von Neumann machines seem very reasonable indeed.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #193,841
2/9/05 7:43:25 PM
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Plus, read your Vernor Vinge.
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Post #191,045
1/21/05 1:20:15 AM
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Reasonable. Unless
it is not just our species which hovers on the threshold - after a certain period of rapid techno advancement - of going off on a snit ending in seppuku. Luddites + Messages from God? can do that. That scenario is also a part of Atlantis myth variants.
(IIRC this was one of Carl's themes, too.)
Of course, with a species sample of 1 - -
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Post #191,057
1/21/05 7:34:24 AM
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True
And I've presented before the probability argument which suggests that we're overwhemingly likely to fail to become a star-spanning race. (You have no reason to believe that you are a particularly special human being. Therefore it is unlikely for you to be in the first miniscule fraction of humans that have ever, or will ever, live. If we succeed in colonizing space, you'd be in that fraction, which is unlikely. If we fail and collapse, then you're likely somewhere in the middle of the human race - much more reasonable. Therefore we should expect to not beat the odds...)
Von Neumann's argument only applies to the case where we succeed in colonizing space. Which we have no good reason to believe that we'll do.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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