We had that one solved decades ago. Centrifugal motion is king. Hell, having a large rotating mass on board can actually help when navigating near gravity fields.OhJohnNo said:
A Warp Drive Is Within Our Reach, Apparently.
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It would if one had a rather shallow and simplistic view of human history. Believe it or not people don't just do shit for the hell of it. Wars and conflict are always fought over either material or ideological gain. Consider this: Even if we suddenly had to ability to harvest and transport resources from thousands of lightyears away, why exactly would we not go to the billions of other uninhabited planets very probably filled with the same resource? What exactly would we be angry enough at the aliens for that we would kill them? The lulz?Eclectic Dreck said:
Usually, people go to war in such an instance because they think something poses a threat to them. If we were the ones to initiate first contact, why would we be afraid of them? It's not like they could do anything to us.thaluikhain said:
Even in cases of race being a "motive" for war, there is always material or ideological gain. The beings could be the ugliest things in existence in our eyes, but would anyone honestly travel that far away and expend massive amounts of resources on doing various injustices to said extra terrestrials "just because?"
You know C.S. Lewis wrote an essay that touched on this. I'll leave his quote here, because it just about sums up my opinion.
"It sets one dreaming to interchange thoughts with beings whose thinking had an organic background wholly different from ours (other senses, other appetites), to be unenviously humbled by intellects possibly superior to our own yet able for that very reason to descend to our level, to descend lovingly ourselves if we met innocent and childlike creatures who could never be as strong or as clever as we, to exchange with the inhabitants of other worlds that especially keen and rich affection which exists between unlikes; it is a glorious dream. But make no mistake. It is a dream. We are fallen.
We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. Civilized man murders, enslaves, cheats, and corrupts savage man. Even inanimate nature he turns into dust bowls and slag-heaps. There are individuals who don't. But they are not the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassador to new worlds will be the needy and greedy adventurer or the ruthless technical expert. They will do as their kind has always done. What that will be if they meet things weaker than themselves, the black man and the red man can tell. If they meet things stronger, they will be, very properly, destroyed."
You can read the entire essay here, it's a good read.
scientificintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/04/religion-and-rocketry-by-cs-lewis.html/
"It sets one dreaming to interchange thoughts with beings whose thinking had an organic background wholly different from ours (other senses, other appetites), to be unenviously humbled by intellects possibly superior to our own yet able for that very reason to descend to our level, to descend lovingly ourselves if we met innocent and childlike creatures who could never be as strong or as clever as we, to exchange with the inhabitants of other worlds that especially keen and rich affection which exists between unlikes; it is a glorious dream. But make no mistake. It is a dream. We are fallen.
We know what our race does to strangers. Man destroys or enslaves every species he can. Civilized man murders, enslaves, cheats, and corrupts savage man. Even inanimate nature he turns into dust bowls and slag-heaps. There are individuals who don't. But they are not the sort who are likely to be our pioneers in space. Our ambassador to new worlds will be the needy and greedy adventurer or the ruthless technical expert. They will do as their kind has always done. What that will be if they meet things weaker than themselves, the black man and the red man can tell. If they meet things stronger, they will be, very properly, destroyed."
You can read the entire essay here, it's a good read.
scientificintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/04/religion-and-rocketry-by-cs-lewis.html/
Interesting how this "ring of exotic matter" that supposedly warps spacetime isn't clearly defined. How large is it? How massive is it? What does "exotic" mean? Degenerate neutron matter? Antimatter? Dark matter? Matter with negative mass? What mechanism does it use to tilt spacetime if not through sheer mass or energy? I'm sure they gave it more thought than just "we surround the ship in MAGIC", just that the article doesn't provide any more info than that.
And I agree that this doesn't make FTL travel "within our reach." It makes it theoretically viable and maybe even practical, but I'm not holding my breath.
EDIT: I also wouldn't count on meeting aliens with this warp drive. Colonizing nearby star systems - sure - but even travelling at 10c, it would take you six months to get to Alpha Centauri. That's actually awesome, but it doesn't allow space-opera-like colonization and expansion. You'd still need centuries to comb even the Local Bubble.
And I agree that this doesn't make FTL travel "within our reach." It makes it theoretically viable and maybe even practical, but I'm not holding my breath.
EDIT: I also wouldn't count on meeting aliens with this warp drive. Colonizing nearby star systems - sure - but even travelling at 10c, it would take you six months to get to Alpha Centauri. That's actually awesome, but it doesn't allow space-opera-like colonization and expansion. You'd still need centuries to comb even the Local Bubble.
Once it became feasible to do so, quite possibly.Waffle_Man said:
Sure, they'd be no material gain as such, but what if it was a vote winner? What if it was politically useful to bomb a country full of brown people, who just happened not to be human and live on a different planet?
We'll never have any sort of meaningful contact with an alien species. There are sciientists at the moment who are trying their best to communicate with terestrial life forms and are having no luck. Just how much meaningful information can you pass back and forth between a man and a blade of grass? That example just shows a difference of a few point of sentience quota; chances are that we will find life forms with a much greater degree of seperation than between man and plant. How are we supposed to communicate with an entity that converses purely in fluxtuation in space/time or through gamma ray bursts that exceed our measurable bandwith. I doubt that we'd even be able to tell we were dealing with anything sentient, that is if we could even detect them at all.Templarixx said:
Okay, guys, calm down. I'm not talking to the people who are genuinely excited about this, I'm talking to everyone who's saying we'll never get off this accursed rock, and if we do, we'll enslave or kill every last one of the xenos. If anything can make us a better species and stop being dicks to each other on such a frequent basis, it's another sentient species. If they're less advanced than us, I imagine we have learned our lesson from the Age of Imperialism (and half of the sci-fi genre). If they're more advanced, I won't automatically assume they're out to murder or enslave us, because that's what Hollywood expects to happen, and Hollywood is the polar opposite of the Oracle of Delphi when it comes to predicting the future. For everyone claiming it'll cost too much and exploration is impossible unless we unite as a planet, keep in mind that technology improves every day and the resource requirements for existing gadgets and theories go down along with time. Even if we aren't united, exploration will not be impossible. It's a huge cliche, but anything we put our minds to, we can do. Freakin' men on the moon.
Considering the universe is infinitely big, I doubt we'd come into contact with another alien race for a very, very long time, which means at least one of our races' shit will be settled by then.
Considering the universe is infinitely big, I doubt we'd come into contact with another alien race for a very, very long time, which means at least one of our races' shit will be settled by then.
well, within ~13000 years we developed from highly advanced omnivorous herd animals with simple technology only one step ahead from other primates and a simbiotic relationship with certain wolfes to the alpha-predators of terra which are so adapt at killing that we wipe out other species without even noticing it in some cases.
if ftl-travel is possible and we would be "the first" (yay, babylon 5 ^_^) to develop it, we may very well become the alpha-predators of the milky way within the next 1k - 1.5k years, and it would be a good thing from the human perspective.
(also, at this point, the term "human" would be a thing of the past; at this point the term "integrated terran intelligence" would be more fitting, because we would have found a way to biotechnologically engineer our own further evolution while developing AI, with which we probably would communicate with some kind of direct brain input, perhaps even the ability to transfer the intellectual abilities of a given individual from a biological brain to an artificial one [which also would lessen the impact of the huge time necessary for interstellar travel])
let me elaborate why i think it would be a good thing: to even get to the point were we would be able to colonize the stars within the next 100k lightyears it would be necessary to be able to tap into the resources of the whole sol-system, just to have enough exotic elements and rare metals.
if you extrapolate the growth of the human population at its current rate, a large amount of that will be dedicated just to meet the requirements of the growing population living a western or chineese lifestyle.
if you now think one step further to ~15-20 planets inhabited by terrans, they would be become really uneasy with non-terran-intelligence trying to develop ftl at their doorstep, using resources terrans could "put to better use".
most likely an automated explorer would "jump" into a system, discover a species below its own technological level, determine if it would be able to reach a comparable level, and if this is the case, order 5-10 AI-controlled drone-carrier-ships armed with railguns, massdrivers and ECM/ECCM from the next base to wipe them out before they could become competitors for resources (keep in mind that wiping out species is what we do casually since the last 10k years, for instance horses in north america by the first indians, wolfes and vultures in most of middle and western europe during the dark age and renaissance, the dodo by european settlers and so forth).
we certainly would not try to conquer them, they only would adapt and resist, unified through a common enemy, fighting a guerilla war to drive us out, looting our destroyed drones and reverse-engineering them to beat us with our own tech.
however, this will probably not happen because religious fanatics which want to life in the bronze age under a cross or a halfmoon or "eco fanatics" which want us to live like bovines, hares and sheep (while disregarding that extinction is a part of evolution if a species can not adapt and some species like rats, mice, dogs, cats, bovines, wheat, apples,... profit from humans) will put a stop to this if rampaging suicide-capitalists dont do it.
if ftl-travel is possible and we would be "the first" (yay, babylon 5 ^_^) to develop it, we may very well become the alpha-predators of the milky way within the next 1k - 1.5k years, and it would be a good thing from the human perspective.
(also, at this point, the term "human" would be a thing of the past; at this point the term "integrated terran intelligence" would be more fitting, because we would have found a way to biotechnologically engineer our own further evolution while developing AI, with which we probably would communicate with some kind of direct brain input, perhaps even the ability to transfer the intellectual abilities of a given individual from a biological brain to an artificial one [which also would lessen the impact of the huge time necessary for interstellar travel])
let me elaborate why i think it would be a good thing: to even get to the point were we would be able to colonize the stars within the next 100k lightyears it would be necessary to be able to tap into the resources of the whole sol-system, just to have enough exotic elements and rare metals.
if you extrapolate the growth of the human population at its current rate, a large amount of that will be dedicated just to meet the requirements of the growing population living a western or chineese lifestyle.
if you now think one step further to ~15-20 planets inhabited by terrans, they would be become really uneasy with non-terran-intelligence trying to develop ftl at their doorstep, using resources terrans could "put to better use".
most likely an automated explorer would "jump" into a system, discover a species below its own technological level, determine if it would be able to reach a comparable level, and if this is the case, order 5-10 AI-controlled drone-carrier-ships armed with railguns, massdrivers and ECM/ECCM from the next base to wipe them out before they could become competitors for resources (keep in mind that wiping out species is what we do casually since the last 10k years, for instance horses in north america by the first indians, wolfes and vultures in most of middle and western europe during the dark age and renaissance, the dodo by european settlers and so forth).
we certainly would not try to conquer them, they only would adapt and resist, unified through a common enemy, fighting a guerilla war to drive us out, looting our destroyed drones and reverse-engineering them to beat us with our own tech.
however, this will probably not happen because religious fanatics which want to life in the bronze age under a cross or a halfmoon or "eco fanatics" which want us to live like bovines, hares and sheep (while disregarding that extinction is a part of evolution if a species can not adapt and some species like rats, mice, dogs, cats, bovines, wheat, apples,... profit from humans) will put a stop to this if rampaging suicide-capitalists dont do it.
I am skeptical about that. Simply because i dont believe that humans are that special.Daystar Clarion said:I think I read somewhere that if the age of the universe was measured on a clock, we would currently be 2 minutes past midnight on the first day.
What that means, is that the universe is still very young, and that humanity may very well be the first advanced species.
You see all this sci-fi stuff, well it turns out that humanity may be the Vulcans, the Asari. We are the ancient race that discovers younger civilisations
I never implied slavery personally; I said tyranny. It's about resources. People (or living things in general) are a resource with a relatively high operating expense. People are nothing if not pragmatic when it comes to exploitation and thus you are at least partially correct - if the final balance shows it is cheaper to use a robot, people will use robots for a task.ZexionSephiroth said:
I could make a lengthy argument supposing much as a reason why even in the distant future slavery is a possibility but that was never my point. If there were technologically inferior aliens between the human race and something useful, we would find plenty of excuses to move in and take it using various means of oppression. From doing it to "help the poor savages" (perhaps even if born from honesty) to xenophobia (we don't even like things that are almost entirely identical to us - I hardly think we'll be terribly opposed to brutal slaughter of sentient slime molds) to simple pragmatism (they're in the way of something we want)
You are, in fact, quite correct - people are not prone to violence for the sake of violence. Except that we are prone to violence for the sake of sport (hunting, various sports), entertainment (gladiatorial matches, boxing and other martial arts, fictionalized violence in all media), and have even developed a number of schools of thought that suppose violence (the expression of power in the purest form) itself is both means and end (nihilism is a notable example).Waffle_Man said:
What's more, even if you don't look at the various reasons why people indulge in their darker side for simple amusement, you need not look far to find reasons why we'd be perfectly comfortable inflicting violence on something that isn't human. You point to it yourself - there is something to be gained. Other humans have a tremendous advantage when it comes potentially facing a human adversary - we're all pretty much alike. This slim protection is often the only thing that ends violence and tyranny in the end. An alien is unlikely to closely resemble people and will enjoy no such protection. Hell, it wouldn't take much to assume there would be plenty that would advocate slaughter simply because they're not people and yet they are intelligent - a rather blasphemous supposition to billions even today.
I'm pretty sure that those characteristics will make us adorable to the aliens.Twilight_guy said:
OT: Rather than enslave and pillage them, we might simply keep an "inferior" species as pets (or does that count as slavery?). Then again, the reverse could be true, and I'm not sure how I feel about being a pet.
Hang on... Dumb, excitable and adorable? In the eyes of more advanced aliens, we'll basically be space puppies.
I think we'd have to seed the galaxy with tech, then group all the countries/planets into roughly equal teams and go all out civil war with each other.RJ 17 said:
Allows us to be the precursors.
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