That's the faultiest "lol u loes i win" logic I've ever heard. If you didn't intialy understand my argument, that's on you, MAAAN.

You didn't even try to argue my points or anything! Typically that means that YOU loose. loosen. Lose. Whatevs. All we were arguing about was your one-dimensional view of corporations which, really, doesn't make for a very fun argument in the first place.

I concede. You win. Good day, sir.


It'd probably take a bit longer than that to get some decent manufacturing capabilities and recyclable food systems going. I'm thinking our first colony ship can't really afford to be huge. There's propulsion energy to consider so, with all of the stuff needed to set-up a permanent city-settlement (assuming we can breathe the air), we'd probably be able to fit about 500 people in between the mass of the fuel and the colony parts.

With that kind of population, I'd shoot more towards fifty to sixty years before the they begin to outgrow democracy and move more towards an oligarchy, where those who prove themselves the best in the early years (either by brains or guts or loudness or some combination thereof) become the trusted leaders of the settlement.

Yeah, but a captain is mostly only good for the command of his ship. Sure, he may have picked up a useful tip or two from elsewhere, but for the most part he probably won't know a whole lot about that colonization business (vis a vis the captain in Wall-E) and will turn that part over to the people who know what they're doing. Or maybe he'd not want to lose his position of leadership and hold everyone hostage somehow.

And while I really like the idea of a generation ship, I was thinking of a ship that could hit the low-to-mid 90% scale of relativistic speed. Something that'd get 'em there in a decade rather than a century. Of course that would require some cold fusion action, maybe even some matter-anti-matter action, but this is disregarding current resources and everything.

Still, good thinking on the ion drive... we COULD combine propulsions systems.

Before you start putting FTL into your future plans:
There is no FTL today.
There is no indication that FTL is possible.

ok then what are thous shiny metal objects that look like calender or sphere or disk shaped things that do not look like an F-16 out in our atmosphere. what do you call those human made?

possibly

Pls show me your noble prize in Quantum Physics to correct me, otherwise you're just bashing the idea.

It's always impossible unless somebody makes it a reality. FTL is possible you said it yourself you just need "to solve the paradoxes created by FTL travel" and maybe its out primitive mind that isn't capable of solving it.

accaly NASA plased a Ion Drive on a space probe

I stand corrected. Though I was thinking more in terms for manned crafts. Still its very interesting.

I agree with you arguing with people like you are meaning less.

Ion drives are currently used for unmanned space probes and satellite orbital stabilizers. There is, however, a base limit on the thrust you can get out of an ion drive due to the electrostatic repulsion between the ions. At a certain point you just get sparks, which looks really cool, but makes the thruster fail.


I'd like to borrow Carbon016's words, and say:

I can't explicitly prove that you can't go faster than light (actually I can, but it would explode your head), but I can explicitly prove that if you go faster than light, you create unsolvable paradoxes. The only way to avoid these is for the theory of special relativity to be proven wrong, and since all of the consequences stem from two postulates, you have to prove one of these two things:
1. The speed of light is not always "c" in a vacuum, or
2. The laws of physics are not the same for all inertial frames of reference.

While you're at it, find me the exact value of pi.


By the universe creating fairy.

-Dr. B

If something in nature violates a law of nature. All that means is we didn't understand that law.

What your forgetting is that while its impossible to travel at FTL speeds, that doesn't preclude getting to places quicker than light does.

Wormholes fit into our current understanding of physics; and while the power requirements needed to "bend space" to allow for FTL travel are... excessive (as in super-nova levels of energy excessive)... that doesn't mean its impossible, just impractical.

For the sake of argument, I'm going to back away from saying that FTL travel is impossible, and instead remind everyone that chronological continuity does not exist in a FTL universe.  If you are comfortable with going back in time, than by all means, believe in your dilithium crystal burning, warp-drive toting, phaser firing starships.

If you believe that you can have FTL travel, relativity, and continuity all in the same universe, then you apparently aren't a physicist.  I wouldn't lose any sleep over that.  But if you want to cut out relativity from this picture, than I recommend you go out and fetch me a better theory.  Which fits all of the observed properties of relativity.  And has the same predictive capability of relativity.  Actually, that won't help you at all.  Because if the real world really is real, you're not going to completely get rid of the effects of special relativity.  General relativity could use more fleshing out, but that's a different story.

Bottom line: unless you can convince the universe that it should stop treating all inertial frames of reference with equal fidelity, you're going to have some serious causality issues with faster than light travel.  No matter how you do it.

Not to burst anyone's ego-bubble, but if you haven't invested several years of your life to rigerous mathematical and scientific study, you're not going to be able to formulate a very robust counter-argument to anything I've just said.  Sharper minds than I have put this theory to the test, and with the blunt instruments most of you are working with, cutting through relativity to get at FTL is going to be about as productive as chopping wood with a comically oversized wiffleball bat.

-Dr. B