ummm....
...guess I ain't going to heaven, neither!
This is the point which the vast majority of people do not get. Faster than light travel is not merely scientifically impossible, it is mathematically impossible.
So how is it that you missed it? The "current rate of technological advancement" is irrelevant to suspending the laws of mathematics. As for warping spacetime:
Finally, the difficulties of interstellar travel are hopelessly complicated as soon as one introduces the word "colonization." When the first colonists landed on the Eastern seaboard, they came to a place that already had food, water, oxygen and soil rich in minerals that would support agriculture. Space colonization requires that man bring every life support element with him or the means to reproduce it during the journey and at the destination.
That's a hell of a lot to pack on top of your socks and underwear. And, oh, yeah, on those "generational" space excursions, what are you going to do about healthcare? And I don't mean just running on a treadmill and stretching your muscles with therabands. Even minor surgical procedures on Earth would be major challenges in space. Cancer treatment? Simple dentistry? Forget it!! See travails of current rescue mission in Antarctica for perspective.
The inability of most people to think "long term" is admittedly problematic. But their inability to think realistically about transporting their fragile, perishable asses over interstellar distances is no less so.
Y'know, I hate how our beloved Colonel sobers up every inspiring thread about us living our Star Trek dreams in reality, but he may have an even more sobering point...
The Dismal Future of Interstellar Travel
The Fly in the Ointment!
Andreas Hein, an engineer with the Icarus Interstellar Project, developed a rigorous method for forecasting the economics of interstellar travel, only to find that most economically plausible scenarios for a “Daedalus-type” mission would cost upwards of $174 trillion and require nearly 40 years of development and 0.4 percent of the world GDP. This would be for an unmanned, 50-year journey to Barnard’s Star using “fusion drive” technology. It consists of 50,000 tons of fuel and 500 tons of scientific equipment. Top speed: 12 percent of the speed of light.
All plausible interstellar missions require travel times of decades or centuries, which means the complex technology must be 100-percent reliable and/or self-repairing. There can be essentially no moving parts, because friction would create wear and tear over decades and centuries of use.
It is entirely plausible to think about kilogram-sized payloads that can be boosted to near-relativistic speeds very economically, but this is impractical because at the distance of the nearest stars, you need a powerful and massive transmitter that can relay data back to Earth, or what is the point of the journey? Even a Voyager-class spacecraft with, say, a “souped-up” megawatt radio transmitter could not be detected at Alpha Centauri by the largest Earth-based telescopes, even at data rates of 1 bit per year! A laser-based system would be highly directional and could possibly do the trick, but it would weigh tons, not kilograms.
One option could be a sophisticated nanotechnology system with a mass of a few dozen kilograms that would arrive at its destination, find an asteroid to mine, and then build from scratch a much more massive system capable of carrying out the scientific investigation and relaying the data back to Earth.
But the concept of sending humans to the stars makes no sense technologically, or at an economic scale that would interest humanity as it is currently constituted. Even if we were at the brink of extinction, do you really think that 7 or 10 billion humans would want to foot the bill and the decades-long effort to send a few lucky humans on a one-way trip to a distant planet — that may not even be habitable?
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-sten-odenwald/the-dismal-future-of-interstellar-travel_b_5965060.html
You know what, I don't care. I wanna still dream of us owning our own Millennium Falcons and space warping to where ever we want!
Indeed they are, but the underlying scientific rationales for those missions are highly suspect imho and may yet prove to be the fatal blow to actually launching them. Truth be known, I think the motivation is primarily to satisfy that human space travel wanderlust so many of us have.
Zumi's indictment of me notwithstanding, I had it big time as a kid all through projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. And a lunar mission today would still be "fun to see." I haven't lost all my romantic genes.
But, alas, some hormonal thrills are still better suppressed than pursued.
