The issues with cryogenics and suspended animation make it rather impractical for long-duration spaceflight, sci-fi staple that it is. Unless something really changes, bringing animals that are currently capable of surviving cryogenic hibernation back out of said cryogenic hibernation is a slow process. Warming them back up too fast kills them. Currently, there are no exothermic animals that are capable of surviving cryogenic hibernation anyways. Unless we can engineer cold-blooded humans, it's not looking good.

But, even if we do solve those challenges, the ship would have to be completely automated and self-repairing. You can't just keep waking up the chief engineer every time something breaks down. I suppose you could do it with an absurd number of redundant systems. Long-duration spaceflight is probably one of those things that is going to be very, very boring punctuated by a few minutes of very, very exciting things if something wacky happens.

Now, I do suppose that as a low-FTL capable ship gets passed up by superior technology, it could be conceivable that they get to a destination only to find out that they got beaten to the punch. However, I suspect that if we figure out FTL physics, we will also figure out FTL communications. It's kind of like the Star Trek notion that the replicator systems basically came out of transporter technology. When you figure out one, the other comes pretty naturally. In fact, I suspect we'll figure out FTL communication before we figure out FTL flight. Another reason to ditch suspended animation, really. If you have FTL communication, technological advancements can be relayed. Faster ships might pick up slower passengers. I believe that's all quite plausible, really.

I also don't see a colony getting a sleeper ship full of people who left twenty years beforehand getting too angry about letting them settle with their colony. Unless you have one massive ship, you're looking at a few dozen people, probably. If a hundred people showed up at the US doorstep with technology from the Civil War, I think we'd probably find some place for them to go.

I also do not think that a more technologically advanced planet in a confederation would bring about the demise unless they got quite snooty about it. Probably, it would be a source of economic growth. Either they would sell the technology under license (as we do all the time today with less developed countries,) or they would use the technology to manufacture goods or produce services for other planets. The US has enjoyed technological superiority for more than a century, and while it's certainly been a thorn in some large Russian and Chinese paws, I don't think it's led to a general downfall of society. It's led to various nation-states developing their own technology, which has frankly surpassed the US in some sectors.

QUOTE

Yeah, a blackhole isn't much different than a star or any other object of equal mass.

Of course. I was thinking along the "supermassive" lines.

Or, while we're at it, what about another galaxy passing through your own? THAT would have some interesting effects. The Andromeda galaxy is headed towards the milky way, but there's no way to know if it'll collide. If it does, though, it'll be in 4-5 billion years, just about the time we need to start worrying about the sun expanding.

One thing to know about these ideas is galactic society would have seen it coming for billions of years. Either they would have the tech to deal with it, or not.

In 4-5 billion years either a) it won't matter because the human race has already exterminated itself or b) we'll have technology way, way beyond what even science fiction can imagine, our present day technology will seem like stone tools to them, and it still won't matter.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 15 February 2010 - 02:26 PM

Sorry, the planetarian in me just has to correct this. No offense intended. The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is about 2.5 million light years away, and it's moving towards us at the pretty smooth pace of about 147 km/s. The Milky Way will see serious gravitational effects in about 3.8-4.2 billion years with the core of M31 getting to the core of the Milky Way in 5.1 billion years. In about 8-10 billion, we'll be an elliptical galaxy instead of a spiral.

That said, the point still stands. I'll be pretty impressed if anyone that resembles a human is still around when that happens.

Hmm... now that I think about it, galactic collision is a little slow. For a plug-in, I would probably go for a surprisingly fast-moving super-massive black hole for drama's sake. Re-routing hyperlinks, anyone?

Speaking of which, exodus to another galaxy need not be an epic journey. In a lot of sci-fi settings, FTL travel is near-instantaneous. In a story, drama could stem from humanity's invasion of the neighboring galaxy with an indigenous space-faring race. If this intergalactic transport takes a year or something, though, you might end up with a sort of new-world colonialism thing too, though by this point I've definitely drifted off topic.

At the risk of drifting further off-topic, n64mon is right about Sci-Fi portraying FTL as near instantaneous. In the Stargate series, one Human 'spaceship', for lack of a better term, could travel the distance between our Milky Way Galaxy and the Pegasus Galaxy in a matter of months. In a Sci-Fi setting, exodus to another galaxy is definitely possible.

Nah, going off-topic is totally cool.

Sci-fi portrayal and reality are not always as closely intertwined as one might desire. Stargate and Star Trek are probably the worst violators of this in the world, actually. Yes, there are more out-there sci-fi series (Farscape comes to mind,) but they don't rely on a lot of technobabble to explain things that are clearly in conflict with any sort of physics, and often even in conflict with show continuity. There's a whole book dedicated to Trek miscues (The Nitpicker's Guide to Next Generation, vol. 1&2.) It's quite the hilarious read, actually.

In fact, I noticed a Trek continuity error just last night. In "Interface," Geordi's mom's ship is declared missing, 300 light years away from their current position. Geordi's mom's ship passed by there ten days ago. Okay, so they can go 30 light years per day. The next episode the Sci-Fi channel showed claimed that at maximum warp, the Enterprise could go 5 light years per day. Unless the flagship is six times slower than most other ships in the fleet (which I think Geordi would be pretty upset about, given his fussing over a tenth of a percent of power conversion efficiency in the episode!) there's one of thousands of such continuity errors in the show. You'd think in the writer's room, they'd have some sort of convention about important things like that...

At any rate, back to topic. Galactic collisions are a process that takes billions of years. It's sort of the universal analogue to watching paint dry. A rogue supermassive black hole moving at relativistic velocities would be pretty exciting if you were within about, oh, 10 light years. The distance between us and the nearest star is 4 light years. If the supermassive black hole were moving at three quarters the speed of light, an absolutely incredible speed by any accounts in nature, it would take it about six years just to go the distance between the nearest star and us. It just wouldn't affect an entire civilization at any pace to make it a serious civilization-killer. Plus, you'd see it coming for millenia if you had the technology to be a space-faring civilization. By the time it would seriously impact your planet or region of space, if you were FTL capable, you could get out of there in a hurry.

If you want to do something with rerouting hyperlinks, a cool idea, you'd need to resort to some sort of more inane technobabble than a supermassive black hole. Something reshaping subspace... blah blah. But the more conventional physics, the more realistic physics, is not very forgiving.

You're right, the nitpicker's guide is pretty funny.

Hmm... what if humanity flies around at near-light speed, such travel is expensive, i.e. teraforming is found to be easier than traveling long distances? Just about every nearby star would be inhabited. However, you would still see it coming miles away. (ha ha)

The biggest problem is most (i.e. all) cosmic phenomena move at sub-light speeds, and any FTL civilization wouldn't have much difficulty dealing with it. As drama, the size of the universe, and the laws of physics don't seem to play nice for cosmological devastation, lets try kicking up the fiction up a notch. What if a supermassive black hole is somehow traveling faster than the speed of light? Maybe it's surfing a gravity wave from some distant cosmic event, I don't know. If that were the case, you might not see it until it begins to affect one of your populated systems, perhaps in the wake of its passing. What would a gravitational sonic boom be? Anyways, tweak the parameters right and you could have a crisis that happens suddenly, and cause its damage across the galaxy over several years.

(great, now I have "super massive black hole" by Muse running through my head)

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Feb 17 2010, 10:35 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sci-fi portrayal and reality are not always as closely intertwined as one might desire.

<snip>

Now, I'm not angry and I'm not trying to make anyone angry, but I never said Science Fiction and reality were similar. I know there are several thousand factors that make the two entirely different worlds, so to speak. We're talking about a scenario for a Sci-Fi game here (sort of) which means we know it can't really happen.

Same with n64mon's idea of a black hole moving faster than light. I'm not sure anything, in a realistic scenario, could make something as massive—this is in terms of mass, not size—as a black hole move that fast.

Hell, the basic idea of FTL travel is impossible in a realistic scenario according to Albert Einstein. Nothing with any mass at all—that's us folks—can move faster than light. Close, yes. However, the closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass you have, thus making it harder to get faster. Also, time gets slower as you get closer to the speed of light. If you were somehow able to reach the speed of light, time for you would stop and you wouldn't be able to come out of FTL until you ran out of fuel or crashed. Neither option is appealing.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 17 February 2010 - 03:45 PM

Gravity waves are also subject to Einstein's cosmic speed limit, unfortunately. Again, given current physics, nothing except for space itself may travel faster than the speed of light. While gravity waves are ripples in space-time, they themselves cannot exceed C. What always bugged me is that there is no such thing as absolute position in space from which to measure velocity, but that it is still a constant. Yes, I know the math on it checks out (I've had to do it myself as an undergraduate, highly frustrating.)

Now, if some insideous force were hell-bent on destroying a civilization, I suppose the technology could be developed to somehow create a space-time bubble around a supermassive black hole and move it at FTL speeds. It would be the same concept as moving a ship FTL, just with something about fifty billion times more massive. Said people-of-malicious-intent would have to be able to create a bubble large enough to accomodate the black hole, and do it without getting spaghettified themselves. Then they would have to find a way to move such a massive bubble (again, you'd be looking at getting no closer than a light year or two to this object,) and hurl it in the direction of those they wish to cause issues for. Unlikely, but possible. And, there would be far easier and less engineering-ly challenging ways to destroy a civilization. This would be more for style points than anything else. It's like sharks with lasers. Is there an easier way to kill a superhero? Of course. But it's so much more fun.

And sub-FTL but close to luminal speed travel really isn't worth it when you consider the time dilation effects of relativistic flight. Sci-fi staple, yes, but not really all that practical when you get right down to it. What point is it to report back to Mission Control (which would take about 20 years from the nearest discovered exoplanet,) only to discover that everyone you knew in Houston has been dust for quite a while. Until we figure out superluminal communications and locomotion, I doubt we'll spend much time outside of our solar system.

Edit: Bah, DarthKev stepped in while I was typing. I'll edit-respond.

FTL travel actually is possible in Einsteinian physics. A, relativity does not take quantum effects into account, which can leave some possibilities open. B, space can move FTL. Find a way to move space itself, and you can go as fast as you want. It's the moving sidewalk thing. If you can run at 9.8 meters per second as a maximum, that's as fast as you can run. Unless you get on a sidewalk moving 5.0 m/s. Then, even though you can only run a maximum of 9.8 m/s, your combined speed on the sidewalk would be a whopping 14.8 m/s.

And, as much as we got off topic into the realm of fictional completely non-possibilities, this topic is supposed to be about the real possibilities of an FTL civilization's downfall.

This post has been edited by krugeruwsp : 17 February 2010 - 03:53 PM

QUOTE (JacaByte @ Feb 13 2010, 10:30 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Which brings up a whole new question for this topic; would be be conceivable that technology would advance so fast that colonies would be set up with technology centuries old in comparison to current tech, even if it took a decade to develop said technology? And how would you send information on such advances to colonies and other worlds? Sending a ship in a sort of pony-express system would take too long, and radio transmissions would be too slow as well, considering information sent via a radio wave would be as old as the distance it traveled in light years. This could also bring a self-collapse upon a civilization if individual worlds that were part of a federation/confederation/whatever advanced technologically faster than their neighbors and created a sort of monopoly on technology.

Actually, I think it's completely plausible in science that technological disparities will occur between distant planets, at least early on in our space-faring progression.

Already you have the simple truth that the technology that gets put into space is not the most advanced stuff we have, because of the danger of using untested technology on something so dangerous. The sorts of computers, for example, that end up in spacecraft tend to be several generations old, because they're known to be reliable. Putting the latest and greatest in somebody's home office is no big deal, but putting something potentially buggy in space can be disastrous in terms of loss of human life, and devastating in terms of the financial losses.

Next, spacecraft sent off to distant stars and planets to set up colonies are going to be frozen in time, in terms of their technology aboard, and the knowledge held by the crew. Yes, the home base can send along signals about the latest and greatest, but chances are the people on those distant colonies won't have the means to build any of it for several generations, and by then the home planet will have advanced even further. It's the whole question of how do you boil a pot of water. Well first you need to invent the pot, invent the machine that makes the pot, invent the stove, invent the machine that made the stove, and then invent the technologies that brought the electricity or gas to that stove, and so on... Whatever technologies we have now, they're based on a many-millenia old progression of simpler and simpler technologies. You can't just upload the latest specs on whatever, and expect somebody to build a thing. Colonists on a distant world are going to be struggling to recreate civilization from the ground up, and yeah, I'd expect them to be working on the really really basics before they can build something more advanced. What it really comes down to is material science. To get some crazy alloy, you need a series of other technologies just to get to that point. Go back far enough, and what you basically have is somebody digging rocks out of the ground, and putting it into a relatively low-temperature fire (the kind you can get just burning wood), just to build the equipment used to refine more advanced stuff to be put into equipment to refine even better stuff. Even today, as far advanced as we are, we're using cave-man technology as the basis for things such as building a car.

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Feb 15 2010, 01:35 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The issues with cryogenics and suspended animation make it rather impractical for long-duration spaceflight, sci-fi staple that it is. Unless something really changes, bringing animals that are currently capable of surviving cryogenic hibernation back out of said cryogenic hibernation is a slow process. Warming them back up too fast kills them. Currently, there are no exothermic animals that are capable of surviving cryogenic hibernation anyways. Unless we can engineer cold-blooded humans, it's not looking good.

But, even if we do solve those challenges, the ship would have to be completely automated and self-repairing. You can't just keep waking up the chief engineer every time something breaks down. I suppose you could do it with an absurd number of redundant systems. Long-duration spaceflight is probably one of those things that is going to be very, very boring punctuated by a few minutes of very, very exciting things if something wacky happens.

Now, I do suppose that as a low-FTL capable ship gets passed up by superior technology, it could be conceivable that they get to a destination only to find out that they got beaten to the punch. However, I suspect that if we figure out FTL physics, we will also figure out FTL communications. It's kind of like the Star Trek notion that the replicator systems basically came out of transporter technology. When you figure out one, the other comes pretty naturally. In fact, I suspect we'll figure out FTL communication before we figure out FTL flight. Another reason to ditch suspended animation, really. If you have FTL communication, technological advancements can be relayed. Faster ships might pick up slower passengers. I believe that's all quite plausible, really.

I also don't see a colony getting a sleeper ship full of people who left twenty years beforehand getting too angry about letting them settle with their colony. Unless you have one massive ship, you're looking at a few dozen people, probably. If a hundred people showed up at the US doorstep with technology from the Civil War, I think we'd probably find some place for them to go.

I also do not think that a more technologically advanced planet in a confederation would bring about the demise unless they got quite snooty about it. Probably, it would be a source of economic growth. Either they would sell the technology under license (as we do all the time today with less developed countries,) or they would use the technology to manufacture goods or produce services for other planets. The US has enjoyed technological superiority for more than a century, and while it's certainly been a thorn in some large Russian and Chinese paws, I don't think it's led to a general downfall of society. It's led to various nation-states developing their own technology, which has frankly surpassed the US in some sectors.

It wouldn't terribly surprise me if someday we were genetically engineering humans for some trait that allows them to survive a long cold sleep. Genetic engineering is actually a really useful solution to all manner of colonization efforts. Got a world with gravity that's too high? Make humans with stronger bones and bigger muscles. Got some weird poison in an atmosphere? Genetically modify that susceptibility right out. Low atmospheric pressure and precious little oxygen? No worries, just do some gene-tweaking.

I think artificial intelligence, though I still hesitate to believe it's possible for us to create at a human-level, will eventually get good enough that the basics of ship automation will become ridiculously easy.

I agree that another colony ship showing up probably won't be much of an issue. The original colony ship will have brought everything it needs to support its colony, and so will subsequent ships after the first is forgotten. Maybe the new arrivals won't be able to fit in the same dome, but they sure as heck can set up their own dome next door. There may be issues with how many resources are available, but sending a colony ship to a world that can't support growth, and doesn't have enough resources for a doubling in size, strikes me as a rather silly thing to do.

Still, that's not to say there wouldn't be some opportunity for conflict. After all, a particularly good site for mining, let's say, may have competing claims to it. There may have been some social or cultural changes that occurred after the first colony ship was sent out, that those colonists may not be so eager to accept the rules or standards of the time by the colonists that beat them.

QUOTE (n64mon @ Feb 15 2010, 02:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Of course. I was thinking along the "supermassive" lines.

Or, while we're at it, what about another galaxy passing through your own? THAT would have some interesting effects. The Andromeda galaxy is headed towards the milky way, but there's no way to know if it'll collide. If it does, though, it'll be in 4-5 billion years, just about the time we need to start worrying about the sun expanding.

One thing to know about these ideas is galactic society would have seen it coming for billions of years. Either they would have the tech to deal with it, or not.

Andromeda won't have to hit us directly for it to wreak all kinds of gravitational havoc. Before it gets here though, I'm sure we'll have computers capable of calculating all the trajectories of stars, their planets, etc., and plan accordingly.

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Feb 15 2010, 04:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry, the planetarian in me just has to correct this. No offense intended. The Andromeda galaxy (M31) is about 2.5 million light years away, and it's moving towards us at the pretty smooth pace of about 147 km/s. The Milky Way will see serious gravitational effects in about 3.8-4.2 billion years with the core of M31 getting to the core of the Milky Way in 5.1 billion years. In about 8-10 billion, we'll be an elliptical galaxy instead of a spiral.

That said, the point still stands. I'll be pretty impressed if anyone that resembles a human is still around when that happens.

I'll be pretty impressed if anybody resembles a human in just a million years. Either through natural selection, unnatural selection, or outright genetic modification, the species as we know it won't exist forever.

QUOTE (n64mon @ Feb 16 2010, 04:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nah, going off-topic is totally cool.

The whole point of these topics is to go off on interesting tangents.

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Feb 17 2010, 01:35 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sci-fi portrayal and reality are not always as closely intertwined as one might desire. Stargate and Star Trek are probably the worst violators of this in the world, actually. Yes, there are more out-there sci-fi series (Farscape comes to mind,) but they don't rely on a lot of technobabble to explain things that are clearly in conflict with any sort of physics, and often even in conflict with show continuity. There's a whole book dedicated to Trek miscues (The Nitpicker's Guide to Next Generation, vol. 1&2.) It's quite the hilarious read, actually.

In fact, I noticed a Trek continuity error just last night. In "Interface," Geordi's mom's ship is declared missing, 300 light years away from their current position. Geordi's mom's ship passed by there ten days ago. Okay, so they can go 30 light years per day. The next episode the Sci-Fi channel showed claimed that at maximum warp, the Enterprise could go 5 light years per day. Unless the flagship is six times slower than most other ships in the fleet (which I think Geordi would be pretty upset about, given his fussing over a tenth of a percent of power conversion efficiency in the episode!) there's one of thousands of such continuity errors in the show. You'd think in the writer's room, they'd have some sort of convention about important things like that...

Hey, there's also a book called The Physics of Star Trek, which discusses all the stuff that Star Trek gets right, and all the stuff Star Trek gets wrong but real science is trying to theorize about and emulate. After all, scientists enjoy science fiction, and even if scientific curiosity doesn't lead them to trying to invent science fiction technologies, market forces do.

As for the variable apparent speed of warp, this is explained away by different areas of space having more or less subspace distortion. Kind of a resistance or something like that, so some areas it's "easier" to travel faster than others.

Regarding the last paragraph of mrxak's post, this is done again in EVN. Notice the extremely long jump lane between Sol and Tichel and the other one between Sol and Kerella? Both of those are traveled in one day and yet the jump between Tekel Reeva and Tekel Over, as short as it is, also takes an entire day to complete?

I came across that explanation in one of the Star Trek technical manuals somewhere along the line. I still don't buy it. I mean, I can understand that some areas of space you might be able to go a little faster or have to slow down a bit, just like modern roads. But by a factor of six? If Voyager , supposed to be one of the fastest new ships in the fleet, were able to go 30 LY/day (the speed that Geordi's mom's ship was able to go,) they'd be back in the Alpha Quadrant in... carry the 2... 6.3 years. Even if we assume that the average is slightly less than half that because Geordi's mom's ship is just in a special region of space where they can really hotrod, they're back in 15 years, not 70. There's just no continuity at all. Not that it's a serious issue. I'm a bit of a nitpicker here. The fiction is great, and I enjoy all of the series of Trek. I have TOS, Voyager, and quite a bit of DS9 on DVD. I'm working on collecting TNG and Enterprise when I have the money. I greatly enjoy all of the series. I'm just pointing out that it's wildly inconsistent.

I am actually amazed that Trek doesn't get more things right, since there are actually two scientists whose entire job is to work with the writers to try to base things in reality. The writers apparently don't listen very well. Ron Moore comments frequently on the use of technobabble often enough in the BSG podcast commentaries, and specifically how they tried to avoid that in BSG.

Amazingly, fabrication technology is coming along quite well. There is a technology that can actually "build" many things using lasers and a special metal-based resin. The scientists working on it have already made it possible to use in space in order to build spare parts for the ISS on-board. That technology is only going to improve to the point where building large-scale machines en-route could really be a reality. I wish I could find the article about this I recently read, since it was quite fascinating.

Genetic engineering is quite the reality, as well. That fact actually scares me. I fear how close to the world of Gattaca we are venturing. You're absolutely correct in that we will probably learn how to genetically modify humanity to be able to survive in almost any environment. In fact, a low-oxygen environment like Mars might not be an issue for humans in a few decades. The idea of creating augmented humans (and them turning on us as "weaker,") is another sci-fi staple, one that I find is dangerously close to science fact. Genetically pre-screening babies is becoming nearly commonplace, rather frighteningly. I am always reminded of the Twilight Zone where a man is killed because a panel has determined he is "obsolete," and then the head of that panel is killed at the end of the episode because he has been made "obsolete."

Artificial intelligence is another near-reality, but I just don't believe that AI's will ever be able to replace human beings. It's also another road that I question if we should go down. Creating the Earth equivalent to the Cylons is just asking for trouble. Giving a computer the ability to think creatively might lead to some great solutions to problems of the universe, but sentient machines can decide that we are "obsolete," just as much as augmented humans might. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, so the saying goes. Unquestionably, adaptable machines that can think creatively and respond to situations, learn heuristically, and change their responses over time can exceed their programming and decide that they are a superior form of life to us fragile organics.

The pace of the evolution of science has always been in question. Not just a sci-fi staple, but a serious branch of philosophy. Just because we can do something does not mean we should. We are always faced with a new discovery that cracks Pandora's box open just another millimeter. Most of the time, it enhances the quality of life. Nuclear physics has led to probably more lives saved than destroyed, but the potential for devastation increases exponentially with these new discoveries. The greater power man harnesses, the greater the chances that someone will push the red button. While I enjoy working on my laptop, there are days when I find it supremely more satisfying to live a much more agrarian life, chopping my own wood, building what I anticipate to be my future retirement home in 40 years with my own hands, living a simple lifestyle independent of major technologies.

In point of fact, I wonder if too steep a pace of technological development leads to the collapse of a civilization before the disasters previously discussed out. A discovery out of control, or put in the wrong hands, will likely spell doom for us first.

QUOTE

Notice the extremely long jump lane between Sol and Tichel and the other one between Sol and Kerella? Both of those are traveled in one day and yet the jump between Tekel Reeva and Tekel Over, as short as it is, also takes an entire day to complete?

Jump time in days is determined by the mass of the ship, not the length of the line. The line really has nothing to do with it, it only serves to indicate which systems are connected.

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Feb 20 2010, 02:50 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I came across that explanation in one of the Star Trek technical manuals somewhere along the line. I still don't buy it. I mean, I can understand that some areas of space you might be able to go a little faster or have to slow down a bit, just like modern roads. But by a factor of six? If Voyager , supposed to be one of the fastest new ships in the fleet, were able to go 30 LY/day (the speed that Geordi's mom's ship was able to go,) they'd be back in the Alpha Quadrant in... carry the 2... 6.3 years. Even if we assume that the average is slightly less than half that because Geordi's mom's ship is just in a special region of space where they can really hotrod, they're back in 15 years, not 70. There's just no continuity at all.

<snip>

I see some holes in your theory. First of all, how did you have come up with the number of 6.3 years for Voyager to get home? We aren't even sure how wide our galaxy is. Even then, our most recent estimations put the distance from 'side' to 'side' at 100,000LY, much greater than 180LY, which is what you say is the distance Voyager had to cover. You stated that if Voyager could travel at a constant speed of 30LY/day, they'd get home in 6.3 years. Using simple math, that puts the distance they needed to cover just over 180LY. Remember, the Delta Quadrant is on the other side of the galaxy from the Alpha Quadrant. In addition to this, they couldn't travel in a straight line even without the distractions caused by other ships and planets due to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, an obstruction they'd need to go around, lengthening the potential distance traveled.

Also, space is an extremely hazardous place, we don't even know what's out there. Who are we to say there couldn't possibly be parts of space that make it difficult to travel quickly? I think your problem here is you're failing to realize just how teeny we are and how enormously gigantic our galaxy is.

Here you see scale comparisons of the planets in our solar system to our sun.

Here you see our sun in a scale comparison to others stars.

Here you see some more scale comparisons.

Now here's a view of the Milky Way galaxy. Keep in mind, Antares is the biggest star we've found (so far), and quite possibly close to as big as stars can get. If each of those pinpricks of light are the size of Antares (quite probable) then you can imagine how miniscule we are as well as how far Voyager had to travel.

In addition to not realizing the scale here, I believe you've also made the mistake of believing we humble Humans know a lot about space. We don't. We know a lot about our solar system, we know a decent amount of information regarding some nearby stars. We do not in any way, however, know what's out there. I find it entirely possible that there could be areas of space with certain anomalies causing speeds to be drastically different.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 21 February 2010 - 03:37 AM

Check your math, Darth. They'd need to cover 70,000 LY, the distance stated constantly in Voyager as the distance back to the Alpha Quadrant from the Caretaker's Array. (Not to sound arrogant, but I wouldn't mess with me on Trek trivia.) 70,000 LY divided by 30LY/day, answer divided by 365 days per year, gives us 6.3 years to cover 70,000 LY. When I wrote "years," I meant years, not days. They'd go 180 LY (actually, 189 to be specific,) in 6.3 days.

And again, not to sound arrogant or snooty, but I started college as an astrophysics major and worked in my college planetarium for five years. I taught Astronomy 101 and 311 for two of those. I've done two observing runs on the WYNN .9 meter telescope at Kitt Peak. I spent a year sifting through Hubble data looking at infrared spectrometry of PAHs in planetary and reflection nebulae even when I was no longer an undergraduate in astronomy simply because I wanted to continue to pursue my knowledge of the field. While I appreciate the trouble you went to on graphics, it was quite unnecessary. Antares is also not the biggest star we've discovered to date, either in mass or in radius. The average accepted distance from the nucleus of the galaxy to the outer edge is generally estimated at 145,000 LY, as well (though that varies depending on who you talk to these days as to where the disc officially "ends" and the halo begins.)

Again, even assuming that the distance covered by the Hera (Geordi's mom's ship) is due to an area of space where they can travel abnormally fast, the average speed of Voyager would need to be slower by a factor of eleven in order to account for the time it is estimated that it will take them to get back. As far as hitting things or needing to go around stuff on the way, the distance between stars is quite vast, Darth. Even at superluminal speeds, you'd have to alter your course by probably only a few seconds or minutes of arc at best to avoid them, even at 30 LY/day. At 30 LY/day, it would take a little over three hours to reach the nearest star to Sol. Given the speeds calculated if Voyager were really to take the 70 years to get home they say throughout the series, it would take them a full day to go from Sol to Proxima Centauri. If you could see the obstacle coming from that far away, it would be beyond simple to go around it. You don't have to get all that far away from a gravity well to avoid it, since the force of gravity decreases by an inverse square with distance. We're not in the absolutely most densely populated region of the galaxy, but certainly we're not in any sort of void. Even if Voyager were to average less than half of the Hera 's speed, they'd be back in 15, not 70 years. The continuity of the show is just obviously in error, it's just that simple. And again, it's a completely moot point, because the continuity of the show has no bearing on the price of milk, or in this instance, the downfall of interstellar society. The sole reason I point it out at all is because you desired earlier on using a television show that has absolutely wild continuity errors and creative fictional license as a model of reality. And this is pointing out the continuity errors in the lesser of the two violating shows in question (you brought up Stargate as your other example.)

We may not know everything out there, but we certainly know quite a bit. As far as navigational hazards are concerned, I'd be far more concerned with how to get up to relativistic or superluminal speeds without space dust or small rocks and interstellar ice putting huge holes in the ship than avoiding something like a star or even a black hole. If we ever get to the point where we can travel at those speeds, we already have sensor technology good enough to warn us in advance where the big things are. It's the little things that would keep me up at night, and those wouldn't be subject to region of space.

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Feb 21 2010, 03:28 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

<snip>

... not to sound arrogant or snooty...

<snip>

Then why bother say everything you just said? Because that's exactly what you sound like.

Furthermore, I never said Science Fiction and reality were similar. I explicitly stated they weren't! You, however, choose to ignore that and instead decide to continue comparing Science Fiction and reality. I only did the same in my previous post since you seemed unable to do otherwise. In simpler words, I was attempting to communicate on your level.

I admit I made a mistake in my math, but you did not need to go all out with veritable flashing signs pointing out my folly. You went too far there.

Lastly, you are so naive regarding how much we know about what's out there. We've barely scratched the surface. Yes, we do know 'a lot', whatever that relative term means, but nowhere near the volumes of information we need to know just to travel outside our solar system. We as Humans have only gone as far as the moon, and even then haven't colonized anything further than our planet. We have a long way to go before we can say what's real out there and what's not.

Now if we can get back on topic, does anyone else have theories or ideas on how to handle the situations mrxak outlined way back in the beginning of this thread?

I'm reminded of how awfully humans get along with each other. Maybe the biggest problem a colony ship would face is the people on board, and not micro meteorites or radiation or whatever...

QUOTE (JacaByte @ Feb 21 2010, 08:03 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm reminded of how awfully humans get along with each other. Maybe the biggest problem a colony ship would face is the people on board, and not micro meteorites or radiation or whatever...

Oh, how true this is...

@Darth: to be fair, as I looked back up in the topic, you were only pointing out that in science fiction, FTL is portrayed as near-instantaneous, not that it actually is.

As far as naivety is concerned, I beg to differ. For one, we have a very good idea of what is "out there." Yes, there is a lot to be learned, and I don't question that at all. But for anything that would pose a navigational hazard, even at FTL, we have a very, very good idea of what is "out there." We're always discovering new things about why things are the way they are, and this is wonderful. Astronomers are adding in new classes of objects on occasion, or variations of existing ones. But to say that we have little to no idea of what lies beyond our solar system is nonsense. To say that we'd run into these extraordinarily large phenomena completely unexpectedly is bordering on the absurd. I'm more worried about mile-wide chunks of rock and ice that we know exist than some sort of undiscovered subspace inversion or temporal rift or other plot device to create a catastrophe in space.

Our lack of colonizing other planets isn't a matter of knowing what lies beyond our solar system at this point. It's a matter of the technological means of actually getting there. We probably have the technology to terraform Mars at this point. We simply don't have the means of infrastructure in terms of getting to the planet and setting up the technology at the moment. It's certainly not for lack of understanding what exists and does not exist in space, either in our solar system or outside of it. It's a lack of funding and commitment. If humanity were dedicated to the task, I have no doubt we'd pull it off.

I do find it somewhat bemusing that you're willing to accuse a person who has worked professionally in the planetarium field, towards an astrophysics degree, and as an astronomical educator of naivety when it comes to astronomical phenomena. However, I'd rather not that this devolve into personal arguments of that nature. It rather reminds me of a student who once argued away an entire lecture because of a Fox special he had watched about how the moon landing was a hoax.

As I have pointed out ad nauseum, while I like to illustrate the flaws in science fiction as a matter of scientific principle and pride, I still greatly enjoy watching and reading it. Bad science often equals great entertainment. A little technobabble isn't necessarily a bad thing. TOS Trek in particular tackled some spectacular philosophical challenges, and science fiction continues to have that ability to explore human nature in an enjoyable genre of imagination and fantasy. Some science fiction is more grounded than other examples, and that's perfectly fine. I am somewhat chagrined that we've delved so far off topic on a point that is rather meaningless. As I said previously, continuity errors in Trek really don't have anything to do with the price of milk here.