Interstellar travel is impossible, moore's law is finite, the heat dea

[Denisovich]

Yeah, all of those things, multipled by five thousand, and there we have the current cosmic predicament for human beings.

Is there any way in which we can do something about this? Or will Schopenhauer have the last laugh?

 

[mfb]

We can do science.I don't think heat death (more like a "cold death" due to the expanding universe) is avoidable, and the available calculation rate is finite (but extremely large), but interstellar travel could be possible.[/size]

 

[Naty1]

Do what?

For obstacles and current options see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel

 

[Drakkith]

Yeah, all of those things, multipled by five thousand, and there we have the current cosmic predicament for human beings.

Is there any way in which we can do something about this? Or will Schopenhauer have the last laugh?

No one knows what the future holds. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

 

[Astronuc]

Interstellar travel is not impossible, just rather impractical for humans.

 

[Tanelorn]

Interstellar travel is not impossible, just rather impractical for humans.

I agree, I am very pessimistic about human interstellar travel ever being possible. Perhaps it will take something the size of a large asteroid to carry life into orbit around a close stellar neighbor.
Alpha Centauri would take 165,000 years so it would need to be a completely self sustaining system. Perhaps robotic with embryonic passengers..
http://Earth'sky.org/space/alpha-centauri-travel-time
We could also wait for another star to come closer to the sun.

It would however be good to see a ship for traveling between the inner planets like these guys are proposing: http://100yss.org/

 

[mfb]

Alpha Centauri would take 165,000 years

With a space-shuttle-like rocket. Well, you don't want to use that for interstellar travel.
Something like the Orion project could achieve ~2.5-5% the speed of light (including slowdown at the target), reaching Alpha Centauri in about 100-200 years.