Why can't we go to the center of the galaxy?

[franznietzsche]

the "speed of light" relative to what? to earth? relative to earth, yes it would take a very long time but remember time dilation and the principle of relativity...as far as the crew of the spaceship is concerned there is no speed limit...

the time it would take to get to the center of the galaxy is only limited by the gradient of acceleration...the gradient of acceleration is only limited by the thrust of the rockets and the mass of the ship, if we can make nuclear thrust technology very efficient i think the journey is a perfectly plausible one...

Slightly erroenous, the speed of light is constant for all observers. The travelers are still limited to the speed of light, the velocity they would measure for the objects moving apst them. But because of length contraction they would say they were traveling at the speed of light, but convering a shorter distance. This is what causes the shorter travel time by the moving clocks.

 

[energia]

let's just face the fact that no existing propulsion system will ever result in interstellar travel

it will take breakthrough physics to accomplish that

and breakthrough physics discoveries are few and far between

the current prospects of joining the federation of planets are dismal

so just get used to watching perpetual space shuttle launches for the forseeable future - as far as propulsion technology is concerned - there has been no progress since the 1960's

the last moon landing (11 December 1972) tolled the end of manned planetary exploration for the 20th century (nearly 32 years ago!) who knows how long it will be before the next moon landing - 32 more years maybe? (most likely with 60's technology) and manned missions to Mars are just a dream until the next generation of propulsion becomes reality

since the cold war ended - the days of cowboy rocketscience are over
(those were the days) I would guess that interplanetary manned missions (within this solar system) may happen by the end of the 21st or 22nd century

missions to the nearest stars?
possibly 300 to 1000 years into the future (maybe)

galactic missions?
possibly never
current physics notwithstanding

 

[setAI]

it seems to me that it would be rather silly to send huge primates and chunks of plastic/steel- if I were considering such a long journey- I think that it would be more prudent to encode the crew/environment/ and a copy of all human knowledge into some quantum-scale computing system- you would transmit or project the ship to it's destination- I would be quite dissapointed in the engineers if the vessel were big enough to be visable by the human eye-



BTW- hello I'm new! (^_^)- I'm not a physicist- I'm a computermusic composer and incorporate some AI/AL/cog sci research into my art- [physics was my first declared major-I was going to go into cosmology but this was the late 80's and my love of the human brain and AI [and sythesizers] won me over so I ended up swept up into the great attractor that was the Santa Fe Inst in the early 90's- when the party was over I settled down into life as a self-styled crackpot/ chaos-shaman/ artist/ polymath/nutter [with a day-job]- thanks to excessive research into psychotropics and too much free time/money (as most of my collegues at SFI did- I think) ]

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