John Hawks takes a look at a fascinating article in Popular Mechanics that looks at what the minimum crew size would need to be for an interstellar generation ship, and relates it to what is known about genetics in anthropology. Popular Mechanics asks, "How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System?". The basic problem … Continue reading Minimum crew size for an interstellar generation ship
Tag: interstellar travel
The faster interstellar travel is, the further away intelligent aliens are
Ethan Siegel has an excellent post up exploring the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations. With hundreds of billions of stars (visible, above, in infrared wavelengths) in our galaxy alone, and literally trillions of planets around them, we have many, many chances for life to have evolved similarly to how it did here on Earth. With at … Continue reading The faster interstellar travel is, the further away intelligent aliens are
For interstellar travel, transmission is much cheaper
It will always be a lot cheaper to send a radio signal to an interstellar destination than any kind of physical presence. Our discussion the other day on the difficulties of interstellar travel left me pondering this, something that is well known to astronomers and other thinkers in this area. Given sufficiently advanced technology, the … Continue reading For interstellar travel, transmission is much cheaper
Why FTL travel is unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future
I'm a big fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, and the space opera genre. The future I would most hope for the human race would be for us to spread out among the stars and become an interstellar species. Now, assuming we don't drive ourselves extinct, I do think we will eventually become an interstellar … Continue reading Why FTL travel is unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future
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