There are no problems, only solutions. A human powered vehicle passing the speed of sound is achieveble if you can find a way to negate the wind resistance. I don't know how to achieve that but someone will find a way to do it. Ion engines have accelerated vehicles past 90,000mph, with gravitational slingshots speeds of over 130,000mph have been achieved. Still a long way to go for Interstellar travel but faster than anything else we have achieved by a long way. CERN have results from experiments that suggest that FTL speeds may be possible (i.e. Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity may be wrong). If you believe that we will never make it I genuinely feel sorry for you...
It all depends on what you consider the problem to be. 1: How you continue to fuel, feed and accommodate a species which is outgrowing and exhausting its world. That is a very different problem to the question of 2: how you control that species and develop a mode of living which ensures it can continue living on the only world available to it. The former negates the latter. If all problems have a solution, the first step to finding that solution is to accept that the problem exists. In the case of question 2 we are by-passing that step because we find it too difficult technically or psychologically to contemplate. Therefore the "solutions" we find are not solutions at all but an extension of the problem.
It is this unbridled optimism that I have a problem with. It sounds good, to some, but is actually meaningless. You can only have solutions to existing problems, therefore to state that "there are no problems, only solutions" is gung ho twaddle. As I previously implied a significant breakthrough at a theoretical level that could be translated into a viable technology is the only way that interstellar travel is ever likely to be possible, but I am not holding my breath. Don't be, I am a grounded person living in the real world.
Then you have missed the point, EVERY problem we come across has a solution, maybe we haven't discovered it yet but there is one. If you believe otherwise you may as well give up now... I have no time for pessimism, it's wasted energy that could be put to better use.
Back in the 80s, there was a government pamphlet, I believe, called "Protect and Survive". The idea was that we could all build underground shelters and stock up on provisions, so that when the Russians pressed the button, we would still be around after the nuclear holocaust to survive it. The academic, E.P.Thompson, took great exception to this and wrote a book called "Protest and Survive". He was taking issue with the fact that the East-West global defence posture of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was being undermined. What Protect and Survive was doing was making a nuclear war thinkable, as you could survive it, whereas MAD made it unthinkable and thus less likely to happen. By suggesting that nuclear war could be survived, you made it far more likely. Now back to the debate in question. If you envisage a time when the human race leaves earth and sets up colonies on other planets because Earth is doomed, and then plan for this, you make the human destruction of the Earth far more likely. It becomes something you plan around, rather than avoiding at any cost. This is the issue I have with it. Embarking on great space colonisation projects seems interesting and exciting. What it doesn't do, is use human ingenuity to address the pressing (really pressing) questions we currently face. These include finding an economic model which keeps people happy without requiring constant growth. None of the people leading us have entertained this question for an instant. Growth is the mantra and is firmly equated with happiness. More goods, more consumption, more spending. No end of people have pointed out that this is unsustainable - or at least, unsustainable if you like to able to share the planet with other species in a non-toxic environment. Focussing on just buggering off enables leaders to keep the blinkers firmly on and continue to do nothing. On the contrary, someone will say that a space colonisation programme will require such massive resources that the only way of funding it is to have a massively profitable economy. I am not dead against manned trips to Mars - if that will make people happy. It's doable. But I am with Johnv as to what it will really achieve. Mars is just a short hop in space terms - a tiny pigeon step. It is indeed Apollo large. If we are going to go to other places in the universe, we are indeed going to have to find means of travel which are space-time oriented, and not just space. Will going to our neighbours in the Solar System achieve this? No. You'd have more chance of finding out something at CERN. Earth will disappear. We know this. Either in a few billion years (by which time we will have long ago disappeared from the universe) or perhaps even next year, if an asteroid drops on us, or a volcano blows up. In the first instance, it's not worth bothering about. In the second, it will happen so quickly we won't be able to do much about it. Would I feel comforted to know that there are some humans who have avoided the catastrophe because they are in another galaxy when these events occur? Not in the slightest. I couldn't give a flying fart.
But why does embarking on colonisation of other worlds mean we will give up on Earth? This is my issue with this argument. Did the Europeans give up on their own countries when they colonised the new world? Clearly not... How do you get good at something? Practice. If we want to successfully set up colonies on far away worlds does it not make sense to practice somewhere closer?
The Europeans killed everything they found. The royals were looking more land, power, gold. Not sure they were really interested in a new breed of sheep. They brought a few things back, shitty plants, toads, tea etc. At least we can now all afford tea
So that people who want the human race to continue on, instead becoming extinct, see their wish come true? Glidd, if you saw someone standing on the railing of a bridge, intent on throwing themselves off, would you: a. Encourage them to jump? b. Encourage them to not jump? c. Walk past on the other side of the road? Knowing the answer to this will help me understand your attitude.
Because they are a bit far away for a day trip. Because its human nature to want to explore, its what took us from simple apes to where we are now (whether that is a good thing is an entirely different discussion). As good as drones and orbital cameras are they aren't the same as actually going somewhere.
Well that moves us on from I prefer goals that are realistic and achievable, interstellar space travel is currently neither. You confuse pessimism with realism. I have no problem with pure research, CERN being a case in point, who knows what might emerge as a result. However CERN investigates the subatomic stochastic world of quantum physics whereas interstellar space travel is in the relativistic world of space time that has so far stood the test of time (if you pardon the pun).
And it will stay that way if don't bother to try and solve the problems, that's the point. The work at CERN is all part of solving those problems.
