zapatos

It will take exactly the same amount of fuel to move a supply ship from point A to point B whether the ship leaves today, tomorrow, or 1000 years from now. There will be no fuel savings. If I put together supplies and launch them ahead of time for use in 10,000 years, or if I put supplies together and hold in a staging area for a later launch, still to be used in 10,000 years, there will be no difference in failures, breakdowns, etc. Let's say it takes 1000 years to get those supplies together. There is no difference between sending out a supply ship every hundred years with one 1/10 of the supplies and then sending the people after the 1000 years, or saving up the supplies for 1000 years and sending them all together. The rate you put the supplies together is exactly the same, so no change in impact to the population. Or, just gather the supplies for years and years ahead of the actual manned mission, but send them out at the same time the people leave. You do not have to change anything about the production, fuel, or anything else, to launch them at the same time you launch the people. Unless there is some other factor not yet mentioned, I see no added benefit to sending out the supplies prior to sending out the people.

I can see you might want to send some supplies afterward to allow you to begin the journey sooner. You still haven't said though why you need to send them ahead of you.

But what benefit would you gain by sending them ahead? It seems to me that having the supplies close by gives you options that you do not have if the supplies are sent ahead. For example, changing destinations, having ready access in an emergency, using the supply craft for a lifeboat, etc.

You lost me here. Basically you want to make a point, but not allow someone to make a counterpoint. Seems like your own version of limiting freedom of speech...

I've been thinking about the unmanned support ships and have gone back and forth between 'what a good idea' and 'not necessary'. I think I've settled on 'not necessary'. Why not just bring the support ships with you? Energy requirements shouldn't change significantly, and it leaves you the option to change your plans later if during that 19,000 years something unexpected happens. Should also help with your disaster recovery planning.

No, this has not descended into the realm of Star-Trek. It started out that way by you in your first post and we are trying to bring it back back down to earth. Lightspeed travel will never be the solution. You will never be able to supply the necessary energy. No, he didn't read yours or mine. Not at all. This place is usually a great place to kick ideas around as long as people are logical and ready to support any assertions they make. Actually I suspect that mimicking gravity would be relatively easy. Imagine if a ship were built like a barbell. If you started the ship were rotating like a twirling baton you could make whatever 'artificial' gravity you like at either end.

My primary focus on entering this discussion was to find out why high speed travel was either 'needed' or 'important', and following that why it was considered 'lazy' if moving at a slower speed. If we travel to another star via any conventional means via any conceivable energy source developed, no one who starts the trip will end it. It will take multiple generations to get anywhere. Which is no big deal. As I said, humans have been travelling through space since humans have been around. It's not as if we'd be sitting at the window seat waiting to arrive at our destination. We would continue to live and work just as we do now. You also don't need to fuel this giant ship for billions on years for travel. It is not like being in a car with your foot on the gas peddle the whole time. Once you are up to speed, other than things like course corrections, you turn the engines off. If you are talking about travelling a significant portion of the speed of light, you will need much more energy that just what is needed for day to day operations. Also, being hit by a giant meteor is much less a problem at low speeds than high speeds. At 1/2 c I'd hate be be hit by a grain of sand. I'm not sure what it means to 'fold space' or whether or not it is possible to make any reasonable predictions about how we can travel from one specific location to another by doing so. As I'm not familiar with it though I obviously can't say much about it. Talking about travelling by worm holes may be fun, but if we were told we had to leave the earth in the next 100 years, no one would be working on the worm hole method.

Ok, I can see I'm in the wrong thread when space travel via wormholes and folding space should be our concentration, due to the fact that infinite energy sources and lightspeed vessels aren't yet in our grasp. Just for the record though, if we can manage to get there in 100 years rather than 100,000... You'll still be dead. Just sayin'.

So let's say we leave right now, travelling at 6 miles per second, heading for another star. That give us 5 billion years to get there before our star's energy is used up. On the other hand, we won't be using any energy from the sun after a fairly short amount of time anyway. After 100 years, do we really care if the sun has run out of energy? In the event of a collission of galaxies, it is unlikely there will be any actual physical contact. So again, why is it important to get there quickly?

So the reason we need to travel near light speed is because it is important? Ok, so I have another question. Why is it important to travel near light speed?

You didn't tell us why we need to travel close to light speed. Why is it a problem if it takes a long time to get somewhere? You got something else to do? Shoot, we've been travelling through space for billions of years now without even trying. Why does travelling in a (more or less) straight line toward another location require a higher velocity than going around our star in a circle?

The square root of 69 is 8 something.

I just checked with my wife and she said that men think of women WAY more than women think of men. She said a woman may have 10 things going on in her mind at once: Work, school, the car, dinner with her friends, men, remember to call my sister, clothes, the baby shower, clean the bathroom, get home in time for the baseball game. Men may also have 10 things going on in his mind at once: Women, women in swimsuits, I'd like to see that woman in a swimsuit, is that a woman up there?, I'm getting a bit randy, get the oil changed, boy I'd like to change her oil, who is that new woman at work?, swimsuit issue of sports illustrated, women. She told me some more things but the Victoria Secrets commercial came on and I missed what she was saying...

Yes, by law. Culture can change. Cultures can vary from place to place. What protects our freedoms if it is not laws?

This common practice has nothing to do with freedom of religion in the US. Our freedoms are protected by law.

Yes, I understood what you were saying. I wasn't questioning that. I was just pointing out that in your post you said, among other things: 'Atheism is not about evidence, it is about wanting evidence.' I just thought it was an interesting way to say it.

Well, maybe on paper, but not in reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States

Yep. Probably why they have about 4 million views!

I know you didn't mean it this way but the wording sounded strange to me...

I feel for you and the stress those type of things induce. I said this before in another thread but it's worth repeating. Stress is the body's reaction to the mind's decision not to choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it.

Freedom of religion should be protected by the constitution because it is likely that without this guarantee, the free practice of religion would be severly constrained. Freedom of speech should also be protected. I cannot imagine a government by the people being successful without this right. They are protected by law. I'm not quite sure what you are looking for here.

Just like they do in the movies, but a little less professionally done.

Well, yes actually. I think the Sarah Palin crosshairs issue was self controlled. Enough pressure came to bear on her to get rid of the map, and I haven't seen anything like it since from anyone else. I don't know what you would do in your scenario but I assume you would first give them a chance to do the right thing before something bad happened. That to me is self controlled. But I feel the same way you do. If someone did that to my family, one way or the other it would stop.

The legitimate freedom it serves is freedom of speech. Whether or not it should be illegal is a matter of opinion, but as a matter of law wishing someone ill is legal. While I object to the occasional crosshairs map, I'd rather see it being self controlled than controlled by law.

Well, here was my question. I don't know how else to state it. You implied a cause and effect. 'we evolved in small groups' so 'we are unable to really show much compassion and concern for those who are outside of what we regard as our group'. What is your evidence to back up this claim?