From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de)
Date: Thu Dec 10 1998 - 10:10:34 MST
In article <19981208192603.11871.rocketmail@send105.yahoomail.com>,
Terry Donaghe <tdonaghe@yahoo.com> wrote:
> He seemed convinced that humanity won't find a way to circumvent the
> speed of light.
It isn't possible according to our current scientific understanding, and
as Drexler explains, you can't predict *scientific* progress, so we'll
have to contend ourselves with the lightspeed limit in rational
discourse.
> One of the things that always bugged me about travelling sub-light
> speeds was the incredible time it takes to travel between stars. [...]
As you noticed, that isn't really a problem in itself--besides, the
universe doesn't give a damn whether we like its laws--but only due to
limitations of our bodies. Let's face it, homo sapiens is ill-adapted
for space travel. We are too short-lived, we can't go easily into
suspension, we could use better resistance against radiation, etc.
I think interstellar travel with present-day humans, as taken for
granted as a convention by much of the ScF genre, is a pretty silly and
unrealistic idea. If we're going to the stars, it will be either a much
changed version of us or our mind children. Watery meat bags it ain't
gonna be.
> I'm wondering if a human were to have lived a few hundred thousand
> years, how much of a pain would it be to travel between the stars at
> sub-light speeds.
Assuming a scenario of uploading into some convenient technology, why
should it be a pain? If you can't occupy yourself for a few years
(decades, centuries, millennia, ...), just go into suspension. Sleep.
Personally, I have a lot of things to catch up on.
> In other words, 500,000 years from now when I decide to travel to Star
> X which is 1500 light years away, taking me, let's say 3000 years to
> get to (conservatively of course), will I bother getting bored?
If you allow yourself to get bored, it's your very own fault.
> My question is, would 3,000 years feel like just a couple of months to
> a being more than a half-million years old? Is there any way to know?
I guess this is a general question, that isn't really related to
interstellar travel at all.
I dunno. How could *we* know?
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de
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