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93 points JPLeRouzic | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.617s | source | bottom
1. d_silin ◴[] No.44380695[source]
Developing propulsion technology to reach 0.1c velocity will move the needle on interstellar propulsion from impossible to just barely feasible. Although that is at least 100-200 years away, we can absolutely start expanding into our Solar System, starting with nearby bodies, like Moon and Mars.
replies(2): >>44380811 #>>44382130 #
2. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.44380811[source]
> Developing propulsion technology to reach 0.1c velocity will move the needle on interstellar propulsion from impossible to just barely feasible

More than barely. "A 40-year one-way interstellar flyby mission to the nearest stars will require a relativistic spacecraft speed in excess of 6000 AU/yr (i.e., > 0.1c)" [1].

That means, practically speaking, nuclear-fusion, antimatter-annihilation and directed-energy propulsion. All of which are TRL ≤ 2.

My bet would be on fusion propulsion. It's inherently easier than fusion power since you don't need to bother converting the energy to electricity. That said, solar sails [2] and directed-energy anti-drone weapons [3] are seeing quiet progress.

[1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200000759/downloads/20...

[2] https://www.nasa.gov/mission/acs3/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hunter_(laser_weapon)

replies(1): >>44380881 #
3. carpdiem ◴[] No.44380881[source]
1 AU is about 8.3 light minutes. So 6k AU is about 50k light minutes. with ~525k minutes in a year, that means that 6k AU/yr is almost exactly 0.1c.
replies(1): >>44380932 #
4. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.44380932{3}[source]
> that means that 6k AU/yr is almost exactly 0.1c

Nobody debates this. The point is that 0.1c propulsion is not necessarily 100+ years away. And its 40-year transit time is not "barely feasible," it's comparable to present deep-space mission timelines [1].

[1] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/

5. pfdietz ◴[] No.44382130[source]
However, travel at 0.1c is not needed for the Fermi Argument to bite. Much slower speeds would allow a colonization wave to sweep a galaxy in time << the age of the universe.
replies(1): >>44385912 #
6. thechao ◴[] No.44385912[source]
Even at .0006c (our current tech), the galaxy would be filled with (weakly self propagating) robotic probes after just 750 million years. Unless extremely long lived self-propagating probes just ... die out ... that implies no aliens older than 750 million years from our galaxy. It implies no aliens from the nearby galactic neighborhood within 3 billion years. That kind of implies we're all alone.

I have three wild-eyed theories: (1) eukaryotism is an unbelievably exotic step; (2) and/or the moon is required and ultrarare; or, (3) advanced civilizations eschew yellow stars for being inconveniently short-lived: maybe they prefer brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, or black holes for their energy gradient.

replies(1): >>44386763 #
7. qiine ◴[] No.44386763{3}[source]
you want a funny one I am starting to like more and more ?

We are simply the first.