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The Universe Within 12.5 Light Years

(www.atlasoftheuniverse.com)
266 points algorithmista | 3 comments | 05 Sep 25 22:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.425s | source
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stephc_int13 ◴[06 Sep 25 01:21 UTC] No.45145686[source]▶
When the Fermi Paradox was first posited, scientists and engineers seemed to believe that interstellar travel was soon to be technologically achievable, a few decades, maybe centuries for the less optimistic. Progress around space propulsion has kind of stalled since then and we should maybe question the possibility of interstellar travel as this would give an easy but unpleasant answer to the famous paradox.
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treyd ◴[06 Sep 25 02:24 UTC] No.45146055[source]▶
We do know how to build interstellar-capable propulsion. It'd still be a generational ship but we know how we could do it within the span of a few human lifetimes. Building them is a matter of organizing the resources to actually make it happen, and we haven't had the collective will for anything like that yet.
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SoftTalker ◴[06 Sep 25 02:31 UTC] No.45146094[source]▶
I’d be pretty pissed at my parents if I was born on a Starship and condemned to die on it too. Imagine living your entire life in a Winnebago and you can’t even go outside.
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1. papascrubs ◴[06 Sep 25 02:44 UTC] No.45146183[source]▶
I follow what you're saying, but many folks on this planet have far less opportunities than such a trip might provide. Guaranteed food, housing, access to cutting edge healthcare, a likely united community. I'm assuming these ships would be fairly big. It would definitely be different but-- would it be as bad as we think?
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2. saulpw ◴[06 Sep 25 03:44 UTC] No.45146423[source]▶
It would be better than living your entire life in a literal cage on earth. But I think it would be worse than even being a slave on earth. A slave can touch grass and hope to run away. A person born on a generational ship would be effectively enslaved (to perform necessary ship duties). You mention 'cutting edge healthcare', but on earth that requires the substantial and diverse resources of an industrial civilization. The research of millions of people and the infrastructure to breed nuclides and manufacture precise machinery. Does this generational ship have a modern chip fab on it!?
3. seabass-labrax ◴[06 Sep 25 05:23 UTC] No.45146831[source]▶
Unfortunately, I suspect that any starship that could bring with it all of those services would also bring with it the economic and political strife of Earth. The are lots of examples of democratic states turning into oligarchies or worse in recent history so that can't work in it's current form at least.

The closest analogue in the real world to the ideal that you describe is, I think, Cuba. It does guarantee food and housing, and it does have a remarkably advanced healthcare system plus what is reportedly a united community. Perhaps most interesting of all, it's politically isolated like a starship would have to be by its nature. Even then, one would have to be either pretty brave or desperate to go along on the journey, as modern Cuba has only been around for half a century and that's at the absolute minimum of an intergalactic starship's practical mission duration.