Newtonian ships or not?.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by PvK:
Huh? Reversing your math, 4000 years, with 100 year stops at each system, and 100 years between systems, is 200 years per system expansion. 4000 / 200 = 20 systems wide, the galaxy. Sounds more like an SE4 quadrant than a galaxy, to me.

No, no, that's only true if we use "proportions". Your number is only correct if the new colonies never make colony ships and only the homeworld is producing new colonies at the rate of 1 every 200 years. With the colony ships makign new colonies in turn the growth goes up exponentially.

It does appear I had a couple small errors in computation. You are right it would be new colonies every 200 years, not every 100 years. I think I had another error somewhere that I am not sure of cause I didn't write all my work down. When I figure it now with all the assumptions I get that it would actually take 15,000 years, not 4,000 years to colonize the entire galaxy. But by point is still valid because compared to the age of the galaxy and the history of our own civilization, that's a drop in the bucket.

2 on year 400
4 on year 800
8 on year 1200
16 on year 1600
32 on year 2000

1024 on year 4000

32,768 on year 6000

1,048,576 on year 8000
...

At this rate of growth you pass 200 billion sometime around year 15,000. Of course this number is modified up or down by some significant factors. First of all, even if there are 200 billion stars, it's unlikely that all of them have habitable planets. So that will decrease the time needed for complete galactic colonization.

On the other hand, I must concede it would likely take longer because of one major factor. As the colonized territory got larger, the systems in the interior would be unable to efficently send out new colony ships. Available planets would be farther from them then the assumptive 100 year trip time would allow for. Of course that is an average figure and it's assumed that some trips would take less time, so it balances out to a degree. But once you reach the point where it takes multiple centuries for your core systems to send clony ships I would expect that those would stop and only teh colonies on the periphary would continue expanding. This would cause the overall rate of expansion to drop. By what ammount I don't know. The math get's a little over my head at that point.

Originally posted by PvK:
Or they aren't doing anything that we have been able to observe, not necessarily because they care if we know about it, or not.

I believe I suggested that p[ossibility as well in my Posts. Maybe not the Last one, but definetly somewhere in this thread I said something along those lines.

[JurijD]

No, GEO, I mean a COUPLE 100.000 years.

I didn´t do the math as you did because there are some serious limitations to your exponent-theory.

I just assumed our galaxy to be 100.000 light years across and since if you jup from one star to the next you must go in a straight line from one end to the other...

you cannot SIMPLY say: we got 1 star now and in 100 years we'll have 2 then 4 then 8... etc. etc
It doesn't multipy like that because you must take into acount that colonists won´t be leaving from your first star anymore (and if they do they won+t get to the colony "much" sooner than those from your secondary colonies... making the whole thing pointless).

Think about it geo you´ll see there is a big logical error in your exponent-calculation.

So you really have to think in terms of a "virtual ship" traveling from one part of the galaxy to the other. the real question is: how long would it take for this virtual ship to cross the galaxy if it took "pit" stops every 10 light years for 100 years each stop... the answer is: 100.000light years/10 light years = 10.000 stops

10.000 stops*100 years/stop= 1.000.000 years ... or in other words "a couple 100.000 years" since we are not exactly at one edge of the galaxy. (and I didn´t take into account the travel time between the stars.. only the stops of 100 years)

If we are traveling at SUB-LIGHT speads we should be able to clonize the galaxy in a couple 100.000 years.

To see how very wrong your 4000 years estimate is ... just try to explain to yourself how we are supposed to reach the other edge of our galaxy (some 60.000 light years away) in 4000 years if our colony ships are traveling at 1 ligt year per year at most (not taking into account that they are stopping at planets for 100-200 years) The colony expansion is NOT exponent in nature.. it is very much LINEAR. Just imagine it as a circle that grows from our solar system outward. Get it?


but anyway you tweek the numbers...any race that is acpable of developing some sort of anti-matter driven space ships (for the low mass/fuel ratios) and genetically modify its population so it can travle in space for several decades would be able to colonize the galaxy in roughly 1.000.000 to 10.000.000 years... which is still nothing to the WAST eones passed.

[ March 28, 2004, 13:11: Message edited by: JurijD ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
It is in fact known that most of the astronauts had psychiatric problems after their missions. There was even some speculation that John Glenn would have had his past problems used against him if he had been successful in his run for the presidential nomination. No need for 'conspiracy theories' about this when it's public information.

Ok, so does this psychiatric issue now affect all astronauts, and not merely the lunar astronauts as you said before? Because John Glenn was not part of the Appolo program. He never left low earth orbit and the saftey of the magnetosphere.

Except for that secret mission that I'm not allowed to say anything about.

How is speculation that John Glenn had a speculative mental condition that a speculative political operative might have speculativly used to damage him politically realate to anything? And we aren't talking conspiracy theories? Riiiigght.

It is NOT in fact "known" that "most" astronauts have had psyciatric problems upon returning to earth. It IS of course rumored to be true by people that have no way of knowing one way or the other. And that rumor takes on life over the internet becasue otherwise intelligent people such as yourself give it more weight that it deserves.

Buzz Aldrin had some well publicized isssues. By his account it was a sudden lack of any goals to work towards in his life. It's a common malady suffered by may people who reach retiement age and no longer feel a purpose. After all, when your life long goal as a pilot and astronaut has been to push the envelope farther and faster, what do you do when you've walked on the moon? There is litereally nowhere to go but down from there.

Who else? Can you name one, give a link, anything? If it's well known you should be able to very easily. Shouldn't take much research at all.

There were less then 27 astronauts that ever orbited or landed on the moon. Maybe a couple hundred that have ever made it as far as orbit. So if only a few had mental problems it would be a significant percentage of the overall total. But the numbers would be too small to have any real meaning as a statistical sample. And considering the intense nature of their occupation it's highly explainable for other reasons.

All that said, there is definetly stuff out there that's bad for us. Recent studies of radiation levels on Mars have put the possibility of any manned missions to mars in doubt for the near term, even if we decided to do it. I don't disagree with you there at all.

But it's not neccesary to buy into any conspiracy theories about it. Nasa will tell you all about it if you ask. What possible reason would they have for classifying the end of the Moon missions? Is there some reason they need to keep us in the dark about what they know and understand about the dangers of long term and deep space travel? If so they have a funny way of keeping secrets, cause they admit that stuff all the time.

They are always telling us that they don't stuff. Their whole reason for exsistance is to find out stuff, so telling us they don't know stuff is job security.

The kind of stuff Nasa covers up is engineering screw ups. If it will get someone fired, I could see them trying to cover it up. I see no incentive to them in covering up the fact that there are things about space they don't quite understand yet.

[ March 28, 2004, 13:31: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by JurijD:
but anyway you tweek the numbers...any race that is acpable of developing some sort of anti-matter driven space ships (for the low mass/fuel ratios) and genetically modify its population so it can travle in space for several decades would be able to colonize the galaxy in roughly 1.000.000 to 10.000.000 years... which is still nothing to the WAST eones passed.

Right. That's what I was trying to say in my Last post. I am in no way trying to say we will colonize the galaxy in 4,000, 15,000 or even a million years. I was just trying to put into numbers that even at sublight speeds it should be possible in an extremely short amount of time as compared to the life of the galaxy. The fact that despite this teh galaxy is not colonized doesn't prove anything, but it certainly gives weight to the probability that there are huge factors making interstellar travel hard. Factors beyond just needing some faster propulsion system.

[JurijD]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Maybe life here on Earth has some important relationship with the magnetic field and leaving the earth's magnetic field unbalances something in our biology? Changing your home might not be as simple as jumping from one rock to another in space. Life processes could be dependent on other factors that we haven't figured out yet. We may be part of this planet in a way that we cannot change.

Well I cannot speak about the conspiracy part of this issue. But I can speak about the medical/physiological part. And I can assure you (P less than 0.01%) that weak constant/changing EM fields have NO impact whatsoever on human life/physiological processes. All the research was done by the WHO, and a great number of leading world heath institutions and for the time being this is the accepted fact.

Think of it this way: the earth magnetic field is something like 10^-4 Tesla, right? Well I´m not sure but our cell phones give out a GREAT deal more than that... and if you think that the distance from that 10^-4 T can harm you I´m sure the cell phones would screw us up completely by now... heck just having someone bring a magnet to your head and wave it around would would prolly have you confined to a mental institution if weak EM fields would have any impact on the human mind.

I dare not think what a MRI would do to you

In conclusion:
The Earth´s magnetic field (or the absence of it) did not affect the state of mind of those Lunar astronauts (if there even were any affects we can speak of). If there are the reason has to be something else.

[JurijD]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Right. That's what I was trying to say in my Last post. I am in no way trying to say we will colonize the galaxy in 4,000, 15,000 or even a million years. I was just trying to put into numbers that even at sublight speeds it should be possible in an extremely short amount of time as compared to the life of the galaxy. The fact that despite this teh galaxy is not colonized doesn't prove anything, but it certainly gives weight to the probability that there are huge factors making interstellar travel hard. Factors beyond just needing some faster propulsion system.

Yes yes, I agree. It is VERY curious that we have not been overrun by aliens by now. I´ve been wondering about this simple fact for some time now.

I don´t think that we can explain it away with "technical problems" because one way or the other we can colonize other worlds its just a matter of time for the right tech to develop.

To be honest I really cannot think of a good reason why we haven´t been visited by aliens before... EXCEPT if I dip into the border-line things some others have come up with:

Maybe we were visited eons ago but our planet was already populated so they moved on... say they have a sort of "prime directive": don´t mess with other life forms until they develop warp drive or a VCR that lets you set the clock easily or whatever..

In any case I wouldn´t be at all surprised if we find out the galaxy is full of colonized worlds... and in reverse I wouldn´t be surprised if we find is scaresly populated.

[Baron Munchausen]

Geo:

Yes, now that you have rammed it into the thread we are talking conspiracy theories. I however did not intend to referance any conspiracy theories or any political subjects at all. I am talking about the problem of why we aren't over-run with aliens if intelligent life is possible on other planets. The publicly know facts of science plus the rumor that the Moon missions were cancelled for more than budgetary reasons allow for a speculation about space flight being more difficult than we currently believe. Not about political conspiracies. You had to find political conspiracy theories in it. If you are obsessed with conspiracy theories (and insisting on debunking them is just another way of being obsessed with them) that is your problem, not mine.

[ March 28, 2004, 18:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]