Exploring Space There is a lot of talk regarding putting humans on Mars. It does make me wonder however what might the feeling be if we had a breakthrough on breaking light speed and found a planet we could reach, which did not need to be terraformed? Would we abandon the idea of colonizing Mars and decide since this other planet was easier to colonize, we would forget about populating Mars? One thing is for sure, even if we did not colonize it, we would probably put some sort of a base there. Breaking the light speed barrier would result in an exponential amount of exploration. We, as humans, have this hunger to explore and we can see just by looking at our planet what exploration over the years has accomplished here. Humans have spread out all over the planet and I am sure once we get multiples of light speed available, we will also spread out all over the galaxy then maybe even the universe. If we wanted to get to the edge of the universe and could travel a billion times faster than light, it would still take over 13 years to reach the edge of the universe we know about. To realize the difference speed makes in travel just look at how long it took the first sailing ships to transverse the globe. Magellan is credited with the first trip around the world, and it is said it took him about three years to accomplish. A Gulfstream G650 flew around the world in 41 hours 7 minutes. There are military aircraft which could do it much faster. Since we have progressed this much in earthly travel, imagine what we might do in space. We are on the verge of becoming much better off in the future. There are incredible riches in ores just waiting for us to mine them, but as I have said before this is a double-edged sword. There are probably so many elements which will become available, the price of certain ones on earth will drop and many of the things we consider valuable today will become very common, severely limiting their value. Gold for example could become so common we might be seeing it become a building material in the future along with silver and other metals. The same probably will become true for gem stones. Some asteroids could be full of these things and some day they might become costume jewelry. What might we find which we know nothing of today? We just might find metals and different elements which will have properties which will increase our efficiency in space travel. We have already found rocks at the bottom of the ocean which scientists think might contain oxygen. Could we find a use for them? The funny part of this is there could still be minerals and metals we haven’t discovered yet right on our home planet. The proof of this is the fact we keep adding elements to the periodic table. An element is defined as a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus. Take Chromium for example, it has the atomic number of 24. Will we take desperate measures to make up for the fact we cannot travel fast enough it space right now? What about sleeper ships where humans are in a state where their heart is slowed to the point they are in suspended animation? I don’t believe we are able to even do this yet, but if we could, would we want to? Yes, it might save on resources the spacecraft would have to carry, but those who are sleepers might have to trust their lives to a computer monitoring their enclosures. I know I wouldn’t want to trust my life to a computer, but I guess that is what happens in a way during a rocket launch with a crew aboard. But we are talking about long periods of time where the computer would have to be running perfectly. Another problem for really long-term missions is, we might be asking the astronauts to give up ever seeing their families again because the trip could either be one way, or so long their family members would have died of old age. We have had problems with computers in space before. One of the Voyagers stopped sending back info, but was somehow repaired from earth. Sure, this was ancient technology, but it was simple technology. The Mariner 1 probe had to be destroyed on launch due to a computer malfunction. Russia reported a computer malfunction on the International Space Station. The computer on the Hubble Space Telescope had to be repaired. I think we all know from personal experience that at times computers will fail. It could be due to faulty software, or hardware. I always felt if you leave a computer running long enough, you will eventually have a problem. The only way around the speed limitation we think we know about right now are wormholes. We have never seen one, but a physics professor will tell you they appear in equations. Maybe they are invisible, or they just can’t be seen with human eyesight. However, no device has yet to be invented which can discover a wormhole. If they do exist, they would provide a shortcut between at least two areas in space. Perhaps some people might have gone through one without realizing it. Could a plane which disappeared and was never found have entered one and is residing somewhere else? How can a plane flying over land just disappear without a trace which has happened many times? I could understand it over the ocean, except for the fact if a plane goes down over water, it emits an underwater locator beacon for up to 30 days. Where does this leave us with space travel? There is no way around it, we just need more speed even for touring around the solar system. It has been estimated a flight to Uranus might take 12 years, which is just not practical for human flight. The Juno spacecraft took about 5 years to reach Jupiter. If I were asked what I thought should be the limit of time humans take to reach a planet or moon in our solar system, I would guess at about 6 months or less. I think we have to consider the mental health component of being locked up inside a craft with people of different personalities. While it is far from being fast enough, I think we have to concentrate on breaking the light speed barrier. This is the first step in getting the speed we need.
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