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-So you probably know that stars are pretty far away
-But you may have also dreamed about visiting one since you were a kid.
-Science fiction has taught us that travelling to a distant star system may not be too far off in the distant future.
-But Science fiction rarely gets into some of the largest problems that surround this concept.
-I've made one video before discussing the possibility of humanity reaching another star in your life-time and to summarize that one,
-The best you can hope for is *Maybe* a tiny probe the Proxima Centauri system sometime in a few decades
That might be capable of taking some pictures of the planets there
But as for you actually going yourself in visiting a planet that orbits a distanse star
Unless you can figured out how to become immortal you likely never will
And here are some of the biggest reasons why
The distances are obviously huge and traveling across those distances will take a lot of time
The fastest speed that humanity has ever achieved with a man-made object was using a Helios 2 prom
which ** to 240 000km/h
That's fast enough to circle around the entire Earth in just about 10 minutes.
With going in that speed will still take about 19 000 years
of just reach Proxima Centauri - the nearest other star to the Sun
But lets speculate for a moment now that perhaps this is the fastest speed that we ever could reach using a spaceships with actuall humans on board
We build a ship with about 100 person crew that we populated-self over generations until we gets to Proxima Centauri
This concept is known as Generation Ship
and the people on board will live their entire lifes without every living the small space of the ship
before arriving at its destination over 600 generations of people will live at this bizzare exsistance
before finally arriving 19 000 years later at their destination and goal:
The first humans to ever colonised antoher star system.
The only problem is tho: after they finally do arrive, they not only discover, that humans are already there,
but have been there already for tousands of years
and have completly colonised the new planet with milions of people and huge cities.
The reason this could happend is that the people of 2018 assumed the speed of 240 000 km/h
was the fastest speed we could achieved on a ship
and so they send up their colonists under that assumption.
However, after 19 000 years into their yourney, they were still 18 000 years more away from getting to their planet.
Back on Earth, tho, a thousand years of technological development was enough time to discover much faster forms of space travel.
And the people od the year 3018 will be capable of sending out colonist on the ship that could reach the planet in just 5 000 years.
So their ship endend up passing the one l*** in 2018 arrived to the destination planet thousands of years before it
and have enougt time to completly develop civilisation there before the 2018 ship arrived
and discover their entire 19 000 years of deal and suffering was all for... nothing.
Who knows what psychological or feel self- problems such an experience could create for those people
But this entire problem is known as the Wait Calculation
When is the optimal time for humanity to send colonist out to another star?
The concept was first written about by Andrew Kennedy in a paper written in 2006.
Kennedy assumed, that it have to be a minimum travel time to any place in the Universe.
And that ment was our technology was close to achieving it we could safely send colonist out and avoid the risk of living too early for nothing.
But deciding when the best time to live is.. is pretty complicated.
And think about the implications that poses to any would-be space traveler:
Would you volunteerly signed up to be locked in the space ship for the rest of your life,
along with your children's life and their children's, and their children's and so on houndred of time over?
When the only pay-off will be being told that: One day humanity will colonise another planet star thanks to your sacrifice?
But then you remember the Wait calculation and release that only pay of is actually a huge gamble
and you sacifice maybe worthless and along run.
You'll be insine to take that risk and everybody else will feel the same way,
so convincing anybody to get on the Generation Ship like this at almost anytime in the future
would be almost impossible..unles you forced them to.
Would be colonist always assumed, that peopole in the future would just create faster form of transportation,
that would completly negate their own journeys?
That is until we descover a way to travel at or near light speed.
It appears, that the speed od light is the Universe highest speed limit.
And so, naturally, if humanity ever discover a way to travel near it,
potential colonists could rest their sure that they sacrifices their travel that never be en vain.
Like the explorers aboard the ABC Jungle Fruit
are cruisers searching for resourses