Galactic Colonization.

[Alferd Packer]

Using technology that is currently theoretical but nonetheless feasible within, say, 500 years, it has been estimated that humanity could easily colonize the entire Galaxy within 2 million years.

It goes like this: Earth sends out a pair of colony transports to the two nearest stars. These two colonies, once established for several hundred years, send out two colony ships of their own to the two stars nearest them. This repeats until the whole Galaxy is crawling with people.

So, if it's indeed possible, why hasn't it been done before? Is humanity really the first species to survive long enough to consider such a path? Or is it already happening on the other side of the Galaxy?

Just something to mull over.

[David]

Whether those two colonies to begin with sent out ships of their own would depend on how much they took with them in the first place.

[Meghel]

Using technology that is currently theoretical but nonetheless feasible within, say, 500 years, it has been estimated that humanity could easily colonize the entire Galaxy within 2 million years.

It goes like this: Earth sends out a pair of colony transports to the two nearest stars. These two colonies, once established for several hundred years, send out two colony ships of their own to the two stars nearest them. This repeats until the whole Galaxy is crawling with people.

So, if it's indeed possible, why hasn't it been done before? Is humanity really the first species to survive long enough to consider such a path? Or is it already happening on the other side of the Galaxy?

Just something to mull over.

There are several possible answers to why it has not been done before:

- Humanity is the first species to survive AND DEVELOP long enough.
And they have to develop the right way.

- Not all stars have habitable planets. Perhaps Terraforming is possible for our environments. Now imagine beings adapted to a whole different type of planet.

- After two million years, there would be a need for an extremely broad definition of Humanity. Mutations, Genetic Adaptations and things like it would seriously produce different types of human. But this is beside the point.

- Perhaps other species did not consider it worth the effort due to religion (anti-tech) , psychology (no need to travel the stars), Physical Adaptation (extremely short life or extremely long life).

-------------------

It is a nice idea, though. I think it is possible.

Meghel

[TrailerParkJawa]

There is also the possiblity that travelling to a nearby star is neither easy or safe. If we are talking about voyages that take multi-generation crews you have some big issues.

And as always with our civilization, there is the phrase "The buck stops here."
Sending a ship to another star is gonna cost big dollars.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

And we'd have to know what the planets are like. I'm sure in about 500-600 years, we could easily build a ship that bcould surviive such a long trip. But not all of the colonies would survive. The problem is, the colonies would be isolated from one another. Anyway, I think before a polanet is colonized, it should be researched.

[ArmorPierce]

Using technology that is currently theoretical but nonetheless feasible within, say, 500 years, it has been estimated that humanity could easily colonize the entire Galaxy within 2 million years.

Some estimates puts it at 65 ,illion years

So, if it's indeed possible, why hasn't it been done before? Is humanity really the first species to survive long enough to consider such a path? Or is it already happening on the other side of the Galaxy?

ways to resolve the paradox are now becoming apparent. For instance, in recent years a wholly new and unexpected discovery was made, which makes a good case for our own present generation being among the first and/or earliest of star farers in the Milky Way.

The discovery? Gamma ray bursters. Massive explosions of radiation rivaling the Big Bang itself in some ways, which may serve to nearly sterilize entire galaxies on a fairly frequent basis. So frequent, in fact, that all by itself the phenomenon may have served to keep the evolution of intelligence 'bottled up' in the Milky Way throughout its entire history-- until only recently. Gamma ray burster frequency seems to have decreased the last few hundred million years or so, making it safe for certain apes on Earth to start talking to one another and crafting tools to make their lives better.

[Lusankya]

Perhaps humans are the only species with the right mixture of intelligence and stupidity to consider sending millions of their kind light years away to an unknown destination, simply because it's there.

Look at the race in Harry Turtledove's Colonisation and World War Series. If any of them thought like this, they'd be considered mad and get locked up.

[Shadow WarChief]

Well if we DO eventually start the colonization of the galaxy, we sure as hell are going to need faster than light communication like the Ansible from the Ender series..

But assuming that we don't, and we find no way to go faster than light, how would wars be fought?

Let's assume this: The Humans of the future have colonized 20 Earth type planets. Let's say over a distance of 200 light years (yeah I know it's incredibly small, but just bear with me). Earth is in the center of this area

For the sake of directions, let's say that the alien territory is "above" our territory so that it looks something like this

0alien territory



200 light years gap between territory


0 Human Territory



The alien government is exactly the same size, but the border of their space is 200 light years away from the border of our space. The alien homeworld is in the center of their territory.

Both of us have standing space fleets of equal capability.

Now then, because we don't have super-luminal speeds It takes 100 years to tell everyone that you're even at war (earth is in the center of our territory)

So that means that as the signal that goes to war travels "up" our territory, every ship that gets it will travel "up". With the signal getting to the end of our territory, all ships in the "top half" of our territory will arrive at relatively the same time the fringe worlds get the signal. This is the first wave

But this is only for the ships which were in the top of your territory. What about those to your right left and bottom?

Well as the signal to go to war moves outward through your territory, all ship will start to go up, but it will take much longer for the left and right territories's ships. This is the second wave

And even longer for the ships which were in the bottom of your territory. This is the third wave.

So when the First wave is half way through the territory gap, the second wave has made it to the end of your territory, and the third wave is JUST starting to travel to the fringe worlds.


All in all, it takes at least 500 years just for you to get every ship over there, and 300 years just to get the first ship over there.


Think about that...

[consequences]

Wouldn't interstellar war without ftl be basically pointless? You would have to send ships a ridiculous distance, with all of the energy costs inherent with accelerating and decelerating a ship to and from a signifigant fraction of lightspeed, if you want results sometime this millenium. When these ships arrive, they have to fight their way through the defenses that an entire planet can produce, with a potential lead time measured in years if the attackers are detected far enough out. The only viable option is to send suicide missions equipped to eradicate all life on a planet. Even then, you have to do it to all enemy planets before any of their communications can arrive at other worlds they control, or you risk retaliation in kind.

[kojikun]

Heres a few possibilities:

1) Its pointless. The government/s of a world limit population such that they don't need to expand, OR they have cannibalized their solar system so much that they don't need to expand. Or they simply don't need to go anywhere, they're fine right at home.

2) They can't benefit from it at all. Even with overpopulation, building new ground colonies, space habitats or terraforming worlds would be easier (you'd have to do it all on those other planets and if you have the room here at home why bother going to another system?)

3a) They're so old by this point that they have FTL and colonizing the entire galaxy is pointless because they can use their entire solar system and surrounding systems to good effect. They have no need for EM transmissions because they either half FTL communications or they use couriers both of which are faster then RADIO, so we'd never hear their transmissions which would still be relatively distant.

3b) They're so young (the universe is only ~13 billion years old, the earth only 4 billion, humankind only ~10,000 years out of animality) and they haven't gotten very far. Any radio transmissions would be far from reading us.

4) They're all buzzing around us but haven't noticed us because our transmissions are only about 70LY out by now. If theres nothing of importance to them withing 70LY of us then they wouldn't even know we're here. If they do know we're here, they would have about as much reason to come to earth as people in the US have to go out of its way to visit an anthill in the middle of the Serengeti.

5) They're already here and we either don't realize it (MIB) or we don't care to realize it (Lawyers).

6) They don't exist (or 3b). The number of them that "should exist" ranges between 3 and 10,000, depending on what numbers you use for the Drake Equation. Even so, that doesn't mean they MUST exist. Just like in gambling, theres still a possibility that you turn up nothing, that we just cropped up when noone else was cropping up (chance has no memory).

7) You're all a delusion in my mind and I'm fucking with you all subconsiously.

[Crossover_Maniac]

Do you think it's possible that medical technology can lenghten the time we live so that interstellar journeys at maybe around .1-.2 c can be made in a person's lifetime? I believe some people say the wear and tear on the human body can be countered using organs grown from stem cells or cancer cured using nanomachines to destroy cancerous cells. Could we get to a point where we can live a century or two? It seems that this is more probable than FTL travel from what we know of biology and physics.

[Crown]

If you would like to read a book on colonising the galaxy with pretty much today's technology, and a bit (or a lot) of wishful thinking, then read;

'The Mellinial Project; Colonising the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps' by Marshal T Savage.

Although be warned, what the author considers easy is open to interpretation...

[Tsyroc]

If you would like to read a book on colonising the galaxy with pretty much today's technology, and a bit (or a lot) of wishful thinking, then read;

'The Mellinial Project; Colonising the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps' by Marshal T Savage.

Although be warned, what the author considers easy is open to interpretation...

Is that the scenerio that plans on generating most
of the energy to power everything but setting up food and electricity
generating colonies in the ocean, and using magnetic rails and lasers to launch ships into space?

[Crown]

Well yeah, the OTEC's have yet to be proven to work IIRC, however the Railgun idea, I have a few issues with, mainly he makes a lot of assumptions about what would be feasable, but yes that is the one.

[Tsyroc]

Well yeah, the OTEC's have yet to be proven to work IIRC, however the Railgun idea, I have a few issues with, mainly he makes a lot of assumptions about what would be feasable, but yes that is the one.

That was a pretty good book. I only struggled to maintain interest in a few parts. It probably helped that he came up with clever names for the various aspects of his plan. Like '"bifrost" to discribe the lasers used to push the ships into space.

[Crown]

I agree, personally once we terraform Mars, I will just call it a day and rest on another planet!

[Darth Yoshi]

Do you think it's possible that medical technology can lenghten the time we live so that interstellar journeys at maybe around .1-.2 c can be made in a person's lifetime? I believe some people say the wear and tear on the human body can be countered using organs grown from stem cells or cancer cured using nanomachines to destroy cancerous cells. Could we get to a point where we can live a century or two? It seems that this is more probable than FTL travel from what we know of biology and physics.

Do yoiu have any idea how incredibly boring that would be, spending several hundred years in space. It'd be like Exodus, except the power of God and stuff.

[Patrick Degan]

Before any serious extrasolar venture can be undertaken, you first have to know which star systems are even worth the effort of colonisation, and that means sending out probes to the nearest sunlike stars which provide the best conditions and probability for the existence of habitable worlds. The probes can be designed for one-way journeys, since laser communication can return data back faster than if the probe has to return to Earth. The initial survey effort, in and of itself, of the local stellar neighbourhood, would I think entail two or three centuries and there is no guarantee of the probes even surviving the transit to, say, Alpha Centauri, Zeta Reticuli, or Pi-2 Orionis.

It would make no sense to risk the lives on a generation ship or relativistic thruster on ventures to star systems which you don't know whether or not there is even anything there worth going to.

Of course, if your objective is to simply establish artificial habitats at other star systems, that factor wouldn't matter. But it seems more feasible to build such settlements within our own star system.

The one thing which will eventually force the issue, of course, is the future death of our own sun within five billion years. That is, if we're still around of course...

[Patrick Degan]

Let's assume this: The Humans of the future have colonized 20 Earth type planets. Let's say over a distance of 200 light years (yeah I know it's incredibly small, but just bear with me). Earth is in the center of this area

The alien government is exactly the same size, but the border of their space is 200 light years away from the border of our space. The alien homeworld is in the center of their territory.

<snip>

Both of us have standing space fleets of equal capability.

<snip>

Now then, because we don't have super-luminal speeds It takes 100 years to tell everyone that you're even at war (earth is in the center of our territory)

<snip>

All in all, it takes at least 500 years just for you to get every ship over there, and 300 years just to get the first ship over there.


Think about that...

It's worse than that, I'm afraid. Relativity also essentially traps the invading fleet in the past. While they're ploughing their way across interstellar space, their ships are essentially frozen at the level of technology they launched with, while the people on the target world have decades to prepare for the attack and advance their own technology to deal with the enemy fleet's weapons. The advantages would be wholly on the defenders' side.