how long till we colonize a planet outside the solar system

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2002-08-24 12:54am

any bets?

Icehawk · Post by **Icehawk** » 2002-08-24 01:10am

WAY over a century, possibly two if NASA and the US Gov keep bumbling around and misusing their money as much as they are currently.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2002-08-24 01:24am

Screw the US. Let Germany or Japan handle it. That ought cut back a few years.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-08-24 01:37am

Tens of thousand years minimum, if ever.

There's absolutely no economic benefit to be drawn from interstellar space colonization. If it happens it will be as a result of a bunch of fanatics wanting to move a long, long way away from the rest of humanity for some social or religious reason rather than economics. As such interstellar colonization will have to wait until even minor deranged fringe groups have the financial and energy resources to mount interstellar missions out-of-pocket. Considering current economic trends this is going to take a very, very long time. Humanity will probably destroy itself first, likely as a result of some deranged fringe group gettting ahold of enough energy to depopulate the earth.

Solid Snake · Post by **Solid Snake** » 2002-08-24 02:34am

50 years. I have a lot of faith in solar sailing!

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-08-24 02:46am

SolidSnake wrote:50 years. I have a lot of faith in solar sailing!

Pure solar sails aren't useful for interstellar journies. Laser-driven lightsails can work but first someone has to build a rather complex optics system centered around a lot of very powerful space-based lasers and a very large focusing mirror. Establishing the space infrastucture to build the lasers and associated optics would likely more than fifty years even if the project was started tomorrow.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2002-08-24 05:29am

200 years, minimum. And that's assuming that things go REALLY well from here on out. As Enlightenment says, there's no reason to do it, which means that it WON'T happen until it becomes economically simple... which I don't see happening for quite a while.

Now, colonizing INSIDE the solar system... that's a lot simpler (relatively). I betcha that we'll be seeing NASA (or some space administration) trying for a permanent outpost (not a colony, though... a scientific outpost, similar to the ones in Antarctica) on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn before 2100.

Cpt_Frank · Post by **Cpt_Frank** » 2002-08-24 06:06am

Hmm, at first we'd need to actually find a planet with characteristics similar to earth, it won't possibly be in one of our neighbouring star systems. That alone will take at least two or three hundred years.
And after we find it we will have to make a colonisation team ready, and that, too, isn't easy since you will have to send many people there so that you have enough genetic diversity to set up a self-contained colony.
So you'll need big sleeper ships, and many of them, capable of around 1/10 c so you won't travel that long.
Setting up the expedition force will take another five hundred years, to develop the tech and build the ships.
Then add the traveling time of, say, 400 years and in only 1200 years Earth will have its first colony!

Lusankya · Post by **Lusankya** » 2002-08-24 06:55am

Perhaps we should do something about it. We could all join forces and then make our own Space Exploration Company. Surely we could get enough people putting money into the cause to keep it functioning if we advertised in the right way.

And think of all the Sci-Fi computer geeks we could have working for us for free! As long as we kept them fed and clothed, of course.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2002-08-24 08:58am

Prehaps we, the denizens of SD.net qualify as a fanatical group that wants to leave humanity behind then?

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2002-08-24 10:33am

NecronLord wrote:Prehaps we, the denizens of SD.net qualify as a fanatical group that wants to leave humanity behind then?

We already have, you know.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2002-08-24 11:04am

It would take billions, perhaps even trillions of dollars to research and develop. And one a colony is set, it will be cut off from Earth, and supplies will take years to reach them. Still, it would be neat to escape this system, but it porbably won't happen in my lifetime. We'll have to develop the technology, an make it inexpensive.

Cpt_Frank · Post by **Cpt_Frank** » 2002-08-24 11:15am

Well, supplying them will be impossible since it'd take the supply ships tens or hundreds of years to reach them, so the colony will have to be self-contained from the very beginning.

SCVN 2812 · Post by **SCVN 2812** » 2002-08-24 07:38pm

NecronLord wrote:Prehaps we, the denizens of SD.net qualify as a fanatical group that wants to leave humanity behind then?

Pity the universe that receives some of these denizens.

I'd say a half millenium to a millenium given our current progress in that direction.

Why would we colonize another world? Major governments probably would form the initial colonies just as they did centuries ago when the Americas were found just so they can scout out the area and determine if anything there is worth exploiting, then come the indentured servents who have sold themselves for a certain period of time (probably years) to a an interested party in exchange for a ticket to the new world and a new life. Pretty much a new world gets colonized for the same reasons the new world got colonized when Columbus first sailed the ocean blue. Greed and/or a desire to get away and leave the rest of humanity behind for various reasons. And also I think growing disatisfaction with the inevidetibility of China surpassing us in space progress given the pace of current Western progress will force the current administrations to get off their butts and do something to re-establish our superiority over those who would threaten our superiority in space matters.