MetaChat - Herzog is right -- we'll never leave, will we?

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11 June 2007

Herzog is right -- we'll never leave, will we? →[More:]I was listening to a science segment on NPR about the discovery of an earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. Apparently this is the right amount of distance from its sun to allow for the possible presence of liquid water.

The scientist (I wasn't paying close enough attention catch his name) said the star is "only" 20 light years away. Meaning that, with our current technology, it would take about 300,000 years to get there.

This made me flash back to an interview I read with Werner Herzog, in which he expressed deep pessimism about the prospect of humanity ever leaving the planet to explore "strange new worlds." And it hit me that he's probably right. Given the vast, vast distances involved and our proclivities for destroying ourselves and our environments, it seems to me very unlikely that we'll ever develop technology sufficiently advanced to make interstellar travel possible.

Dammit, I guess a little kid inside of me still nursed the idea. I feel like I just realized that a fat guy in a red suit couldn't possibly squeeze himself down our chimney on Christmas eve.

Even if it's unlikely that we're alone in the universe, it seems we might as well be, and that our little life form will probably perish before ever finding out.

post by: treepour at: 16:07 | 16 comments

Looking at the history of prediction, the only thing we can say for sure is that the future is always weirder than we thought it would be.

The job I do today (computermotron programmer) literally did not exist 60 years ago, just as a thing a human could do.

In the last century we went from calvary to a-bombs, print to email. There are now more people alive and healthy than there ever have been before.

I don't know about you, but I'm planning to get off this rock.

posted by Capn 11 June | 16:18

While I'm getting closer to intellectually understanding it (I think), I still don't emotionally get why people want to leave Earth. It's always seemed like a giant admission of failure to me. Not space exploration, but colonization and the idea that this place is so bad that we have to go start someplace else.

On the other hand, I also think the most romantic and fitting end to Venice would be for it to sink gently back into the lagoon rather than being "saved" by well-meaning interlopers, so maybe I'm coming at the whole thing from a perverse angle. (Which I just typed as "perverse angel.")

posted by occhiblu 11 June | 16:24

Yeah, I think Capn is pretty much right on. The history of science is a series of unexpected events. Look at physics before and after Einstein, no saw him coming and then bam! the world was turned upside down. Someone will come up with some way to make galactic travel a possibility but it probably won't be from NASA.

posted by doctor_negative 11 June | 16:27

Well, it's the Fermi Paradox we're talkin' here.

And this reminds me of a sci-fi writer (just looked it up, it was Timothy Ferris) likening the Fermi Paradox to wanting to have a lobster dinner: he sets the table, lights the candles, and waits for a lobster to crawl in and settle on his plate. Not impossible, but...

posted by Specklet 11 June | 16:28

occhiblu - I think, for a lot of people, it's the idea of space as the last great frontier. Why did people colonize the "New World"? Why did people then proceed to "Go West"? America especially was founded by people who were continually dissatisfied by wherever they were.

Personally, I think it's a lot more economically feasible to start mining the asteroids.

Sort of crazy site about mining asteroids using earth tethers (basically, space elevators).

posted by muddgirl 11 June | 16:30

The history of science is a series of unexpected events. Look at physics before and after Einstein, no saw him coming and then bam!

Well, that's not entirely correct, but in essence yes, the progress of science has become quicker and quicker.

posted by muddgirl 11 June | 16:31

"Cavalry," Capn; it's forgivable, though, as we know yer no landlubber.

We'll be jaunting before you know it, my friends. Just visualize, completely and precisely, the spot to which you desire to teleport yourself, and concentrate the latent energy of your mind into a single thrust to get yourself there. It'll blow society apart, we'll inhabit far-flung colonies, and eventually one among us, Gully Foyle by name (Terra his nation, deep space his dwelling place, the stars his destination) will jaunte through space and time and defuse an interplanetary war.

posted by Hugh Janus 11 June | 16:34

I think, for a lot of people, it's the idea of space as the last great frontier. Why did people colonize the "New World"? Why did people then proceed to "Go West"? America especially was founded by people who were continually dissatisfied by wherever they were.

Yeah, that's the thing I intellectually understand, but can't viscerally feel (which is odd, given how much I love the West Coast and its history). I think it's the technology aspect of it -- there were already human beings in pretty much every area subsequently colonized on Earth. It just seems unnatural to go inflict ourselves on other areas of the universe where we aren't already, I guess. It seems rude. :-)

posted by occhiblu 11 June | 16:45

up here, man, I'm awlready there.

posted by Hellbient 11 June | 16:45

I still don't emotionally get why people want to leave Earth

Because every time I look up at the heavens, I feel invited and then ashamed that we've ignored that invitation for so long.

Also? Infinities of exploitable resources!!!!

posted by WolfDaddy 11 June | 17:09

If the future is never as we imagined, then we are imagining ourselves exploring and settling on other worlds WAY too much. Sadly like the Flying Car and Personal Jetpack, it may be a self-UN-fulfilling prophesy.

Here's a controversial conjecture: is the belief that humanity will travel to other worlds in our lifetime a substitute for a belief in Heaven and the Afterlife?

posted by wendell 11 June | 18:25

The world is nearly all parcelled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered and colonised. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far. — Cecil Rhodes' will.

posted by matthewr 11 June | 18:36

My dream job is at Scaled Composites. If I ever get there, you all get spaceship rides on me.

posted by backseatpilot 11 June | 19:12

Hey, thanks, all. Some really good thoughts here. Occhiblu, I'm with you on not wanting to colonize the rest of the universe, but I share WolfDaddy's feelings on a gut level -- always have. It's not something I can explain, just a kind of longing that seems to be hardwired in. And it's really not about achieving it during our lifetimes -- I think I lost that hope a long time ago (about the same time that I admitted to myself I wouldn't grow up to live on one of those neato earth-like space stations with their own atmospheres and ecosystems). What seems painful to me is the notion that it may never happen. At least for us humans. Once the singularity gets here and we enter into a post-human symbiosis with technology, things might change. (I jest. Kind of. I think.)

posted by treepour 11 June | 21:31

Do I think that in my lifetime we'll ever have easy travel to extrasolar planets? Nah.

Do I think that in a reasonable human future we'll have a warp or jump drive? Nah, probably ruled out by physics. Probably.

Do I think that before 300,000 years is up, we'll have a way to get 20 light years over in less than 300,000 years? Oh yes. Maybe within a century we'll have the technology to do a light sail or something that could make the trip in less than a century.

There's a rule of thumb (Niven, or somebody) that any exploration -- in or out of the solar system -- has to have a mission timeline from conception to completion of under 50 years, because that's roughly the maximum career lifetime of a scientist.

posted by stilicho 12 June | 00:39

the idea that this place is so bad that we have to go start someplace else.

It's a lot like a successful relationship, really. You have to work on yourself before you can hope to be with someone else. And humanity needs to get out of its infancy and into some kind of maturity before we can expect to do anything without major fuckups.

I used to dream about space exploration for the sake of the frontier. "We're space explorers and we need space!" Now it's kind of like, "Hey, whoa, there's a LOT of shit going on inside the brain that we don't even understand yet." So I changed my major from Physics to Psychology.

posted by Eideteker 12 June | 01:11

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