What is the point of space travel without FTL?

nyarlothothep

This might seem trollish but I don't mean to troll. At best we might colonise the solar system with chemical rockets but that's it. Yeah we might extend the survival of the species by a few millenia. We might find microbial life on Mars or we might not etc. These are worthwhile goals but at the same time do you think it's all a bit futile? The universe is not set up to allow proper space travel it seems.

nokia69

nyarlothothep wrote: »

This might seem trollish but I don't mean to troll. At best we might colonise the solar system with chemical rockets but that's it. We might find microbial life on Mars or we might not etc. These are worthwhile goals but at the same time do you think it's all a bit futile? The universe is not set up to allow proper space travel it seems.

If you want to look at it that way, sure whats the point of anything

BTW interstellar travel or probes are possible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)#Interstellar_missions

nyarlothothep

Orion was a great idea but it's not feasible. Doesn't the nuclear testban treaty prohibit the use of nukes in space? Plus for every launch it was estimated that 10 people would die as a result of fallout. You could assemble in space but even so, 44 years at best isn't ideal to travel to a star system merely 4 light years away. And there probably isn't anything there anyway!

AMKC

I don,t think that any of that is futile. You have to start somewhere. If Europeans said 4 or 5 hundred years ago Ah You know what we won,t bother building ships whats the point we will just stay were we are instead. Than a lot of us that are around now might not exist and out technology might still be way back maybe even before the industrial age. Its about exploring expanding our knowledge of the world and of the Universe and from doing that we can learn more. Sure it will not be easy at first there will be mistakes and accident even some unfortunate deaths but through it all we can learn and become a better race. It might be a couple or even a few hundred years yet before we have FTL or can fold place but am sue when the human race does get to that point that we will be a better race and it will be worth it.

nyarlothothep

AMKC wrote: »

I don,t think that any of that is futile. You have to start somewhere. If Europeans said 4 or 5 hundred years ago Ah You know what we won,t bother building ships whats the point we will just stay were we are instead. Than a lot of us that are around now might not exist and out technology might still be way back maybe even before the industrial age. Its about exploring expanding our knowledge of the world and of the Universe and from doing that we can learn more. Sure it will not be easy at first there will be mistakes and accident even some unfortunate deaths but through it all we can learn and become a better race. It might be a couple or even a few hundred years yet before we have FTL or can fold place but am sue when the human race does get to that point that we will be a better race and it will be worth it.

I totally agree, but the difference between sailing ships and FTL is that we're breaking an ontological informational speed limit. Relying on antimatter/negative energy etc, all these ideas depend on the idea we can even manufacture sufficient quantities which may be impossible. Even if we did warp space, that apparently would lead to space dust etc travelling at unfathomable speeds which would obliterate planets when de-warping. I'm sort of wondering why invest so much energy in rocket travel when it can really only get us to the moon and possibly to Mars but only with great expense/trouble? And even for unmanned exploration rocketry is a bit meh in terms of distances/time. We're not really equipped to explore space at all at this moment, just to get into LEO.

AMKC

It may not be possible now but it no doubt will be possible in the future. We will not get to see it maybe but maybe our great grand children will. Thats why you come out of warp outside of a solar system Ok being serious. I am sure that humans will eventually overcome that problem too. Why? Because humans are curious and we want to learn more also it will only ever become more accessible and get cheaper by doing it and learning how to to it and make it cost less. I think the human race is doing ok. Sure we really should have been on Mars by now but there has been setbacks. We have a prob that has just left the solar system for instance and we have another that is at Pluto, some at Mrs and more going to other planets.

Wibbs

Plus if we end up engineering our own descendants, future "humans" may not consider the huge time frames an issue. I suspect that if we ever do come across another intelligent species that travels between stars it'll not be biological in the sense that we are. Entities like that could travel for millions of years without much concern, only "waking up" at points of interest.

Another issue may be that interstellar space is actually full of "stuff" and this precludes extremely high speeds because you will hit it. Maybe space is like the seas above the arctic circle in winter. Within harbours(solar systems) the local movement(gravitational bodies) keep the harbour largely clear of ice, but beyond the bay the pack ice slows shipping right down. Maybe this dark matter stuff isn't exotic at all and the shortfall in the mass of the universe is made up of this "stuff" between stars, not dense enough to block much light, but dense enough to make traveling close to light speed a suicide mission. Hell a grain of sand at near light speed would have scary levels of kinetic energy if you hit it.

Or cultures reach a stage where their inner virtual world is so involved that they never look outward and that, rather than some nuclear armageddon is what dooms them. We may simply stop going outside to play and stay on our xboxes indoors. It might explain why we haven't spotted any out there yet. That there may be an infinitesimally small timeframe where the lights are on and the curtain is open, enough for us to see them and indeed be seen and either side is darkness.

Capt'n Midnight

It took 252 years to build York Minster Cathedral.

If we get suspended animation or some super longevity genes it's easily doable. Breeding sentient or at least intelligent animals that could be revived from eggs might be an option if life is the goal. Octopus and Crows might be suitable if you could revive frozen embryos.


The original inhabitants of Australia have stories about volcanoes that have been extinct for 40,000 years. They have stories about sea level changes. It's only in the last 200 years that the chain all the way back was damaged.

Humans have been around for a long time. It's possible our ancestors have been using tools and fire for nearly 2 million years.


Thing is if a way of life is the only one you know and you don't have any options then you will probably have to live it. As indeed almost all our ancestors had to do. The Feudal System and earlier Empires pretty much ran on having 99% of the population working for the 1%. Sorta like today 'cept we have interwebs as a diversion.




It just means the people who start the project won't be around when it's finished.

nyarlothothep

The problem with generational ships is that it depends on the tech lasting that long. I get the sense that such an approach isn't really practical, humans get bored, change their aspirations and probably would get p1ssed off after 40,000 years on a ship. They may eventually forget their original mission and go insane, who knows. 40,000 years isn't a long time but for humans it is almost unfathomable.

Speedwell

It's not trollish, but I'm having a conniption over here because I can just barely remember Apollo 11 (I was just about to be three). Daddy worked for McDonnell Douglas. The "point" of space travel was... to get out of the atmosphere, basically. Just to get up and out and land on something besides the Earth. People don't have the remotest clue how much technology became accessible to the average person as a direct result of space travel technology; it should rank as a second Renaissance. To me, the point of space travel without FTL is just to get wherever we can and to make the technology move in a generally forward direction.

Hearing you ask "what's the point" is like being a caveman and hearing a young person say, "What's the point of using fire for cooking our food if Escoffier won't be born for seven hundred thousand years".

mickmackey1

Let's not forget the issue of time dilation here; if you can propel a spacecraft to 99.99% of c, the occupants of that spacecraft will age more slowly than a stationary observer. It would only take a few (probe) years to reach the centre of the galaxy at those speeds.

eeguy

Let's also not forget that there's no point in sending humans on a 200 year journey tomorrow, when in 100 years the same journey will take 20 years and will overtake the original travellers.

rolion

May look silly question again...but how do you plan a light speed travel in the Cosmos,travelling with light speed between planets and stars...do you travel beside them,avoiding the physical objects,fly trough !?
How do you avoid them ? How do you know how to get there,well thats easy based on current maps seen from Earth,as a 2D map.
What if something changes in meantime,i mean Vega is 25 LY away,today map is already 25 years older...what is an object that is not currently mapped ? Seen the Startrek journeys,but not sure how do they have tought of it...

Can i compare the flight to a journey today,using traditional maps (or even better or worse,GPS units ) !?
Thanks.

Speedwell

rolion wrote: »

May look silly question again...but how do you plan a light speed travel in the Cosmos,travelling with light speed between planets and stars...do you travel beside them,avoiding the physical objects,fly trough !?
How do you avoid them ? How do you know how to get there,well thats easy based on current maps seen from Earth,as a 2D map.
What if something changes in meantime,i mean Vega is 25 LY away,today map is already 25 years older...what is an object that is not currently mapped ? Seen the Startrek journeys,but not sure how do they have tought of it...

Can i compare the flight to a journey today,using traditional maps (or even better or worse,GPS units ) !?
Thanks.

Objects in space travel according to certain physical laws. if a computer can render a scene in a 3D software program by evaluating how light bounces off all objects in the scene in all directions according to how light is known to behave, a computer can also predict how objects in space, including your ship, will interact according to their known trajectories and characteristics. Your "map" will have a time dimension as well as the three dimensions of space, as if your GPS unit had to take into consideration the known flight paths of airplanes and the declared routes of sea vessels.

rolion

Speedwell wrote: »

Objects in space travel according to certain physical laws. if a computer can render a scene in a 3D software program by evaluating how light bounces off all objects in the scene in all directions according to how light is known to behave, a computer can also predict how objects in space, including your ship, will interact according to their known trajectories and characteristics. Your "map" will have a time dimension as well as the three dimensions of space, as if your GPS unit had to take into consideration the known flight paths of airplanes and the declared routes of sea vessels.

Thanks.

But, if I have to make a parallel to our cheap brother GPS...
-whos designs the mapping./navigating system(s) ?
-who's maintaining the sky maps light years away ?
-how do you receive updates of the new / old stars or formations ?
-how do you manage the congestion of "two" spaceships going near / close / opposite direction ?
-is a travel from A to B just a straight line or taking curves, when do you have to do it ?

Thanks.

_Tombstone_

Worry about it when we get out there!

rolion

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

Worry about it when we get out there!

Well,that will not be in my lifetime...not in my children's either !
We may have to wait until 4th of April 2063 ...

_Tombstone_

rolion wrote: »

Thanks.

But, if I have to make a parallel to our cheap brother GPS...
-whos designs the mapping./navigating system(s) ?
-who's maintaining the sky maps light years away ?
-how do you receive updates of the new / old stars or formations ?
-how do you manage the congestion of "two" spaceships going near / close / opposite direction ?
-is a travel from A to B just a straight line or taking curves, when do you have to do it ?

Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo

_Tombstone_

https://www.youtube.com/user/howfarawayisit/videos

Capt'n Midnight

rolion wrote: »

Thanks.

But, if I have to make a parallel to our cheap brother GPS...
-whos designs the mapping./navigating system(s) ?
-who's maintaining the sky maps light years away ?
-how do you receive updates of the new / old stars or formations ?
-how do you manage the congestion of "two" spaceships going near / close / opposite direction ?
-is a travel from A to B just a straight line or taking curves, when do you have to do it ?

Thanks.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, just look at any Mercator projection map.

You can use pulsars as navigation beacons. It's relatively easy , as long as you remember to correct for relativity. And it works the same way as GPS. A bunch of accurate clocks whose position is known beforehand.

As for mapping There's an app.
http://blogs.esa.int/gaia/2014/09/01/gaia-in-your-pocket-mapping-the-galaxy-with-the-new-gaia-app/
Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.ub.gaia

Congestion is not an issue , space is big. Like really big. So big that using 355/113 for Pi would still leave you miles away from where you wanted to go.

Jawgap

"If we don't go, we'll never know"

Progress is incremental. Developing an FTL drive or mechanism - if it's even possible - will be done over many generations with many minor technological advances and the odd theoretical breakthrough, the eventual sum of which will be FTL. We simply won't get to that point in one or a few leaps.

In the interim, we've got to look at other ways to get ourselves, or at least our DNA, off this rock - so I'd say the point of space travel is, ultimately, to make sure we as a species survive beyond our technological puberty.

rolion

Thanks.

But...in order to create a 3D map, we need 3 points.
For a GPS location, we will need minimum 3 satellites.
If we are on Planet Earth, doing all the projections, simulations and designs...where is the third reference point !?

Also, call me a novice or a complete pessimist...but why is this pressure to get out there, off of our home planet !??

Jawgap

rolion wrote: »

Thanks.

But...in order to create a 3D map, we need 3 points.
For a GPS location, we will need minimum 3 satellites.
If we are on Planet Earth, doing all the projections, simulations and designs...where is the third reference point !?

Also, call me a novice or a complete pessimist...but why is this pressure to get out there, off of our home planet !??

Because if we don't destroy ourselves inevitably some big rock will.

Capt'n Midnight

rolion wrote: »

Well,that will not be in my lifetime...not in my children's either !
We may have to wait until 4th of April 2063 ...

April 5, 2063 – From beyond Earth's atmosphere, a Vulcan ship descends and lands in Bozeman, Montana. Watched by a crowd of onlookers, a member of the Vulcan crew disembarks and approaches Zefram Cochrane. The alien performs a Vulcan salute and recites a Vulcan salutation: "Live long and prosper." Cochrane tries to imitate the newcomer's salute.

After an unsuccessful attempt, he lowers his hand and, instead of holding it for a handshake he reaches into his coat and pulls out a shotgun with which he shoots the Vulcan, who instantly collapses. A bearded man in the crowd tells the other Human spectators to board the alien ship and take everything they can. Then the crowd storms the Vulcan craft, carrying shotguns as they run

Best start of an Enterprise episode.

Capt'n Midnight

Jawgap wrote: »

"If we don't go, we'll never know"

Progress is incremental. Developing an FTL drive or mechanism - if it's even possible

Not possible. Or at least no one's come back to tell us how to make one.

Some laws are hard to break. Like Gravity. Or the Arrow Of Time.


Spreading through the Galaxy is easy.

Step one is getting out of this gravity well by learning to live in the asteroids.

Step two is filling up the larder, wrapping up in some nice woolies. Then strap an outboard motor on the asteroid and follow the second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.


We don't even need to go to Andromeda, it's coming to us.

Jawgap

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Not possible. Or at least no one's come back to tell us how to make one.

Some laws are hard to break. Like Gravity. Or the Arrow Of Time.


Spreading through the Galaxy is easy.

Step one is getting out of this gravity well by learning to live in the asteroids.

Step two is filling up the larder, wrapping up in some nice woolies. Then strap an outboard motor on the asteroid and follow the second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.


We don't even need to go to Andromeda, it's coming to us.

I've no argument with anything you say, but my response to the scientific is the philosophical!

I think it's a mistake of arrogance on the part of us as a species to think that we know enough to make conclusive statements about the universe. Granted, our current theoretical view clearly suggests that FTL travel is not possible, but 125 years ago we had a different theoretical view of the universe, so who knows what breakthroughs will have occurred by the time bicentenary or tricentenary of the Rising rolls around

An Alcubierre 'Warp' Drive, for example, may (and that's a really big may) be possible - we just need a few grammes of negative energy!!!

I'd say a good first step would be to move our technological basis beyond its base of relying on us burning stuff, to fusion. I think once that's a practical reality, we'll have taken a major step towards at least being able to establish a more than token presence in other parts of the Solar System.

The current problem seems to be that fusion is 50 years away, and it was 50 years away 30 years ago, but I think it'll eventually be cracked as a technology.

ps200306

The futility or otherwise of space travel might be assessed against its goals. Here's a non-exhaustive list that springs to mind, some of them already mentioned up thread:

1) To satisy human curiosity and add to scientific knowledge
2) To develop new technologies that will be useful here on earth
3) To exploit extraterrestrial mineral and energy resources
4) To find a future home for mankind
5) To provide new avenues for escapism and tourism
6) To stimulate public interest and garner support for the other goals above.

Most of these can be furthered (for now, at least) without going to the stars, and without FTL speeds. So far we have only scratched the surface of what we can do with current technology. There's an awful lot of solar system to explore, and it has already turned out to be a far more varied place than we imagined.

It is a bit of a misnomer to call our current spacecraft "chemical rockets". They are more like gravitational sailboats. Earth's orbital energy around the Sun provides most of the impetus for travel to nearby planets, and the outer solar system can only be reached by stealing momentum from several planets on the way. Chemical propellants merely manoeuvre us into position to exploit this free energy and, like a saiboat waiting for favourable winds, we have to wait until planetary configurations are just right to perform a launch.

This suggests the possible next steps for space travel. The ability to accelerate continuously would revolutionise travel within the solar system. We would no longer have to wait for precise alignments, nor depend on slingshots and aero-braking. Travel to the inner planets would go from months to days, and to the outer planets from years to months. Compact nuclear fusion could provide the energy for this, and there are good reasons to be optimistic it may be achieved.

Another possibility is laser acceleration. This could accelerate small masses to relativistic speeds using no more energy than is currently expended by chemical rockets -- on the order of some tens of gigajoules. This would put the outer solar system in reach within days, and the nearest stars within the time horizon of current missions to the outer planets. (Here's an article on the idea). As to the usefulness of such an approach ... that might depend on whether we can squeeze a camera plus super long range radio transmitter into a package weighing a few grams.

Neither of these ideas is much good for getting humans to the stars, though. The laser-drive craft is too small, is not steerable, and can never slow down again once launched. The fusion powered one still has to carry its own reaction mass even though the energy is almost free. Newton's third law is a killer.

Personally, I don't see much future for manned space flight. We are too frail, and the universe is too hostile. We were born for this planet, and I reckon we're stuck with it. I disagree that progress is continuous and inevitable, that FTL is only a matter of when, not if. We would need not just a revolution, but a complete overturning of our current science in order for FTL travel to be even possible, let alone achievable. Even highly relativistic speeds may be a step too far, unless we find a reactionless propulsion mechanism, which would also need new physics.

But to end on a positive note: I'm super optimistic about the contributions to science that unmanned spacecraft will make.

Maximus Alexander

ps200306 wrote: »

Personally, I don't see much future for manned space flight. We are too frail, and the universe is too hostile. We were born for this planet, and I reckon we're stuck with it.

This, however, assumes that we will remain fragile. We may begin to modify ourselves over the coming decades / centuries.

ps200306

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

This, however, assumes that we will remain fragile. We may begin to modify ourselves over the coming decades / centuries.

Yes, good point. Things might look different in the future. That said, even all our technological achievements so far have not changed the fact that our individual outlook tends to be fairly short term. Apart from a vague aspiration not to leave the planet worse than we found it, we don't tend to make plans that would only bear fruit millennia in the future. But certainly, even our notion of what it is to be human might be very different thousands or millions of years hence.

One sobering thought is that we have no idea how much time we have. Our species' future may stretch far further into the future than it does in the past. Or a big rock with our name on it could end it all tomorrow. The Fermi Paradox should definitely give us pause for thought. Our best hope is that the Copernican / mediocrity principle is wrong -- that somehow, against all the odds, our solar system is an almost uniquely stable environment. Kepler's view of exoplanetary systems shows that there are some bizarre ones out there that would be very inhospitable to life, even if they have broadly the right chemical environment.

The downside is that if we happen to have been endowed with one of the very few places amenable to long term survival, there may be damn all point heading out to look for alternatives. :pac:

_Tombstone_

Jawgap wrote: »

Because if we don't destroy ourselves inevitably some big rock will.

Nope, as long as we live fast and die young we don't have to worry about rocks.

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24053

maninasia

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

This, however, assumes that we will remain fragile. We may begin to modify ourselves over the coming decades / centuries.

We've started modifying ourselves from when humans adapted to eating cooked meats and dairy and alcohol etc.
More recently we've modified our immune systems with vaccines to stop us succumbing to previously often fatal common childhood diseases.
We wear glasses to fix our eyesight problems.

This process is massively accelerating and within a few decades humans will be substantially different in many ways to people from just the 20th century..and no doubt downloading/uploading/duplicating both human brains and artificial brains will happen sooner rather than later.

I'll also mention, and it seems many forget this, that if you travel at the speed of light the aging involved slows down DRAMATICALLY , so much so that if you travelled AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT (although it would take infinite energy to do), you would arrive at ANY destination instantly (to your frame of reference).

RebelButtMunch

maninasia wrote: »

We've started modifying ourselves from when humans adapted to eating cooked meats and dairy and alcohol etc.
More recently we've modified our immune systems with vaccines to stop us succumbing to previously often fatal common childhood diseases.
We wear glasses to fix our eyesight problems.

This process is massively accelerating and within a few decades humans will be substantially different in many ways to people from just the 20th century..and no doubt downloading/uploading/duplicating both human brains and artificial brains will happen sooner rather than later.

I'll also mention, and it seems many forget this, that if you travel at the speed of light the aging involved slows down DRAMATICALLY , so much so that if you travelled AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT (although it would take infinite energy to do), you would arrive at ANY destination instantly (to your frame of reference).

Indeed you could likely include gene therapy too. Sports is already dealing with gene doping.

ps200306

maninasia wrote: »

no doubt downloading/uploading/duplicating both human brains and artificial brains will happen sooner rather than later.

That sounds unlikely. There's quite a gulf between correcting eyesight and duplicating the most complex structure in the known universe. Even its basic mechanism of operation is almost completely unknown to us. Predictions that rely on that sort of breakthrough have to be taken with a large pinch of salt, and not just assumed on the basis that "progress is inevitable".

maninasia wrote: »

I'll also mention, and it seems many forget this, that if you travel at the speed of light the aging involved slows down DRAMATICALLY , so much so that if you travelled AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT (although it would take infinite energy to do), you would arrive at ANY destination instantly (to your frame of reference).

Not forgetting it, but maybe ruling it out as irrelevant. Travelling at light speed is impossible, and even at very close to light speed is almost certainly lethal. Even if we suppose that we had the technology to achieve 90% of light speed and could somehow avoid being vaporised by the interstellar medium, the time dilation factor would be less than 2.3 -- it only really takes off at ultra-relativistic speeds. A mere doubling of the human lifespan wouldn't make travel throughout the galaxy much more tolerable.

maninasia

ps200306 wrote: »

That sounds unlikely. There's quite a gulf between correcting eyesight and duplicating the most complex structure in the known universe. Even its basic mechanism of operation is almost completely unknown to us. Predictions that rely on that sort of breakthrough have to be taken with a large pinch of salt, and not just assumed on the basis that "progress is inevitable".

Have you not been keeping up with the news?
You think it's unlikely, really?

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/9/11184362/google-alphago-go-deepmind-result

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35886456

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/brain-controlled-gadgets/
By the time we have the technology to travel at close to the speed of light..we won't be us. We'll be something else.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/brain-implant-lets-rats-see-infrared-light

ps200306

A couple of those articles reminded me that we'll still be advertising junk to the gullible in a million years time. :pac:

ScumLord

nyarlothothep wrote: »

This might seem trollish but I don't mean to troll. At best we might colonise the solar system with chemical rockets but that's it.

I don't think that colonising our own solar system should be overlooked. If we could colonise space, we don't even need a planet, just build cities in space, we would solve so many problems. If we could send our additional population off planet it would take the pressure off earth. We'd be better able to protect earth from asteroids.

There are billions of tons of material just floating around our solar system from gold to water. Once we get over the initial hurdle of finding a way to survive up there our current economy would become redundant because anyone could just float up to the asteroid field and obliterate something like the gold market with one find.

We'd basically eliminate all our resource and pollution problems. I think living in our own solar system is the only way we're going to be able to figure out interstellar travel.

maninasia

ps200306 wrote: »

A couple of those articles reminded me that we'll still be advertising junk to the gullible in a million years time. :pac:

What does this even mean?
There won't be humans 'like us' in a hundred years let alone a million years time.

ps200306

ps200306 wrote: »

A couple of those articles reminded me that we'll still be advertising junk to the gullible in a million years time.

maninasia wrote: »

What does this even mean?
There won't be humans 'like us' in a hundred years let alone a million years time.

It's extremely hard to say what things might be like in a million years time. We can only surmise, based on what evolution has done since the emergence of life. Once it got going, the game of life became a competition for resources, with the aim of furthering reproduction.

Even as cultural development in humans has outpaced biological evolution, many of our most basic instincts still drive us -- the instincts to acquire material goods, to gain advantageous knowledge, and so on. These all increase our status and increase our chances of reproductive success. They are not much different to a bowerbird's affinity for shiny objects with which to attract a mate. Advertising is the art of making us covet things that we hope will increase our status.

I see no reason to imagine things will change at this fundamental level. We won't evolve -- by accident or human artifice -- into docile old sages with Vulcan passivity. We may or may not survive another million years, but if we do I expect we'll still be bickering and squabbling and, yes, selling and buying useless baubles like the "mind-blowing gadgets" in that article.

_Tombstone_

Bionic Eye Lets Blind Man See Again

Chip, Implanted in Brain, Helps Paralyzed Man Regain Control of Hand

^^That sorta stuff will improve something serious.


Chinese Embrace Human Cloning, Ignoring Western Concerns-->Easy DNA Editing Will Remake the World. Buckle Up.-->Everything You Need to Know About CRISPR, the New Tool that Edits DNA

^It'll take the next version of CRISPR for the seriously snazzy stuff, as breakthrough as it is I read it has some limitations during the week...I forget what they were.


Nanobots in your blood curing/fixing all sorts.

Bake a few clones missing an eye and inject some nanobots with eye stem cells and see what happens.


Read a projection that Brain Cancer will still be killing people by year 5 at end of century...

Keplar240B

Even if we develop FTL tech.
We will not be able to fuel the propulsion systems.
There is not a single source of Tylium in this star system.