How was this all calculated?

[u/chinese_spongebob1]

[u/GeneralKang]

1000 years ago, humans couldn't cross oceans.

200 years ago, humans couldn't fly.

100 years ago, it was impossible to visit the Moon.

50 years ago, visiting Mars was something only a robot could do, and it wouldn't last long.

Now, after 50 years, we're going back to the Moon, this time to establish a base.

If humans can survive the next 1000 years without going through another dark age, we'll be able to leave the Solar System. In another 1000, we'll be able to navigate our spiral arm, maybe even the Milky Way Galaxy. It's just a matter of time, innovation and progress.

[u/Jesus_of_Redditeth → u/GeneralKang]

If humans can survive the next 1000 years without going through another dark age, we'll be able to leave the Solar System.

The only way we'll be able to legit leave the solar system is if we somehow discover a technological solution to the distance problem. Literal FTL travel is physically impossible for us; even close to FTL travel is just totally infeasible. If we discover a way to warp space-time to get around FTL travel and traverse vast distances without actually physically moving that fast (think: wormholes) then that would make it possible. But right now that's just an idea on paper. Otherwise, it's just never going to happen no matter how long our species manages to to keep existing. At least not unless and until we get out of these flesh sacks and turn ourselves into silicon-based life. But then if we did that, we wouldn't be human anymore, so what would be the point?

[u/GeneralKang → u/Jesus_of_Redditeth]

We had nothing about flight except for a Greek story for a thousand years. No, we don't understand faster than light travel, yet. Also, while we're not quite ready to swap to being silicon based, becoming silicon won't change the basics of what we are.

Sure, we have on idea how to do it now. 100 years ago we hadn't figured out ow to make rocks think, yet here I am typing a message and arguing with a random human I'll never meet. A thousand years, and we'll be able to traverse great distances far faster than we can now - as long as we don't kill ourselves in the process.

[u/Jesus_of_Redditeth → u/GeneralKang]

We've had basic conceptual, feasible ideas about how to fly since basically forever. There's nothing standing in the way of that besides a technical understanding of how lift can be created and the ability to create something to propel us. It's an inherently uncomplicated idea.

Traveling to another solar system on a timescale that would make it worthwhile is...not that. Even if we entirely solved the problem of accelerating to near light speed and then decelerating again, so that we could reach Proxima Centauri in about 6 years or so, hitting even a single dust particle along the way, at that kind of relativistic speed means that everyone's dead. So that won't work. And if we want to actually explore space for real, Proxima Centauri isn't gonna cut it, so we're actually talking tens, hundreds, even thousands of light years and since the speed of light appears to be a universal maximum, that isn't happening at any feasible level. The distances are just way too vast.

So at that point it becomes a hand-waving discussion of "well, let's do FTL travel then" and we don't even have any conceptual way to start down that road. It's an entirely pie-in-the-sky topic. Assuming we will definitely be able to find a solution to that simply given enough time is almost painfully naive. And just as past stock market gains do not predict future gains, the fact that "100 years ago we hadn't figured out ow to make rocks think" is entirely irrelevant to potential future technological progress.

I mean, just look at where we thought we'd be by now in the early 70s compared to where we are. That rapid decline in those expectations, the reality of the fact that we're barely even baby steps farther along from Apollo in that progress in more than half a century, and the understanding that we needed intense, near-apocalyptic, nation vs. nation competition to even get as far as the moon in the first place, presents a pretty clear indication that sending humans to other star systems is a pipe dream.

But hey, dreams are nice, I guess. So at least there's that.