Lifespan of humanity

[robinbloke]

Mankind is a pretty damn parasitic species and our planet is more and more groaning under the strain of coping with us as we sprawl all over it. Now, doom and eco-rants aside we're more than likely have to get off this rock eventually and find a new one to infest as we will eventually use up/render unusable all the resources we have lying around in our backyard.

Presently most of the other planets/moons in this system aren't particularly promising but more and more systems within several light years are looking likely. But how likely?

100 years ago travelling over anything beyond 30 miles an hour was seen as pretty damn dangerous, nigh on suicidal in fact so this whole light speed barrier thing shouldn't be a problem if we can think our way around it, all it needs is a greed or war related reason and we'll be right on it in no time I reckon.

So how long until we reach planet X? That's the point of this ramble; I reckon there are three key areas we need to develop...

Space tech: Construction of rockets, housing etc to transport and survive elsewhere.
Physics: Separate from Space Tech as this is the theoretical stuff we need to make practical to actually get from A-Z without going via B-Y, so to speak.
Biology: Survival on other systems with limited resources (O₂ recycling) and ultimately Terraforming.

We're not doing too bad so far, we've put a man on the moon, we can predict motions of every solar body we can detect and we can break down most things into components that work as a kind of template for designing it. But we have a long way to go.

How long? That, again, is the question.

Numbercrunching things down into generational increments, Space tech wise, we're pretty basic, physics, we're not too shabby, but nowhere near where we need to be, we're slacking a bit in Biology but we're learning. I reckon, throwing a number into the air that we'll need (Guesstimating) at least three generational increases in our understanding of science in each of these areas before we can get to planet X, if it's governments, mutant offspring of llamas or starbucks that does it I don't know; I'm just asking when.

So; generational increases.
Space flight
Not too bad so far. We'll take the first balloon flight by Bartolomeu de Gusmão in 1709 as a marker for starting space technology and then we can take the first moon landing (Yes, I believe it happened, shush) of 1969 as the next marker. Which is to say, basic flight to moon landing is a pretty good step. Total elapsed time for generation shift; 260 years.

Physics
I'm going to take Isaac newtons publication of Principia Mathematica as a first stepping point of physics in 1687 as a startpoint for physics, the next one will be old Albert E's work on relativity/mass-energy equivalence and I'll take his 1921 Noble Prize as a time marker. Elapsed time: 234 years

Biology
A bit more difficult, at least for me as I know very little about it... but plucking a name from history I'll take Leonhard Fuchs, whose Historia Stirpium (History of plants) was published in Basel in 1542 and Charles Darwins 1859 book On the Origin of Species as the second. Elapsed time: 317 years.

So for three generational changes (assuming linear rate of change, blah blah blah) whereby I hope we can build spacecraft that can cross galaxies, understand how to power said spacecraft and then terraform what we find when we get there it will be...

1969 + 260*3 = 2749 (Space flight)
1921 + 234*3 = 2623 (Physics)
1859 + 317*3 = 2810 (Biology)

A few years to wait then. If however we assume each generational change takes half as long again due to advancements in science, technology and having more people around to think about it...

1969 + 260 + 130 + 65 = 2424 (Space flight)
1921 + 234 + 117 + 59 = 2331 (Physics)
1859 + 317 + 159 + 80 = 2415 (Biology)

For an average date just to give us a single final figure of: 2390 for when we get our arses into another solar system.

See you then!


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Comments

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

About ten years ago I knew a theoretical physicist who worked for people like the ESA. His working assumption was that we'd crack the light barrier by 2500, so you match up with him quite well.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

That's reassuring, well, sort of :)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I forgot to add: That's assuming that breaking the light barrier is possible, which he thought was.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Well yes, you've got to assume things like that or we're basically stuck on this rock unless we go for things like generational ships or cryostasis.

[gerald_duck]

You know, it might be better to have three or four data points in each category before trying to work out how the rate of technological advancement is changing. :-p

In any case, living in the Sahara would be a lot simpler than living on the Moon, but the people currently interested in doing that are madmen on camels whose kidneys explode after a few short decades of abuse rather than trillion-dollar multinational scientific efforts.

And I really doubt we'll ever work out how to travel faster than light.

It might be worth noting the Industrial Revolution began less than 250 years ago and the Information Age has only really been upon us for less than 75. Come 2390 we may have dramatically different interests and priorities. Given industrialisation is the cause of the massive population boom that's making the Earth suddenly feel cramped, even that problem could look very different (for better or worse) on a shorter timescale.

[blackmetalbaz.livejournal.com]

I need to read this properly later and question a few bits.

Point of information though (and laregly irrelevant to your calculation), Einstein didn't of course get his Nobel Prize for his relativity work. It was for his work on the photoelectric effect.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

I thought about making it a bit more complicated, going to to classify stages of development for each era of development and progress.

But then that looked far too complicated and I thought a near-as-dammit rough calculation would more than likely not be a zillion miles off and be a hell of a lot quicker to calculate and less tedious to read ;)

I'm fairly confident we'll break the speed of light, hell if people with far bigger physics brains than me think it's possible I'll go with what they say.

Good point about using ages of development however, could be interesting to stage it using that and some kind of civilisation^tm style progress tracker.

And yes, no accounting for problems along the line, from populations to energy crisis to global thermonuclear war...

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

True enough about ol' A.E. but it seemed a good point for his work.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

True enough; now we have got atomic theory and associated gubbins we find out new things dramatically faster than we used to so the rate changes exponentially or something of that shape. Except my research, because I am sitting here on LJ instead of doing it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_catharine_/]

Personally I don't think it's possible so I'd go for the generational ships.

[dreamfracture.livejournal.com]

I don't think we can ever crack the light barrier in the sense of getting something to go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. On the other hand, yay wormholes and yay spatial distortion.

[texassky.livejournal.com]

Much too pessimistic a view.

In the 50's, we thought "fast" was "breaking the sound barrier," but on February 20, 1962, Friendship 7 showed us all the real meaning of speed when John Glenn manned the first orbital mission of the United States.

Just 7 years later, give or take a month or two, (7/20/69) Neil Armstrong walked on the surface of the moon.

A mere 2 years after that the Russians launched Salyut 1, the first space station. (4/19/71).

It took 10 years to get a shuttle into orbit, but blame budget cuts, not science. (Columbia's first mission was in 1981).

I bet the generation that solves the "light speed" problem will be the children of today's college students.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

My mediocre understanding of contemporary physics means I'm skeptical about FTL travel for any massive object or information-carrying particle. I guess it's not impossible for there to be a radical reworking of physics of a similar scale to QM and GR in the early 20th century, but currently it seems improbable.

Even so, given limitless power, you can get fair distances, at least within our own galaxy, at constant 1G acceleration/deceleration within human timescales (for the people on the ship if not those left in Earth's inertial frame). It doesn't really need generation ships, just people willing to spend a few years traveling, which could be helped with suspended animation type technology.

It's all a one-way trip though, and no chance of finding somebody at home to talk to when you get there. However, it should be enough to keep the human race alive if that seems important.

Terraforming a planet though seems less plausible in short timescales. There's a couple of interesting wikipedia entries on our nearest neighbours that represent a couple of plausible types of planet to terraform:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

[texassky.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm skeptical, but I've seen so much change in my life, that I am optimistically skeptical.

I have my Dad's science book which actually teaches the smallest "thing" in the universe is the atom.

My books taught us that the "smallest thing" were the electrons, neurons, protons.

Today's text books debunk that.

They have split the atom, harnessed its power, etc.. .. in a relatively short time.

All it takes is one "amazing discovery" for an entire wealth of knowledge to flow forward. It doesn't really require "rewriting physics". It just requires opening our minds to fact we've still got a lot to learn.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

One problem I see with generational ships is ensuring quality of people when you get there... nice link someone else has used though to suggest how to get somewhere at a 1G acceleration.