[blackhole]

Read this. Not the whole thread, just the blog posting. Bottom line: Space colonization is not going to happen, unless several "magical" technologies (in the Arthur C. Clarke sense) are developed that allow humans to not only go out there, but stay there indefinitely.
That said, colonizing the space near earth is most definitely possible, but I find it highly unlikely that the amount of people going up there would make a serious dent in the population totals down here. Oh, and you DO know that Phobos and Deimos are just asteroids, right?

Only idiots think interstellar travel is at all practical in our current timeframe, but it will become at least economically viable some thousand years in the future. Humans are notorious for inventing laws of physics and then seemingly defying them the next day. Hell, there's a thread below this one discussing electronic brains and nanotube muscles. Space travel will never be the way we envision it to be, but it will exist, in some form that we are unable to comprehend right now, in the distant future. I don't care how impossible space travel seems, if the existence of the entire human race is dependent on getting to another planet, we'll figure out a way to do it.

And some of us might live to see it, if present technologies continue.

[Pred the Penguin]

The O₃ layer can be preserved in many other ways.

Such as?

Google them...

Space exploration shouldn't be halted by a handful of environmentalists.

Well research needs to go into at least reducing emissions that are harmful to the ozone layer.

[redsniper]

As far as I know, the ozone layer either cannot be restored or can only be restored very slowly with current technology. There have been some claims to the contrary in this thread, but these are as yet unsubstantiated.

So, as much as I love space travel (and really, I do) we cannot afford to trash the ozone layer. Therefore, we need to invent better rockets or alternative propulsion methods OR invent some kind of ozone restoring machines.

[Pred the Penguin]

It does seem very stupid to destroy the Earth's environment before we can leave it. Then again, the Human species isn't known for it's smart decisions. =/

[IceFire]

FTL is theoretically impossible....

Ermmm...I've sat few a through lectures with some very educated professors in the realm of physics and astrophysics who say that FTL is theoretically possible but practically impossible.  Given current understanding of course.

Not much over 100 years ago conventional wisdom that heavier than air flight by mankind was also impossible.  Just a little over 50 years ago people were convinced that breaking the sound barrier was also impossible.  We're very good as a species of setting up all sorts of barriers for ourselves and then breaking them.  I'm sure somewhere along the line someone will go "Eurkea!  FTL!"  Could be a while...a good long while.

[Aardwolf]

I'm all for space flight.  A moon colony means less people on the Earth to pollute it.  Same with a Martian colony, except you can cram more people on Mars and Phobos and Deimos than on the Moon.
*snip*

Having more places to live isn't going to mean less crowding at home. At the very best, it would mean your kids can now be forced to move to another planet in order to not have to struggle for survival. The problem is, the exact same thing that happens here on earth is no less likely to happen on the moon (which is, by the way, much smaller and has a significantly lesser biomass   ).

"Put them on the moon" might work as an answer to "where can we put people when there's no room left on earth?", but that's a stupid question. If there are no additional people, you don't have to worry about where to put them.

Of course that falls apart if one group of people (a country, a religion, people with the same ethnic background) works on population control and another doesn't, because then they have more people, thus more workforce, more potential military manpower, more potential democratic voters, ...

Then again, the Human species isn't known for it's smart decisions.

Thing is we don't make decisions as a species, we make them as individuals. And any "good for future generations" planning or decision-making depends on our personal views of what is good for them. Things like:

• Is being very numerous but with a poor quality of life preferable to being few but content?
• Is one person being euphoric better than several people being content?

Welcome to the hard parts of moral and ethical philosophy.

[Hellstryker]

I've only skimmed the paper, but it looks like they're analyzing a pure Alcubierre warp rather than Van Den Broek's "double-bubble" (my term) warp.

It's been known that the strong field gradient at the warp boundary is hazardous if matter is encountered (Halt, Held, Hoiland et al.'s 2006 paper) so the possibility of Hawking radiation isn't that much of a surprise; the question is whether it's strictly "within" the bubble (and thus confined to the "shell" of a Broek warp) or not.

The stress-tensor energy instability is another issue, and I hold out hope because it only implies bubble instability. Instability can be overcome by dynamic control of the bubble, provided that the timescale of the control mechanism is shorter than that of fluctations caused by instability.

In other words, there's still room for me to handwave away these problems in my science fiction stories (grin). And in real life, if we ever figure out a way to create a warp in the first place, we may find a way to control the instability (if it indeed exists). Might need a quantum computer, though. ;-)

Not that I can confirm any of that, of course, since it's way over my head.

[Kosh]

FTL is theoretically impossible....

Ermmm...I've sat few a through lectures with some very educated professors in the realm of physics and astrophysics who say that FTL is theoretically possible but practically impossible.  Given current understanding of course.

Not much over 100 years ago conventional wisdom that heavier than air flight by mankind was also impossible.  Just a little over 50 years ago people were convinced that breaking the sound barrier was also impossible.  We're very good as a species of setting up all sorts of barriers for ourselves and then breaking them.  I'm sure somewhere along the line someone will go "Eurkea!  FTL!"  Could be a while...a good long while.

Didn't some guys from Baylor University come up with a theoretical model for a warp drive?

[IceFire]

FTL is theoretically impossible....

Ermmm...I've sat few a through lectures with some very educated professors in the realm of physics and astrophysics who say that FTL is theoretically possible but practically impossible.  Given current understanding of course.

Not much over 100 years ago conventional wisdom that heavier than air flight by mankind was also impossible.  Just a little over 50 years ago people were convinced that breaking the sound barrier was also impossible.  We're very good as a species of setting up all sorts of barriers for ourselves and then breaking them.  I'm sure somewhere along the line someone will go "Eurkea!  FTL!"  Could be a while...a good long while.

Didn't some guys from Baylor University come up with a theoretical model for a warp drive?

I forget from where but yes....someone did the math and figured out what was required.  Energy was a big problem...if you had extreme amounts of power then it was quite possible.

[blackhole]

"uncontrollable singularities in the renormalized quantum stress-energy"

"If a Minkowski spacetime contains a compact region Ω, and if the topology of Ω is of the form Ω ~ R x Σ, where Σ is a three-manifold of nontrivial topology, whose boundary has topology of the form dΣ ~ S2, and if, furthermore, the hypersurfaces Σ are all spacelike, then the region Ω contains a quasipermanent intra-universe wormhole."

Reading about FTL is fun.

[Pred the Penguin]

I wonder what effect FTL drives will have on the ozone layer, if the earth even has one by then. <_<

[BloodEagle]

Quasi-permanent? 

Seriously?

....

....

 

[Kosh]

I forget from where but yes....someone did the math and figured out what was required.  Energy was a big problem...if you had extreme amounts of power then it was quite possible.

Well we went from being theoretically impossible to hugely impractical, that's a step in the right direction. Hopefully sooner or later we can make it less and less impractical.

Back on the main topic, I was thinking recently, what kind of ozone depleting substances do rocket launches make?

[Spicious]

I wonder what effect FTL drives will have on the ozone layer, if the earth even has one by then. <_<

Given the energy required and likely inefficiencies, using FTL anywhere near Earth would probably cook everything on Earth.

[BengalTiger]

Only if the FTL drive involves generating heat.

[BloodEagle]

Didn't his FTL theory call for the power of some odd billion suns? 

I'm still holding out for subspace. 

[Enigmatic Entity]

There is a way to save the ozone layer: (multiply by 3 495 000 000) - 100 just so there's some left. They will do this themselves.

[attachment deleted by evil Tolwyn]

[Liberator]

I'm all for space flight.  A moon colony means less people on the Earth to pollute it.  Same with a Martian colony, except you can cram more people on Mars and Phobos and Deimos than on the Moon.  And just wait until we get FTL travel.  People will be abandoning the Earth in droves to settle and terraform new planets.

You want an idea of the nitty gritty of FTL space travel and terraforming?  Go read The Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton.

The Great Dispersal did nothing to relieve the population burden of the planet.  Of course the concept of the Armada Storm is kinda FUBAR but it's an interesting plot device.

[Aardwolf]

^^ Basically what I said but in a fictional context.

[General Battuta]

Only if the FTL drive involves generating heat.

Or light.