Sunday, June 17, 2007

Charles Stross: Space Colonization, highly unlikely

Charles Stross, in a resent post in his Charlie's Diary, posits that due to time, distance and energy requirements, humans are at the very least, unlikely to colonize even the local neighborhood, let alone nearby star systems.

Whether you agree or disagree, Charles has some very inventive and interesting thought experiments that really bring the distances and the times it takes to travel even to say Jupiter.

It's well worth the read just for putting the effort into perspective.

Click the article title or here to go to the post

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The trouble with the old 'time, distance and energy argument' is that it is based on our current science...look back a hundred years at what we were told then that couldn't be done...sorry, but it's a very weak position.

Beam Me Up said...

I don't know Shaun. I read the post and you have to admit that an AU is an AU and a light year is a light year. No matter what your science, the distances and the energy required to cross those distances will alway remain. In one respect I have to agree though. To cross those voids something very fundamental will have to change.