I don't know if it will happen in the next century, but we definitely should focus on moon and Mars colonies before thinking about leaving the solar system. I'm 48 and would love if we had a moon colony in my lifetime. At the very least some station where astronauts have an extended stay like they do on ISS.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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The most livable place outside of the Earth is in the upper atmosphere of Venus. It's way closer to the Earth. And air pirates would sail through clouds of sulfuric acid on their steampunk zeppelins.
49 here, and I was always hopeful that I'd see us make it to another solar system in my lifetime. Another planet in our solar system would still be great, though!
People in general have a hard time conceptualizing how large and empty space is. With our current propulsion technology it will take longer than the human lifespan, barring any absolutely groundbreaking cryonics developments, to reach even the Oort cloud of our own solar system.
I think in the next century, a reasonable goal is to have small sparsely manned mining outpost settlements on Mars. There's enough financial incentive where I could see a future where it happens.
This is probably the correct answer. I'm a fairly smart guy but the enormity of space is astounding. We aren't going far anytime in the near future. Probably we'll kill each other first. Manned Mars is even a stretch even, imo.
Ion drives. A little acceleration over a long time can get you going quite fast. I doubt chemical rockets will be used much except actually getting off the planet soon.
For in-system travel, we have to invest in space infrastructure, same as we did for the Oregon trail -> highways, the earliest sailing ships -> hydrofoil ships and aircraft carriers, and from covered wagons to cargo trains.
Skyhooks are a system of locomotion we could already do today, and save tons of expense on fuel and lift capacity, it's just staggeringly expensive to do. We would need to redesign our spacecraft and building the first skyhooks would be a joint nation-state endeavor.
Interesting high level overview on them here. https://youtu.be/dqwpQarrDwk
Pretty decent pre generation-ship technology.