Then it's sort of tough....... for them. Besides something something such as Terra farming could potentially adapt a lifeless planet or a planet with minimal life to earth type habitation. Survival will predominate. Besides I have no problem leaving the bleeding hearts behind.
And preservation of our species. Isn't it ethical for us to protect endangered species? So then it must be ethical to put ourselves on the endangered species list.
At near-light speed travel I'm guessing it's not even possible to make course corrections to miss any mass encountered and there would essentially be no braking. The craft can never come into contact with an atmosphere or anything that causes damaging friction. Whatever the sensing technology to see objects ahead must detect and locate those objects at astronomical distances. I could go on but the point my intuition is trying to make is any idea of 1/2 SOL travel or near-SOL travel is basically impossible without technological leaps and bounds...more likely new discoveries in physics if they exist...
Back in 1928 the fictional stories of Buck Rogers were all about space. Ancients thought there was already space Gods and who knows if they were correct or not? Look what mankind has accomplished in the past 200 years and all of it will pale in comparison to what it will take to increase space travel to 10% or 25% or 50% of the SOL. And as I repeat there's not enough money on planet Earth to make these achievements. Anything is possible but is anything practical...
Imagination can only steer us towards technology and innovation...in order to create new technology and innovation we require both knowledge and money...
800 million years? try 3-4 billion, the Sun will go nova before we get close enough to have the water boil off... The Earth is basically in a locked orbit...
From what I've read, our sun isn't massive enough to go nova. See https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#The_fate_of_the_Sun "The fate of the Sun[change | change source] "Astrophysicists say our Sun is a G-type main-sequence star in the middle of its life. In a billion years or so, increased solar energy will boil away the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. In a few more billion years, they think the Sun will get bigger and become a red giant star. The Sun would be up to 250 times its current size, as big as 1.4 AU and will swallow up the earth. "Earth's fate is still a bit of a mystery. Calculations suggest that Earth could escape to a higher orbit. This is because about 30% of the Sun's mass will have blown away in the solar wind. A newer study suggests that Earth would possibly be dragged into the bigger Sun due to tidal deceleration. This would happen while the Sun continues to get bigger. Anyway, Earth's ocean and air would have vanished long before the Sun finishes its main sequence stage. "After the Sun reaches a point where it can no longer get bigger, it will lose its layers and form a planetary nebula. Eventually, the Sun will shrink into a white dwarf. Then, over several hundred billion or even a trillion years, the Sun would fade into a black dwarf." (My emphasis - more @ the URL) Solar evolution is interesting - the other item to look for is Chandrasekhar's Limit - the lower mass limit for a white dwarf star to go nova.
The sun will shrink into a dwarf after it expands... The sun will swell then it will collapse.. I have absolutely no idea why that article is even up...
