A better example of how the US raped over the Native Americans with guns, germs and steel we won as a nation and they lost as nations in the end. So if we go into space and meet a species better we will fail and if superior we will keep going stepping on other species as far as we can.
The thug who is murdered every night is certainly not an example of evolution...this has zero bearing on survival of the fittest...
Yes it is he ,until caught, demonstrates Might Makes Right principles that the strong in whatever capacity that is evidenced is king. Now if this Thug meets a organized crime boss and pissed him off the crime boss will see him killed or die, proving he is stronger. Evolution is a violent process to survive one must adapt to be a better predator or better prey to avoid death, intelligence doesn't matter. A Great White Shark is an apex predator and pure instinct but human are intelligent and developed means to kill them if we want. In truth our capacity to kill each other pushed advances of our species war is good for innovation, and our capacity to do so is a serious edge.
Evolution is a process which takes place over millions/billions of years...not during the Friday night fights...
Our capacity to save lives gives us a better edge. For example, medical research gives us a capacity to save lives, and therefore makes humanity more fit to survive. The ability to grow crops gives us a Darwinian advantage over species that can only look around for whatever food grows naturally. Our ability to preserve food for times like winter also improves our survival rate. Then fire protection methods help; flood control methods help; and so forth.
Only if we are stupid. In reality, each new civilization on other planets would be an invaluable resource for us. Each would have large amounts of knowledge and artistic techniques which would advance out own civilization, and therefore help us to survive though the natural dangers we meet in the physical universe. The new knowledge and artistic techniques would also greatly improve our quality of life, our enjoyment of life. As just a small example of how having more choices improves our quality of life, look at food. If we had to live with only one kind of food we would be worse off. For example, think of what it would be like if we could only have English food, but no Italian food, no French food, no Chinese food, no Japanese food, no Mexican food, and so forth. Without new options in food which have come from other cultures, we would have a less enjoyable life.
None of these things has much to do with evolution. It's not so much about if we can survive as it is how we 'adapt' in order to survive. For example, if global warming was so horrific that humans needed to move underground, and ambient light levels were only 75% of what we have today, over enough time perhaps our eyes will grow larger and gain eyesight capacity in low levels of light...maybe we become more nocturnal?
Alien megastructure may be exocomets... 'Alien Megastructure' Mystery May Soon Be Solved October 28, 2015 - The mystery behind a strangely dimming star could soon be solved.
Survival is the only thing that matters. Screw ethics. Hypothetically speaking, of course, since it's a hypothetical question.
I'd rather assume we expand into space for the survival of the species the more spread out we become the better our odds of the species surviving and also assume any species we meet that is intelligence is predatory like we are until proven otherwise. So we should also travel the stars armed with the best weapons we can invent and with ships able to fight. Just in case.
I believe that interstellar travel will never be possible. We cannot travel faster than light. There is no technology, let alone a plausible theory, that would allow us to do so. The light speed limit is absolute.
Maybe life has already expanded into space transported by comets, asteroids, meteorites, and other foreign bodies we don't yet know about? Does survival of the human species mean current humans survive or the building blocks of human life continue to exist? Unless we discover new physics which allows humans to travel lightyear distances...it is unlikely humans will ever travel to another star system...
Our current rocket technology in space gets us to about 60,000 mph (ignoring gravitational effects) while the speed of light is about 670,000,000 mph. This is a factor of about 1:11,160. Without new discoveries in physics, can you imagine what it will take for us to simply double our current speeds? Or even increase them by 100 times? I'm further guessing there's not enough money on planet Earth to fund such technology and equipment to increase even 2 to 5 times our current speeds. Lastly, does anyone even know the limitations on the human body to travel at higher and higher speeds? But...it would be neat IMO to have an orbiting space station that can accommodate and sustain 10-20,000 travelers. If this can ever be achieved, perhaps they can eventually leave their orbits and very slowly head out to where no man has gone before...
Your statement doesn't follow. You must mean you don't believe interstellar travel will be possible in a there and back sort of sense. But what you said does not exclude the possibility of self-contained colonies spending thousands of years in transit, sometimes orbiting a planet to gather resources or explore. Also the light speed limit may not be absolute if you can bend space time. Doubling our current speeds would most certainly not require new technologies. Getting to a substantial fraction of light speed, like even 10%, would though. At speeds below that, the human body isn't really hurt by velocity per se, but acceleration exerts g forces, which are not especially limiting either.
And....100 years ago everyone believed we would never go to space (if they even thought about it), no one thought we could use nuclear energy, people died from the flu in droves and cars went about 30 mile an hour.
That would require that humanity set aside their differences and cooperate, since it would require a global effort. Knowing human nature, that would be impossible.
It would probably require a coordinated effort in the short-term to do anything like I described. It did for the international space station, so cooperation at scale is certainly possible. Suffice it to say we didn't need Afghanistan to build the ISS. However, in a few decades it'll probably be feasible for most developed nations. And within a hundred years, probably individual billionaires could put it together with investors.
Wishful thinking. Take a good look at world events. There are only five countries that are not involved in some sort of conflict. I believe that the stage is set for WWIII. History repeats itself, and we have already had two world wars in the last century. With the weapons we have available, it might be the last.
I've never been accused of being an optimist before, haha. What you describe is intensely pessimistic. Plausible, but pessimistic. The international space station is a perfect example of how countries can cooperate on a large project and succeed, so in the future I don't see why they couldn't do something similar with a self-contained spacecraft given more technology. Consider how implausible the international space station would have sounded to people less imaginative than Werner Von Braun in the 1940s when he was struggling to get V2 rockets to even take off without exploding, let alone a mere 50 years before that when we hadn't even flown in the sky, let alone space. It's very hard to predict the future - in some cases it vastly exceeds our expectations, in others it's much less, and often it's nothing like what we expect.
I'll concede that you may have a point, but I do not share your optimism. Call me a pessimist. I call myself a realist. Besides. Being an optimist is overrated. As a pessimist, you're never disappointed, yet you can always be pleasantly surprised.
An astronaut does not have to travel faster than light to get to the next star system. An astronaut could travel just about anywhere in our galaxy within a lifetime at 1g of acceleration, and to Proxima Centauri in less than 4 years assuming slowing down (-1g) at the halfway point. The huge problems are maintaining that acceleration for that long (fuel quantity) and providing a habitat for the astronaut for 4 years.
The problem is not the fastest drive, we obviously have drives that can produce over 1g (or we'd never leave Earth). The problem is sustaining 1g for a long period of time, both in terms of fuel and reliability. I already mentioned the sustainability of an astronaut for years. The problem is not the light barrier, but these other issues.
This is completely inaccurate. IG is not a measure of speed in the first place, it is acceleration and momentum. At one gravitational unit of continuous acceleration a ship would not even notice it in the ship or by the individual inside it. It would keep heading toward c and never actually reach it. the theoretical is rather pointless in this case as there is no possibility of it becoming a reality unless we are dealing with a particle rather than a ship or person.
I don't know what "IG" is. I don't know what "one gravitational unit of continuous acceleration is" is. Equating something to "acceleration and momentum" seems false at face value, since momentum is directly related to velocity not the rate of change of velocity (acceleration). I can assure you a human knows the difference between 1g and no acceleration (weightlessness), but I'm not sure if this is what you're struggling to convey. Ships and people are made of particles, so you'll need to refine your point.
