Re:Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions f...
by handmodel on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @12:15AM
(#29400935)
You would think if other advanced life existed in abundance that many of them were civilizations that started billions of years ago. If they still can't reach us - that probably means that civilizations self-destruct at a certain point or stuck in an area to be eaten by the stars there. That would likely be our fate too if it turns out moving from solar system to solar system is extremely hard.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions f...
by vl on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @01:06AM
(#29401174)
Simple explanation is why nobody travels to the stars is that it’s extremely expensive and very useless: you can’t really exist without biome, and building out compatible biome at the far star is very, very hard.
Re:Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions f...
by deepsun on Thursday December 02, 2021 @12:01PM
(#29418849)
I can argue it's not really that hard. We can even experiment right now to recreate it on Mars, or on Earth with Mars-like conditions (it's certainly much easier to colonize Antarctic than Mars).
Just create big hermetic container, and put there minerals, bacteria and fungi. Heck, people even do it at home with big sealed glass bottles.
No need to bring living biome. Just bring spores, seeds, sperm and eggs.
Re:Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions f...
by vl on Saturday December 04, 2021 @01:11AM
(#29439092)
(As it stands now) It is a multi-generation trip. These humans need to live somewhere and eat something, thus it's logical choice just to ship biome with them. Additional advantage is that error-prone 'boot' process to built up new biome at destination is eliminated.
But this is not the main point. It's still extremely expensive. Imagine that world GDP needs to be taken for few years just to build single ship. Who would agree to that in democratic society?