NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

Re:NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to E... by phantarch on Thursday July 23, 2015 @02:08PM (#9937457)

Even if it only took them 100 years to get to a star system 5 ly away, I would be amazed and impressed by a society that would be okay with investing in and working on at minimum a 105 year mission. Perhaps they live much much longer than we do :)

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Re:NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to E... by corford on Thursday July 23, 2015 @02:42PM (#9937669)

>working on at minimum a 105 year mission

Cathedral building in the middle-ages was a multi-generational 80+ year affair and some of the Pyramids took even longer IIRC. So societies were/are definitely capable of working on ~100 year missions :)

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Re:NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to E... by jimmcslim on Thursday July 23, 2015 @04:39PM (#9938350)

Or the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona for a contemporary and in-progress example.

Maybe a generation ship needs to have some sort of 'cathedral-in-the-sky' religion connotation in order for us to commit to building it. Sounds like an interesting idea for a sci-fi plot!

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Re:NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to E... by jessaustin on Thursday July 23, 2015 @02:23PM (#9937529)

If they lived much longer, comparisons on earth would lead one to expect they'd be much slower to get anything done. Small burrowing rodents that live a couple of years hit the ground running, build extensive dens, and reproduce before they're a year old. OTOH giant tortoises never actually do anything except walk around slowly.

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