But is it a good argument? What are the chances a new technologies will be invented that allow for ships that are actually substantially faster? And what are the chances of some conflict or disaster or combination preventing any ships from being built regardless of how fast those ships are?
My view is: As soon as technology is ready there’s an actual 1% chance of a successful mission, launch right away. And keep on launching till you can’t launch anymore. Sure maybe something better will come along, but maybe it won’t. If the window of opportunity is open, don’t wait for it to close.
But in reality I don’t actually think interstellar travel for living humans is possible. There are so many issues, it’s hard to see us overcoming us all. But maybe the state of the world has left me jaded and the future will be bright somehow, who knows. I’d love to be proven wrong, but for now I lean of the side of impossible.
You kind of answer your own question there, honestly. If you’re at the point where you can somehow convince hundreds to thousands of people to get a one way ticket to turning into a space popsicle for the chance of eventually turning into xenomorph chowder, then you can probably also do better than that eventually.
So from that perspective we both hard agree that interstellar travel is probably not practical to any degree of technology below full-on Star Trek. But also, we both hard disagree that “shoot people into space to die as soon as you have the ability” is something that any society is ever going to do. If some modicum of a survival instinct is needed to evolve intelligence, then the answer to the Fermi paradox is that aliens looked at the practicalities of actual interstellar travel and went “Hell, no”.
If anybody out there is willing to do interstellar colonization you better believe that it’s because their star is about to pop and they’ll try that exactly once.
First, there have always been people who have thought, “I’m fine with the chance of dying to do this thing.” Free climbers, for instance. If the odds of survival are zero, and your personal effort isn’t going to change it, that number goes down by a lot.
Second, unless we find a FTL solution, surviving in space indefinitely is the first step in interstellar travel, because 3000 years is functionally equivalent to indefinitely. If you’re response to that is sleeper ships, you only survive if the ship survives, and we’re back to the same point. The reason this is important is because if the planet at the destination isn’t required for your survival, you have a lot more flexibility for how you colonize that planet, which vastly improves the odds of success.
As for the Fermi paradox, it doesn’t require that everyone wants to colonize a different star, build a Dyson shell, or whatever, it requires that everyone who doesn’t want to do that be willing to do whatever it takes to stop anyone else from doing it (and can make it count). It’s a slightly different proposition, and one that I think is less likely than other solutions.
But is it a good argument? What are the chances a new technologies will be invented that allow for ships that are actually substantially faster? And what are the chances of some conflict or disaster or combination preventing any ships from being built regardless of how fast those ships are?
My view is: As soon as technology is ready there’s an actual 1% chance of a successful mission, launch right away. And keep on launching till you can’t launch anymore. Sure maybe something better will come along, but maybe it won’t. If the window of opportunity is open, don’t wait for it to close.
But in reality I don’t actually think interstellar travel for living humans is possible. There are so many issues, it’s hard to see us overcoming us all. But maybe the state of the world has left me jaded and the future will be bright somehow, who knows. I’d love to be proven wrong, but for now I lean of the side of impossible.
You kind of answer your own question there, honestly. If you’re at the point where you can somehow convince hundreds to thousands of people to get a one way ticket to turning into a space popsicle for the chance of eventually turning into xenomorph chowder, then you can probably also do better than that eventually.
So from that perspective we both hard agree that interstellar travel is probably not practical to any degree of technology below full-on Star Trek. But also, we both hard disagree that “shoot people into space to die as soon as you have the ability” is something that any society is ever going to do. If some modicum of a survival instinct is needed to evolve intelligence, then the answer to the Fermi paradox is that aliens looked at the practicalities of actual interstellar travel and went “Hell, no”.
If anybody out there is willing to do interstellar colonization you better believe that it’s because their star is about to pop and they’ll try that exactly once.
First, there have always been people who have thought, “I’m fine with the chance of dying to do this thing.” Free climbers, for instance. If the odds of survival are zero, and your personal effort isn’t going to change it, that number goes down by a lot.
Second, unless we find a FTL solution, surviving in space indefinitely is the first step in interstellar travel, because 3000 years is functionally equivalent to indefinitely. If you’re response to that is sleeper ships, you only survive if the ship survives, and we’re back to the same point. The reason this is important is because if the planet at the destination isn’t required for your survival, you have a lot more flexibility for how you colonize that planet, which vastly improves the odds of success.
As for the Fermi paradox, it doesn’t require that everyone wants to colonize a different star, build a Dyson shell, or whatever, it requires that everyone who doesn’t want to do that be willing to do whatever it takes to stop anyone else from doing it (and can make it count). It’s a slightly different proposition, and one that I think is less likely than other solutions.