How close are we to warp engines ?

[Hayabusa Rider]

I think we'll be extinct first. I'm thinking my children will see their grandchildren but they will not do the same.

 

[irishScott]

i think we should figure out how to communicate faster then the speed of light before we try to travel it.

Why? Wouldn't it be simpler to just use messenger ships until we figure it out?

Would be kinda cool actually, we'd essentially be back in the pre-electronic era relatively speaking. I imagine the rules for FTL communication are as different from FTL travel as mechanical physics is from E&M physics.

 

[irishScott]

I think we'll be extinct first. I'm thinking my children will see their grandchildren but they will not do the same.

Ah, Doom and Gloom. Think there was a study that pointed out we're pre-programmed to think that way. It's easy for us to see how things could go wrong, but there are always a shit-ton of unknown factors that come in and fuck up the predictions.

 

[BudAshes]

Someone call the whaaambulance.

In first contact, humanity has just finished WWIII, and when the Borg sphere starts orbital bombardment of the site the humans of the time mistake it for an attack from one of the ex-warring nation states; so clearly there's been significant technological developments if orbital, surface-bombardment weapons platforms were in common use.

"Scrap parts" then are not "scrap parts" now. Hell nowadays we put 4-function calculators on key-chains and give them away to people who likely throw them away. Think that would have been done 50 years ago?

The movie is retarded. Don't try to defend it as you just make yourself look stupid.

 

[Markbnj]

Yeah...stupid smart phones and medical scanners and translation software and and GPS and space probes and aluminum oxynitride (transparent aluminum) and directed energy weapons...all of which had their inspiration taken from Star Trek.

Well, I said "virtually."

Smart phones and medical scanners are a stretch. In the first case the ST version didn't herald much besides voice comms, and in the second we don't have magic scanners you can wave over people to find out exactly what's wrong with them.

Voice control, yes. Translation software... a stretch but I'll give it to you. We'll probably eventually get to realtime voice translation. Not there yet, though.

The idea of "directed energy weapons" long pre-dates ST, and anyway, we've had "directed energy weapons" for thousands of years. Spears, javelins, bows and arrows, and firearms are all directed energy weapons. If you mean laser beams, yeah now we have some of those too. Phasers that fit in your pocket and can melt rocks, not so much.

I do agree that many things on Star Trek could feasibly exist in the future, but most of the "headliner" techs that the show was built around fall into the realm of fantasy, not science.

 

[zinfamous]

we're about 1001 years away

I bid 999 years

 

[zinfamous]

While warp drives might or might not ever be possible, THAT tripe is pure sci-fi nonsense. A planet can't have population spiral out of control until it reaches a tipping point and devolves into Soylent Green. It's a natural process, without an outside agency like nuclear winter causing sudden change, things would gradually reach a stasis where population and resources balanced. And if food production dropped there would of course be small population self-corrections until another balance was reached, just like any ecosystem. Artificial population control is a pure boogie-man concoction, not a realistic possibility. The world is not close to overpopulated and never will be. Growth is slowing, population is expected to plateau in the next 100-200 years and the Earth can produce 10 times more food than is actually needed to feed that many people. As long as there isn't a catastrophe to suddenly change the balance...

methinks you are ignoring the complete lack of arable and habitable land to sustain what is, indeed, sustained population growth on this planet.

You are also talking about human population growth, not herds of bison that can be controlled through hunting and natural predation.

Do you intend to apply these widely acceptable methods towards human population control? I guess the comparative method would be to cease medical and immunological development. Stop all research directed at fighting cancer, I suppose. Yeah....that's not going to happen.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

We will know everything in the next 100 years.

 

[BladeVenom]

Forget warp drive, we need to get the Impulse engines up and working first.
Interstellar travel is useless if we can't handle intra-solar system travel.

I agree. Let's actually start building what we can do today. Lets make a space gun to get things into orbit cheaply, and perfect ion thrusters for traveling in our own solar system.

 

[Jadow]

Stephen Hawking is starting to look like that freaky guy that's inside a dalek.

 

[Paratus]

methinks you are ignoring the complete lack of arable and habitable land to sustain what is, indeed, sustained population growth on this planet.

You are also talking about human population growth, not herds of bison that can be controlled through hunting and natural predation.

Do you intend to apply these widely acceptable methods towards human population control? I guess the comparative method would be to cease medical and immunological development. Stop all research directed at fighting cancer, I suppose. Yeah....that's not going to happen.

The biggest factor in reducing birth rates is a Western European/US/Japanese lifestyle.

Raise everybody's standard of living, they have less kids, population begins a slow steady decline. Increases in efficiency keep productivity up.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

methinks you are ignoring the complete lack of arable and habitable land to sustain what is, indeed, sustained population growth on this planet.

You are also talking about human population growth, not herds of bison that can be controlled through hunting and natural predation.

Do you intend to apply these widely acceptable methods towards human population control? I guess the comparative method would be to cease medical and immunological development. Stop all research directed at fighting cancer, I suppose. Yeah....that's not going to happen.

Methinks you are a buffoon.

1) Humans are using 1/3 of the planets arable land currently and that land can produce enough food to feed the expected 9 billion person plateau many times over. There is enough arable land to feed 100 billion people if it was all converted to agriculture and used to max efficiency.

2) You don't need human population control, it is self-controlling. If you can't produce food to feed the people they can't reproduce. Every ecosystem self-levels, population can't exceed food supply long-term. In one generation it balances.

3) Population growth has slowed significantly and is expected to reach a peak of 9 billion between 2050 and 2150. It is not expected to exceed that and might even shrink to a fairly stable 8.5 billion or so. As more of the world changes from 3rd-world lifestyles to urban it slows further.

4) There is an abundance of habitable land.

5) These will NEVER be a need to institute artificial population controls. No Logan's Run scenarios, no stopping disease research, no nothing. Nature takes care of that on it's own. Period. Through eons and eons and eons, without fail, population can't exceed food supply for any period longer than a generation. And without an asteroid strike, supervolcano or war creating a nuclear winter that stunts the planets ability to grow food at the current rate, the population will never reach the point where the currently used arable land can't feed the people, let alone worry about tapping into the 2/3rds of the arable land that isn't being used at all.

 

[irishScott]

The movie is retarded. Don't try to defend it as you just make yourself look stupid.

The movie is entertaining. It's people who expect Star Trek tech to have more than superficial legitimacy who are retarded. Or at least naive.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Ah, Doom and Gloom. Think there was a study that pointed out we're pre-programmed to think that way. It's easy for us to see how things could go wrong, but there are always a shit-ton of unknown factors that come in and fuck up the predictions.

Encourage me then

Ten thousand years ago one man might kill a few people. Tribes perhaps hundreds if things went well

A thousand years ago an archer dozens. Their governments had siege engines and could kill thousands.

A hundred years ago one man could kill hundreds with explosives, machine guns. Armies could kill hundreds of thousands.

Twenty years ago small groups of terrorists could kill thousands, perhaps one person could. Governments could kill a billion.

Today, the potential for nuclear terrorism looms. Governments have ways to virtually eliminate human life.

Tomorrow? Doesn't get worse than extinction. Terrorists could cause a hundred million dead with clever application of biology.

Note a few things. First the absolute death totals increase over time. Second, the time between significant potential death tolls is decreasing rapidly. Third, the ease and effectiveness with which small groups of individuals can do increasing damage. People I know have the education and resources to create havoc, although doing so is the furthest thing from their minds. The future always makes discoveries about how to do things easier.

So what happens in 50 years? A hundred? By that time engineering a custom organism will be child's play. I won't go into more detail but I think you will have a hard time finding an expert on such things who will day this is paranoia or mere cynicism.

 

[Greenman]

Hawking seem to think we got about 1000 years left..

Is 1000 year enough for warp engine to develop ? What development do we need to finally make space travel feasible ? or just alien intervention ?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/stephen-hawking-space-exploration-humanity_n_3061329.html

10,392 years, 4 months, 3 days and 6 hours from now.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

10,392 years, 4 months, 3 days and 6 hours from now.

More or less.

Be interesting if it could be built or something which accomplishes the same and if humans are smart enough to pull it off.

Once read a story where this enormous AI was built to determine how the universe came about. After many years the computer announced that it had figured it out. The excited scientists ask for the answer to the beginning of all and the computer replied that would be impossible. The scientists asked why and the AI replied that humanity wasnt smart enough to understand it.

 

[irishScott]

Encourage me then

Ten thousand years ago one man might kill a few people. Tribes perhaps hundreds if things went well

A thousand years ago an archer dozens. Their governments had siege engines and could kill thousands.

A hundred years ago one man could kill hundreds with explosives, machine guns. Armies could kill hundreds of thousands.

Twenty years ago small groups of terrorists could kill thousands, perhaps one person could. Governments could kill a billion.

Today, the potential for nuclear terrorism looms. Governments have ways to virtually eliminate human life.

Tomorrow? Doesn't get worse than extinction. Terrorists could cause a hundred million dead with clever application of biology.

Note a few things. First the absolute death totals increase over time. Second, the time between significant potential death tolls is decreasing rapidly. Third, the ease and effectiveness with which small groups of individuals can do increasing damage. People I know have the education and resources to create havoc, although doing so is the furthest thing from their minds. The future always makes discoveries about how to do things easier.

So what happens in 50 years? A hundred? By that time engineering a custom organism will be child's play. I won't go into more detail but I think you will have a hard time finding an expert on such things who will day this is paranoia or mere cynicism.

So we're the Krogan from Mass Effect 3? Seriously?

You're missing the fact that despite that exponential increase in killing power we've had an ever larger increase in population. If greater ability to deal death = more death, why do we have more life? Why haven't we been slowly grinding ourselves into extinction with each new weapons advance? Why was the atomic bomb used twice and then never again? Why do unstable and undeniably evil nations own WMDs but not use them?

Also there's the whole armor/weapon phenomenon. Right now we have 100% effective defenses against clubs, arrows, musket balls, most bullets. We're even starting to get a handle on effective missile defense. To use your organism analogy, if the tech exists to create custom organisms then it also exists to create custom counter-organisms. It would be black hat/white hat all over again, just with disease.

There are so many problems with your theory I could write a dissertation on them. You honestly think Al-Quaeda's 6th generation decedents are going to steal a singular weapon, small enough to be used by an individual or small group, powerful enough to wipe out the whole planet and then use it? And you're certain of this?

By the time we have tech that advanced, we'll likely be colonizing other planets anyway.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

So we're the Krogan from Mass Effect 3? Seriously?

You're missing the fact that despite that exponential increase in killing power we've had an ever larger increase in population. If greater ability to deal death = more death, why do we have more life? Why haven't we been slowly grinding ourselves into extinction with each new weapons advance? Why was the atomic bomb used twice and then never again? Why do unstable and undeniably evil nations own WMDs but not use them?

Also there's the whole armor/weapon phenomenon. Right now we have 100% effective defenses against clubs, arrows, musket balls, most bullets. We're even starting to get a handle on effective missile defense. To use your organism analogy, if the tech exists to create custom organisms then it also exists to create custom counter-organisms. It would be black hat/white hat all over again, just with disease.

There are so many problems with your theory I could write a dissertation on them. You honestly think Al-Quaeda's 6th generation decedents are going to steal a singular weapon, small enough to be used by an individual or small group, powerful enough to wipe out the whole planet and then use it? And you're certain of this?

By the time we have tech that advanced, we'll likely be colonizing other planets anyway.

Actually what you've said is "that can't be. " Your biology is out of date.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I'd like to see you "white hat" this.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/346997/description/Controversial_bird_flu_papers_fly


How about a slow virus? Something that sits quietly until a whole population is infected then switches on and kills?

 

[rsutoratosu]

so basically we're probably not going to be able to generate the factory needed for warp or transwarp or speed of light travel by ourselves. How much more physics do we need to know ?

would you guys agree we just need help for aliens now ? maybe one day we get lucky and some one drops by with warp engine for us ?

 

[Ichinisan]

For all I know, a warp engine may be beyond scientific possibility. Why would anyone think they could say how close we are to developing something that may never actually be developed?

 

[SKORPI0]

Not even close with the current knowledge and technology we have. Pointless to have without inertial dampers and force-field generators.

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/ques...mpeners-a-requirement-for-going-to-warp-speed

 

[disappoint]

Virtually every technology depicted in Star Trek was laughably stupid. Nothing could be stupider than the holodeck.

HAH! The holodeck is actually one of the most plausible sci fi devices they had on the show! You only have 5 senses to fool. Fooling humans into believing in alternate realities won't take much technological advancement. Heck they do it to themselves all the time when they believe fairy tales with no evidence just to name one example.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

The bigger question is will we even survive long enough to make one.

 

[zinfamous]

Actually what you've said is "that can't be. " Your biology is out of date.

eh, despite our capacity to kill in much greater numbers, you'll notice that our wars are getting far less bloody as the decades progress.

an atrocity like Antietam, where you see 10s of thousands of bodies pile up in a a single day are simply unconsionable now--even when you think of day slike Operation Overlord, only 70 years after.

Look back at the Peleponesian wars, and much, much later, when Sala'hadin was laying waste to vast swaths of Persia and you would have 200k deaths in a single day.

a single fucking day...of hacking each other with swords.

It took about 500 years for humanity to return to that scale of insanity; and in 1945 we certainly managed to up the ante in efficient killing with mere minutes on the scale....and you know what? Never again.