faster than light has always been thought of as being dreadfully important to space travel. bu how important is it realy. What im really asking is do we need FTL to expand into space. And if not how we would cope.
2006-09-29 04:36:30 · 7 answers · asked by Vulcan Ambassador 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
Without FTL we would have to freeze people for them to live long enough to get anywhere at all. Or else we could NOT freeze people, and they just reproduce on the ship, and their descendents arrive at the destination.
2006-09-29 04:38:16 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Without FTL, we cannot travel outside our solar system. Just imagine the trip out to Pluto, that's going to take 12 years at current speeds. Which is still doable for human exploration I guess. The trip out to the nearest star is a little over 4 light years distance. Which takes millennia to travel to at current speeds. Not possible at all. The farthest man-made objects are the 2 Voyager spacecrafts. They are about 100 au from the sun and it took them over 25 years to get there. 100 au is what, 0.00000000000000001 lights years? probably need to at more zeroes. But you get the idea.
2006-09-29 06:53:55 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
First of all, FTL is one of the only things that would let us explore other galaxies, and in response to the first answer, you can't freeze someone and have them live after they're frozen. FTL actually is the only way to really get anywhere with any great degree of certainty.
2006-09-29 07:19:28 · answer #3 · answered by matrixneo_1392 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Considering how long it's been since we visited the moon, and how long we've talked about visiting Mars... I don't think FTL is the most important thing for space travel.
2006-09-29 05:56:00 · answer #4 · answered by btsmith_y 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
At speeds approaching the speed of light, time slows so that travellers age more slowly. Thus, humans could potentially travel to other stellar systems. Unfortunately, commerce would be almost impossible since those left behind would age at their own rate.
A journey to a nearby star system five lightyears distant and back would take 100 years at 10% of the speed of light. The travellers would age 99.5 years during the journey. (The speed of light is about 1,079,252,849 kilometers per hour or about 670,616,629 miles per hour.)
At 50% of the speed of light, the journey would take 20 years and the travellers would age 17.3 years.
At 90% of the speed of light, the journey would take 11.1 years and the travellers would age 4.8 years.
At 99% of the speed of light, the journey would take 10.1 years and the travellers would age 1.4 years.
At 99.9% of the speed of light, the journey would take 10 years and four days and the travellers would age 5 months.
2006-09-29 04:52:30 · answer #5 · answered by Deep Thought 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Given the sheer distances to even the nearest stars expansion beyond our solar system is highly unlikey.
2006-09-29 04:40:04 · answer #6 · answered by Vanguard 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Without it I cannot immagine travel outside our own solar system.
2006-09-29 04:38:31 · answer #7 · answered by campbelp2002 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋