Limitations of space exploration?

Question

What are some limitations of space exploration?

Answer 1

The greatest limitation on space exploration is, quite frankly, practicality. With the possible exception of the planets in our own solar system, space travel to other worlds isn't feasible for a variety of reasons.

Because of the distance involved, reaching other solar systems is little more than a dream. Even if speed of light travel were possible, it would take four years just to reach the nearest star. While Einstein's theories include the slowing of time for those that move at or near light speed, allowing them to make the trip, who is going to want to leave their families knowing that ten, twenty or a thousand years may have passed on Earth by the time that they return, while they've only aged a year or two?

Generation ships are a possibility, as the time consideration could be waived since entire families would join the ship. However, outside of colonization, what purpose would such a ship have? If you haven't already located a suitable planet, where does the ship head?

So, are we left with somehow spanning the distance without traveling the space between, perhaps with wormholes? Even if the technology is possible, it would require years of research and almost endless funding for a technology that might be just shy of useless in application. Even if you could make a wormhole, you still need to know WHERE you want to go before you just jump in and press buttons.

While I believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life, this is my main reasoning for not believing that we're being visited by little green men. Unless they found a way to solve these problems, then they're not coming here any faster than we're going to them.

Answer 2

Interesting question. For now--and probably the next few centuries--the limit is the solar system. whether we'll eventually cross interstellar space is debatable (personally I think we will, but that's just my opinion).

The only real limit to exploring the solar system is our willingness to develop the technology required. The amazing thing is that our government is not willing to make a real effort to do that. The reason this is surprising is that we already know the benefits--and they are immense. In the late 50s and the 1960s that committment was there--and that we can take on and meet the challlenges was thoroughly proven.

And we discovered that it was a fantistically good investment. Out of that effort we got the basic technology that underlies our computers, we got vastly improved medical technologies, we got an entirely new kind of materiels -- composites--that are revolutionizing the ariline industry, among others. We got weather satelllites and communications satellites. And a host of other things.

And other countries are recognizing toe balue of space--we cannot expect the rest of the world to ignore these benefits simply because we--and our political leaders--have lost the vision we once had. Japan, China, Russia, the European Union, Asstralia, and most recently India--are making that committment. The limits to space exploration? They are in our own minds--and hearts. Nowhere else.

Answer 3

Limitations Of Space Travel

Answer 4

In general or specifically now?

In general, the limitation is distance. There's no way around it. While wormholes could theoretically exist, we don't know if they actually do. And we can't go past the speed of light. The distance between stars is mind-boggling, so much so that we can only really describe it by stating how long it took for the light from a star to get here.

Answer 5

Time is the great limiter of space travel. It takes incredible amounts of time to reach anything. At this time, we cannot combat that. Can you sit, bored, in a tiny room for the 9 months it would take to reach Mars? or the 50 years it would take to reach our closest star?

If we develop faster than light travel (extremely unlikely) or stasis (very likely) then this becomes less of a problem. You'd only age a year, but everyone you kew back home has died of old age.... still not an optimal solution.

Answer 6

I guess its Time. People took great achievements on the past centuries, but in reality we have only saw a dust of it. Space it too broad. Too huge that we could imagine. We could travel the whole universe within a million years, and take note, only if we are riding a space shuttle that is as fast as the velocity of light. I think that was beyond reallity. And human age and time prevents it for making it possible.

Answer 7

The only real limitation is the speed of light. Nothing we know of can go faster than that that is of practical use.

Some debunking:

If you go fast enough, you don't need provisions, nor will you be particularly bored. Time dialtion will assure that the trip, from you point of view, is only a few days to anywhere you want to go. There are a few stars a few light years away, the nearest galaxy other than our own is abot 250000 light years away

Answer 8

I'm not sure what kind of answers you want to hear, but "time" is a major limitation. If we want to explore the rest of our galaxy, we have to develop something that can get around the vast distances between solar systems.

Answer 9

Well lets just hope its just as hard for somebody on the other side of the galaxy to get here as it is for us to get there. If you could travel at 0.99 x the speed of light according to Carl Sagan you could circmumnavigator the entire known universe in one human lifetime.

I don't see that happening anytime soon. For the technology we have now the farthest we can go is our own solar system. The nearest star is still too far away.

Answer 10

Going a distance from your spacecraft or your drif of into space is a huge one. There are to many. The list could go on forever. Running out of fuel, weakness of bones and muscle because of weightlessness, exploding while going through the atmosphere, just plain exploding, etc...