Cosmic Journeys -Voyage to Alpha Centauri: First Interstellar Space Flight .

[Katashi_itto]

Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our Sun and the most likely destination for our first journey beyond the solar system.

[RoccoR5955]

1. We could have been doing all this and more

had NASA's budget been that of the defense department.
We are explorers, and need to explore beyond our own back yard, which has been shrinking over the millennia.
Space is one of the only things left that we can explore. True there are oceans, but space is a lot more vast, and thus more interesting.

The way that I now see it, is as soon as some greedy corporation sees that they can make huge profits on it, there will be no exploration beyond our solar system. I hope that I am wrong, but that just seems to be the way that things are going these days.

I would love to be on a ship going to Alpha Centauri, or any other star system, for that matter. I am sure that it has been a dream of many of us as well. I only hope that we humans can get off of this rock, and explore other worlds.

[Archaic]

3. The engineering of exploration.

Boats, footwear, protective clothing, food preservation, sanitation, rugged materials, etc.

Real research that benefits everyone.

Unfortunately, the engineering is for faster wall street trading systems. Which does cascade down to normal folks, but I think we can serve up cat videos quite fast enough now.

[RoccoR5955]

4. Oh?

Did you know that you can thank the Space Program for your PC?
I can name about a hundred things that benefit everyone that came out of the Space Program, so your argument is a FAIL AFAIC.

[Archaic]

5. I must not have been clear enough.

I receive NASA's Spinoff book. If you don't, you should. It's free, it's awesome, and the person that sends it is very nice. If you want a bunch to give to friends, do it.

I was saying that from the beginning of time, through the future, exploration has created the need to engineer new solutions that benefit everybody.

Og, what over that hill? Don't know. Bring food and stick.

Ok lads, we're going to sea. For a while. How do we survive the trip to the New World?

Ok, ladies and gentlemen, we've thoroughly wrecked Earth. We need to colonize the moon, then Mars. What are we going to need to sustain life as we branch out?

My point is that TODAY's engineering seems to be wasted on Wall Street. But I can totally see how you would read my post and think that.

[talkingmime]

2. If we are to survive as a species, all such interstellar missions must have human crews.

It's a one-way trip, but procreation along the way will be essential. At .1c, the original members of the crew will be dead or close to it and their progeny will be the ones to search for a place to live.

Obviously some of the missions will be failures, but that's a risk with any space crew. We don't have the luxury of sending a probe or rover out on this one.