Em MacIntosh
3rd Black Belt
Space exploration should be limited to telescopes and orbital research. Long before we establish any useful colonies on the moon or mars we'll have transcended our biology and we'll resemble clouds or puddles of shape-shifting supercomputers. We won't need to eat, sleep, breathe or hydrate. Sociology will interfere but I doubt it'll abate it. I suspect it's an eventuality for any extraterrestrial civilization that they'll take advantage of atomically precise construction to improve their bodies. This will change the ship-design paradigms currently held as there will be no need for a habitation modules, the nature of the fuel/propulsion system will change and the time frames will be percieved differently. This will likely happen long before we even get a significant colony started on the moon, let alone achieve human interstellar spaceflight.
I'd hazard any aliens coming for a visit would have long since transcended their biology in a similar fashion. Further, I'd say they'd have had ample time to improve upon the plateau of atomic precision and might resemble a form of energy rather than conventional matter. I think by the time a civilization can leave its home star it will resemble any other civilization able to do so.
So when people talk of little green or little grey men and a saucer abducting rednecks I scoff. Their scanners would be able to catalogue us down to the atom and their databases could hold this info on every human on the planet.
As far as FTL, I don't believe it's possible with our current understanding of physics but I do believe that ultra-high-energy systems can change the local nature of the phyical constant and our robust intelligence in the future will be able to break the dam wide open once we percieve a crack in it. I think metahumans, or whatever they want to call themselves, will have very different perspectives about a long journey, or the necessity thereof. At any rate, our telescopes can see the sillhouette of a planet in front of a star. To see that planet or even the surface of the planet is just a matter of degree, and particular refraction limits which will probably be overcome through mathematical estimation cross-checked with other forms of observation (our images will be from hundreds or thousands of years in the past though).
I believe aliens would have no reason to visit us except to amalgamate with us (perhaps there's a prime directive of some sort) which would serve little purpose for them. If they did visit us, we wouldn't be able to find them if they didn't want to be found. They would have the capability to brainwash a planet with relative ease. They could learn everything they wanted to know from extreme distance. I doubt probing cowpokes is on their agenda.
I'd hazard any aliens coming for a visit would have long since transcended their biology in a similar fashion. Further, I'd say they'd have had ample time to improve upon the plateau of atomic precision and might resemble a form of energy rather than conventional matter. I think by the time a civilization can leave its home star it will resemble any other civilization able to do so.
So when people talk of little green or little grey men and a saucer abducting rednecks I scoff. Their scanners would be able to catalogue us down to the atom and their databases could hold this info on every human on the planet.
As far as FTL, I don't believe it's possible with our current understanding of physics but I do believe that ultra-high-energy systems can change the local nature of the phyical constant and our robust intelligence in the future will be able to break the dam wide open once we percieve a crack in it. I think metahumans, or whatever they want to call themselves, will have very different perspectives about a long journey, or the necessity thereof. At any rate, our telescopes can see the sillhouette of a planet in front of a star. To see that planet or even the surface of the planet is just a matter of degree, and particular refraction limits which will probably be overcome through mathematical estimation cross-checked with other forms of observation (our images will be from hundreds or thousands of years in the past though).
I believe aliens would have no reason to visit us except to amalgamate with us (perhaps there's a prime directive of some sort) which would serve little purpose for them. If they did visit us, we wouldn't be able to find them if they didn't want to be found. They would have the capability to brainwash a planet with relative ease. They could learn everything they wanted to know from extreme distance. I doubt probing cowpokes is on their agenda.
