Space travel? How far can we go?

I doubt that you have teken into consideration just how enormous the costs would be in order to lower or eliminate the effect of microgravity, and to shield against cosmic radiation. Every solution involves boosting enormous weights out of the mother well. Good luck with that long-term strategy.

I'm not actually referring to any specific mission, just developing space travel in stages.

Way to dodge the implications of what i've written. It will cost enormous amonts of money (i.e., energy and resources) to boost significant payloads ouf of the mother well. Even if one imagines mining the so-called asteroids, and perhaps using the moon as a manufacturing base, that will have to start with boosting enormous payloads ouf of the mother well.

Right now, the federal prison system, social security and medicare, federal pensions and social security disability payments eat up more than half of annual government expenditures. Where are you going to find the money to boost thousands and thousands of tons of material out of the mother well? I know this kind of "wake up and smell the coffee" message is unwelcome, but it's germane nevertheless. It's not just that it will be horribly expensive to do in space the things that science-fiction addicted dreamers want us to do--it's a serious matter of not having the resources to do everything that needs to be done here on earth, never mind out there.

There will come a time, say several billion years in the future where the option for interstellar travels will be a virtual necessity for the maintenance of our species.
"Loophole" physics is just in its infancy so come back in several million years and make thoise same definitive sounding statements. Serious work is already being done on wormhole astrophysics and warp drive mechanics. All require several gazzilion joules per fortnight but our evolution into a multiplanet species will have to be faced.


ANYWAY, its a species problem, not a national one

You are making a pretty big assumption that our species will last that long.

opportunity meets technology all the time. We work on ways to find the loopholes in physics and, hopefuly, well have time to adopt them.

We cant just sit on ur asses and state that e will be extinct so whats the use. When our sun dies, it aint gonna be pretty uness we transcend the notion that its impossible to do interstellar travel.

Just like fusion power, we will have really long term investments in stuff we dont even know exists at this point.

I think we can pull it off.

In my opinion, your most successful belief around this statement will be that all energy present in suns and furthermore in materials, can be harnessed to create non degrading (<% required degradation for failure prior to acceptance) structures for eternal development of self, when all is gone, you remain, field shifts at zero point can be of slight consequence, if they are not, devising such methods will be possible, though is eternity really worth that much to you?

We think that the idea of the conquest of space should continue because now, we have already discovered a lot of things owing to the NASA like the disposition of the planets with the Solar System, the laws of gravity with the first step on the Moon with Neil Armstrong and in the month of October, a new man, Felix Baumgartner, did the biggest jump of the world so why not continue still the progress for the future even if the experiments cost a lot.
Moreover, in the future, we hope that the Moon or another planet will been habitable because the Earth could be destroyed because of the ozone layer could open so we should find another place where people will be able to go to live. During the years, the technology progresses don't stop to progress so we should maybe see in the coming 500 years people go to the Moon in rockets. Before, it was only scientist who could, after, it will be everybody : what a progress ! Today, the world was visited, known, was photographed, etc... Now, it's the tour of the universe to become universal !

The space conquest is good to surpass limits , explore new horizons. This has led to on increase in technological , discover the space, the unknow . Nevertheless , it's very expensive . Many workers for the space conquest .
The exploit to Felix's Baumgartner, it was a big step for humanity. It's a sport exploit but many people used this eventto make money .The sponsor used for this record like Redbull . He exist now travel in the space.
It's an interdisciplinary science involving different fields of knowledge , including physics, astronomy,mathematics ,chemistry,biology,medicine,electronics,computing and weather. Economically , it has led to new competitions and cooperations.Control of space will last a long time , no doubt,a not bring ambitious development.

To beginning we think colonize another planet is not a solution. First we must stop pollute our planet before pollute space. Why spend money to pollute another planet instead of using this money to develop green energy ? We went into space to discover another life whereas we have discovered only 25 % of animal species in our ocean ? A lot of money was spend to finance sppatial conquest. This money would be more useful to resolve world problems like hungrier in the world or war... Felix Baumgarther's "exploit" was just a commercial campaign for Red Bull to boost her sales. Felix Baumgartner's still spent 50 millions dollards for this. Another travel in the space was organized for all people and particulary rich people. Another thing uselles and expensive.
Travel in the world space is not a solution. It's just a useless thing.

The Texas Couscous. Paul & Benoît.