Aliens?

The nearest star is 4.3 lightyears away. Nothing can travel faster than the normal speed of light, except light... in very odd situations. Assuming we could travel at the speed of light, it would take us 4.3 years to get to Proxima Centauri of the Alpha Centauri system (3 stars). This system is not known to have any planets. A list of stars known to have planets may be found here.

Then of course there would be the problem of taking along more than four years worth of food, water, and breathable air... make it for more than eight years since there would be no where to get new supplies. Let's not forget fuel for running the various systems and propeling the ship. Moving all that supplies just out of the atmosphere would be a significant undertaking... we already spend millions for 'simple' missions to orbit. Well there is the option of putting people in a sort of hibernation... It is speculated that just about every animal has a gene that would allow them to go into hibernation, but how we would activate that gene is not yet known and the existance of that gene is a speculation so we might not even have one. Cryogenics is a faulty science so far....

Okay anyway, let's say that humans could hybernate. Then you would have to worry about atrophy of the muscles, and even those that were awake would gradually lose much muscle strength. With out gravity, little resistance is put on the muscles. You don't have to support your weigh... since technically you have none(only mass). Basically it's worse than if you took a fit runner and made them do as little as possible for a month and then had them run their normal route. Put a person who has been in zero gravity for a few months back on Earth, and they have a hard time doing things like standing up. What if they did excercises? NASA worked on this... but still excercising in space is not the same as excercising on Earth, and beside we're talking years here, not months.

Okay well let's say we fixed that somehow... artificial gravity is not practical... We just did somehow okay. How many people would you have on this ship? They would have to alternate who got to hibernate.... for the reasons of monitering all the various equipement, excercising, and what not. More than two that's for sure... Could you imagine being the only person in a silent spaceship for months? Yeah... that would drive most people nuts. What if there was a talking computer? Oh wait 2000 Space Odessy... Dave? What are you doing Dave? =) BWAHAHAHAHAHA.... um I mean... Anyway...

Okays so how big would the spaceship be? Well it couldn't be too large... because the larger the object, the harder it is to get into space. We could build the ship in space... there was one idea of transporting goods to outerspace that seems... odd but not entirely unfeasible... If a giant cable where built that extended to a sort of counterweight that orbited at the correct speed so that the cable would remain straight... and this little thingamagummy would move up and down it like an overgrown elivator. If we had one of those then we could build a giant ship in space.... assuming we had the resources...

Yeah right... Space travel out of this solar system will not happen in my life time. If aliens were able to come here... I doubt they would destroy the planet... If they were smart enough and advanced enough to get here, they would use this as a resource on which to resuply on their epic journey's across space. Who knows... maybe they would say we taste like chicken.

EDIT: Epsilon Eridani is the fifth brightest star in the constellation Eridanus and is the tenth closest star to the Sun.
It is 10.7 lightyears away. Happy traveling.

 

Most likely, if we go to aliens instead of them coming to us, we will use robots and computers. Discovery Channel had a nice hour long movie about that and how it could go.

 

Aye but the point I'm sayin' is as difficult it would be for us... wouldn't it be just as hard for anything to get to us, unless they are way beyond us as far as... well everything. And yet here there are people who believe that aliens visit Earth... Oh never mind

 

Yeah, I doubt any species is gonna be able to meet a species from another planet face to face unless someone makes some sort of instant teleportation device. Cause you're calculations for time was set for traveling at lightspeed. We haven't even gone 1/10 that fast yet. So unless you expect people to breed on the ship, they probably won't make it.

Then again, going back to the going faster than light makes you travel through time thing..... the faster you go, the slower time is supposed to go. Meaning if someone is traveling at light speed for 30 Earth years it would only seem like 3 years to that person or something. I doubt that actually happens but if it does then the chance of making it increases.