If Mankind discovered FTL travel

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Boddington's


Even 1mph faster than c and the travellers would arrive before they set off.

I don't believe there is any reason to believe we can travel backwards in time. if we traveled faster than light in some relatively conventional way than we would be breaking relativity and most likely be working on a different understanding.

[St Leo]

let you be the first

We had the technology to colonize Mars thirty years ago. The advancements in minituarization have only made it easier.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by loinburger
Depends on how much faster than the speed of light we're talking here. If we're talking 190,000 MPH, then hooray for breaking the light barrier, but it'll still take us years to leave the solar system.

You mean 186,000 miles per second.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by St Leo
let you be the first

We had the technology to colonize Mars thirty years ago. The advancements in minituarization have only made it easier.

I for one DON'T BELIEVE YOU.

Give us a few links to "Let's colonize Mars now!" links.

Or feel free to give us more hyperbole and I'll start posting the links that indicate we can't.

Up for it????

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Boddington's
Even 1mph faster than c and the travellers would arrive before they set off.

No they won't. Their arrival on Mars will not before their setting off from Earth.

[Ben Kenobi]

From who's perspective?

From the perspective of the Earth nothing will change.

From the perspective of the people on board, I can see lots of funky stuff happen. The people should get younger the longer they stay on board!

Perhaps we should test on monkeys first.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by obiwan18
The people should get younger the longer they stay on board!

No they won't. They just age slower. Unless, of course, you are positing that time runs backwards for any object moving faster than light.

[Urban Ranger]

Of course, we all have been thinking about moving faster than light. We could also reduce the distance to be travelled instead, e.g. wormholes, hyperspace.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Of course, we all have been thinking about moving faster than light. We could also reduce the distance to be travelled instead, e.g. wormholes,

Well that introduces the added complication that you might not end up when you wanted rather than where you wanted.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


No they won't. They just age slower. Unless, of course, you are positing that time runs backwards for any object moving faster than light.

Of course, if time runs backwards, that means the next thing to happen will be the undoing of the last thing thing to happen -- in this case, the action of moving faster than light.

Of course, since they just be bounced back to the exact time they crossed the light barrier, they will cross it again -- and get bounced back again, etc.

Sounds like a bumpy ride...and a time trap.

[Cruddy]

We're going a bit OT here, talking about the mechanics rather than the effect on humanity.

One thing I would see happening is closer cooperation on space efforts. Everyone would want a slice of the eventual colonization pie, with the prospect of mineral rights in the medium term.

I don't think it would slow the arms race as such - but it would add a whole new area for it, which might slow other areas of that race.

Another application I can see is setting up deep space listening and monitoring posts like Hubble, well out of the gravity well of the Sun. Put enough far away enough, run continugous clocks on them and we'd have a radio telescope effectively light years wide!!!

Astrophysicists would go bananas over that - but it would take a long time to set up and years for the raw data to arrive, let alone being analysed.

[The Mad Monk]

We probably have the technology to build an interferometer at Earth's LaGrange points now -- expensive, but doable, and pretty damn wide.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Cruddy
Another application I can see is setting up deep space listening and monitoring posts like Hubble, well out of the gravity well of the Sun. Put enough far away enough, run continugous clocks on them and we'd have a radio telescope effectively light years wide!!!

You could never be completely out of the Sun's gravity well. The effect just drops as you get further away. What is the point of building a radio telescope out there?

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


You could never be completely out of the Sun's gravity well. The effect just drops as you get further away. What is the point of building a radio telescope out there?

in all practical senses u can most definitely be out of the earth's gravitational well. if ur calculator is large enuff u might always get a #, but it would be irrelevant.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


You could never be completely out of the Sun's gravity well. The effect just drops as you get further away. What is the point of building a radio telescope out there?

Building one wouldn't be that sensible - I was talking about a network, linked by a common clock.

It would give a FANTASTICALLY sensitive radio array. If someone made a mobile call from Alioth we'd pick it up. OK, that's an exagerattion, but you get my point - the wider the array, the better the data it produces.

Bear in mind, Urban, that 80% plus of matter is undeteced at the present time. We still have a lot to discover.

Putting such an array outside the solar system - with probes monitoring around a radius of a few hundred AU's or more - means we get less interference from the sun and especially from Planet Earth.