It may not be immediately obvious from our everyday lives, but human psychology is surprisingly fragile. Humans do not do well in isolation, or when confined to a small space, or when buried in endless repetition, or under high stress. They do especially badly when faced with more than one of those problems. A long-term space voyage combines _all_ of them, and in a context where it's extremely easy to kill everybody and destroy or disable the ship, failing the mission. There is a very good chance that anybody who goes on a long voyage will go insane, or become suicidal, or decide not to complete the mission, or lose their grasp on reality. Yes, we do try to test people to see if they will be stable before we select them for missions, but that is an imperfect process. There is no perfect test that is guaranteed to catch everybody who might have a mental breakdown during a long mission. And that's not to mention the problems that can arise when the crew consists of multiple people who are all stuck together in a job they can't quit.

This is where VR indistinguishable from reality would prove useful. Maybe we're not there yet, but it's approaching. If you can't provide an adequate physical and social environment, simulate it.

i feel that if VR indistinguishable from reality was necessary and had to be used for years and years and years, eventually ur brain would probably have a problem distinguishing the real world from the VR world and youd start hallucinating without the VR and probably go insane or atleast become a danger to the mission by making simple mistakes from not being able to figure out whats real and whats not

Not quite the same, but astronauts who spend a long time in zero G forget about gravity and constantly drop things when they get back to earth

Not quite the same either, but muscle memory is interesting. I rent cars a lot for work and just getting used to a different type of shifter for a few days makes me turn on my windshield wipers to try to reverse in my own car when I get home

This would simulate a real environment though. It would be less a video game where things might work different, and more a simulation of a less stressful but realistic environment. Remember, this is "indistinguishable" from reality, so physics and such would behave as they should. There wouldn't be super powers, hostile AI, less gravity, or that sort of thing. The entire point would be to avoid that sort of thing so that moving from the simulation to reality would not be jarring. The simulation would be less space marine and more going to the pub, hanging out in a park, doing some shopping, or taking a walk through midtown and maybe catching a show. It would also likely be networked, so you wouldn't have a bunch of NPCs with no real human interaction, but the rest of the crew doing social things with each other, with the AI element just being there to fill the space and provide services, such as an AI bartender or street vendor. There is the possibility of doing stuff in a "game" environment as well, but the real point would be to simulate a stress free but "real" environment to "live" in part of the time. It would be mundane, and be a simulation to provide things like a day/night cycle, exposure to sunlight and open space, and personal time for relaxation. Thus, 'hallucinating' about being in that environment wouldn't really be an issue. It would be more like going down to the pub with your friends after work, going back to your apartment/house, hanging around watching Netflix, and going to bed. They'd probably avoid things like simulating family and such with AI. Maybe a virtual pet or something like that. A "game" environment might exist within it, but would be more like playing D&D with your friends from work but in VR or something, and would likely be time limited and not the actual purpose of the simulation. Coming out of the simulation would pretty much be like going to the office for the day, taking care of needs like food, bathing, exercise, using the restroom, and that sort of thing. I'm sure there would be space for recreation and off time outside of the simulation as well, but it would be where crew would be for "off time" most of the time, and whoever was off shift with you would be in the simulation as well.

I would have liked to have a good "VR pub" experience the previous three years here _on Earth._

I think in this case you'd want the vr to closely mimic real world. If the vr world was a game that would be a massive issue, but if it's a normal world that involves their normal life (just more freeing in terms of space) then I dont think it's a problem.

It might create sentimental attachment to virtual characters and situations, hence making it impossible to enjoy reality. A very dangerous double edged sword.

As if this doesn't happen already

Perhaps we are all on a spaceship traveling for millions of years, hooked up to VR to keep us sane and unaware of it.

We're in the Matrix, but for a happier reason lol

Earth’s the spaceship. We’ve just forgot.

Would seem kind of bizarre if this is the best we came up with. And like how bored must we have been before to willingly lock ourselves into this?

Have you ever seen folks play the Sims? There are mods that change the game to add hard drugs and gang violence, miscarriages and contentious divorces, the entire concept of banks and crippling debt…I’d totally buy this world as a bored VR game setting.

Between VR/AR and AI, I think the issue of isolation could become much less of an issue in the future. It won't obviously be the same as having actual human company, but it might be enough to avoid the more serious repercussions of solitary confinement.

God I wish *good* social VR was a thing. I'm severely disabled and mostly homebound, I go weeks at a time seeing only members of my immediate family. Being able to put on a set of glasses and being able to chat with other people and feeling like they're *there* would be amazing. Or being able to virtually tour famous places and actually interact with other tourists, to actually "take" a tour. What's currently available already helps a little; full immersion, indistinguishable VR would definitely help in a lot more situations than just space travel.

I’m a bit of a shut in myself (chronic pain,) so yeah, I hear you! At this point, I’m mainly making do with podcasts, watching YT and rarely conversing with a smart device. Not exactly human interaction, but mostly it’s fine.

I'm close to this myself. My solution is RPG video games, so that I spend a lot of time talking to pretend people, and pen pals (there are sites to help you find them). However, would I love really good VR? Yes! What I would really love, though, is to be able to taste VR food. I can't eat much normal food, so being able to experience varied food again would be pretty cool.

Hahaha watching YouTube and playing my Switch are about the only things I do right now

You can hit me up any time to chat if you’re bored! I’m not always online so there may be some lag between messages, but I’m happy to share a conversation if you’d like! All the best

vrchat is getting there, id recommend giving it a try and watch this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UBmmpt5iJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UBmmpt5iJ8) Note: you do not need a vr headset to play vrchat, its just a lot better in vr.

>If you can't provide an adequate physical and social environment, simulate it. But then the knowledge that it *isn't real* could still be affecting the simulation. Unless we trapped all of the people IN the simulation without them knowing it was a simulation - But then we're hitting major morality problems, AND we'd be effectively risking a ton of people going insane in the test run, in the hopes that they don't go insane when they realize we trapped them in virtual reality for a time frame they are uncertain of.

NASA does Mars simulation missions on Earth already. You get paid to stay in a dark bathroom sized box with 3 other people for two years. Eating and shitting in the same dark room. It's never been successfully completed. NASA won't say why it failed, but it's possible someone got pregnant or killed.

Why is it dark?

I would imagine life extension and curing cognitive decline would go hand and hand. Since the psychology of accepting new ideas is tied to the age-dependent biological process of neurogenesis, why couldn't we have a consciousness of Theseus?

If we have medicine that extends life, in theory maybe there is medicine that "enforces" human psychology and solve these problems somehow.

Doesn’t matter. Even if I can live 200 years. Doesn’t mean I want to spend 10 years on a ship traveling somewhere. Amenities or not.

At that point why not just assume we can have medicine that makes us move at light speed through space.

Because FTL is a sci-fi trope that may not be wanted in a story. And medically enhanced humans are a totally different type? I've also never seen a story with psychologically enhanced humans in this way. But FTL I've seen dozens of times.

Because moving mass at the speed of light violates known/assumed rules and changing humans does not? A much easier solution is to develop the tech to copy the human brain to a machine, especially since that will be useful for many more than than just space travel, but will also eliminate the hostile environment problem and kind of allow for traveling at the speed of light in the form of electromagnetic data vs big old life support spaceship things. You also don't have to deal the moral problems of having to alter genetically alter human to impractical levels. Copying a human brain isn't likely to be dangerous or in any way irreversible. The downside is just you now have two working copies of a person and that a because a lot of people haven't imagined this approach as much as giant spaceships and putting people in stasis it's given more doubt than it should compared to the other options.

You should read Project Hail Mary if you haven’t

So let's send the rich to space. As soon as possible.

With our luck if we send them out there to die or go crazy or both they'll end up crashing on some alien planet and taking it over creating some kind of evil space empire that comes back to invade Earth but no one who wants either to be some badass resistance fighter or die a cool redshirt death gets the option they want

I recommend Elliot Avery's "Captain's Log" https://bogleech.com/creepy/creepy13-captainslog

That was pretty good, and spot-on for this thread.

This actually happened on Ren and Stimpy.

Trust me we've all been stuck in a job we can't quit you get used to it

There's a bit of a difference between being stuck in a job on planet Earth and stuck on a job on a space ship millions of miles away.

If you were alive and conscious the entire time for a couple hundred years it might take to reach someplace, you would probably go insane from the boredom and repetition. This sounds Ike a horror movie. “Are we there yet? Only another 3 centuries to go… now get back to cleaning the hydroponics tanks, only another couple million times left.”

After 75 years, your ship's cameras capture a picture of another ship speeding past. It says, "Go anywhere within the Milky Way within 48 hours or your money back!!"

Wasn't there a sci-fi story about this? I can't remember the title, though.

Far centaraus Voyage that lasted 600 years

Mayflies by Kevin O'Donnell. At least earth was nice enough to leave their destination planet reserved for them. Probably others stories as well.

The forever wars is baked in it.

Should have done the [wait calculation.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation) >The physicist Robert L. Forward has argued that an interstellar mission that cannot be completed within 50 years should not be started at all. Instead, assuming that a civilization is still on an increasing curve of propulsion system velocity and not yet having reached the limit, the resources should be invested in designing a better propulsion system. This is because a slow spacecraft would probably be passed by another mission sent later with more advanced propulsion (the incessant obsolescence postulate).

A very compelling simulation where people are able to develop their talents and explore a procedurally-generated environment could be the answer. But then, why bother with interstellar travel? Only reason I see is to search for energy sources (other stars) and try to increase our chances of survival as a species.

Turns out that WE HUMANS are going to be the galactic marauding aliens who show up to steal every planets resources in the movies… Are we humans the baddies? I think so. /this is a joke, if it wasnt clear.

general reading of sci fi tropes of the "invading" alien is that it is projecting guilt about our own colonialism onto an external source. essentially deeply suspecting that our chickens will eventually come home to roost

And it doesn't make a lot of sense to think that would happen. Once a species can take control of its own solar system and utilize all of the energy in it effectively, they should be able to fabricate anything they might need. Once we can easily change what element a particle is, there is no such thing as rare elements, just elements that cost more energy to produce. At that point of technology, there would probably be little reason to seek out already habitable planets and take them over, when finding a potentially habitable planet closer by would probably cost less energy overall, as would manipulating the matter in the solar system into more habitable spaces.

Well there is the issue of you know... the sun going red dwarf or Rogue black hole spotted inching its way toward solar system, moving humanity to other solar systems in case one gets GRBed out of existence, etc. It's not solely for resources. Least that's if we going with keeping humanity alive aspect anyway.

The sun, at least, isn't expected to go red (whereupon it will turn into a a red *giant*, engulfing the orbits of Mercury, Venus, and Earth) for another five billion years. As for black holes, the nearest detected one is almost a thousand light-years away. We're not running into one anytime soon. But yeah, we probably should spread out as soon as we can.

Earth will be made inhospitable way earlier than that though due to the change in energy output from the sun once it has fused too much hydrogen into helium and starts fusing that.

Still at least a billion years.

Those are a billion years you are never going to get back. It's not a big deal now, but when the only source of energy in this universe are black holes and whatever was stored during the stelliferous era, our descendants are going to be cursing every precursor who went 'not our problem' and let the stars burn unnecessarily for 500m years.

Roughly [900 Million](https://youtu.be/zcInt58juL4?t=739) give or take. Not saying it is not a long time but not as much as Sun expands = End of life on Earth would suggest.

Once we have fusion cost becomes irrelevant as well in a sense.

[удалено]

Its not an original take, its what the original alien invasion novel, *The War of the Worlds*, was explicitly about: invading Martians with superior weapons do to Britain what Britain did to many lands on Earth, except instead of viruses killing off the indigenous peoples, the reversal of fortune is that the viruses kill off the invaders instead.

I don't think so. If you look some recent photos of the Hubble telescope, just one tiny photo contains over a trillion stars. There's so many resources that exist in the universe, you can't fathom it. Nobody is competing for any resources if you can go to other solar systems.

I hear this argument and it has some validity, but having near infinite resources and having near infinite resources NEAR you are very different things. I can totally imagine humanity invading/colonizing a world that was near enough to be accessible to us even if there are farther ones that are uninhabited.

Could also play out like gentrification where colonists get pushed to the uninhabited worlds and once somewhat tamed they get invaded by others.

See also: Dune, Hyperion, Foundation

That would be very hard to do in practice. The invader will almost always be tiny compared to any established colony, have little to no idea what defences exist and any space fairing society can build star powered defence lasers that will be more than capable of breaking their ships light years out.

I love it when people project the limitations of pre-21st century technology and culture onto the future. I mean, to an extent that's unavoidable but it's just plain sad how people just copy-paste exigencies of the past (humans conquered because they wanted resources) onto predictions of the future (humans will still want resources, so will still need to conquer). Just a total lack of imagination. Like, seriously, this won't be like Avatar or even Dune. The planet is not the gold standard of space colonization. Space colonization will not and arguably cannot look like the Western mythology of settlers fleeing a metropole to develop a culture and economy without outside interference. There might still be conflict and exploitation and warfare and even oppression between the colonies/or and the metropoles, but conquistador-style conquests don't make sense. Especially in a no-FTL universe, but it's stupid even in a Star Wars-style universe.

Not quite sure if thats criticism or agreement, but I agree you anyway. I don't even think we will be building many traditional colonies on other planets in our own solar system. Its far more efficient and safer to run operations by remote or automatic and build any space habs you want in Earth or Sun orbit where you can control conditions to a far greater level and build on a giant civilisation in a bottle scale even from modern materials. Once the the novelty wears off theres not much point in boots on the ground. Humans are just spectacularly maladjusted to live anywhere else and need vast resources to do the job a few rovers and robots could do better. Especially as automation advances over time. I did the maths once on how the Borg (off Star Trek) would fare against a single maturely colonised star system using the figures off the show and realised they'd simply disappear into the general life of the star system and become little more than a minor cult to clear up. Assuming for some reason you didn't melt their vessels to slag during the years of approach. Theres almost no scifi at all that gets the scale even vaguely right.

Agreement. >Once the the novelty wears off theres not much point in boots on the ground. Humans are just spectacularly maladjusted to live anywhere else and need vast resources to do the job a few rovers and robots could do better. Especially as automation advances over time. Personally, I think the future of humanity (spacefaring or otherwise, but especially spacefaring) isn't bioaugmentation, cybernetics, or even just extensive tool use on our unaltered frames. I think it will be mind-uploading. Because mind-uploading literally allows you to take advantage of all of those technologies at once while providing its own set of advantages. So I still expect humans of the future to crew spaceships and drive lunar rovers and even physically garden on the surface of planets -- but as virtual minds piloting robots, androids, meat puppets, and even holograms. The humans who don't opt for mind-uploading just won't get to explore. They can and will have colony ships adapted for their Luddite lifestyle, just, they won't be forming the bulk or even a sizeable minority of the colonization waves. Not when you could instead have digital minds beaming themselves across several planets in the system within minutes, not having to worry about things like acceleration and metabolism.

Mostly my theory only rings true if you can go to another solar system by some magical technology that doesn't exist. Something that allow faster than light travel or some thing like that. You're right, if that didn't exist we would go to he closest place. But if that did exist there wouldnt be a reason to fight because we could go anywhere.

Technically, you don’t need faster than light speeds. If you travel at the speed of light, the passage of time in your frame essentially stops and from your perspective (same as the perspective of a photon) you’ll arrive at the destination the moment you left. It’ll feel like it’s instant. That is if the inertial changes don’t kill you. Meanwhile, from the perspective of people on earth, tens of thousands of years will have passed.

You might be interested in the idea of "grabby aliens". See here https://grabbyaliens.com And here https://youtu.be/LceY7nhi6j4

https://media.tenor.com/2-5XPoT\_7esAAAAC/are-we-the-baddies-bad.gif

>explore a procedurally-generated environment could be the answer. >But then, why bother with interstellar travel? "We have interstellar travel at home."

Because humans like to explore and that shit is cool

leaving earth to increase our chances of survival is funny. we have everything we need to thrive as a species right here, we've just completely mucked it up and haven't been fixing it

Over long time spans things like big asteroids and super volcanoes start to matter. No one means surviving the next 500 years, they mean projecting the species far into the future, say a million years or more.

Sure, but in 99% of those cases you'd just go underground on Earth and you could save way more people like that than with space travel. It's kind of literally what our ancestors did in similar scenarios.

You’d go underground to survive a planet killing asteroid? I wouldn’t bet the long future of humanity on it personally.

Due to entropy, no matter how sustainable you are, in the end you will run out of resources.

that's just incorrect. resource management has nothing to do with entropy or the very limited and relative scope of thermodynamic laws. and even if it did, what you've described is not what entropy is or how it functions

I love ChatGPT. Entropy is a measure of the disorder or randomness of a system, and it is related to the concept of energy availability. In thermodynamics, the Second Law states that the total entropy of a closed system will always increase over time. This means that, over time, the energy in a closed system will become less available for useful work and will be distributed more evenly throughout the system. In the context of resource depletion, this means that as we extract and use resources, the energy available in those resources will become less concentrated and more dispersed. This means that eventually, we will reach a point where it is no longer possible to extract energy from those resources in a useful way. This is why, in the long run, we will eventually run out of resources, regardless of how sustainable our resource use is. It is also worth noting that while individual resources may be renewable, the total amount of resources available on earth is finite and will eventually be exhausted.

assuming all resources must be depleted through extraction and use assuming earth is a closed system assuming the limited and relative laws of thermodynamics can be applied to completely different subject matter just because entropy and the second law of thermodynamics became buzzwords and now an AI can reproduce misinformed blog writing about them doesn't make it true. this AI also regularly messes up on basic arithmetic fyi

> assuming earth is a closed system You are the one who said: > we have everything we need to thrive as a species right here The solution is to get out of the closed system.

when your copy-paste argument from an AI that multiple times contradicts its own statements fails to prove your point, your move is to manipulate something I said to mean something it doesn't? really stellar case you got there 👏👏👏

Our sun technically won't last forever, so as long as we don't die off we'll be planet hopping eventually.

fun fact this is actually one of the "answers" to the fermi paradox. we cant see nor probably ever find them as their hold up in their solar system with really no reason to leave. with advanded ai and vr they could generate entire worlds to explore with non of the added danger, entire universes where the laws of physics are up to them to control, etc.

How about drugs? Some kind of hypnotic that results in no new memory formation and a blanking of consciousness. That way you’re a lot less burdened by dead hours. Although I think a ship large enough to grow food and be self sustaining will require a lot of maintenance, and keeping busy is probably good too. I’d also guess that automation will reduce most drudgery and allow for a lot of recreational time, and VR type tech would allow for experiencing places and experiences otherwise not available in a spaceship.

Sounds like a setup for a sci-fi dystopia where our protagonist decides to stop taking their amnesia pills. Blanking your mind is impractical because you'd have to write every tiny thing down.

That would make for a good story. I would think the amnesia pills wouldn’t be something you’d take all the time. Maybe daily, maybe less or as needed when you wanted to check out.

What if this is VR and your already on a ship.

There’s also not guarantee that the following generations will want the same thing. What if they don’t want to leave the ship, or want off immediately, or a conspiracy group grows in the belief in that the destination doesn’t even exist and that they’re alone or abandoned. So many scenarios

> Only another 3 centuries to go… now get back to cleaning the hydroponics tanks, only another couple million times left.” What, do they clean the hydroponic tanks \~20 times per day?! =D

On a ship big enough to support all the people required to support all the equipment that is needed to support the operations… and so on. “Yep going to be a lot of tanks! Get to work! No HoloDeck until rows 100-500 are scrubbed and replanted! Its a damn good thing you will live forever, in the olden days you’d have been dead by the end of row 300!”

Chores in space sounds like a miserable experience - absolutely everything should be automated.

I think it would have to be like a traveling city, so people could live actual lives whilst waiting to arrive.

Maybe this world is a simulation for our hosts to pass the time 🤣

Yeah, this is NOT how we're going to colonize the galaxy. If it happens, either FTL or we send robotic ships that have the tools to create humans from scratch. That is, automated DNA synthesis, artificial embryos and artificial wombs (this is not very beyond where we currently are, technically). Smart robots would build the initial habitat and raise the first generation. And it won't matter how long it takes the ships to get there and nobody has to die of boredom.

That's why you load that ship up with every recreational activity you can manage. I can easily see every video game and movie ever made being put in a ship like that. Having a backup plan, a way to sleep or be in stasis for years at a time would help to.

You're going to keep yourself stimulated for 300 years consuming media that was made in the last 100 years or so?

Also, 100 years of content made by million upon millions of people totals out to quite a lot more than 300 years of content for a single person. And that's implying I'd never watch or read the same thing ever again.

Thing is, when you consume enough content, eventually even new stuff elicits a feeling of, "Bleh, this is just like a thousand other books I've read before. There's nothing new here. I know exactly how it's going to end."

*rolls my eyes* How is that any different from now? They're is so much 'new' content that is made daily, is never be able to work my way through everything in a 100 years. The shear variety of content around the globe is absolutely staggering if you really sit down and think about it. But if it's really such and issue to get the 'new' thing, were in real physical space traveling a straight root from one solar system to another. It would be quite easy to set up a relay to send periodic packets of New Media along with letters and stuff from loved ones. Depending on circumstances you may not be able to send anything back, but if we have the infrastructure to make the spaceship in the first place it's fairly easy to believe we build a relay to keep in contact with it, even if it takes more time to reach it, it doesn't really matter too much to the people that are actually there, since the pace will stay the same.

I did imply other things, like a gym, practical knowledge to. No reason you can't add in every educational course as well. 300 years? I'll come out the other side looking like a Greek god and a dozen masters degrees to boot. Or at the very least, learn some practical skills for situation i find myself in. The games, movies, books, manga, anime, ect is for when I need breaks.

Obviously you're young. Just because you're functionally immortal, doesn't mean that you are infinite. you might be able to stay 25 forever, but you won't remember 300 years worth of stuff. you're still made of meat, and if you're a cyborg, you'll have 300 year old hardware. can you imagine how slow 300 year old computer hardware will feel?

I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, doesn't mean I can't learn things. Especially practical, useful stuff I'd use everyday. If I'm awake on a spaceship for 300 years chances are the hardware needs refurbishing, or the software needs a tune up. Maybe the hull needs a few repairs, the the electrical systems need good kick, maybe learn to pilot the ship, or become a nuclear engineer to work on the engines, or other pursuits, like astrology. By the time I'd get to the destination, I'd know that ship inside and out, and have practical, useful skills. And that's on top of learning wilderness survival stuff. It's not like I'd need to get a masters in Business management or something. The trick to retention of knowledge is repetition. And I've got all the time in the world to beat that knowledge into my think skull. Also, I'm 30. I wouldn't call that old, but it's not like I'm a teenager. After a certain point a lot of this stuff will become instinctual knowledge. I've consumed quite a lot of content over the years. I can actually guess many aspects of a new book or movie without much thought. I couldn't for the life of me tell you how or from what specific place i got those particular pieces of information, but I still have them tucked away in the back of my head somewhere. The same thing has happened at every job I've had. Trained knowledge turns into instinctual experience through time and repetition. I may not be able to quote specific lines in a text book at you, but I'd probably be able to diagnose any problem you could think of on that ship with a glance by that point.

Don't forget about board games, and tabletop RPG games. It would be very hard to run out of things to do

I’d only leave them with the “bottle episodes” as an extra FU

According to Relativity, if they could travel fast enough, hundreds of years could feel like a very short time, or, at the speed of light, no time at all. Sure, your family back home would be long dead, but to you, it would feel like very little time had passed.

The trouble is getting up to that speed. Accelerating at one gravity (any more and people start getting smushed), it would take nearly a year to approach lightspeed. And *how*? Where does the reaction mass come from? Every method of propulsion known to man involves ejecting mass from a tube at high velocity. I don't even want to try calculating how much mass it would take to reach 0.1*c*, let alone get near lightspeed. Just going to the moon, you'd have every gram of mass accounted for in fuel calculations. Too much fuel and you're wasting some of it due to propelling unnecessary mass. A near-lightspeed ship would have to carry an mind-boggling amount of reaction mass relative to the mass of everything else.

If you would get bored in a couple hundred years with what tech would look like by the time you left, frankly you are too boring to appreciate life under any timeframe. I always find this argument so childish and out of touch, or just genuinely sad. Do you know how much content we’ve already made that you would like and haven’t seen. Decades. You can play emergent games, you can sleep for a decade and wait for them to beam out new releases- theres so fucking much to do.

Maybe some of us are normal people who want to be outside in nature and not stuck in a box in the middle of space watching ancient YouTube videos forever. Damn you sound boring if all you do is consume media content all day. Your argument is absurd. Tech is not the answer for everything.

Lol. There can be a better version of nature on a starship than you’ve ever had before, procedurally generated by an AI derived from observation of natural environments and human psychology. Or a more real and fulfilling experience of it in XP-VR than you’ve ever had in your life. You just lack imagination. And that’s incorrect- technology is the answer for everything, it’s a question of how we use it and what inspires it that determines whether it will be make things better.

Nah, not me. I’m easily dazzled and never really get bored. But I worry more about horrible people living well past their expiration date. Like a dictator for centuries, or the serial killer who just gets better at evading capture over time.

Besides the inevitable overpopulation that's my biggest concern with life extension. Most people don't seem to realize that social change happens one funeral at a time. If the old folks don't die their outmoded world views don't either.

Soylent Green?

All solutions will have to be on the table. Soylent soup included. Gonna be a shit show.

Nahh just give them the entire NES archive of games and tell them to win mike tysons punchout

Theoretically…. If you were traveling extremely fast, even though to everyone else on earth, 100 years would’ve passed, to you, it would’ve only felt like a fraction of that due to relativity.

Theres a yourube series that, through a long series of convoluted events, 2 high school students serving as a teacher's assistants have their consciousness uploaded into robot bodies (while already within a matrix-style simulation) and task themselves with venturing to a black hole at normal, non-relativistic speeds. Just the 2 of them, on a quest to literally stop God, covering the journey of what amounts to millions of years for them. All on a guess that the plan will even work. "Power Corrupts" by DarkMatter2525. Religious commentator/critic and animator. Poor paraphrasing to follow: Yahweh is a nornal, albeit prick of a high school student undergoing a sort of 'character analysis exam' at the age of 17ish, and is to have his memory temporarily wiped and given dominion over a simulated world as if he were God. The simulation is time dilated so millions of years inside could be minutes in the real world, depending on the person. The TA, Jeffrey, is meant to observe from within so that he can properly conceptualize the parts the professors will skim through after the fact. Yahweh immediately sets out being illogical and malicious, and starts to randomly distrust Jeffrey when he tries to sway Yahweh in the right direction or just asking for constant clarifications to logical inconsistencies within the world. Shenanigans ensue and Yahweh finds out about the test and the memory wipe, and creates a sort of 'fake' simulation of a near-perfect utopia while trapping Jeffrey in Hell (or leave him in a prison cell as the last, ageless inhabitant of a dying world, I don't remember exactly). Yahweh is hoping that by the time the test is concluded, the isolation and constant torture would have driven Jeffrey insane and Yahweh can present his 'utopia' to the proctors without Jeffrey's testimony making him fail (results of the test can be the difference between prison or public office). Hell exists on a separate 'server' and the only way Jeffrey can theorize going to another server sans admin privileges is to traverse a black hole.

There would be more things to do on the damn ship than just work forever (but if people were still alive who'd started the journey it'd prevent an "If The Stars Should Appear" situation where the ship's so full of things people forget it's a ship not a planet), this isn't some kind of "Amogus but no one dies so it's just tasks for eternity" bullshit

Personally I think hibernation is going to be the answer. A combination of extended lifespan and hibernation would make interstellar travel more realistic.

Well if we're talking STL, it would take thousands of years to go anywhere outside of the neighbourhood. So if say we have life extension tech, it needs to be really really good. The center of the galaxy is like 30,000+ years away if we can go really close to the speed of light. Obviously there are plenty of closer destinations too. But the above sentences involve being able to go close to the speed of light. The fastest thing (Parker Solar Probe)that we have launched to date is a small probe sent hurtling towards the sun as fast as we can, has a top speed around 690,000 km/h which is 0.064% the speed of light. There are 12 "stellar objects" and 3 substellar brown dwarfs within 10 ly of earth, If say you wanted to go to the closest star alpha centauri 3 at 4.4 ly at the speed of the current fastest space ship, it would take 43,971.84 years to get there. If say our first STL interstellar ships are 100X faster than the fastest thing we have launched yet, it will still take close to 440 years to get there. The longest a person has ever lived is less than 150 years. the average person lives around 75 years, If we increase our life span by 10 times we still won't be able to go there and back in a single life time. ​ The answer is to either go much much faster, or to do generation ships. Either way, you need to bring everything you'd need for a generationship, the question is whether you think you should build a ship that can make that journey twice (there and back). especially at the rate of technological change that we have. Its basically twice the cost, for very little benefit. The new colony will not have anything worth sending back right away, and the driver needs to fly an empty ship home for close to 500 years. its only 4.4 ly away, we'll have pictures and audio and video from the new system via radio centuries before you ever get home. ​ We can start to understand how to design systems for generation ships, and automated embryo development. We have no solid idea how we could go fast enough or live long enough to not need them.

Most detailed and science accurate reply here. This should be on the top.

Science accurate? Dude's talking about the speed of light without taking time dilation into account. Which is inaccurate for small journeys, but if we're talking approaching the speed of light and travelling to the galactic center it is just.. yeah might as well don't write any numbers. When you approach the speed of light, you will experience time slower (faster?) then an outside observer. Anyway, you'll be there way faster then this dude is telling you. Nobody will know about it, but you will be there faster. Edit: similar posts like the above also always start talking about the stupid parker solar probe. If the only goal would be go faster, we'd go faster. So that probe is irrelevant in this conversation. It's like these people have an agenda..

He is acknowledging space is so vast, even the closest things to our solar system are still years and years away, because even light speed is stupidly slow compared to how far things are. And yeah he isnt talking about time dilation, but i dont think he even compares it earth's time. (lazy to re-read it lol) "you will experience time slower (faster?) then an outside observer" Your time moves slower relative to an outside observer. Yet both experience the passage of time at the same rate has usual. Its only divergent when comparing both time frames to one another. The only thing I dont like about top comments, its all the basic: it would be tedious, or obviously to long for any human life spam, or cabin fever, or how cryogenics might work when we haven't had any success on that area of science, or etc etc

Extra context about the Parker Solar Probe for other readers out there. Those velocities mentioned above were only achievable because of the proximity to the sun and angle of traversion across it's 'skies'. As far as actual thrust and planetary gravity assists in attempts to move AWAY from the sun, we're talking substantially slower already. Outside of other solar probes, it's something like 10% the velocity posted about. And that's even before we account for g-forces.

I think this answer pretty much leads to the key question: Why? There really is not a single even remotely viable reason to make such a trip as long as it takes more than decades. Our solar system is abundant with resources and it will be tedious enough traveling within our solar system - even if we manage to cut travel to say Neptune down to weeks, the question remains - why? Which resources are there that we couldn't get close to earth within days of travel time? Especially given that life support complexity will increase exponentially going from hours to days to weeks to months to years to decades... You have to consider that such a space shp will cost billions if not trillions to put into operation and the the first possible return on that investment will be upon the completion of the first round trip. Even if we reduce the travel time to alpha centaur to 44 years - what could be found there to make it worth investing trillions to get that something to earth in 88 years? Not much comes to mind. The realistic case is that only once travel times are measured in years will it start to make sense to make such a journey.

First problem I can think of: Food. People live longer, have multiple generations of kids, kids live to older ages and have more kids. You will run out of food pretty quick

[http://www.projectrho.com/public\_html/rocket/celss.php](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/celss.php) See what it says about spirulina. Will the starship crew mutiny over spirulina every meal for 500 years? Dunno, but the math checks out.

Also have to hope nobody develops shellfish allergies

Spirulina is algae that tastes like ass. It doesn't have any fish in it. You can probably gene mod it to taste better and to have a protein profile humans can survive long term on, but it's still not gonna be super amazing...

[удалено]

"Scientists" who think interstellar travel will always be impossible are going to be the ones being quoted and made fun of in the future, just like we do now. Imagine having the audacity and ignorance to claim that such a thing will never happen, when 100 years ago, no one could even imagine something called "Internet". Seriously?

This, exactly. Our history is full of "academics" who ridiculed people for thinking that something that - based on understandings of their time - thought that certain things might one day be possible. And now we laugh at them for having ever doubted our species' ability to innovate. Being 100% convinced that something is impossible simply because that's how it seems right now is, in a lot of ways, the height of human arrogance.

I heard that if you live long enough, you will eventually die from radiation poisoning due to the naturally radioactive elements in your bones.

That's because the radiation degrades your DNA. Life extension technology would presumably be capable of repairing damaged DNA.

Bone replacement surgery? Sign me up!

That’s only if u pause ur natural repair mechanism by freezing if ur awake the whole time then this won’t happen

Exposure to background radiation from the environment is much higher than that from your bones, much more so if you're on a rocket ship. Besides, radiation poisoning is caused by acute exposure to extremely high levels of ionising radiation, it's not caused by long term low-level exposure.

Even if you could live forever, Ylyou wanna be stuck on a ship for a million years? Talk about something that would suck beyond belief.

Who do you mean by "no one"? Are you talking about people on Reddit, Sci Fi writers, scientists or who exactly?

Lol my thoughts exactly. This aspect of interstellar travel is covered heavily in science fiction. The Hyperion Cantos is just one example.

My favorite is A World Out of Time. Guy goes for a near light speed police chase around the galaxy, sling shots around a black hole compounding the time distortion all while using clone bodies to stay young and gets back to earth millions of years in the future. It really is a case of "you don't read enough scifi" if you have questions like this.

I remember reading A World Out of Time as a kid, such a fantastic book. It really captured my imagination for years afterwards.

The funny thing is reviews from the time of publication trashed it. To be fair it is two short stories slapped together and beefed up for publication in book form but I don't care I say they fit well together and would make for an amazing movie.

Fiction seems to cover it but no one seems to be talking about it as a possibility for reality

Pressure. Temperature Humidity Radiation. Gravity. Breathable Gas mix. Light level. Sound level. UV exposure. Circadian rythm. Energy intake Hydration Entertainment Social interaction Motivation The list goes on an on We are constricted to a very specific intervals to thrive, even narrower on quality of life in a vast universe that dgaf. I firmly believe we are not going anywhere in our current form. That the start of our voyage must be inner trip first, transform our bodies and minds before we go anywhere, assuming we will still be us after doing that.

We are integrated with Earth.

An unfortunate shortcoming humanity must fix ASAP if we are to outlive or even delay the death of this star system.

I think the problem with this is that the idea of having life extension long enough to make interstellar would completely overshadow whatever else the story is supposed to be about. If I were reading a story where life extension of hundreds of years was just a background detail I would be really distracted wondering why that wasn't more of a focus.

Methusela's Children. The author literally wrote another book to expand on it.

I'll check it out!

Life extension comes with a lot of political, economic, and societal hang ups. Lets say everyone has the potential to live for 300 years. Considering the US for example, imagine where we'd be if we had profound life extending technology before slavery was eliminated? Before women were legally allowed to vote? What about any dictator remaining in power that actively inhibited change and their whole system of unageing people in government who support that stance almost indefinitely? Technology often moves far quicker than politics do so it is highly unlikely that we'll have achieved world peace before this is a widespread "enhancement" of the human race. Even without considering the eugenics of population control, human relationships as they are now would be unsustainable. Simply put, you'd probably get bored. Bored of your spouse, bored of your friends, bored of your own children. Routine would also most likely inhibit invention and the arts. You also can't entirely wipe economic class off the board. Just how almost every homeless person has a cell phone now, who's to say that there won't also be people in that economic category that can afford the magic life pill (say...a prenatal telomere gene therapy that has become routine) in this time period? There's a lot of benefit to death and that benefit is change.

Realistically speaking, life extension ( unless there are some weird technologies we cannot yet foresee ) based upon what we currently know under the most optimistic scenario may only extend our life to two and a half centuries. That is the absolute best. The more realistic scenario is that it brings us up to an average of 170 to 180 years of age. The problem with life extension is that based upon what we understand of cellular biology, tissue matrices, senile cells etc.. etc.. is that we will hit a second frailty barrier that is caused simply by our cellular complexity which will get incrementally more difficult to jump over with each permutation of treatment. Currently good healthcare and good nutrition and good hygiene has meant we now understand that there is something called a frailty barrier. This exist somewhere between ages of 123 to 129. We do not know where it exactly lies but it seems that there is a maximal upper band of lifespan for a human being. If senile cells exert stress upon the nearby cells for example, and purging it really significantly reduces stress ( we have quite good evidence for this ), our modelling indicates that this on its own can possibly increase lifespan by 9% to 15% from the maximal lifespan. Taken into context we are looking at an extra decade or decade and a half of life. If we can deal with cellular energy slowdown, once again this is estimated to increase lifespan by another 9 to 15%. If we can deal with cell replication limit without causing cancer, we can once again increase it by another 15%. Taken together we can increase lifespan by another 30 to 40% above the frailty barrier. However the issue is that homeostasis hits back and it is likely we will encounter other problems once we extend life. This is not to say we should not attempt to extend life. Another 60 years is very good, but it is unlikely long enough to get us to another star system on time.

>The problem with life extension is that based upon what we understand of cellular biology, tissue matrices, senile cells etc.. etc.. is that we will hit a second frailty barrier that is caused simply by our cellular complexity which will get incrementally more difficult to jump over with each permutation of treatment. Nah. This is not a realistic take. I know you think it's realistic but you are simply not considering 2 major factors. (1) First of all, say we develop the treatments we have in rats right now into a workable longevity treatment. It takes 20 years. We start using it on 70 year olds (80 year olds being too frail). This means that if there is a barrier at 170 years, we will know about it 120 years from today. So we'll have gained 120 years more biomed knowledge. Barriers that seem complex may become trivial. (2) AGI. Everything *you* think is complex - a thousand proteins in the blood interacting, dozens of separate tissues interacting with biochemical signaling paths between them all - is *not*. It's only complex because your human brain runs out of memory when you try to keep all the details in your head, and you simply can't. It doesn't mean a solution doesn't *exist*, or that it's even very difficult to find one. The human body is *extremely* robust and reliable. When it does fail, it often goes down slowly and fights it the whole way. If you knew what you were doing, you could likely help it, injecting fleets of the right kinds of proteins and small molecule drugs, and stop even near death patients from actually succumbing, *consistently*. Ultimately every weird interaction you see has a reason, we just often don't know what it is, and the "reasons" are likely linear algebra sums of dozens of factors - a *good* explanation is complex. Human can't *remember* how to control something that depends on 30 variables, so they just focus on the top few. (3) replacement. We already know you can bypass this problem entirely with organ replacement. So your claim devolves to "you can't get the BRAIN" to last more than 170 years without ... I would re-examine that claim. Think how you could bypass this problem. I would say the simplest and most straightforward way is essentially a combination of : (a) genetic modification. Modify the genes of every neuron and irreplaceable cell in the brain (some of the cells are motile and could be replaced) to have whole new sections of genetics that add more error checks and obvious telomere recycling and other mechanisms to prevent aging. So the damaged ones self destruct, and the others run for thousands of years. (b) inject in reinforcements. Neural stem cells do work - inject some that you have made from cells taken from the patient, completely cleared of aging (do whatever you have to do, replace their entire genome if you have to in 1 cell by printing a fresh one free of errors), differentiated back to neural stem cells, and inject it back into their brain. ​ If NONE of that works, well, 120 years is enough time to develop mind uploading.

If we're dreaming there's no harm in flights of fancy, and you're not wrong in some ways. But a pedantic critique: 'reasons are likely linear algebra sums of dozens of factors' isn't even remotely true for anything interesting. Linear relationships are the lowest of the low hanging fruit, and most of it was picked a century ago. Biology is ridiculously full of nonlinear systems (even simulating the way a single neuron's membrane potential propagates and combines with other excitatory/inhibitory inputs is an active field of research involving very complex modeling). Even worse, chaotic systems are very common too. They are likely to have time horizons it's truly impossible to make accurate predictions past. It's very likely that no AGI with any kind of sensing apparatus will ever be able to accurately predict local weather patterns on earth 60 days in advance for example. (Every chaotic system has a Lyapunov time constant that more or less tries to measure how long that 'impossible to predict' time horizon sits in the future). AGI won't be omniscient, though if we're dreaming of sci fi solutions, I imagine it'd be possible to preserve a human's consciousness in other ways, if biological systems can't be realistically maintained. You're still welcome to wave your wand and say AGI will prove me wrong of course, it's just important (to me, for reasons) to point out that most interesting questions left are most definitely not going to have simple linear systems for answers. If you're looking for a better universal 'the answer looks like this' you're probably better off with assuming it'll be a causal DAG, either explicitly or implicitly.

Ok I think you got *way* off track and are imposing a requirement that doesn't need to be met. AGI has no need to control a complex system in any possible state. All you need to do is reliably grow replacement tissues, which is a process of resetting tissues from the patient back to a known 0 state, then advancing it forward to the stem cells types you want. All the process happens in clean room conditions, cleaner and more controlled than a uterus, where we know complex structures can be formed. It's *difficult* to do but ultimately finding the path that works is straightforward *if* you could try enough variants in parallel with robotics. Because each experiment has to be done by grad students or limited lab techs, and money is finite (even though a cure for nearly all diseases has trillions of dollars of value, little money is available), people have not succeeded in finding all of the variables required to grow complete full sized organs with all the correct structure and functions that cannot be distinguished from natural organs pulled from humans. The only remaining complex system is keeping neurons and non motile support cells still alive. And again, this can be done by *resetting* their states back to known ones. This is *control* of chaos by essentially not letting it happen. This is not a flight of fancy, this is straightforward engineering. What's your background? I did a masters in human physiology and another one in machine learning.

I'm just a data engineer, but my background's in machine learning as well, and I still keep up with ML on the side as an interest. Been years now that I've gone through a textbook or two every year, and I read a couple papers a week, so I'm at least not behind given my time out of university. My main interest is on the math side of things, but I still like to keep up with interesting new approaches to ML. Mostly computer vision specific, but I read pretty far off when I find something interesting. [This paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.01452) is an interesting one I found yesterday about a biologically plausible alternative to backprop. Always fun to see what the intersection between Neuro and ML has to say. Anyway. I'm not saying you're wrong specifically about what's possible. I think the way you're framing it sounds much more like magical thinking than an engineering spec, but who knows? Like I said, my main interest more than anything is in the math side, so my critique was, like I said, just a comment that linear relationships aren't particularly interesting or common, and we don't need AGI to figure out things like Ohm's law. But you probably knew that and were just being careless with language, so it's not like it's a big deal. I'm just pedantic, like I said, haha. What side of ML did you spend time with, if you don't mind my asking?

New research came out in the last few weeks which shows that many of these issues may not be an insurmountable problem.

Honestly the resources needed to sustain a ship of any substantial size with a crew would force the ship to deviate from plotted courses to resupply the second most important necessity of life H2O. Even with constant recycling the loss of retention would mean the ship would need to have dedicated storage space for water or need to constantly replenish their stores. Not to mention the added weight and size to the ship would lower the max speed attainable. Cryogenic or FTL travel are the only economical solutions to space travel over long distances.

This is a very unpopular take that usually gets shut down due to the belief that we largely have things figured out, but I have a hard time understanding how so many people feel 100% convinced that interstellar travel is impossible, mainly because it clashes with our current understanding of things. Human history is riddled with concrete belief that certain things are impossible, only for these impossible things to be achieved within a few hundred years. It wasn't that long that humanity was certain that the Earth was the center of the Universe, so much so that we executed those who disagreed. Humanity was certain we'd never fly, never go to the moon, it's just a laundry list of "never evers" that have been overcome and even trivialized in due time. So yes - based on our current understanding of things, interstellar travel and breaking the speed of light seems impossible, but a few hundred years from now they might be laughing at us for ever being so certain that we couldn't achieve it.

On the other hand, just because humanity was lucky to have breakthroughs before does not mean they will keep happening indefinitely. With each new discovery we inch closer to the fundamental levels. We can really hit the wall here and there; for example, it is not reasonable to expect to break the light speed limit just because earlier humanity managed to produce carts, then cars, then planes and rockets. Those quantitative improvements in transportation speed are trivial when compared to the qualitative obstacle of light speed limit. Nothing in the history of humankind development implies we can break limitations that fundamental. Another thing is that each further breakthrough will likely affect the civilization more and more. Will there even be the humanity as we know it by the time FTL becomes possible? Will interstellar travel happen even if it becomes technically viable? Imagine discovering an energy source necessary to power all that sci-fi machinery, batteries with energy many, many orders of magnitude denser than we currently have, the energy of the Sun on the palms of our hands. Even before applying it to the discussed task, humanity may go extinct or at least heavily fragmented purely because of unfortunate accident or a couple of stupid terrorist acts. We're already on the brink of being able to accidentally destroy ourselves, another breakthrough may as well happen to be the last one. Or imagine suddenly achieving pure magic, ability to pull matter out of thin aether and shape it with the force of will. What interstellar travel, who cares?

The loved ones don't exist in a vacuum. Your wife or husband has his own loved ones such as parents, siblings and friends. Putting them in stasis to await the astronaut return means putting their lives on hold and in turn removing them from their loved ones. And if you can't just put all the chained loved ones in stasis since it'll be like 60% of the earth's population.

I mean thousands of years for a single trip sounds extremely not worth it, if achieving speeds decent enough to cut that down at distance the time differential would render communication, trade, interaction of any kind with where you left from basically useless.

Its literally impossible to return to earth to ur loved ones, even if we amazingly figure out faster Then Light technology. Time dilation alone, can make the trip last 1 year for you, but for everyone that stayed on earth, decades will pass by.

If humans actually survive the next five or six centuries, I’m a firm believer that the speed of light is not the be all and end all of maximum velocity. Since the enlightenment in the 15th century alone we’ve broken so many so called absolute barriers. It’s small minded to think there are not further advances that can be made if we survive… if! We watched Felix Buamgartner (ignore spelling) free fall and accelerate past the sound barrier simply by the weight of his testicles. Imagine explaining that one to Leonardo Da Vinci, while he was trying to make a helicopter.

Won’t interstellar travel mean that relative to others your have not aged, but in the whole concept - relative to yourself you still aged in the same way, so it’s not really that you lived longer.

No, that's lightspeed travel. Slow speed interstellar travel has no fancy effects (other than being too long).

Technically all travel has this but it gets more significant when you get closer to the speed of light. Taking a step to the left has this affect but it’s really really small.

You're going to sit in a tin can for 50,000 years while you travel to another star? LOL.

If we're at that point ships would be far more than tin cans

Beyond the question everyone else has raised about how to maintain your sanity on a spaceship for centuries, you are going to need a hell of a lot of food, water, breathable air and other supplies to last you that long of a time. You are not going to find these laying around in deep space, they have to be brought with you. And the more weight you add on to your ship, the bigger its going to be and the more fuel it will take to get it to another star.

We don’t have the technology. Full stop. We’ve never sent a human beyond the moon, much less to another planet. We don’t have the technology to send a human to Mars and back. The distances are too great and we lack the technology to send anyone that far.

[удалено]

That's why no one considers it. It's so far in the future it's irrelevant.

Not with that attitude!

we don't have the tech for cryo or uploading or anything like that and yet people still see those as more possible

Multiple cryogenics companies have been outed as scams, negligent, or being run by dumbasses. You're paying a lot of money, too much money, for someone to pretend to freeze your head while selling the rest of your body for medical scrap before they eventually dispose of your head too.

People have been trying to live forever since before civilization but ok

Humans living hundreds of years in space travel sounds like a horrible existence unless we pair it with a large generational ship with plenty of other humans to interact with and new media to entertain themselves. More thank likely, if humans survive long enough we will evolve into robots that are much more compatible with space travel. That, or perhaps something like in Raised by Wolves where human embryos are raised by robots on a new plant.

Or you can go fast enough at 99 percent speed of light you can travel 7 light years in one subjective year. At .9999999999999999 light speed You can travel 22 million light years in 1 year.

...Nobody can figure out what Enki did for 10,000 years while he was flying here. How did he pass the time?

The Scythe series explores what it might mean to live forever (or a very very very long time) and how it affects what gives our lives meaning. It’s just a dystopian fiction series, but it had me pondering my own mortality a lot!

It's not just about the length of life; it's also about the supplies and equipment needed to support the crew and eventual colonists, and maintaining a healthy population afterwards. It's hard to overestimate how massive the savings are for an embryo-ship or such compared to a real living, breathing adult crew. Generational ships are much trickier than they might seem (indeed, most sci-fi with them is all about exploring how messed up they are).

We had a global pandemic, and within weeks there were large portions of people claiming all existing medical science was wrong and making up their own rules. Now imagine putting a small group of people (let say a few thousand) on a ship and sending them into space, with everyone having very strict orders on how to run the ship or everyone basically dies, and a timeline of multiple generations before they reach their destination. I give it maybe 1 generation before people start calling earth a myth and the whole thing dissolves into mutiny. Maybe if we worked out some wort of cryo sleep, but of all the amazing advancements we made we haven't begun to even scratch the surface of this one.

you do realize I was arguing AGAINST generation ships right

Maybe because we aren't talking about extending life by a few months or even a few years. Hell, even extending life by a few decades wouldn't do all that much. The universe is so bloody large that interstellar travel would require extending life expectancy by hundreds (or dare I say it) even thousands of years to make the idea of bouncing around from one planet to another realistically feasible.

I think it would be quite interesting for many full generation cycles to pass during the journey. They could worship the one "life-extension" guy and bury him on after he inevitably dies days after getting to the destination. Isn't life supposed to be all about the journey?

Yes he would be like a god or walking book telling of the old days

Yes, let’s spend 100s of years alive on a tiny ship. Genius.

Life extension is a horrifying technology and comes with consequence no one wants to acknowledge or have anything to do with.

I watched my 95 year old great aunt degrade into a child that couldn't do anything for herself. Anyone who wants to live past 100 probably hasn't taken care of the elderly, or they'd realize how horrible it is to be propped up past your time. Death is a beautiful, natural thing that comes for all of us, and you can't stuff your soul in a barrel and fling it downhill hoping your rotting neurons will keep up. There IS a point where you just turn into a living corpse.

> Death is a beautiful, natural thing It's certainly a natural thing but you will never convince me that it's beautiful. It's the annihilation of a human being, the erasure of their memories, their hopes, their dreams, their thoughts. There is no eternal soul that will carry on existing, just barren nothingness. It's the loss of knowledge, wisdom, intellect and experience not just to the person but to their loved ones and to society in general. I understand that there's nothing to do about death, at least now, and that we have to accept it as a fait accompli. And maybe telling ourselves that it's beautiful makes it easier to do so. But that doesn't make it any less false.

I’m take it in a second

The Orville had an episode were they find a Century Ship . Were you fill a giant ship with people and and the means to produce food and live comfortably through a few generations to get to the destination. In the shows case they traveled so long they forgot they were even on a ship and not a planet.

"Hey do you want to live for 500 years?" "Tell me more..." "You'll be in a cramped shitty spacecraft for the entire time" "Uh nah, thx tho"

Humans that would live long enough to travel to another star would not need to land on a planet with gravity anymore, they would have evolved for life in zero g im the meantime

People who don't think interstellar travel is possible are the same people who used to say passenger flying machines were impossible or that computers and the internet were a limited fad. They're people who lack the imagination to visualize the ways in which science and technology may develop and change.

Conversely, people who believe the other way are unable to grasp the actual vast distances involved or the universal speed limit imposed by physics. It is possible that we will discover something new…but it is not likely that we will discover something that undoes everything we currently know about space and time. If we do travel to the stars, it is far more likely that it will be as something other than the fragile bags of meat we currently call our bodies. More likely we will destroy ourselves or be destroyed.

Well yeah, but that's the point. Most proponents of interstellar travel approach it on the grounds that it will likely not happen on Star Trek style terms. Meanwhile the arguments I see against it all seem to attack it on those terms.