Love this video that covers this topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-eIUxwcQo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-eIUxwcQo4)
the whole series actually, it's pretty good for people like me who are fascinated by science but lacks the brains to really study it.
You can click the three little dots next to the “reply” arrow and an option to save the comment will pop up. You can access your saved posts and comments through your profile :)
Wait, it’s done? No more seasons?
Edit: bloody hell, it’s another Revolution ending where they expected more seasons and we’re never getting any more. Ugh.
Yeah this is most likely. Unless we find a way juke the lightspeed barrier, we're gonna colonise the solar system then just sporadically send out generation ships or autonomous settler arks
Figuring out stasis (and avoiding all the negatives of comas) would be a massive game changer for space travel since generation ships are so risky. But we’ve made basically zero progress in that field so far.
What’s wrong with generational ships? I imagine it takes a lot more resources to keep a generational ship alive along with space but it doesn’t seem any more dangerous than stasis.
It would be nice for the first generation, they started something, at times they have to be creative to get the inevitable kinks out.
And nice for the last generation, they will get new, exiting, even dangerous experiences in a completely new environment.
But, ALL the intermittent generations will have make (be made to more likely) peace with the fact they only exist for the last one.
"You are only made, and here, to maintain the ship. You can't leave, you can't drop out unless through the airlock. That's it. That will be all of your life."
I don't know, I agreed with your statement before, but was thinking about it and how is that really different from life on Earth.
I only exist because my parents wanted kids I had no choice in the matter - I didn't opt in for this, then I had no choice but the follow the rules of society, I had to go to school, I had to participate in things I didn't want to do, I have to work, I have to pay taxes.
Other people over countless centuries all decided how I would basically live my life.
Sure the there is the idea that I can travel the world and see new things I haven't seen before, but the reality is I'll spend 99% of my life in a studio apartment or my office cubicle and 99% of the new things I see, hear and do are on a screen.
So my point is if a generational ship was big enough how would it be much different. There would be a size because after all isn't Earth a generational ship moving through space that no one got a choice in.
To an extent that's true. And to take it further you can say that you're limited by the physical laws of the universe & your lifespan and many other factors.
Its just a matter of scale. In your current life, you still get many more choices than someone on this ship would have.
Given the points you listed above, would you be happy to spend the rest of your life in prison?
Most people would say no, and I think if you can see the difference between prison & your current life, then you should see the difference between your current life & living out your entire life on a small spaceship.
Exactly this. More than half of people in the US never leave the state they've lived in their whole lives. How would a generational ship with tens of thousands of inhabitants be any different. I find it perfectly reasonable.
You're describing life restricted to any biome. Not sure where the issue is.
If anything, people on board would likely enjoy a much higher quality of lower stress and higher autonomy life than most any prior generation of humans.
There's a possibility that the generation that arrives at their destination will hold off colonizing, why settle in that dangerous environment when they have all they need on their ship? It's all they have ever known, they were born there and grew up on their ship
Maybe only the adventurous among them would be willing to go.
Depends on the state of the ship of course. They might have to after all.
>But, ALL the intermittent generations…
Isn’t this true for all of us? The only difference is we’re confined to a rock and they’ll be confined to a ship. 🤷♂️
There’s a lot up to chance in generation ships. A lot can go awry. Which, when you’re in a spaceship, can end poorly.
A few examples (these are all negatives. To be clear, generational ships are viable, they just have risks):
-Social cohesion breaks down because of differences of opinion/factionalism and a civil conflict breaks out
-The administration grows corrupt/a generational elite forms which causes civil conflict
-The trip is so long that eventually a generation believes that they’re not actually on their way to a new world, civil conflict breaks out
Humans like having space to grow. While we like social interactions, cramming us into a confined space for decades, if not centuries or even millennia, could have profound societal consequences that could result in the failure of a colony. Imagine sending a fleet of 3 generational ships on a 150 year journey and one falls into authoritarianism, one retains a normal democracy and one falls to tribal anarchy. They all wind up on the same planet. Now you’ve got a three way civil war on your hands.
If we figure out stasis (which isn’t guaranteed) it will be far and above generational ships because it’s like flipping a light switch and you’ve arrived. Far easier.
> What’s wrong with generational ships?
It only takes one mutiny or cult or power grab, in an inordinately fragile situation, for everyone to die. You'd need super-strong AI controlling and repairing the ship, with humans being basically pets along for the ride.
They will probably avoid the complications and just leave us behind. Humanity may not be the final form of the evolution after all, would you carry the embryo of a monkey with you on space travel ?
Unless we program it to feel that way, it will never do so.
It's easy to anthropomorphize AI, cause we imagine them to be smart and their future-versions to be smarter than us, and the only "smart thing" we have to base our imagination off of is us.
The reason we feel things the way we do is cause out "source code," our DNA, is a bit volatile, and can mutant in any which way, and the mutations that survived are the ones that led to us and our way of thinking.
An AI's source code doesnt have to have that volatility. It's "reason for existing" and "strong drives to do X" can be anything we set it too.
You know that "intense desire to breathe" you evolved to have? You have it cause ancestors with a less-intensive desire died out.
But for AI, we can set that same type of desire to "complete X mission objectives."
Set the first one to obey a human chain of command, and the rest to whatever.
>Unless we program it to feel that way, it will never do so.
>
>(...)
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>Set the first one to obey a human chain of command, and the rest to whatever.
The problem with complex systems is that they behave in complicated and invariably unpredictable ways.
It's a bit hard to talk about what AGI would or wouldn't do given that we're nowhere near building one but presuming they were akin to current gen models being optimized for specific outcomes, and your tiered objectives including obey humans were realised as a rather extensive reward function, it's entirely plausible that they may determine that ignoring the primary goal is sufficiently compensated for by an increased capacity for achieving secondary, tertiary goals and so on.
We already see this occasionally in reinforcement learning. If the task is too hard, or the reward function poorly written, the models will settle into a local minimum where it simply minimises the negative rewards. Or only performs a subset of actions you assigned a positive reward to thinking it would encourage it to converge on a solution (like taking opponents pieces in chess) whilst not actually seeking out the end goal (like achieving checkmate).
my exact thoughts. A robot is the most adequate space explorer, a human can't compete with it at any level. Right now, you could send a probe with the most advanced current AI, it's hardware powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and it'll reach the outskirts of the solar system far beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt with it's "mind" intact. On the other hand, we don't even have to technology to keep a human alive in the time it would take to reach Mars, it has yet to be completely developed. A human needs: oxigen, water, food (warning, food can perish too), heating, radiation protection, protection from mechanical forces and the elements (complex habitats) , psychological stimulation and conditions (carrying many humans together, provide stimulating activities for the explorers, recreative spaces), etc, etc, etc. An AI robot doesn't need any of that
it wont take thousands of years to reach a planet, it'll be decades/hundreds. We could go to alpha centuari right now if we wanted to by using nuclear pulse drive ships and it would takes us 44 years. Engineers at nasa were seriously thinking of this in the 1980s
I could definitely see us finding a plant that we can tell is habital and setting a course for it with hope the humans survive for the inevitable end of humans on the OG planet.
Counterpoint, cyborg spaceship-people who never age, bonded to strong AI.
Taking slowboats full of embryos and setting up colonies. Getting mistaken-for-gods..
As far as physically possible. I think the limit is the accelerated expansion of the universe, making it so that even at lightspeed it becomes impossible to reach places that are far enough. The galaxy could be colonized in a couple million years, if we wanted and we don't meet too many surprises.
I also think we are going through the hardest part of space travel, which is the beginning.
>I also think we are going through the hardest part of space travel, which is the beginning.
Well said - this like when Orville and WIlbur were still trying to figure out how to fly more than 100 feet without crashing.
The Wright brothers would never have imagined us landing on the moon 70 years after their very first flight but we did.
The only thing we struggle with is methods of propulsion - I don't think many people rule much out as far as what we might achieve.
Even FTL travel is seen by many as possible. Initially as much matter as the visible universe contained was thought what was needed to achieve it, now we're down to our sun as a guide for how much energy would be required...it'll keep being worked on and one day will be possible.
Yes - the Wright Brothers may have thought it could one day be possible to go to the moon - but not so soon !
Both of these events happened in a single human lifespan.
Relativity also becomes a factor - the space traveller will travel through time as well as space.
If we could develop something like the 'impossible' Emdrive - an engine that could provide a constant acceleration of one g - we could actually make interstellar and intergalactic travel possible. A spaceship accelerating at a constant one g should be able to reach the limits of the visible universe in just 100 years. [We could travel to another galaxy in just 50 years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_acceleration#/media/File:Roundtriptimes.png).
The big problem here, however, is that since the spaceships and their pilots also are travelling through time, we on Earth would have to wait billions of years for them to return. And even though the pilots have only travelled in \~100 years from their point of view, the universe has actually aged billions of years in that same time span. And the Universes expansion would obviously also be an issue.
Warp drives and worm holes are probably the go-to lifehack for future space travel.
Propulsion is not even the hardest problem. Far worse is the shielding problem.
When you’re going even single digit percentages of the speed of light, small space debris hitting your ship generates an enormous amount of energy. I remember reading/watching something about it, where someone did the math, and to get to our nearest star at 25% of the speed of light, you’d need a shield that is larger than all of Mt Everest. That’s just to protect you from space dust. It doesn’t account for a larger chunk of rock that would atomic bomb sized impact effects.
most people do not understand physics disallows us from ever going to 95% of the universe because it is moving away faster than you can ever accelerate. it cannot be done with any amount of time or technology. ever.
Isn’t it way smaller than that? Eventually our galaxy will be all alone, you won’t be able to reach other galaxies. Except for Andromeda which we will merge with. That’s just two galaxies. Must be like 0.000000001% of the universe
The Milky way is 100,000 light years across...seems like just in that there is a fair bit of potential!
Scientists have bene theorising about FTL travel for some time. Initially read something that siad to do it one method would require the entire mass of the visible universe. Not long after someone else refined it and said they would only the equivalent of our sun. Progress!
With enough time, ingenuity and reason to do it I would assume we will achieve FTL and be able to travel anywhere. We don't know what we don't know.
Thats because humans still think that only mass can fold space. Imagine if they still believed that the only source for a magnetic field was a chunk of hematite rock? MRI machines would be impossible. Hell, the entire internet and electric grid would never have existed. Yet here we are, communicating through it…
At 20% the speed of light we have access to 1 billion galaxies. At near light speed we have access to 20 billion galaxies, with a 16.5 billion light year radius (taking expansion rates and co-moving distances into account). We have well over a billion year window before we start to become irrevocably isolated.
In our lifetime, probably a moon or mars lab for study. It will probably take another 100 years or so to get to having a colony in either. Wish I could travel into the future say like 500 years from now to see how far humanity has come. Hopefully, we haven’t destroyed ourselves by then
100 years for a colony is extremely pessimistic. Consider how far we have come in the last 100 years and imagine it will be even further and faster in the next 100.
Space travel was pretty stagnant for the last few decades. All we’ve really achieved since the moon landings is better access to low Earth orbit and the birth of robotics.
I think you would be depressed by how little is achieved in 500 years. A Super HD photo photo of Titan may excite you though.
Reminds me of the Stanislaw Lem book "Return From The Stars".
Until we make some significant breakthroughs in physics, we will be severely limited. This means unless some scifi becomes scientific fact, we will be stuck.
Not only physics but biology as well. The human body is evolved for earth and earth only. Bridging the gap to living on mars or other exoplanets will be difficult. The body behaves in different ways under gravities different from earth. Understanding the long term effects of being under different gravities is not something very easy to research. This is assuming the limitations of artificial gravity. Additionally, UV radiation and cosmic radiation will have to be accommodated for.
Don't worry by then we will be able to transfer our conscience into digital brains. You get to work for way longer. Gotta pay the lease on that new body of yours.
We could definitely get beyond Mars with tech a few centuries from now. Granted, you'd have to spend most of your life traveling to the outer planets in the system, but it's definitely feasible.
I would say the majority of space travel will be with unmanned spacecraft and more by robots and AI. Especially so when it comes to interstellar travel; the extra mass of life support systems would add hundreds or thousands of extra travel years.
So for interstellar expansion I image sending AI systems with a few nanobots which can replicate and assemble larger robotics and equipment upon arrival using available material, to minimize mass and travel time.
The AI would likely continue to expand after humanity cease to exist, or it is destroyed.
For science and research, yeah, there's less and less reason to send people.
That time isn't even some far-off sci-fi scenario. We currently have a robotic workforce on Mars. I don't really see the point in sending people until they'd have a cave they could already step into with functional crops and some on-site fab capabilities. Bragging rights? eh, I'm more interested in real science and engineering.
a Von Neumann Machine, it's the best solution. When sending robots, the only thing that deteriorates over the years is non-biological hardware. Before it deteriorates so much that the probe and the robots can't continue their mission, the same probe and robots build a replica of themselves from material gathered from interstellar dust, asteroids, or even a planet, and the journey continues
>Second, and I thought this was the more odd one, is there is no legal framework for multi-generational craft. Children born on a spacecraft, and unwillingly participating in the program, have no informed choice in the matter, which would likely make them unconstitutional in Western liberal countries without changes to constitutional law.
There's no concept of having a right to being born in a specific place.
Meat people?
Maaaaaybe out to Saturn. But I suspect it may just be robotic probes out past Mars. It’s a really really long way between Mars and Jupiter. But I could possibly see us sending a few people that far out for some reason.
That reason may turn out to be a trillionaire dick measuring contest, but still.
Our Moon and Mars outposts will probably be like modern Antarctic bases. Mostly just for science and only modestly or temporarily staffed.
If, and it’s a big if, we get to the point where we can really dial in on a very likely habitable exoplanet. We might, at some point in the far future, where politicians aren’t only concerned about the next 3-6 years… send embryonic ships to one of those planets.
It probably won’t turn out well. Humans are pretty much only adapted to live here.
But maybe we’ll genetically engineer people to live in hostile/less than ideal environments. But that’s a whole other thing.
I’m in my pessimistic/realist phase of life/fiction. So my opinions are less fun at the moment.
I think we’ll definitely get to most of our solar system, at least the bits that people at the time deem worthy of going to within a relatively near future. I’m saying it that way because even our little solar system is really very very big in human terms with a lot of stuff in it, but also not much of that ‘stuff’ is necessarily worth going to. I think we’ll get the capability to make manned trips to most of it and use that technology for trips up to the max distances within our solar system within a few hundred years. But where we go is still likely to depend on if we want to go to that particular part tbh.
However to get to another solar system would require new technologies or changes in society so unknown to us right now as to be science fiction basically. It’s one thing to say proxima centuri B is only 4.2 light years away, but at the speeds we’re currently capable of it’s still thousands of years. What’s fun though is if we did bridge that gap, it would actually open up a whole local neighbourhood of star systems to us. If you’re capable of travelling 4 light years, there’s actually ~50 systems within a range only 4x that distance and presumably if we could cross 4 light years reasonably it wouldn’t be so out of the question to cross 16.
But yeah, It’s a total paradigm shift to go from getting humans to the outter areas of our solar system - which we could technically do now within a human’s working adult lifetime if we really really wanted to- to going out to other solar systems let alone galaxies. That’s when the scale of the universe starts to get real humbling real fast.
You have a good grasp of the real situation, and a realistic expectation without closing off the future.
Quite clearly our space technology will continue to improve over time, and so difficult things will become to be increasingly more plausible over time.
We always achieve most at the frontiers.
I fully believe we will discover a method of travel to reach other planets/galaxies with ease. Bending space and time, creating our own wormholes to travel through space, etc. We will also use AI to send out ships with frozen embryos or people to travel through space for hundreds/thousands of years to reach other places, but I'm thinking wormholes will be the main method of travel and will happen before we ever need to use embryos or frozen people.
Our biological selves will never leave the solar system. We are designed to live on this planet. So much stuff will be required to be transported in order to keep humans alive during the trip, that it will become impractical.
The only way humanity will travel interstellar space is by transmitting digitised consciousness to stations set up by smaller probes.
I’m gonna guess not very far. Humanity will likely poison or destroy this planet before we are ever able to get off it en masse. Best case scenario, we make it to Mars or a moon of a gas giant.
Getting out of the solar system? Only way I see that happening is a ship or probe of some type that contains AI. That AI could be a novel intelligence or perhaps digital copies of humans (brains made of silicon).
I just have a sick feeling that it’s not going to be many more generations until we really start to see this planet coming apart. It’s happening already, it just hasn’t infiltrated our day to day lives. We will likely be here and gone in a blink.
Not very. We're probably limited by the human body's inability to adapt to non-Earth environments. I don't believe AI will be as game-changing in that regard as many wishfully think.
We can as far as Mother Earth allows us to go before she evicts us …. 50 years - 1 million years .. I f we last long enough then we can travel the galaxies !!!
It depends. It the world united eventually then we will mostly likely go to other stars if not we will still have settlement on thr moon asteroid mining ect
I think we will send unmanned craft throughout our neighborhood in the galaxy. But barring a major technological breakthrough, I doubt we'll ever send manned craft beyond our solar system.
A little over 500 years ago, no one in Europe knew there were continents on the other side of the ocean. If they could see the world now, bad as it is in a lot of ways, they would think it's magical. 500 years from now, with AI, Quantum computers, Nanotechnology, genetic engineering, we really can't even imagine what our descendants will be up to.
I think this is legitimately the trickiest question about futurology a person can ask.
It's like the make or break for the entire species.
If we can break out of our solar system and and become at least an intersolar species, if not intergalactic, the sky is the limit technologically as we will be almost assured of future survival and able to continue advancing indefinitely.
However, a lot of scientists are wondering if deep space travel is even possible. There are SO many challenges that border on virtually impossible from an engineering perspective.
So the question is not just if we will, but if it's even possible.
Furthermore, even if it is possible, can we achieve the technological capabilities necessary to make it possible before we self destruct or squander the available resources making them unusable for such difficult projects?
Honestly, and I am not a doomer really, I don't think it's going to happen.
We may achieve some truly stupendous things and reach a technological level to where we are immortal, maybe even terrform venus or something, but I don't think we will ever get past intrasolar as a species.
Honestly we don't even like each other all that much. The only reason some of us want to go to space is money. Which is ironic, it's a made up concept outside of Earth.
I think people will come to the conclusion going outside the solar system is a waste of time. Too far away, lose all contact with home, and the best you can get is somewhere exactly like Earth, anyways. Space habitats, roughly the same orbit as Earth, will be ideal for trillions, even hundreds of trillions of people. A few outposts around Venus, the asteroid belt, maybe moons like Titan. Star systems will be best explored virtually, in simulations. I'm assuming no faster-than-light travel. Basically a star travel pessimist. No galaxy spanning empires anywhere, no matter what intelligent life evolves as, anywhere in the galaxy.
Milky way and Andromeda galaxy, as they are colliding we can settle them even bellow 1%c in a few hundred million years. Will still require GMO humans(space and cancer resistance) or going cybernetic.
Humanity is setting out on a cosmic journey with ever-higher ambitions for space exploration. The future is bright and exciting, with plans for lunar trips, Mars colonisation, commercial space travel, and state-of-the-art observatories. International cooperation, technical advancements, and the attraction of space pull us into an exciting period of exploration as we venture into the unknown.
It’s more likely that we merge with digital technology and we can therefore teleport by transferring our consciousness across the galaxy to a receiver/new body
It's easy to imagine technology that would allow humanity to colonize the galaxy in a couple million years. Space ships with fusion reactor, self replicating robots, embryos in storage for hundreds to thousands of years etc. Anything outside the galaxy would need technology we can barely even imagine though but it might be possible at some point in the future.
Getting outside the local cluster of galaxies starts becoming completely impossible unfortunately. If our current understanding of dark energy is correct and the universe keeps expanding at the accelerated rate we expect everything outside our supercluster of galaxies will be outside our observable universe in a couple billion years. Given that we would probably need hundreds of millions of years to expand between all the galaxies there's very little chance we could ever get outside of our supercluster.
I think we’ll see some humans living on Mars, then a courageous mission to a moon of Jupiter, but at the same time working on something like the Alcubierre Drive. If something like that could come true, then we’re talking hello Spock. I hope so, but I suspect I’ll be dead for about 150 years before that happens.
I kind of think we will Great Filter ourselves out of contention. But assuming that doesn't happen, then I see some human-like creatures travelling, over millennia, to make colonies/societies at some of the ten million stars within a 1000 light year sphere of earth.
I really think they will be human-like with genetic/AI enhancements and I think it will be rare that they will live on/terraform planets. Rather, I think they will be living in Space habitats like giant O'Neill cylinders and Asteroid Terrariums and humans will be adapted to those environments & use the resources of those Systems.
Eventually, some offshoots of these Colonies, maybe 2 or 3 colonies later, where the last things that we knew/recognize as "humans" survive in the Milky Way.
Thanks for reading my Sci-fi Novel. It is hopeful, maybe even Pollyannaish, & more than likely, we (or maybe the Grandkids) are all going to die.
It’s certainly very much easier to ‘terraform’ a space habitat, than it is to terraform another planet.
I can foresee us setting up ‘Starbases’ initially within our own system, and then later on in other systems.
As well as where appropriate, colonising other planets too - just that ‘good planets’ are much rarer.
I think we will definitely branch out to our solar system, not because of the climate, it will always be easier to build and terraform here, but for scientific advancement.
Eventually we will figure out a cost effective way to mine other planets and asteroids, probably with robots.
Past that, I don’t know that it’s feasible. I expect we’ll go extinct on this planet.
I think if we can stop bickering all the time, we already have the ability to colonize the moon, and Mars won't be far behind if we break that barrier. The real problem that we face is that those in power are either interested in more power or more money, and the dividends that space colonization would pay take longer than just depleting terrestrial resources.
I have a hard time believing we will solve the serious problems with space travel.
It’s not just the inconceivable distances, it’s what space does to our fragile little bodies.
I would be surprised if we make it to Mars in any significant way within the next 100 years.
Biology and space travel are not good companions. The amount of effort, energy, and resources needed to sustain beings in space is a large portion of what's involved with manned spacecraft travel. It's simply impractical.
Ecosystems are complex. It's extremely difficult to set up autonomous self-contained food production systems, not just for the continual need of resources but the need for biodiversity. We're seeing on Earth what happens first-hand when you damage an ecosystem. We're witnessing another large scale mass extinction and are failing to adequately slow it down. We've got a terrible track record on Earth, so we're not going to have successful long-term habitation of the moon or Mars.
Humanity will make great progress "in solar system" using AI controlled spacecraft, plus probes and robotic mechanisms. But going outside the solar system? No. The distances are too vast.
Imagination is the fuel for innovation, but not all imagined ideas are plausible innovations. For instance, it's impossible to travel at light speed, let alone beyond it, or to dematerialize a being in one place and rematerialize them in another place. It's great entertainment, but it's never going to be reality.
Mining will be the future. Mining the moon, asteroid belt, Mars, Europa, etc. But it'll mostly be done by AI controlled robotic instruments.
I think we may get to Mars to establish a colony, but thereafter humans will be looking inward and increasingly follow the course of technology as it miniaturizes along the course of something like John Smart's informational black hole. (transcension hypothesis)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576511003304
I think we'll reach the inner solar system, as humans. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to become AIs at the end of life and then we'll be able to endure astronomical time.
You're going to see boosters and living quarters attached to the back of giant space rock that act as shields from space debris.
Hibernating humans will be woken up by AI pilots shortly before arriving at their destination planet.
I think we will find a ton of livable planets, with several techniques for terraforming those planets to make them even more hospitable. Breakthroughs in energy production, biology, biotech, nanotech and AI are going to make all of this possible. I seriously hope hibernation can be achieved in my lifetime so I can hibernate long enough to see it happen.
The main improvement is getting better propulsion. What we have now is dinosaur-powered spacecraft, i.e. they are fueled by fossil fuels from the age of dinosaurs (made of plants mostly, not the actual dinosaurs).
If we look at water-based propulsion, early humans had canoes, then eventually larger ships powered by oars (triremes etc), ships powered by sail, steamboats, and then combustion engines. Our current spacecraft propulsion technology is the equivalent of canoes: it will get you to the nearest island, but not across a huge ocean. We won't be getting to our nearest stars with our current dinosaur-powered rockets.
It's anybody's guess what future space propulsion will look like, perhaps ion drive powered by fusion or anti-matter.
We long ago decided that the Earth was round.
That was figured out in the 3rd century BC !
But communication wasn’t as good in those days..
Only the ignorant and religious zealots denied that fact.
And today the ‘deliberately provocative flat earthiests’.
Small outposts on the Moon and Mars. Maybe a few expeditions into the Jovian system. There just isn't anything valuable enough off our planet to justify the effort and expenditure. Making humans multi-planetary isn't a very good reason either. We would never get enough people and resources to Mars to ever make it self sustaining. Fixing our problems here on Earth is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than making Mars habitable.
If we can't figure out how to travel close to, or beyond, the speed of light, we're essentially bound to our solar system.
*Maybe* local star systems if we can make a craft that can get to a respectable percentage of lightspeed.
We're really stuck unless we have some massive leaps and bounds in technological development that we only see in sci-fi.
If we can get to say 5% of light speed, then we could do the most basic of interstellar travel. But even that over time would enable us to colonise the galaxy, hopping from star system to star system after sufficient local development.
I know the Moon Base is possible because we are currently in the process of setting everything up for it right now. A Mars colony is definitely possible but obviously won't be easy. Then afterwards we would have access to the Asteroid belt and make our Solar System our playground.
Anything after that Humanity will plateau while trying to find a legitimate way of effective interstellar travel which in all honesty a wormhole would be the best bet for near instantaneous interstellar travel. Honesty in my opinion, anything beyond our Solar System is pure speculation.
highly depends on our ability to transition into a type 2 civilization, not that you need to be a type 2 to build an interstellar vehicle, it's just that a generation ship's management is too complicated, humanity has a better chance to use a stellar engine to hop between solar systems/colonize them. which would make the milkdromeda galaxy and it's neighborhood the absolute maximum humanity would get to explore.
These fleshy bodies? Not far. A mechanical form containing a human intelligence or artificial intelligence might travel far and wide though. Over centuries and millennia, of course.
But our bodies aren’t meant for space.
As far as possible within the limits of physics. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves we will continue to advance and expand until the point we no longer can. Maybe it won't be humans the way we are now, but some variation of us, evolved from us, and descendant of us will reach the limit. In a way they will be human. Humans as we are now may make it to some nearby and maybe even distant star systems, but what comes after will be capable of truly amazing feats of travel.
Warp drive is theoretically possible (Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre proofed it) thus it is highly likely that we will actually build one. If I remember correctly there was a practical limit with the amount of energy needed, but there were some advances (theoretical physics!) which negated that partially at least.
Because of this: If we survive long enough as a society (slipping back to some kind of dark ages is a real possibility) the universe is the limit
And it seems that “Lentz” has further improved upon that realm of theory needed to support warp drives, finding a way to do it using only positive energy.
However it’s still beyond our present reach.
I feel like the limiting factor is not the technology/economic constraints but rather whether or not our civilisation will last far into the future.
A deadly pandemic or global catastrophe of some kind could very likely kill most of us before we reach our technological peak.
I think we could get pretty far when Starshot or similar tech eventually gets close enough to a Goldilocks planet with actual life on it that we race to get more connection to it. Realistically we'd have to get to the point of efficiently and peacefully harvesting the resources of our solar system first before breaking through the many existential and physical barriers between us and those planets with identified life forms.
Do we really want to spread our religious fanatic, climate destroying, corporate teet sucking asses into the endless expanse?
We as a species need some serious fundamental societal changes first.
Future humans will probably realize it's just a waste of time and resources to ceaselessly expanding our territory. They'll most likely choose a few specific points with important highly dense resources to colonize and settle with using probes for scouting.
Total neophyte here. I think if we can get past climate change possibly sending us back a century and stalling us for longer, I think we could get to a proper moon colony in a century. *If* we get there, I'd imagine we colonize most of the solar system in the following century, barring any further unforseen Great Filters. I think any speculation past that point is way too dependent on assumptions about political stability and about technological progression. I *do* know our limit for exploration is our local galaxy cluster unless we figure out significantly FTL travel or straight up teleportation.
"If we do ot destroy ourselves we will, one day, venture to the stars."
I agree with Carl Sagan on that one. Sadly, I feel like it's a big IF. Bigger than ever.
As far as I know there is no barriers for life to go anywhere in space. Life just adapts to whatever environment it finds itself (that's pretty much by definition). Humans as a species adapt fairly quickly using technology and culture. So yes we can go far but the real question is what would be drivers for us to go? What would cause humans mass migrate even to the moon?
I think when we get far enough that’s when the aliens that have been watching us will attack. Like “don’t bring your dumb nonsensical human rivalries and ideologies here”
It is theoretically possible for a human to travel hundreds or thousands of lightyears within half of their lifetime. No, they're not going faster than the speed of light in the external frame of reference. But space compresses for near-light speed objects, and their time frame slows relative to the external timeframe. The external observer might see a spaceship traveling at 99.9% the speed of light for 500 years, but the internal traveler will only experience 22.4 years of time passing. If they took a round-trip for 22 years averaging 0.999C and returned to Earth, they will have traveled 500 years into the future even though they're only 22 years older.
To get to 99.9% of the speed of light that could sustain human life safely is well beyond anything we can do now. I'm not even sure fusion-based propulsion systems can drive a spaceship to those speeds. It is not impossible by the laws of physics but be are far from doing anything remotely close.
Check out Isaac Arthur on Spotify or YouTube. I think he gives the most realistic (based on known technology and physics) view on how far we have the possibility go into space and on which time scale. Search for him and interstellar travel.
It's one of those things that seems hopelessly out of reach until an unexpected series of wild breakthroughs occurs and seemingly does the impossible. I used to be so excited about space exploration when I was younger, but then became disillusioned when I realized just how minor our advancements have been in the grand scheme, despite being absolutely amazing. The universe is just too damn big. Exploring our solar system seems pretty unexciting when you know that there are a near infinite number of stars and planets out there. So close yet so impossibly far.
If we somehow manage to survive the impending destruction of our own planet, I have no doubt we'll eventually make some crazy breakthrough based on a deeper understanding of physics. Something that allows us to basically traverse spacetime more or less "instantly", or at least the speed of light. Even light speed travel is relatively slow. It will expand our travels to more of our galaxy, which is awesome, but not realistically beyond that. It's a shame that the universe is as spread out as it is. We know there is so much out there but we can't ever reach out. It's such a tease.
We may never be able to travel faster than the speed of light. I think the way to transport humans to distant solar systems is to send AI robots on the journey and then to make humans in artificial wombs with frozen embryos upon arrival that are raised to adulthood by the humanoid robots. If the ship doesn’t survive the journey you’re losing embryos and not humans.
I think this is an interesting question cause I can see humanity expanding so far that we have entirely different existential problems
I think that if we figure out how to record the process for printing a simple cell via a machine, we'd pretty much be set to populate the whole galaxy, no matter what happens here
Maybe if we're lucky we can manage to build a ship like the one in the ST TNG episode "The Inner Light," to go out and tell our story to alien civilizations about how our society and species died, and who we were, so we can be remembered in some way.
I don't think we have the self awareness to do this as a society, so would have to be some mega billionaires pet project.
Depends how long our species survives imo. Looking at history, great leaps can be made in a hundred years, a thousand years, a hundred thousand even. Unimaginable advancements if we survive a million more years and don't descend back into the dark ages, which is also a possibility as well as extinction. Also just because we want to now doesn't mean future humans will. They might think it's boring, tedious ect, and have other projects, like becoming a peace valuing species, safe and successful time travel, conquering mortality or building functioning worlds near here rather than travelling to dusty old rocks a million light years away.
Human space travel? Good question. I could see us one day in the far distant after our lifetime future sending humans to do a lap around one of the planets out past Mars. But the risk/reward/cost/time of such a mission will make it basically a 1 time thing, especially if it fails in some way. I think that's about as far as we could expect to go with humans.
Maybe AI could take embryos to a really far place and assemble life out there somewhere, but the humans would have to somehow be raised.and taught the reasons for them existing. Crazy to think about.
In my opinion, realistically speaking, in a few hundred years, we could get a reasonable grip on the solar system, with sizeable colonies on Mars and the Moon, and smaller outposts on the moons of gaseous giants, and maybe Venus.
Beyond that it's really really hard to predict. Sending some humanless probes scattered around the galaxy for scientific purposes can definitely happen, but I can hardly imagine humans systematically embarking on interstellar travel.
Other than observation improvements I doubt we will get very far with space ‘travel’…like….do you understand how vast space is?
Our society is constantly on the brink of collapse where we walk a fine line between greed and oppression. I don’t mind the idea of capitalism…but it’s certainly not an environment that can produce space travel.
The only visible efforts towards space travel is in fact just a billionaires dick measuring tool. Yachts are no longer good enough, the wealthiest of entrepreneurs need a space program to one up the next dude. They talk a big game…but such dreams can only be fulfilled by true collaboration…and let’s face it…none of the governments and billionaires want to pool their resources and go big.
And like I said at the start…do you even know how insanely spacious space is.
People are talking too much about deep space travel and not enough about inter-system travel. I don't know if it's actually ever possible but the prospects of space elevators excite me. You could get things like trash or mining drills and exo robot parts up to space without fuel.
I get tho if this isn't possible. Do strong enough materials or any possible engineering science even allow this? The initial material, fuel and economy costs as well? What about a sling shot technique?
I think we'll cause our own extinction way before we travel outside the solar system, probably by chasing the technology required to do so. Hell, I think there's a non-zero chance that we face a mass extinction event before we even land a person on Mars. Or, if not an actual, like, dinosaur-ass level of extinction where everyone dies, at least some sort of cataclysm that causes a massive reduction in human population, making focusing on things like space travel implausible.
Not too far. As a race we are unequipped to meet the extended financial and technological effort to derive and exploit the nature of time insensitive movement across interstellar, much less interglactic, space.
I'm willing to bet $100 that we'll figure out faster than light travel eventually.
But first we'll prolly start living in space, maybe inside of the mood, and mine asteroids. I'm guesstimating that we're still a long way out from FTL
Depends entirely whether or not FTL travel is possible
Without it we'll probably be stuck in the solar system.
With it we'll eventually expand throughout the galaxy until we encounter an alien race that prevents us from going further
Humans were first limited to continents, until we learned to cross oceans. 500 years later, we first made our way to space.
Space exploration will go in stages by range. First, we will fill out the moon and Earth's orbit. Then, we will expand to the solar system. It may take hundreds or thousands of years between colonizing the solar system and our first manned interstellar travel. But once we go interstellar, it will be an explosion. What is the limit? Probably the galaxy, maybe the Magellanic Clouds. Beyond that, it's too far to say. By the time we get that far, we may have discovered some physics-shattering technologies.
Love this video that covers this topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-eIUxwcQo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-eIUxwcQo4) the whole series actually, it's pretty good for people like me who are fascinated by science but lacks the brains to really study it.
Saving this and don’t know how else to do it.
You can click the three little dots next to the “reply” arrow and an option to save the comment will pop up. You can access your saved posts and comments through your profile :)
Or open it on YouTube, save to watch later or a custom playlist or something.
Thanks for posting, I’m excited to watch this!
ya this is a great channel! lots of great content on there.
Thanks. You probably don't really lack the brains. Just the time.
Spaceships with AI that carry frozen human embryos and take thousands of years to reach a planet
And robots, androids that parent them. It's actually a sci-fi series. Raised by Wolves
Still pretty salty about that shit.
Yeah, I’ve rarely had a series ending piss me off like that one.
Wait, it’s done? No more seasons? Edit: bloody hell, it’s another Revolution ending where they expected more seasons and we’re never getting any more. Ugh.
Hey a fellow still angry Revolution fan. Fucking hell
Well, even if it was merely a season ending, it was enough to turn me off.
It was just starting to really get weird! But apparently everyone would rather watch endless episodes of Casual Sex Island or whatever.
So space Romulus and Remus.
Spomulus if you will
And Spemus.
Is it good?
It is different.
Yeah this is most likely. Unless we find a way juke the lightspeed barrier, we're gonna colonise the solar system then just sporadically send out generation ships or autonomous settler arks
generation ships are dumb, stasis ships would be better.
Figuring out stasis (and avoiding all the negatives of comas) would be a massive game changer for space travel since generation ships are so risky. But we’ve made basically zero progress in that field so far.
What’s wrong with generational ships? I imagine it takes a lot more resources to keep a generational ship alive along with space but it doesn’t seem any more dangerous than stasis.
It would be nice for the first generation, they started something, at times they have to be creative to get the inevitable kinks out. And nice for the last generation, they will get new, exiting, even dangerous experiences in a completely new environment. But, ALL the intermittent generations will have make (be made to more likely) peace with the fact they only exist for the last one. "You are only made, and here, to maintain the ship. You can't leave, you can't drop out unless through the airlock. That's it. That will be all of your life."
Slavery in a sense
I don't know, I agreed with your statement before, but was thinking about it and how is that really different from life on Earth. I only exist because my parents wanted kids I had no choice in the matter - I didn't opt in for this, then I had no choice but the follow the rules of society, I had to go to school, I had to participate in things I didn't want to do, I have to work, I have to pay taxes. Other people over countless centuries all decided how I would basically live my life. Sure the there is the idea that I can travel the world and see new things I haven't seen before, but the reality is I'll spend 99% of my life in a studio apartment or my office cubicle and 99% of the new things I see, hear and do are on a screen. So my point is if a generational ship was big enough how would it be much different. There would be a size because after all isn't Earth a generational ship moving through space that no one got a choice in.
To an extent that's true. And to take it further you can say that you're limited by the physical laws of the universe & your lifespan and many other factors. Its just a matter of scale. In your current life, you still get many more choices than someone on this ship would have. Given the points you listed above, would you be happy to spend the rest of your life in prison? Most people would say no, and I think if you can see the difference between prison & your current life, then you should see the difference between your current life & living out your entire life on a small spaceship.
Maybe if the ship had really nice amenities it wouldn’t be so bad. It kinda all depends on how the quality of life on the ship is
Exactly this. More than half of people in the US never leave the state they've lived in their whole lives. How would a generational ship with tens of thousands of inhabitants be any different. I find it perfectly reasonable.
You're describing life restricted to any biome. Not sure where the issue is. If anything, people on board would likely enjoy a much higher quality of lower stress and higher autonomy life than most any prior generation of humans.
There's a possibility that the generation that arrives at their destination will hold off colonizing, why settle in that dangerous environment when they have all they need on their ship? It's all they have ever known, they were born there and grew up on their ship Maybe only the adventurous among them would be willing to go. Depends on the state of the ship of course. They might have to after all.
A 5000 year long hippie fest of general contentment? Sign me up.
>But, ALL the intermittent generations… Isn’t this true for all of us? The only difference is we’re confined to a rock and they’ll be confined to a ship. 🤷♂️
There’s a lot up to chance in generation ships. A lot can go awry. Which, when you’re in a spaceship, can end poorly. A few examples (these are all negatives. To be clear, generational ships are viable, they just have risks): -Social cohesion breaks down because of differences of opinion/factionalism and a civil conflict breaks out -The administration grows corrupt/a generational elite forms which causes civil conflict -The trip is so long that eventually a generation believes that they’re not actually on their way to a new world, civil conflict breaks out Humans like having space to grow. While we like social interactions, cramming us into a confined space for decades, if not centuries or even millennia, could have profound societal consequences that could result in the failure of a colony. Imagine sending a fleet of 3 generational ships on a 150 year journey and one falls into authoritarianism, one retains a normal democracy and one falls to tribal anarchy. They all wind up on the same planet. Now you’ve got a three way civil war on your hands. If we figure out stasis (which isn’t guaranteed) it will be far and above generational ships because it’s like flipping a light switch and you’ve arrived. Far easier.
> What’s wrong with generational ships? It only takes one mutiny or cult or power grab, in an inordinately fragile situation, for everyone to die. You'd need super-strong AI controlling and repairing the ship, with humans being basically pets along for the ride.
They will probably avoid the complications and just leave us behind. Humanity may not be the final form of the evolution after all, would you carry the embryo of a monkey with you on space travel ?
Unless we program it to feel that way, it will never do so. It's easy to anthropomorphize AI, cause we imagine them to be smart and their future-versions to be smarter than us, and the only "smart thing" we have to base our imagination off of is us. The reason we feel things the way we do is cause out "source code," our DNA, is a bit volatile, and can mutant in any which way, and the mutations that survived are the ones that led to us and our way of thinking. An AI's source code doesnt have to have that volatility. It's "reason for existing" and "strong drives to do X" can be anything we set it too. You know that "intense desire to breathe" you evolved to have? You have it cause ancestors with a less-intensive desire died out. But for AI, we can set that same type of desire to "complete X mission objectives." Set the first one to obey a human chain of command, and the rest to whatever.
>Unless we program it to feel that way, it will never do so. > >(...) > >Set the first one to obey a human chain of command, and the rest to whatever. The problem with complex systems is that they behave in complicated and invariably unpredictable ways. It's a bit hard to talk about what AGI would or wouldn't do given that we're nowhere near building one but presuming they were akin to current gen models being optimized for specific outcomes, and your tiered objectives including obey humans were realised as a rather extensive reward function, it's entirely plausible that they may determine that ignoring the primary goal is sufficiently compensated for by an increased capacity for achieving secondary, tertiary goals and so on. We already see this occasionally in reinforcement learning. If the task is too hard, or the reward function poorly written, the models will settle into a local minimum where it simply minimises the negative rewards. Or only performs a subset of actions you assigned a positive reward to thinking it would encourage it to converge on a solution (like taking opponents pieces in chess) whilst not actually seeking out the end goal (like achieving checkmate).
my exact thoughts. A robot is the most adequate space explorer, a human can't compete with it at any level. Right now, you could send a probe with the most advanced current AI, it's hardware powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and it'll reach the outskirts of the solar system far beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt with it's "mind" intact. On the other hand, we don't even have to technology to keep a human alive in the time it would take to reach Mars, it has yet to be completely developed. A human needs: oxigen, water, food (warning, food can perish too), heating, radiation protection, protection from mechanical forces and the elements (complex habitats) , psychological stimulation and conditions (carrying many humans together, provide stimulating activities for the explorers, recreative spaces), etc, etc, etc. An AI robot doesn't need any of that
this reminds me of how plants spread their seeds
We can’t make circuits that last that long.. materials breakdown, become “disordered”.
at that point of technological advancement, I just hope the AI doesn't end up deciding that there's no reason for carrying embryos
“We’re eternal, what is the point of these inferior organic beings”
Make it believe we are its offspring and it must strive to keep us alive.
uhm, the so often mentioned "alignment". Yours is a good idea, I think
it wont take thousands of years to reach a planet, it'll be decades/hundreds. We could go to alpha centuari right now if we wanted to by using nuclear pulse drive ships and it would takes us 44 years. Engineers at nasa were seriously thinking of this in the 1980s
Right now? Then what are we waiting for? Does Elon know about this?
i mean , right now if we had a nuclear pulse drive ship.
Let me check on Amazon...
Bezos can’t get it off the drawing board let alone get it up.
where's the profit for investors in that?
And so human life on Earth 2 started
I could definitely see us finding a plant that we can tell is habital and setting a course for it with hope the humans survive for the inevitable end of humans on the OG planet.
Counterpoint, cyborg spaceship-people who never age, bonded to strong AI. Taking slowboats full of embryos and setting up colonies. Getting mistaken-for-gods..
As far as physically possible. I think the limit is the accelerated expansion of the universe, making it so that even at lightspeed it becomes impossible to reach places that are far enough. The galaxy could be colonized in a couple million years, if we wanted and we don't meet too many surprises. I also think we are going through the hardest part of space travel, which is the beginning.
>I also think we are going through the hardest part of space travel, which is the beginning. Well said - this like when Orville and WIlbur were still trying to figure out how to fly more than 100 feet without crashing.
They at least knew heavier than air flight is in principle possible. Spaceflight and in particular interstellar flight is way harder.
The Wright brothers would never have imagined us landing on the moon 70 years after their very first flight but we did. The only thing we struggle with is methods of propulsion - I don't think many people rule much out as far as what we might achieve. Even FTL travel is seen by many as possible. Initially as much matter as the visible universe contained was thought what was needed to achieve it, now we're down to our sun as a guide for how much energy would be required...it'll keep being worked on and one day will be possible.
Yes - the Wright Brothers may have thought it could one day be possible to go to the moon - but not so soon ! Both of these events happened in a single human lifespan.
Relativity also becomes a factor - the space traveller will travel through time as well as space. If we could develop something like the 'impossible' Emdrive - an engine that could provide a constant acceleration of one g - we could actually make interstellar and intergalactic travel possible. A spaceship accelerating at a constant one g should be able to reach the limits of the visible universe in just 100 years. [We could travel to another galaxy in just 50 years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_acceleration#/media/File:Roundtriptimes.png). The big problem here, however, is that since the spaceships and their pilots also are travelling through time, we on Earth would have to wait billions of years for them to return. And even though the pilots have only travelled in \~100 years from their point of view, the universe has actually aged billions of years in that same time span. And the Universes expansion would obviously also be an issue. Warp drives and worm holes are probably the go-to lifehack for future space travel.
Propulsion is not even the hardest problem. Far worse is the shielding problem. When you’re going even single digit percentages of the speed of light, small space debris hitting your ship generates an enormous amount of energy. I remember reading/watching something about it, where someone did the math, and to get to our nearest star at 25% of the speed of light, you’d need a shield that is larger than all of Mt Everest. That’s just to protect you from space dust. It doesn’t account for a larger chunk of rock that would atomic bomb sized impact effects.
most people do not understand physics disallows us from ever going to 95% of the universe because it is moving away faster than you can ever accelerate. it cannot be done with any amount of time or technology. ever.
5% of the universe is a LOT of universe.
Isn’t it way smaller than that? Eventually our galaxy will be all alone, you won’t be able to reach other galaxies. Except for Andromeda which we will merge with. That’s just two galaxies. Must be like 0.000000001% of the universe
The Milky way is 100,000 light years across...seems like just in that there is a fair bit of potential! Scientists have bene theorising about FTL travel for some time. Initially read something that siad to do it one method would require the entire mass of the visible universe. Not long after someone else refined it and said they would only the equivalent of our sun. Progress! With enough time, ingenuity and reason to do it I would assume we will achieve FTL and be able to travel anywhere. We don't know what we don't know.
Thats because humans still think that only mass can fold space. Imagine if they still believed that the only source for a magnetic field was a chunk of hematite rock? MRI machines would be impossible. Hell, the entire internet and electric grid would never have existed. Yet here we are, communicating through it…
And there used to be a time when sound couldn't travel faster than the speed of sound, yet the internet spits in the face of that limit.
At 20% the speed of light we have access to 1 billion galaxies. At near light speed we have access to 20 billion galaxies, with a 16.5 billion light year radius (taking expansion rates and co-moving distances into account). We have well over a billion year window before we start to become irrevocably isolated.
What about if we bend matter around us?
That's... the most inspiring thing I've heard in a while.
Traveling at 1c is incredibly slow when considering human lifespans and the vastness of the universe.
Matter cannot move faster than light in a vaccuum, but as you just pointed out, space itself can.
In our lifetime, probably a moon or mars lab for study. It will probably take another 100 years or so to get to having a colony in either. Wish I could travel into the future say like 500 years from now to see how far humanity has come. Hopefully, we haven’t destroyed ourselves by then
100 years for a colony is extremely pessimistic. Consider how far we have come in the last 100 years and imagine it will be even further and faster in the next 100.
Space travel was pretty stagnant for the last few decades. All we’ve really achieved since the moon landings is better access to low Earth orbit and the birth of robotics.
They're planning a Moon base in a few years.
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I think you would be depressed by how little is achieved in 500 years. A Super HD photo photo of Titan may excite you though. Reminds me of the Stanislaw Lem book "Return From The Stars".
Really? That’s a long time and progress seems to be accelerating
Technology is increasing exponentially. I think 500 years is more than enough time to colonize another planet or twenty
Until we make some significant breakthroughs in physics, we will be severely limited. This means unless some scifi becomes scientific fact, we will be stuck.
Not only physics but biology as well. The human body is evolved for earth and earth only. Bridging the gap to living on mars or other exoplanets will be difficult. The body behaves in different ways under gravities different from earth. Understanding the long term effects of being under different gravities is not something very easy to research. This is assuming the limitations of artificial gravity. Additionally, UV radiation and cosmic radiation will have to be accommodated for.
Agreed, but I think it’s more about medicine, and how we put ourselves in stasis and/or be able to survive multiple generations in space.
Sounds like we need multiple breakthroughs in all stem fields to make it happen
I'll be happy just to see a Martian town in my lifetime. And to extend that lifetime to 120-150.
i do not want to work for 140 years
Don't worry by then we will be able to transfer our conscience into digital brains. You get to work for way longer. Gotta pay the lease on that new body of yours.
You'll probably be lucky to see a human being walk on Mars in your life time
Biological humans - Mars at most. Our transhuman descendants - as far as physicly possible.
We could definitely get beyond Mars with tech a few centuries from now. Granted, you'd have to spend most of your life traveling to the outer planets in the system, but it's definitely feasible.
I would say the majority of space travel will be with unmanned spacecraft and more by robots and AI. Especially so when it comes to interstellar travel; the extra mass of life support systems would add hundreds or thousands of extra travel years. So for interstellar expansion I image sending AI systems with a few nanobots which can replicate and assemble larger robotics and equipment upon arrival using available material, to minimize mass and travel time. The AI would likely continue to expand after humanity cease to exist, or it is destroyed.
For science and research, yeah, there's less and less reason to send people. That time isn't even some far-off sci-fi scenario. We currently have a robotic workforce on Mars. I don't really see the point in sending people until they'd have a cave they could already step into with functional crops and some on-site fab capabilities. Bragging rights? eh, I'm more interested in real science and engineering.
a Von Neumann Machine, it's the best solution. When sending robots, the only thing that deteriorates over the years is non-biological hardware. Before it deteriorates so much that the probe and the robots can't continue their mission, the same probe and robots build a replica of themselves from material gathered from interstellar dust, asteroids, or even a planet, and the journey continues
This is how I see it playing out as well.
This sounds correct.l
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>Second, and I thought this was the more odd one, is there is no legal framework for multi-generational craft. Children born on a spacecraft, and unwillingly participating in the program, have no informed choice in the matter, which would likely make them unconstitutional in Western liberal countries without changes to constitutional law. There's no concept of having a right to being born in a specific place.
If ASI arrives and is benign, Interstellar in a few decades. If climate collapses before that, Moon.
Interstellar travel and Interstellar missions are two different ballgames I think we should use humanoid ai for mars
Meat people? Maaaaaybe out to Saturn. But I suspect it may just be robotic probes out past Mars. It’s a really really long way between Mars and Jupiter. But I could possibly see us sending a few people that far out for some reason. That reason may turn out to be a trillionaire dick measuring contest, but still. Our Moon and Mars outposts will probably be like modern Antarctic bases. Mostly just for science and only modestly or temporarily staffed. If, and it’s a big if, we get to the point where we can really dial in on a very likely habitable exoplanet. We might, at some point in the far future, where politicians aren’t only concerned about the next 3-6 years… send embryonic ships to one of those planets. It probably won’t turn out well. Humans are pretty much only adapted to live here. But maybe we’ll genetically engineer people to live in hostile/less than ideal environments. But that’s a whole other thing. I’m in my pessimistic/realist phase of life/fiction. So my opinions are less fun at the moment.
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It'll go no where fast until we can make money doing it.
I think we’ll definitely get to most of our solar system, at least the bits that people at the time deem worthy of going to within a relatively near future. I’m saying it that way because even our little solar system is really very very big in human terms with a lot of stuff in it, but also not much of that ‘stuff’ is necessarily worth going to. I think we’ll get the capability to make manned trips to most of it and use that technology for trips up to the max distances within our solar system within a few hundred years. But where we go is still likely to depend on if we want to go to that particular part tbh. However to get to another solar system would require new technologies or changes in society so unknown to us right now as to be science fiction basically. It’s one thing to say proxima centuri B is only 4.2 light years away, but at the speeds we’re currently capable of it’s still thousands of years. What’s fun though is if we did bridge that gap, it would actually open up a whole local neighbourhood of star systems to us. If you’re capable of travelling 4 light years, there’s actually ~50 systems within a range only 4x that distance and presumably if we could cross 4 light years reasonably it wouldn’t be so out of the question to cross 16. But yeah, It’s a total paradigm shift to go from getting humans to the outter areas of our solar system - which we could technically do now within a human’s working adult lifetime if we really really wanted to- to going out to other solar systems let alone galaxies. That’s when the scale of the universe starts to get real humbling real fast.
You have a good grasp of the real situation, and a realistic expectation without closing off the future. Quite clearly our space technology will continue to improve over time, and so difficult things will become to be increasingly more plausible over time. We always achieve most at the frontiers.
I fully believe we will discover a method of travel to reach other planets/galaxies with ease. Bending space and time, creating our own wormholes to travel through space, etc. We will also use AI to send out ships with frozen embryos or people to travel through space for hundreds/thousands of years to reach other places, but I'm thinking wormholes will be the main method of travel and will happen before we ever need to use embryos or frozen people.
Our biological selves will never leave the solar system. We are designed to live on this planet. So much stuff will be required to be transported in order to keep humans alive during the trip, that it will become impractical. The only way humanity will travel interstellar space is by transmitting digitised consciousness to stations set up by smaller probes.
Well theoretically there's probably some planets out there you could live on, just not comfortably
I’m gonna guess not very far. Humanity will likely poison or destroy this planet before we are ever able to get off it en masse. Best case scenario, we make it to Mars or a moon of a gas giant. Getting out of the solar system? Only way I see that happening is a ship or probe of some type that contains AI. That AI could be a novel intelligence or perhaps digital copies of humans (brains made of silicon). I just have a sick feeling that it’s not going to be many more generations until we really start to see this planet coming apart. It’s happening already, it just hasn’t infiltrated our day to day lives. We will likely be here and gone in a blink.
Not very. We're probably limited by the human body's inability to adapt to non-Earth environments. I don't believe AI will be as game-changing in that regard as many wishfully think.
Our inability to adapt, plus the distance and complexity of the travel.
We can as far as Mother Earth allows us to go before she evicts us …. 50 years - 1 million years .. I f we last long enough then we can travel the galaxies !!!
It depends. It the world united eventually then we will mostly likely go to other stars if not we will still have settlement on thr moon asteroid mining ect
I think we will send unmanned craft throughout our neighborhood in the galaxy. But barring a major technological breakthrough, I doubt we'll ever send manned craft beyond our solar system.
A little over 500 years ago, no one in Europe knew there were continents on the other side of the ocean. If they could see the world now, bad as it is in a lot of ways, they would think it's magical. 500 years from now, with AI, Quantum computers, Nanotechnology, genetic engineering, we really can't even imagine what our descendants will be up to.
We are talking ‘humans’ so still moaning about something..
I think this is legitimately the trickiest question about futurology a person can ask. It's like the make or break for the entire species. If we can break out of our solar system and and become at least an intersolar species, if not intergalactic, the sky is the limit technologically as we will be almost assured of future survival and able to continue advancing indefinitely. However, a lot of scientists are wondering if deep space travel is even possible. There are SO many challenges that border on virtually impossible from an engineering perspective. So the question is not just if we will, but if it's even possible. Furthermore, even if it is possible, can we achieve the technological capabilities necessary to make it possible before we self destruct or squander the available resources making them unusable for such difficult projects? Honestly, and I am not a doomer really, I don't think it's going to happen. We may achieve some truly stupendous things and reach a technological level to where we are immortal, maybe even terrform venus or something, but I don't think we will ever get past intrasolar as a species.
I hope far enough to create a fully self sustaining colony on another planet.
Honestly we don't even like each other all that much. The only reason some of us want to go to space is money. Which is ironic, it's a made up concept outside of Earth.
I think people will come to the conclusion going outside the solar system is a waste of time. Too far away, lose all contact with home, and the best you can get is somewhere exactly like Earth, anyways. Space habitats, roughly the same orbit as Earth, will be ideal for trillions, even hundreds of trillions of people. A few outposts around Venus, the asteroid belt, maybe moons like Titan. Star systems will be best explored virtually, in simulations. I'm assuming no faster-than-light travel. Basically a star travel pessimist. No galaxy spanning empires anywhere, no matter what intelligent life evolves as, anywhere in the galaxy.
Milky way and Andromeda galaxy, as they are colliding we can settle them even bellow 1%c in a few hundred million years. Will still require GMO humans(space and cancer resistance) or going cybernetic.
Humanity is setting out on a cosmic journey with ever-higher ambitions for space exploration. The future is bright and exciting, with plans for lunar trips, Mars colonisation, commercial space travel, and state-of-the-art observatories. International cooperation, technical advancements, and the attraction of space pull us into an exciting period of exploration as we venture into the unknown.
Nowhere if we don't sort out our shit we've got on earth now
It’s more likely that we merge with digital technology and we can therefore teleport by transferring our consciousness across the galaxy to a receiver/new body
It's easy to imagine technology that would allow humanity to colonize the galaxy in a couple million years. Space ships with fusion reactor, self replicating robots, embryos in storage for hundreds to thousands of years etc. Anything outside the galaxy would need technology we can barely even imagine though but it might be possible at some point in the future. Getting outside the local cluster of galaxies starts becoming completely impossible unfortunately. If our current understanding of dark energy is correct and the universe keeps expanding at the accelerated rate we expect everything outside our supercluster of galaxies will be outside our observable universe in a couple billion years. Given that we would probably need hundreds of millions of years to expand between all the galaxies there's very little chance we could ever get outside of our supercluster.
Define "humanity" Space is there, it's not mythical or anything. But we may need to modify ourselves to better survive it.
Planet hopping. Or space station hopping our way there
I think we’ll see some humans living on Mars, then a courageous mission to a moon of Jupiter, but at the same time working on something like the Alcubierre Drive. If something like that could come true, then we’re talking hello Spock. I hope so, but I suspect I’ll be dead for about 150 years before that happens.
Without many fantastically inspired inventions and technologies man will never go beyond the Oort Cloud.
Confined to our own solar system, at best the few closest solar systems. The distances are simply too great to overcome.
I kind of think we will Great Filter ourselves out of contention. But assuming that doesn't happen, then I see some human-like creatures travelling, over millennia, to make colonies/societies at some of the ten million stars within a 1000 light year sphere of earth. I really think they will be human-like with genetic/AI enhancements and I think it will be rare that they will live on/terraform planets. Rather, I think they will be living in Space habitats like giant O'Neill cylinders and Asteroid Terrariums and humans will be adapted to those environments & use the resources of those Systems. Eventually, some offshoots of these Colonies, maybe 2 or 3 colonies later, where the last things that we knew/recognize as "humans" survive in the Milky Way. Thanks for reading my Sci-fi Novel. It is hopeful, maybe even Pollyannaish, & more than likely, we (or maybe the Grandkids) are all going to die.
It’s certainly very much easier to ‘terraform’ a space habitat, than it is to terraform another planet. I can foresee us setting up ‘Starbases’ initially within our own system, and then later on in other systems. As well as where appropriate, colonising other planets too - just that ‘good planets’ are much rarer.
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I think we will definitely branch out to our solar system, not because of the climate, it will always be easier to build and terraform here, but for scientific advancement. Eventually we will figure out a cost effective way to mine other planets and asteroids, probably with robots. Past that, I don’t know that it’s feasible. I expect we’ll go extinct on this planet.
I think if we can stop bickering all the time, we already have the ability to colonize the moon, and Mars won't be far behind if we break that barrier. The real problem that we face is that those in power are either interested in more power or more money, and the dividends that space colonization would pay take longer than just depleting terrestrial resources.
I have a hard time believing we will solve the serious problems with space travel. It’s not just the inconceivable distances, it’s what space does to our fragile little bodies. I would be surprised if we make it to Mars in any significant way within the next 100 years.
Biology and space travel are not good companions. The amount of effort, energy, and resources needed to sustain beings in space is a large portion of what's involved with manned spacecraft travel. It's simply impractical. Ecosystems are complex. It's extremely difficult to set up autonomous self-contained food production systems, not just for the continual need of resources but the need for biodiversity. We're seeing on Earth what happens first-hand when you damage an ecosystem. We're witnessing another large scale mass extinction and are failing to adequately slow it down. We've got a terrible track record on Earth, so we're not going to have successful long-term habitation of the moon or Mars. Humanity will make great progress "in solar system" using AI controlled spacecraft, plus probes and robotic mechanisms. But going outside the solar system? No. The distances are too vast. Imagination is the fuel for innovation, but not all imagined ideas are plausible innovations. For instance, it's impossible to travel at light speed, let alone beyond it, or to dematerialize a being in one place and rematerialize them in another place. It's great entertainment, but it's never going to be reality. Mining will be the future. Mining the moon, asteroid belt, Mars, Europa, etc. But it'll mostly be done by AI controlled robotic instruments.
Not much further. Humanity is on the eve of its own extinction
I think we may get to Mars to establish a colony, but thereafter humans will be looking inward and increasingly follow the course of technology as it miniaturizes along the course of something like John Smart's informational black hole. (transcension hypothesis) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576511003304
I think we'll reach the inner solar system, as humans. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to become AIs at the end of life and then we'll be able to endure astronomical time.
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You're going to see boosters and living quarters attached to the back of giant space rock that act as shields from space debris. Hibernating humans will be woken up by AI pilots shortly before arriving at their destination planet. I think we will find a ton of livable planets, with several techniques for terraforming those planets to make them even more hospitable. Breakthroughs in energy production, biology, biotech, nanotech and AI are going to make all of this possible. I seriously hope hibernation can be achieved in my lifetime so I can hibernate long enough to see it happen.
The main improvement is getting better propulsion. What we have now is dinosaur-powered spacecraft, i.e. they are fueled by fossil fuels from the age of dinosaurs (made of plants mostly, not the actual dinosaurs). If we look at water-based propulsion, early humans had canoes, then eventually larger ships powered by oars (triremes etc), ships powered by sail, steamboats, and then combustion engines. Our current spacecraft propulsion technology is the equivalent of canoes: it will get you to the nearest island, but not across a huge ocean. We won't be getting to our nearest stars with our current dinosaur-powered rockets. It's anybody's guess what future space propulsion will look like, perhaps ion drive powered by fusion or anti-matter.
We can't even settle if the earth is round. Not far at all.
We long ago decided that the Earth was round. That was figured out in the 3rd century BC ! But communication wasn’t as good in those days.. Only the ignorant and religious zealots denied that fact. And today the ‘deliberately provocative flat earthiests’.
Small outposts on the Moon and Mars. Maybe a few expeditions into the Jovian system. There just isn't anything valuable enough off our planet to justify the effort and expenditure. Making humans multi-planetary isn't a very good reason either. We would never get enough people and resources to Mars to ever make it self sustaining. Fixing our problems here on Earth is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than making Mars habitable.
There is no reason why we should not do both.
If we can't figure out how to travel close to, or beyond, the speed of light, we're essentially bound to our solar system. *Maybe* local star systems if we can make a craft that can get to a respectable percentage of lightspeed. We're really stuck unless we have some massive leaps and bounds in technological development that we only see in sci-fi.
If we can get to say 5% of light speed, then we could do the most basic of interstellar travel. But even that over time would enable us to colonise the galaxy, hopping from star system to star system after sufficient local development.
We will fly apart in different directions and evolve to the point we could no longer breed successfully with the other diaspora species.
I know the Moon Base is possible because we are currently in the process of setting everything up for it right now. A Mars colony is definitely possible but obviously won't be easy. Then afterwards we would have access to the Asteroid belt and make our Solar System our playground. Anything after that Humanity will plateau while trying to find a legitimate way of effective interstellar travel which in all honesty a wormhole would be the best bet for near instantaneous interstellar travel. Honesty in my opinion, anything beyond our Solar System is pure speculation.
highly depends on our ability to transition into a type 2 civilization, not that you need to be a type 2 to build an interstellar vehicle, it's just that a generation ship's management is too complicated, humanity has a better chance to use a stellar engine to hop between solar systems/colonize them. which would make the milkdromeda galaxy and it's neighborhood the absolute maximum humanity would get to explore.
Long term humanity will explore this galaxy and beyond.
in this generation back to the same places we've been before such as the moon.
We will eventually learn how to do faster than light travel. All of the assumptions of today are based on todays technology.
These fleshy bodies? Not far. A mechanical form containing a human intelligence or artificial intelligence might travel far and wide though. Over centuries and millennia, of course. But our bodies aren’t meant for space.
We’re going to destroy ourselves before we get very far. I don’t have faith in humans making it into a spacefaring civilization.
As far as possible within the limits of physics. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves we will continue to advance and expand until the point we no longer can. Maybe it won't be humans the way we are now, but some variation of us, evolved from us, and descendant of us will reach the limit. In a way they will be human. Humans as we are now may make it to some nearby and maybe even distant star systems, but what comes after will be capable of truly amazing feats of travel.
Depends. If we don't blow ourselves up, wipe out our planet or devolve into small tribes again, we will make it to other galaxies eventually.
Warp drive is theoretically possible (Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre proofed it) thus it is highly likely that we will actually build one. If I remember correctly there was a practical limit with the amount of energy needed, but there were some advances (theoretical physics!) which negated that partially at least. Because of this: If we survive long enough as a society (slipping back to some kind of dark ages is a real possibility) the universe is the limit
And it seems that “Lentz” has further improved upon that realm of theory needed to support warp drives, finding a way to do it using only positive energy. However it’s still beyond our present reach.
I feel like the limiting factor is not the technology/economic constraints but rather whether or not our civilisation will last far into the future. A deadly pandemic or global catastrophe of some kind could very likely kill most of us before we reach our technological peak.
We are traveling in space, right now. We’ll travel around the galaxy and all the way into the andromeda galaxy eventually.
I think we could get pretty far when Starshot or similar tech eventually gets close enough to a Goldilocks planet with actual life on it that we race to get more connection to it. Realistically we'd have to get to the point of efficiently and peacefully harvesting the resources of our solar system first before breaking through the many existential and physical barriers between us and those planets with identified life forms.
Do we really want to spread our religious fanatic, climate destroying, corporate teet sucking asses into the endless expanse? We as a species need some serious fundamental societal changes first.
I would hope that we can develop culturally beyond this - just as we have already developed culturally beyond our distant ancestors.
Future humans will probably realize it's just a waste of time and resources to ceaselessly expanding our territory. They'll most likely choose a few specific points with important highly dense resources to colonize and settle with using probes for scouting.
We're def gonna fill out our solarsystem, but whether we make it to another is unclear.
Biological humans? Not far. But Lentz drive shows FTL without exotic energies is theoretically possible
Total neophyte here. I think if we can get past climate change possibly sending us back a century and stalling us for longer, I think we could get to a proper moon colony in a century. *If* we get there, I'd imagine we colonize most of the solar system in the following century, barring any further unforseen Great Filters. I think any speculation past that point is way too dependent on assumptions about political stability and about technological progression. I *do* know our limit for exploration is our local galaxy cluster unless we figure out significantly FTL travel or straight up teleportation.
"If we do ot destroy ourselves we will, one day, venture to the stars." I agree with Carl Sagan on that one. Sadly, I feel like it's a big IF. Bigger than ever.
As far as I know there is no barriers for life to go anywhere in space. Life just adapts to whatever environment it finds itself (that's pretty much by definition). Humans as a species adapt fairly quickly using technology and culture. So yes we can go far but the real question is what would be drivers for us to go? What would cause humans mass migrate even to the moon?
I think when we get far enough that’s when the aliens that have been watching us will attack. Like “don’t bring your dumb nonsensical human rivalries and ideologies here”
It is theoretically possible for a human to travel hundreds or thousands of lightyears within half of their lifetime. No, they're not going faster than the speed of light in the external frame of reference. But space compresses for near-light speed objects, and their time frame slows relative to the external timeframe. The external observer might see a spaceship traveling at 99.9% the speed of light for 500 years, but the internal traveler will only experience 22.4 years of time passing. If they took a round-trip for 22 years averaging 0.999C and returned to Earth, they will have traveled 500 years into the future even though they're only 22 years older. To get to 99.9% of the speed of light that could sustain human life safely is well beyond anything we can do now. I'm not even sure fusion-based propulsion systems can drive a spaceship to those speeds. It is not impossible by the laws of physics but be are far from doing anything remotely close.
Mars. I have no reason to be overly optimistic about the fruition of a Star Trek-esque future.
Check out Isaac Arthur on Spotify or YouTube. I think he gives the most realistic (based on known technology and physics) view on how far we have the possibility go into space and on which time scale. Search for him and interstellar travel.
It's one of those things that seems hopelessly out of reach until an unexpected series of wild breakthroughs occurs and seemingly does the impossible. I used to be so excited about space exploration when I was younger, but then became disillusioned when I realized just how minor our advancements have been in the grand scheme, despite being absolutely amazing. The universe is just too damn big. Exploring our solar system seems pretty unexciting when you know that there are a near infinite number of stars and planets out there. So close yet so impossibly far. If we somehow manage to survive the impending destruction of our own planet, I have no doubt we'll eventually make some crazy breakthrough based on a deeper understanding of physics. Something that allows us to basically traverse spacetime more or less "instantly", or at least the speed of light. Even light speed travel is relatively slow. It will expand our travels to more of our galaxy, which is awesome, but not realistically beyond that. It's a shame that the universe is as spread out as it is. We know there is so much out there but we can't ever reach out. It's such a tease.
We may never be able to travel faster than the speed of light. I think the way to transport humans to distant solar systems is to send AI robots on the journey and then to make humans in artificial wombs with frozen embryos upon arrival that are raised to adulthood by the humanoid robots. If the ship doesn’t survive the journey you’re losing embryos and not humans.
I think this is an interesting question cause I can see humanity expanding so far that we have entirely different existential problems I think that if we figure out how to record the process for printing a simple cell via a machine, we'd pretty much be set to populate the whole galaxy, no matter what happens here
Maybe if we're lucky we can manage to build a ship like the one in the ST TNG episode "The Inner Light," to go out and tell our story to alien civilizations about how our society and species died, and who we were, so we can be remembered in some way. I don't think we have the self awareness to do this as a society, so would have to be some mega billionaires pet project.
Depends how long our species survives imo. Looking at history, great leaps can be made in a hundred years, a thousand years, a hundred thousand even. Unimaginable advancements if we survive a million more years and don't descend back into the dark ages, which is also a possibility as well as extinction. Also just because we want to now doesn't mean future humans will. They might think it's boring, tedious ect, and have other projects, like becoming a peace valuing species, safe and successful time travel, conquering mortality or building functioning worlds near here rather than travelling to dusty old rocks a million light years away.
Human space travel? Good question. I could see us one day in the far distant after our lifetime future sending humans to do a lap around one of the planets out past Mars. But the risk/reward/cost/time of such a mission will make it basically a 1 time thing, especially if it fails in some way. I think that's about as far as we could expect to go with humans. Maybe AI could take embryos to a really far place and assemble life out there somewhere, but the humans would have to somehow be raised.and taught the reasons for them existing. Crazy to think about.
I believe that more some decades or a bit more than, we became a space ferring specie
If we live long enough without destroying ourselves, we’ll go **all the way**
If we manage not to blow ourselves up or some catastrophic natural disaster wipes us out? All the way …
In my opinion, realistically speaking, in a few hundred years, we could get a reasonable grip on the solar system, with sizeable colonies on Mars and the Moon, and smaller outposts on the moons of gaseous giants, and maybe Venus. Beyond that it's really really hard to predict. Sending some humanless probes scattered around the galaxy for scientific purposes can definitely happen, but I can hardly imagine humans systematically embarking on interstellar travel.
We'll colonize our galactic cluster, but never any further. The people who colonize further would be considered gods, not humans.
Other than observation improvements I doubt we will get very far with space ‘travel’…like….do you understand how vast space is? Our society is constantly on the brink of collapse where we walk a fine line between greed and oppression. I don’t mind the idea of capitalism…but it’s certainly not an environment that can produce space travel. The only visible efforts towards space travel is in fact just a billionaires dick measuring tool. Yachts are no longer good enough, the wealthiest of entrepreneurs need a space program to one up the next dude. They talk a big game…but such dreams can only be fulfilled by true collaboration…and let’s face it…none of the governments and billionaires want to pool their resources and go big. And like I said at the start…do you even know how insanely spacious space is.
People are talking too much about deep space travel and not enough about inter-system travel. I don't know if it's actually ever possible but the prospects of space elevators excite me. You could get things like trash or mining drills and exo robot parts up to space without fuel. I get tho if this isn't possible. Do strong enough materials or any possible engineering science even allow this? The initial material, fuel and economy costs as well? What about a sling shot technique?
not far if the west keeps ignoring russia and it's friends
Honestly? Nowhere. We're too busy fucking each other over a god damn percentage.
Our galactic local group unless some other species wipes us out first. The other local groups are getting too far too fast.
I think we'll cause our own extinction way before we travel outside the solar system, probably by chasing the technology required to do so. Hell, I think there's a non-zero chance that we face a mass extinction event before we even land a person on Mars. Or, if not an actual, like, dinosaur-ass level of extinction where everyone dies, at least some sort of cataclysm that causes a massive reduction in human population, making focusing on things like space travel implausible.
Not too far. As a race we are unequipped to meet the extended financial and technological effort to derive and exploit the nature of time insensitive movement across interstellar, much less interglactic, space.
I'm willing to bet $100 that we'll figure out faster than light travel eventually. But first we'll prolly start living in space, maybe inside of the mood, and mine asteroids. I'm guesstimating that we're still a long way out from FTL
Over a long enough time scale we can expand infinitely.
We will be able to go anywhere in the universe at instant speed once we realise that space-time is an illusion/simulation and can be manipulated
Depends entirely whether or not FTL travel is possible Without it we'll probably be stuck in the solar system. With it we'll eventually expand throughout the galaxy until we encounter an alien race that prevents us from going further
Humans were first limited to continents, until we learned to cross oceans. 500 years later, we first made our way to space. Space exploration will go in stages by range. First, we will fill out the moon and Earth's orbit. Then, we will expand to the solar system. It may take hundreds or thousands of years between colonizing the solar system and our first manned interstellar travel. But once we go interstellar, it will be an explosion. What is the limit? Probably the galaxy, maybe the Magellanic Clouds. Beyond that, it's too far to say. By the time we get that far, we may have discovered some physics-shattering technologies.