You don’t need FTL travel or multi-generational ships really. If you get close enough to the speed of light, time dilation can make the travel time for the people on the ship be as short as you want. Only for the people that stay on earth would the spaceship appear to take generations. Getting enough energy to reach such high speeds would be the difficult part as well as accelerating quickly without crushing the travellers.
scytale@piefed.zip 4 days ago
We won’t even be able to reach it until we can figure out FTL travel or technology that can support multi-generational passengers to get there.
yobasari@feddit.org 3 days ago
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
And presumably not vapourising from collisions with random particles in space while travelling at a significant fractions of C.
Xaphanos@lemmy.world 4 days ago
FTL travel implies a mastery over spacetime itself. After that, a practical time machine is a matter of engineering details.
We can be sure that we never get there because we are not flooded with tourists from the future. QED.
Windex007@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I love the hubris of this argument. It’s the identical construction of guys who say a woman must be a lesbian if they’re not into them.
bluGill@fedia.io 4 days ago
For that matter they have not sent travelers to us.
toynbee@lemmy.world 3 days ago
As a kid, I once heard the theory that aliens are actually time travelers fucking with people.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 days ago
i wouldnt call it mastery, implies you can control spacetime as well, just finding ways around the speed of light limitations.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That depends on the type of FTL we use. Some just require infinite energy or exotic particles to work. No mastery of spacetime needed.