this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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I'm a little more optimistic about it. It's definitely insanely difficult to do, and I don't think a lot of people even get how hard it is and the crazy out of this world (literally) hazards there are with just flying to the moon and Mars.
But more than one country has sent things to the moon, and we seem to have low earth orbit cracked, so I can definitely see people normalizing moon transit and beyond in the inner solar system.
It gets even more hazardous past that though. But like the oceans before I really do believe humanities strive for exploration will endure and someday we'll go further and further.
Extra-solar system is a giant flashing question mark though. That might be the next new ocean, and might take us just as long if longer, if even ever, to conquer.
We could put people on Alpha Centauri in 88 years with 50s technology like Project Orion. The really hard part is figuring out a way to make us use the technology we do have for things like that, instead of for bombing each other back to the stone age.
I get what you're going for, but no we couldn't. The radiation and other interstellar particles and dangers would kill a crew using moon landing technology.
With that kind of propulsion politically available, I doubt finding workable combinations of mitigation strategies to interstellar medium hazards would be the showstopper. Especially not one to hold us back for time scales that oceans did. Getting humans interested in prioritizing projects like that, to me, is the real headscratcher.