
Close and tranquil solar system has astronomers excited - olvy0
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/close-and-tranquil-solar-system-has-astronomers-excited/
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greeneggs
Just for context, there are 22 other solar systems within 12 light years of
us.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs#List)

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_Microft
_" Mr. Data, report to the stellar cartography and prepare a view of sector
001 and all stars within a radius of a few parsec."_

Here is a map:
[http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html](http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html)

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caiobegotti
Please just make JWST operational at last, please.

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curiousgal
I've always been curious, when the design phase ends and construction begins,
wouldn't new technologies have emerged by then? Do they try to keep up and
incorporate improvements or are new breakthroughs rare?

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caiobegotti
After 25 years in the making and now waiting to be launched, technology of
course has advanced enough for JWST to be "obsolete" in that sense by the time
it's operational. However, new space telescopes take so long to be operational
but they still give us amazing data... even if what they give us is peanuts
from old dusty tech it's still worth it. Anyways, JWST is going to be
incredible... heck, even after so many years Hubble still produce a ridiculous
amount of good data and research and it was designed in the 70s! Can you
imagine if launching was cheap and we had a constant flow of budget for space
telescopes and we could launch a new improvement every year (after an initial
ramp-up of, say, 10 years)? Unfortunately launch costs and cadence has been a
major blocker so far to the things you asked about IMHO.

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dotancohen
Just wait for Starship. It promises all that, and the possibility of an eight-
meter aperture.

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einpoklum
We still don't know:

1\. If those planets have water. 2\. If their surface gravity is tolerable.
3\. What kind of atmosphere they have, if any. 4\. What's the mineral
composition of those planets. 5\. How violent the surface weather is, provided
an atmosphere does exist.

So, there's only cause for cautious optimism.

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senectus1
Musk ever spoken about what he'd do to get outside of the solar?

Speed of light is a bastard of a limitation to have to beat...

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admax88q
Only for those left behind, time dilation is magic.

As per wikipedia: > a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel
through the entire known Universe in one human lifetime

So it's really only a challenge of propulsion. You're not making a return trip
to any recognizable civilization though.

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d_silin
The amount of energy required to keep that 1g acceleration though...

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z3t4
Particles accelerate to light speed all the time though. So it is possible, we
have not yet discovered a way to do it at larger scale.

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airstrike
Particles also don't care so much about how quickly they stop...

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egeozcan
“Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets
you.”

Jeremy Clarkson

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cynusx
So realistically we have two ways of colonizing this. Either we cure aging so
a few decades of space travel wouldn't make a dent in our life and our
physical ability to colonize an uninhabited environment OR we invent real AI
and leave space colonization to the machines as they have both don't age and
can transport themselves at the speed of light.

I'd say machines will be cheaper.

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fierarul
Using AI seems pointless. Not to mention that what need would an AI have for a
planet. Might as well put a solar sail in our system. Maybe make a few
thousand clones...

How about sending a whole village for the voyage? Some will die, some will be
born, culture will be thought and the next generation would colonise the new
planet.

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simcop2387
A fun book about this idea, Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora.

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soared
Similarly, Red Mars by the same author takes the much easier goal of
colonizing mars!

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gchokov
Can we just accept habitable zone planets exists in every single star system
around us? Thanks.

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dylan604
No, because there's no evidence that's true. We've found lots of stars with
planets around them where none of them appear habitable.

