💾 Archived View for cosmic.voyage › outpost%20M-48 › FTL%20travel.txt captured on 2020-10-31 at 00:51:54.
⬅️ Previous capture (2020-09-24)
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Humanity has been theorizing about the possibilities of interstellar colonization long before it even qualified for Type I civilization on Kardashev scale. Before we event sent our first seed ship, it has been theorized that it will take several generations before it even pass the half-way mark towards it's destination. Some even suggested that by the time the first such ship would arrive, the rest will already have developed faster and more efficient ways of travel between interstellar bodies. Some were putting their hopes in quantum computing, or even self-teaching AI, but alas, our machines are still only as perfect as their creators. Here we are, still floating around at sub-light speeds, spending the first half of the journey speeding up and the other half slowing down and praying for our calculations to be correct. As fascinating as it may seem, even the stars move around. We have to calculate the trajectory of our target and account for the delay caused by the speed of light and the distance, because by the time the star's light reaches our eyes, it might be already long gone. In the better case, it merely moves from it's previous position. Worst case, it's gone supernova and our ship will arrive to a newly formed black hole... Then there is this little annoying thing backed up by out observations from our home planet - the universe (or at least it's observable part at least) is expanding - we can tell, because the stars are gradually changing their color spectrum towards red and infra-red meaning the light itself is taking longer and longer to travel all the way to our photoreceptors... Sounds depressing doesn't it?