More on Space Travel

Scientists are talking about quantum communications much more often lately. Will it matter in the search for intelligent life in the universe? Most scientists think it just might, after all we know radio communication is a ridiculous thought when talking about universal communication. It is almost always impractical. Voyager one is being monitored by radio and it takes 22.5 hours for it to receive a signal from NASA and another 22.5 hours to receive a signal back and it takes longer the further away it gets. This type of communication is just about useless. Do I think we might pick up a quantum communication signal some day? It depends. If it is being sent by a device maybe, but there have been some indication signals might be capable of being sent by an alien’s brain. Take the case of the time we were performing remote viewing and accidently broke in to an alien ship and could see everything. The aliens were able to become aware of this and it was quickly broken off. We don’t know if this even has anything to do with quantum communication. It could be an entirely different process and the most interesting part of this is it seems we can do it today, at least some of us can.

It is being said remote viewing, which is a form of it, can be taught to almost anyone and some are better at it than others, but most seem to have the ability. It is strictly not just communication but features signals which come into people’s brains leading to locations and what is in them

Without fast communications and much faster speed, a speed which is many hundreds of times or much faster than light speed, space travel becomes an extremely dangerous pursuit. How can we make space travel safer in this situation. One way might be to send out two spacecraft to the same place at once incase one has a problem which can’t be fixed. At least the crew might be able to be transferred to the other ship. I believe this is why we should not venture out of the solar system until we can reach a target in a reasonable time period. Another thing we should never do is trust a cryogenic system to put the crew to sleep and depend on it to wake them years later. Even if we would perfect this method of travel, it is fraught with problems. So many things could go wrong. Imagine there is an emergency and the crew is awakened years before reaching their destination. What the heck would they do then. They probably wouldn’t have enough food and water to live for the entire voyage. Maybe even worse might be the fact there would only be enough for some of them.

These scenarios have been the basis for some science fiction movies in the past, but this could be a real problem.  There are just so many different things which could happen while the crew sleeps. First of all, there is the problem of having to trust a computer to function correctly for years while you slept. I am sorry but there isn’t a computer which was ever made I would trust in this system. I am not saying it would go HAL on me, a reference from 2001 a Space Odyssey. What I am saying is due to my experience with computers since the 1970s to today, I have never seen a perfect one which didn’t have problems even if they only happened infrequently. The one I use is very good, but I still would not trust it with my life.

Another problem might be the ship goes off course due to an undetected glitch and when the crew awakens, they have no idea where they are, and there are no habitable worlds within reach and they are doomed because there is no way a rescue ship can be sent to save them.

There is still much about the universe we do not know, and some of the things we think we understand might turn out to be wrong. Maybe speed will not be as important as we now think. You are probably wondering how I can say this, after all I have always been for more speed for space travel? The reason I am saying this is if we find the universe is riddled with wormholes and we can transverse them they might lead to other areas in space we want to get to, that is assuming they are shortcuts. There is another idea which some scientists are pursuing and that is how to create a worm hole. Imagine if we were on a spaceship which could create wormholes, that might just be all we need to  travel the universe, again making an assumption they would allow us to travel between solar systems and perhaps even galaxies.

I think if we don’t wipe ourselves out, or set back our technology due to war or plagues, we are destined to be a space traveling race. The only way we will eventually survive is to have colonized other planets so if anything happens to earth, humans will still exist. As I have said many times, I don’t believe a transporter can help because by the very nature of what it does it would kill us by disassembly and create a clone which might believe it was the same person. It is one of the very few devices on Star Trek I don’t believe would work on living matter, unless you wanted to create a clone of something. Remember the original would have to die.

One thing which might be a good idea would be to establish emergency stations stocked with food and fuel, and also with communication devices along well traveled routes. Every spacecraft should have a printer for making parts for the ship and the material to make them out of. This would save the space which would have been needed for parts and allow it to be used for some other purpose. Maybe, one day, they could also have a food printer to create food and even cook it. It would have to be some sort of food synthesizer and air cooker. This would not be as cool as the Star Trek Replicator, but it is closer to our reach right now.

Space is full of problems and we humans have not been designed to easily travel through it. There are many forces which could destroy us out there such as radiation, gravity, lack of oxygen and such. Space wants to kill us and it is up to us to conquer it.