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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Banshee16" data-source="post: 5277394" data-attributes="member: 7883">Erk.....just a tad.....that should have said 60 light years....but I think while writing it I was thinking it may as well take 60 million years to get there, at current speeds.I didn't think we had stars that "close" to us.  I thought they were much further out.  In any case, do we really *know* that no stars closer than 300 light years away have planets?  Or have we just not seen them yet?  As far as I know, it's only in the last 10-20 years that we've been starting to actually, definitely "see" planets around other stars.  My understanding is that even with the best telescopes, we don't "see" planets around other stars...we mainly get guestimate that they're there, based on seeing refracted light that tells of the presence of certain gases or minerals that indicate planets, or calculate based on analyzing gravitational movements of other stars, which indicate planetary bodies are circling them.I'd guess that there are a lot more planets out there, even in our close neighbourhood, and it's just that our instrumentation isn't powerful enough to detect it yet.  Plus, budgets applied to finding planets etc. are still limited, hence we might be able to find more planets closer, sooner, if we were able to throw more money into detecting them.Similar to how budgetary limitations mean that we're really blind to how many space rocks with civilization or nation-ending potential are out there, on possible collision courses.So, again, barring some kind of technical discovery, such as figuring out that wormholes exist in anything besides the theoretical, and then actually using them to move vast distances instantly, we don't have any conclusive way to move to these other star systems in any approximation of feasible time periods.  I mean, Michael Crichton did it in "Sphere", but who knows if that will ever happen?I'm not sure we'll ever get nuclear drives working for space travel.  And even if we did have a craft capable of going 90% of the speed of light, and as a result, we get to a star that is 4.2 light years away in 4.6 years.......isn't there a dilation effect whereby people left behind on earth will have experienced a longer period of time?  Or is that not correct?  If it *is* correct, how much time would have passed on earth while they were traveling to the next star?Of course you never know.  Science is progressing rapidly in a lot of fields.  I had read that cryogenic suspension was basically science fiction....because when they try to "thaw" subjects after suspending them the cells rupture, and they die (when working with cells in the lab, not with human test subjects).  But I've also read that in the last 2-3 years, they've been making strides, and they're talking about experimenting with extreme cold used to slow or suspend physiological activity in accident victims, in order to improve survival rates in trauma victims.  The article had commented that most trauma victims who die, die because they bleed out before the doctors can fix the damage.  So if they can slow down the body's systems so that doctors can repair the damage, the person could be brought back once the damage is repaired.And if they can do that, it would likely be a big step in the right direction to some kind of cryogenic suspension, you would think.As to whether to colonize other planets or not.  As a matter of species survival it makes sense, if possible.  All it would take is one bad day encountering a space rock, and that's it for homo sapiens.  Heck, we could have a day that's bad enough to maybe not kill everyone, but eliminate 99% of the global population, and send us back to the stone age.Haven't astronomers said something about human civilization having evolved during a period when our solar system was passing through a part of the galaxy where there was a relatively low level of space clutter, but we're moving back into the busier areas?  Obviously solar systems move very slowly.....but the technological, practical, and financial advances to get us to other planets are so significant, what is the likelihood we get anywhere before we get hit by something big?And if it's not that, global climate change could make things unpleasant, we could run out of certain needed materials/supplies, have a global nuclear conflict, or run into the next ice age.  Any of those things could put us in a position where we have no resources to devote to space travel.Banshee</blockquote>

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