2100: What will life be like by then? What will humanity have accomplished by then?

[FoolKiller]

It's a good dream, but we're nowhere near that kind of propulsion breakthrough. Largely, space travel is still done the way it was on day 1 - blow **** up to push you around. We do have ion propulsion these days, but it's brand new stuff and it's not going to be useful for interstellar travel. What you're talking about would have to be accomplished by some sort of completely new concept in propulsion - something we've basically seen only once since the dawn of space travel.

What was that once?

Anyway, I feared it was a pipe dream. I'm rereading the Ender saga and I think the whole relativistic speeds thing has gotten stuck in my head. Maybe I just like the idea of being relatively 35 3,000 years from now.

Part of me would like to think that at some point in the next hundred years or so we could have some sort of physics breakthrough. I mean, sometimes it really only takes one thing to open a whole new world.

Oh well, after this I am going to reread the Rama series and then I'll be on about travel measured in generations on multi-city sized colony ships.

 

[Danoff]

What was that once?

Ion propulsion. It's very different than what we started exploring the solar system with, but it's slower than rocket propulsion - not the direction you wanted to go.

 

[hellnback]

I was watching Discovery channel about the history of the moon just recently...

It said an object got drawn in by the superior gravitational pull of the Earth, these two stellar objects collided and after both were changed quite dramatically, the smaller one (moon) began to orbit the larger one (Earth).

The moon then was orbiting Earth at a considerably closer orbit than today and this caused the Earth to be quite unstable on it's axis, rotational speed, and created conditions, volcanic, seasonal and all, that in effect lead to the evolutionary timeline/conditions (but that's another thread) as we know it today.

As the moon slowly over billions of years away from Earth it became a more 'calming influence' on Earth, rotation slowed and it's 'wobble' on it's axis became the 23.5ish degrees it is today.

Theorists have that at present the Moon is in the 'range' where it is of most benefit to Earth's development conditions (it's not too strong or too weak), and as it moves away over the next couple of billions of years Earth will slowly become more unstable, as the moons influence diminishes, and it will slowly revert back to the unstable planet it once was.

On a side a 'wild' theory lots believe is possible (heaps of literature) for a dramatic magnetic change on Earth is Planet X will reappear back into the Solar System from it's irregular orbit of the Sun (akin to Pluto's). As this Planet X is of the mass mid Saturn/Uranus, when it passes Earth with reasonably close proximity, it will cause catastrophic changes on Earth, volcanic, earthquakes, tidal waves, tornado's/hurricanes, magnetic shift. This all happens very quickly and supposedly ~90% of Earths population will perish. I've heard many different dates for this event btw.

As for 2100? All I know for sure is either of these two things in all probability won't happen.

 

[Danoff]

It said an object got drawn in by the superior gravitational pull of the Earth, these two stellar objects collided and after both were changed quite dramatically, the smaller one (moon) began to orbit the larger one (Earth).

I'm not up on my geological origins for the moon. I had always assumed that it formed near the earth during the early stages of the solar system. Catching it seems very unlikely, especially given its shape and the shape of its orbit. Now I'm interested and am going to have to do some reading.

 

[hellnback]

Danoff, did a little search myself, and although collision theory is most widely accepted a 'most likely'. The scenario is a little different to what I took from the doco (prolly cause I was on 'net reading at same time), it appears Earth collided with a 'Mars size' object, but it was the debris of this collision that formed the moon and not the object itself.