which lays out just how vast outer space is, and how time (with travel being strictly limited by the speed of light) as much as distance limits the feasibility of voyages between stars, especially back-and-forth voyages between stars.
both emphasize that traveling to a nearby star is already a huge task.
The probable density in the universe of intelligent living things (the "aliens" of the title of the submitted blog post) among all the many stars is low. All those aliens run into the same hard physical laws we run into if they attempt to make a voyage to another star. To the most relevant correct approximation, our probability of meeting interstellar voyagers is even lower than our probability of being interstellar voyagers, and our probability of being interstellar voyagers during the lifetime of anyone now reading Hacker News is nil. Remember, we have not even visited Mars, not even on the proposed one-way trip,
and humankind has delayed in traveling to Mars far beyond my imagining (I thought that the trip would be made in 1980s, and even dreamed of being on the landing crew) because humankind has higher priorities and better claims on our shared resources. So the submitted blog post title is correct, even if you quibble about the blogger's reasoning (as I do). We won't meet the aliens, because the aliens won't make a trip here before we all die.
http://www.olivenri.com/conquer_space_files/Conquer_space.pd...
which lays out just how vast outer space is, and how time (with travel being strictly limited by the speed of light) as much as distance limits the feasibility of voyages between stars, especially back-and-forth voyages between stars.
A blogger on a planetarium website
http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/why-we-will-never-conquer-s...
and the maker of a Prezi based on Clarke's essay
http://prezi.com/uxc2owcv5ekp/well-never-conquer-space/
both emphasize that traveling to a nearby star is already a huge task.
The probable density in the universe of intelligent living things (the "aliens" of the title of the submitted blog post) among all the many stars is low. All those aliens run into the same hard physical laws we run into if they attempt to make a voyage to another star. To the most relevant correct approximation, our probability of meeting interstellar voyagers is even lower than our probability of being interstellar voyagers, and our probability of being interstellar voyagers during the lifetime of anyone now reading Hacker News is nil. Remember, we have not even visited Mars, not even on the proposed one-way trip,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5390730
and humankind has delayed in traveling to Mars far beyond my imagining (I thought that the trip would be made in 1980s, and even dreamed of being on the landing crew) because humankind has higher priorities and better claims on our shared resources. So the submitted blog post title is correct, even if you quibble about the blogger's reasoning (as I do). We won't meet the aliens, because the aliens won't make a trip here before we all die.