Old Aliens

Guest Post by The Zman

When I was a kid, smart adults still believed that humans would be visiting other planets sooner rather than later. That was mostly a carry over from the previous generations, who managed to get from zero to the moon in roughly a decade. If you were into this stuff in 1968, it was hard not to think that the next stop for man was Mars and then from there the rest of the solar system. By the time I was becoming aware of the world, this was fading, but there were plenty of optimists and romantics, with regards to space travel.

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It really was a generational thing. By the time my generation was noticing things the space program had stalled and there didn’t seem to be a point to it. The competition with the Russians had decayed into a fight over the mundane and pointless. My guess is beating the Russians in hockey counted for more to most Americans than the space shuttle managing to take off, go to space and come back in one piece. Subsequent generations are simply too self-absorbed and self-indulgent to care much about space travel.

Of course, a big part of it is the self-inflicted wounds from previous generations that continue to tax us to this day. If Boomers and their parents had not decided to violate the rules of human nature in the 60’s and 70’s with a laundry list of social programs, things may have been different. The money spent on “fixing race relations” could have financed several trips to the stars. Our ruler’s endless fights with observable reality is like a leash keeping us from doing much more than squabbling over our own destruction.

Putting aside the Spenglerian interpretation of the recent past, there is another way to understand the technological stall. This post the other day by Steve Sailer had some interesting stuff in it, but the space travel stuff is what got my attention. Freeman Dyson is of that generation that thought we would be much further along in exploring the universe than we are today. He still assumes it will happen, despite the obvious decline in overall human capital due to changes in demographics and social mobility.

What occurred to me reading it is humanity probably needs to go through a different period of technological advance, before we can make the great leap to exploring the stars. If you look at the generation of geniuses who took us from propeller planes to rocket ships, peaking with the moon landing, it all happened in about one generation. It really was a remarkable run. In the 1930’s, the concepts of rocketry were being worked out and 30 years later a rocket was hurling men to the moon. That’s a great career.

That’s what it really is, one career. The sorts of people who work on these types of projects are not starting as teenagers. They go through years of education and apprenticeship, before they get on the big project. A career making project is going to be one that happens within the normal span of a human career, which is about 30 years for a cutting edge scientist.  A guy like David Reich, who is doing groundbreaking work in ancient genetics, is never going to do much of anything else. This is his peak.

Well, if you are an ambitious guy looking to do space work and be part of a great project, you’re not picking one that will take 50 years to finish. Some people may be fine toiling away at some small aspect of the 50 year project, but most people, especially the people funding it, are not going to find it appealing. If Elon Musk is going to bankroll a trip to Mars, he wants it to happen in the next decade, so he can take credit for it. The same is true of the scientist he would recruit. They want to get it done before they retire or die.

What this means is that space travel, beyond orbiting the earth or maybe revisiting the Moon, is going to first require extending the human life span. A mission to land people on Mars and return them to earth is probably 30 years away. Getting propulsion technology to traverse the solar system is a fifty or sixty year project. Figuring out how to survive longer periods in space is an even longer project. Before humans figure any of this out, it is going to mean living much longer lives so that a person can have a 50 or 60 year working life.

Think about it. If a person could reasonably assume a working career that started in the mid-20’s and goes strong to 100, with a slight decline at the end, that’s roughly a 60 year prime working life. With twice the time, you take more risks and you take on different career objectives. Suddenly a twenty year project to put men on Mars is not that big of a deal to the financiers or the scientists. Stretch the lifetime out further and the much more daunting projects can be chipped away at by a team expecting to finish in their lifetime.

Logically, it means the same would hold for some alien species that eventually comes to visit us on earth. Those aliens we have stored in Area 51 are probably very old, as their species had to unriddle problems that would take hundreds of years to solve, not to mention the fact that it was an extremely long trip from their home planet. The nearest habitable planet outside out solar system is roughly four light years from earth, which means it was a very long trip for our alien visitors. They must have been extremely old.

The other aspect of this is a longer life would mean more experience. Our IQ may be fixed, but we have an infinite capacity for screwing up. The longer the life, the more trial and error a person would endure. Someone living 500 earth years is not going to be any better at math, but they would be much more prudent. That would mean at the upper limits, the species would become less rash and less prone to error. Those dead aliens in New Mexico are an outlier, because their kind rarely misses its intended target.

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TPC
TPC

“What this means is that space travel, beyond orbiting the earth or maybe revisiting the Moon, is going to first require extending the human life span.”

Got it in one.

We will never see one without the other.

Stephen
Stephen

Distance is farther than the moon or impossible. The physiological stress on the body is too much. Just your eyes-you’ll go blind with any extended stay in space.

Also, it’s befuddledme how we got to the Moon with a minuscule fraction of technological capabilities we have today, and in the modern-day of the space shuttle, about half of those missions have ended In catastrophe.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

“…in the modern-day of the space shuttle, about half of those missions have ended In catastrophe.” – Stephen da Moran

2 out of 135 missions does equal half.

The total number of crew members of all 135 space shuttle missions, with some individuals riding multiple times and 14 astronauts killed during the Challenger and Columbia accidents. 789: The number of astronauts and cosmonauts who have returned to Earth on a NASA shuttle.Jul 21, 2011

General
General

We already have the tech to go to Mars. We just lack the will. Plus it doesnt help that the bankers are stealing so much wealth.

Mousanony
Mousanony

That’s the key point right there. So long as humanity insists on being ruled over by people who claim the magical nonexistent authority to engage in criminal behavior, we will never make it to Mars, nevermind any other star systems. Mankind is far too primitive, and it’s not the tech. We have some serious evolving to do yet.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

Faulty premise.

We never went to the Moon.

Hollywood Rob

Hahahaha HSF. You one funny guy. How is your maple syrup coming this year?

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

T’was a decent year, in the midst of bottling this week and will begin packaging and shipping this weekend.

In case you overlooked it NASA just produced a gif of a snowstorm on comet 67p (Rosetta mission). It took about seven paragraphs t discover it wasn’t “actually” a snowstorm on an “actual” comet, but it was a really good cgi, so there’s that.

Jimmy Torpedo
Jimmy Torpedo

Van Allen.
I cannot believe people still think man has been to the moon without a lead spaceship.
Try reading something Rob.
Everything you believe is a lie.

Luminae
Luminae

Until recently, I would have vehemently argued that point. Sadly, I can now only agree….
Although an alternative, expendable crew may have gone.

Remember NASA is DOD, ahem military. Loyalty is paramount.

Certainly the missing billions or trillions could be indicative of funding for the breakaway civ. If not it, was an expensive insignia patch.

Nevertheless, it sure would be nice to focus Hubble on the face of the moon…and what about that Chinese lander that went there a few years back? Haven’t heard much about it.

Mars? By ourselves? Without assistance? Unless we’ve been there already…not for 100 years…and if/when they go they better be packin’ some of that best dadgum maple syrup.

ordo ab chao
ordo ab chao

An open cry for transhumanism? My bet is that the earth will be ‘visited’ by the aliens you seek long before mankind accomplishes such. Hell, the Jesuit Pope is currently making plans for just such an ‘arrival’– “Exo-Vaticana” Petrus Romanus, Project L.U.C.I.F.E.R., and the Vatican’s Astonishing Plan for the Arrival of an Alien Savior. Only “they” will not be extraterrestrial, but rather extra-dimensional beings. And yes, “they” are very, very old!

They ‘grin’ technologies (which I like to call the grain technologies) Genetics, Robotics, (Artificial) Intelligence, and Nanotechnologies are here, even as we speak!

Bob P
Bob P

But if we dedicate billions to exploring the final frontier, we’d have to divert the money from warfare and welfare. How would the stockholders and employees of our military/industrial complex prosper if the USA can’t afford the tools to slaughter pesky foreigners? How would the criminal bankers be able to afford their fifth vacation home? How would lazy welfare bums find the money to smoke and drink? Have you given any thought to the misery the policies you advocate would cause, you heartless meanie?

kokoda the Deplorable Raccoon and I-LUV-CO2
kokoda the Deplorable Raccoon and I-LUV-CO2

Bob….the MIC is already working on the plan. They realize the easy picking fruit on planet earth is in the end game. The new frontier will be the aliens intent on destroying earth. Think of the Tens of Trillions needed; the Fed/Treasury will get sore fingers from adding the zeroes.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

comment image

EL Coyote
EL Coyote
Martel's Hammer

Actually give the time scales and radiation and likely destruction (meteors, etc.) it would make more sense to send robots and automated ships not piloted ships. Once we master faster than light speed travel (if we ever do) then humans are likely to expand rapidly across the cosmos. At anything approaching light speed its always going to be a One-Way trip in the sense that if you make it back everybody you know will be long dead and gone and you will a stranger in a strange land due to the impacts of relativity. Yes quite possible that “aliens” will just be demons manifesting. Alternatively would aliens with the tech to get here even notice us? Do we pay attention to ants? Not usually and if we step on them we don’t feel bad about it.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Way ahead of you, Marty, that’s the Mars Exploration Rovers and the Voyagers 1 and 2 Or as NASA would say, we’re all over it.

Anonymous
Anonymous

That’s how the Borg got started.

None Ya Biz
None Ya Biz

Do the people of earth pay attention to ants? Now that is a legitimate question.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

The article is based on a false premise: he spoke of space aliens like it’s something real.
Then he surmises that man has to live a long time. I guess he forgot Einstein’s theory that time slows down as speed increases. Then old Hawkins said mass increases as an object approaches light speed. Even if an object could accelerate through space by sling-shotting around a large planet like a damn pinball, where will it get sufficient energy to lift off from Earth’s gravity? Von Braun said such a vehicle would have to be several times the size of any rocket seen to date.

Gilnut
Gilnut

“I guess he forgot Einstein’s theory that time slows down as speed increases.”

EC, understand that this is based on Einstein’s thory of relativity, so time would slow down ‘relative’ to a fixed point in space. There’s nothing to say that the ‘relative’ time wouldn’t then catch back up as speed decreased. (It’s actually right there in the math, I can ‘see it’ but am just a bit shy on theoretical math in order to express it correctly in equations.) Also, most of Einstein’s theory’s are only valid if the speed of light is constant, right now there is a lot of debate on that subject.

mark branham
mark branham

Just a few things:

Humans will never even approach speed of light travel… nor is there ever a need for such.

The earth has been without the aid of universe communication for the last 200,000 years. As normal planets have such communication there is no mystery about “alien” life. One day such communication will be restored.

Most questions people have, about most things, are already answered… ya’ just have to look in the right place.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

Not the Book of Mormon, I hope.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Humans will never even approach speed of light travel… nor is there ever a need for such.

Hawkins said an object traveling at light speed would become as massive as the universe. Even at light speed, which you say there is no need for, it would take years to reach any solar systems beyond the 4+ year hop to Alpha Centauri.

RHS Jr
RHS Jr

Many types of Alien Beings (based on others reports) are on Earth in real machines (I’ve seen 3 types of UFOs within 100 ft). I didn’t need to know how they did it to see them; and neither did the Sumerians, Indians, Jews, Europeans, etc. The Evil Elite are working with some of them and keeping US in the Dark; I will not hesitate to call on Jesus if I run into one of them (or into an Alien Being).

NickelthroweR
NickelthroweR

Greetings,
The reason we have not continued on to the stars is that we are a bunch of pussies. We’ve come to demand the equivalent of air bags in everything related to manned spaceflight. We should be hammering out spaceships like crazy and sticking people in them to see what happens but we are too afraid. Notice that I didn’t say “rockets” as it no longer makes any sense to explode our way in to low Earth orbit.

I should be able to hop in to something that looks like a car and go fly to the moon to have lunch. Why that isn’t possible nearly 50 years after our first visit dumbfounds me. I haven’t seen the innovation from NASA that should have come with the increase in computational power. Computers that are a billion times more powerful than what first brought us to the moon should allow for us to magic our way back again with ease.

By now we should have modes of transportation that would appear as wizardry to our parents. I should be going to the grocery store on a magic carpet yet nothing has changed – nothing.

Luminae
Luminae

Just to toss up an analogy…our current fuel based technologies are akin to a bicycle chain and gears.

Try going coast-to-coast on a bicycle. Damn hard, although it can be done. Eventually we will build, discover, acquire or back engineer other propulsion techs that will make hypersonic flight look like a bicycle chain.

Then again…maybe we are simply…trapped.

C1ue
C1ue

Nice try, but the real problem with space travel is the cost of energy.
Remember the Arab oil embargo?

Pat

Until we find some other method of propulsion, we aren’t going much of anywhere IMO. How long would it take to safely accelerate to a speed anywhere worth achieving to get somewhere? Just the routine missions NASA does requires about 92-95% of the weight of a launch to be fuel and rocket and the rest is payload. There are no supply depots in deep space. Also what kind of g-force can be tolerated for the (very long) period required to accelerate to super high speed? Then, the deceleration you would have to begin about half way there in order to again avoid too much g-force. I havn’t even mentioned radiation, micrometeors, bone and tissue atrophy and the possibility of going crazy en route. I’m just scratching the surface of the challenges, i’m sure. 6 successful moon missions without a glitch will prove to be the pinnacle. Alternatively, 6 (6-1/2?) successfully faked missions would be an even greater achievement.

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