If you look at the recent exoplanet photography, you will see, in some cases, planets much farther from their stars than Neptune and big giants.

Also there is the interestelar space, and gravity bound stars... even brown dwarfs can be there, while it couls be a great gravital issue. Who can say what there is there?

I guess it takes a bit more than just being rich to create a successful space launch company after all.

This is live or die for Virgin Orbit. I can't imagine what the team is going through right now.

A valid point. I'm just saying its's not entirely impossible. As anything when you look at things at the scale of a galaxy.

I am not assuming anything, but you're still proving my point.

The original point was that alien life with intelligence would need something like the "industrial revolution", but now you're talking about Middle Eastern Neolithic farmers who migrated to Europe.

The point regarding Neolithic farmers, that is just based on intelligence, and understanding to work as a society. This can easily be achieved by other intelligent alien life.

Another thing that you keep assuming is that, people without better clothing, getting sick from curable illnesses, without simple technology that could make their lives easier, didn't create better clothing, medicine, simple technology because they didn't want to, as opposed to just not being able to (due to not having enough time).

Why didn't Zorg come up with Algebra? Because he didn't want to, or is it because he was too busy hunting and taking care of/protecting his family?

Also, you have to realize, that those who contribute to knowledge, are very few, especially in the beginning. There was 1 Isaac Newton out of millions at that time. There was 1 Galileo out of millions at that time. It would require 1 out of millions and perhaps more for Neanderthals since they weren't living in civilizations.

So, now that we have calculus, because 1 person came up with it, and now is being taught in colleges/universities all throughout the world... would you say that before Newton came up with calculus, let's say the ancient Greek or Egyptian civilizations, would you say that the ancient Egyptians, who used lots of math, just didn't "want" to come up with calculus? Or would you say that humans didn't have enough time yet for that 1 person to come up with calculus?

So, this is why when you say, "Neanderthals didn't want to do X", it doesn't make sense, when the reality was that they just didn't have enough time like Egyptians and calculus.

Virgin Orbit is in final talks to raise funds from Texas-based investor Matthew Brown, two people familiar with the deal told CNBC, amounting to an injection of $200 million.

Virgin Orbit and Brown began deal talks last week, one of the people said, around the same time the company announced it was pausing operations and furloughing most employees to seek a financial lifeline. Brown would get a controlling stake in the rocket builder, according to the people, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss private negotiations.

The parties aim to close the deal as soon as Thursday, the people said.

At the same time, one person familiar with the matter said, the company has continued to talk to another, yet unnamed potential investor, who was in discussion with Virgin Orbit prior to the talks with Brown.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/22/virgin-orbit-nears-funding-deal.html

Sure sure. But it's not a binary answer. It's more like the more ionizing radiation and the harder the ionizing radiation, the lower the probability of life for the simple fact that molecule bonds get torn open.

Awesome! I didn’t realize we were so close to landing something on the moon again. Thanks

It's landing, probably in about a month. It's also delivering a moon rover for the UAE.

Our current spacecraft would take tens of thousands of years to reach Alpha Centauri. Spacecraft that are powered by nuclear fusion would be capable of reaching 0.04-0.12c, greatly reducing the travel time to <100 years, thus making such an interstellar mission far more achievable.

But... dark matter also doesn't interact with normal matter, so how would it create friction?

Apparently high radiation levels do not automatically mean extinction or evolution stop.

See this and that.

What is "life"? What is "intelligent"? These words have a very fuzzy and arbitrary meaning

As much as I'd like to see a mission to Alpha Centauri that would only take 2-3 decades, there are a few significant hurdles that we are going to have to jump over. So far, the 2 main types of proposed methods of interstellar travel have been a "slow" nuclear powered ship that cruises between 0.04-0.12c and a "fast" nano-probe powered by a light sail that can reach 0.10-0.20c.

Project Daedalus was originally conceived in the 1970s as a fusion rocket that ran on deuterium/helium-3 that could travel to Barnard's star at 0.122c. The main drawback is that the amount of Helium 3 required would take roughly 20 years to mine, and the probe would not have any leftover fuel to de accelerate and would instead be a flyby mission. Due to the scarcity of helium-3 and the inability to go into orbit around any potential planets, a probe of Daedalus' design is unlikely to be viable.

Icarus Firefly was designed in 2009 and utilizes a Z-pinch fusion engine running on deuterium/deuterium, which resolves the issue of needing copious amounts of helium-3. However, it would have a maximum cruise velocity of 0.045c, and the after accounting for acceleration/de-acceleration, Firefly would arrive at Alpha Centauri roughly 100 years after it has been launched. I see this as a more viable option than Daedalus, but constructing such a probe in orbit and ensuring that it can operate for 100+ years without fail would be challenging.

Finally, we have Breakthrough Starshot, which is perhaps the most achievable out of the 3. These gram sized probes could reach Alpha Centauri in just 20-40 years, but they would be restricted to fly-bys only and need to be powered by a 100 gigawatt laser array located in space. In order to send such a mission, we would need to effectively scale down sensors, chips, etc to meet the stringent weight limits and then find a way to set up an orbital laser array. Not impossible, but still extremely difficult.

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Send me. I will go and explore this star system.

I think the plan is to send a chain, reason is that the v prices would be too small to power any type of transmitter that could reliably reach earth, so you use the train to relay. also redundancy since space v dust could damage some probes

which project, I only heard the one with the microprobes powered by sails, starshot I think that was called. but that was one way as far as I recall, since you need a laser to power them, which you won't have at destination for the return trip

I don't see how we could do round trip with any type of technology we can design for at least several centuries.

The energy density will go a long way, especially without an extraterrestrial fuel source for propulsion.

Sending data back is the point, and I don't think you need a chain to accomplish that - just make sure the antenna is pointed in the right direction. The person above me seemed to suggest that the probe itself will be brought back, and that's not so. But the data, definitely.

>The director is at their post becuse of their experience, talent and because we think they are the best person to fit for the job.

Here I fixed your sentence.

If you sent several in a chain, the probes could transfer the data back to each other, eventually coming back to earth, no?

Problem is, during that 32 years we’d probably develop faster propulsion!

Just don't send out any messages, I don't want to be two-dimensionalised

Fusion wouldn't help you do that directly