• Question: Can humankind achieve long range space travel?

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Elaine Cloutman-Green

      Elaine Cloutman-Green answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I believe in time we will be able too. I think that we could send people to parts of this galaxy, although currently a lot of time would pass and the members of the crew would get very old on the way.

      I think fueling and carrying enough food and oxygen might be a problem for voyages lasting years. That said in the 1950s no one would have considered that landing on the moon would be possible. Humanity can accomplish amazing things when it decides that it’s worth the effort.

    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      I suspect the answer is yes, but we’ll have to take this one giant step at a time. Currently going to Mars is definitely possible, and there are some research projects that are investigating just how we’ll do that.

      There are lots of issues, but as I understand it we have the technology to do everything that we would want to do. The key difference between visiting Mars or the Moon is time. The quickest possible trip there and back is about 9 months (it’s all to do with plant alignment), but as you would want to spend sometime on the planet surface realistically trips would take 18 months or so.

      I see two huge problems here!

      Firstly you’ll spend most, perhaps nearly all, of that 18 months in a room in a space ship with two or more other people. Nobody gets on all the time, so what happens when two of your fellow travellers argue or fall out? There’s nowhere to go. So it’s got a great potential to drive the spacemen or spacewomen completely mad.

      Secondly, on such a long trip you’d have to take everything with you, and therefore grow your own food, and recycle all the water. Drinking other peoples urine is not high on my list of priorities on things to do before I die.

      As for whether it’s safe. Absolutely not! And the problem is that if even a small thing was to go wrong nobody is going to be able to be able to help or even rescue you.

      So I won’t be volunteering.

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