In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Tue, 7 Feb 2023 15:45:14 -0500:
Hi,
[snip]
>Robin <mixent...@aussiebroadband.com.au> wrote:
>
>
>> >What makes you think such things are possible? Is there any evidence for
>> >them?
>>
>> The evidence of my own eyes . . .
>
>
>You have seen these machines?
I have seen a UFO in the sky on a sunny cloudless day, through binoculars, in
1996.
The fact that it only moved slowly ("drifting hover"), and had no apparent
means of locomotion, tells me that it
probably used some form of anti-gravity.
>
>
>
>> >They seem like pure science fiction to me.
>>
>> They always do, until you have seen it for yourself.
>> Besides, everything is SF until our understanding advances a little
>> further, and it becomes science fact.
>
>
>If "everything" is science fiction until our understanding advances, then
>why not wait until we have teleportation and faster-than-light
>transportation?
Perhaps I should have said "everything real". Which is not to say that
teleportation &/or FTL will never be invented,
but at the moment they seem further removed than a propellant-less drive.
>
>I think we have no basis to assume that everything we can imagine, such as
>faster than light travel, is certain to be realized sooner or later.
Agreed. What I was trying to say is that every real discovery was thought to be
SF before it was actually discovered.
>Some
>things are impossible. Granted, we can never be 100% sure that something is
>impossible, but we can be 99.9999% sure about many things.
Well we can certainly say that, given our current level of understanding, many
things are highly unlikely.
>
>Regarding your original statement, it seems to me that if we are ever able
>to colonize planets on distant stars, there are probably millions of
>planets that would be nice to live on. Places either similar to earth, or
>capable of being terraformed. So why bother going to one that is too hot or
>requires extreme technology such as anti-gravity just to live on it?
...because the closest ones may not be so nice, and also because the really
nice ones may already be inhabited.
Furthermore, terra-forming is likely to be a slow process taking years at
least, and possibly millennia.
Besides, a little closer to home, anti-gravity also implies the ability to
increase gravity, which would probably make
life on the Moon or Mars, more comfortable, and less likely to have adverse
affects on the bodies of the inhabitants.
Zero G affects the bodies of Astronauts adversely, so gravity < 1G probably
does too, though it may take longer.
There are also a number of moons & minor planets in our own Solar system that
could be made habitable in this way. For
the time being, I would rule out all the planets except Mars.
Gravity on the surface of Mars, is 0.38 G, that of the Moon 0.166 G.
Cloud storage:-
Unsafe, Slow, Expensive
...pick any three.
