What Space Travel?

As I was waiting for my son at his school, I was parked under one of the many trees that line the road in his school. I reclined the drivers seat to relax while waiting. Outside the sky was clear with a few puffs of clouds floating by. Just staring at the big expanse of blue sky makes you feel really, really very small. The night before the same sky was filled with blinking stars and now it seems like that they have taken the day off after a night of heavy blinking.

How can one even think of traveling to those distant stars. With the technology of today we can hardly set foot on the moon and be back for lunch. Yet we dream of deep space travel. Lets look at some speed facts. The speed of light is approximately 300,000Km/sec. or 187,500miles/sec. As light years are used as units of measurements in space, multiply the speed of light (187,500miles/sec) x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 to get how far light has traveled in 1 year.

What is the diameter of the Milky Way? It is 100,000 light years! What does that mean? Multiply the distance light travels in 1 year by 100,000 to get the approximate diameter of the Milky Way and then begin to wonder at the greatness of God’s creation.

We are not going anywhere in the form we are in and with the mode of transport that we have today. Your car could have a speed potential of up to 150 mph. The speed of the space shuttle is approximately 17,500mph.

The Voyager spacecraft left the solar system at 37,000 mph. At that speed, it would take Voyager 80,000 years to reach our nearest star - Proxima Centauri.

Just imagine you are a goldfish in a bowl that has been fixed to a toy pickup truck with batteries.

You are now trying to cross the Sahara desert. What are your chances? zilch!

We have only thought about the speed and the vastness of space. We are our worst liabilities. Most of us have an average life span of 70 -75 years. So, how far can we go with that time frame? 70 -75 is from birth to death. The actual useful time is much less. We also need oxygen and food. The vehicle also needs fuel. How big can the storage of this vehicle be to travel for such a long period of time. This is assuming we can develop a spacecraft that can travel at the speed of light which is still not sufficient. It has to be able to travel many times the speed of light. The only way we are getting out of this solar system is in a different form, probably in a spirit form. Back to the Star Wars movies or Star Trek to travel to space at warp speed! Whatever that means! Below are some photos of interest for future space travellers.

Distance Comparison

Supernova

Space Shuttle