Do We Have Enough Time To Colonize Space Before The Sun Burns Out? Also The Year 2125.. Let's Talk About That...

[Spacescifi]

 

Do we have enough time though.... provided we don't nuke ourselves silly so that we have the time to progress technologically?

Secondary question: I think technological progress is incremental... you cannot make great leaps of technology without a fundamental understanding of the physics in play that allow us to make our technological marvels. That said... what advances do you predict to be here in 2125 (a century later).

My predictions: Provided we don't get nuke happy and pull a Dr Strangelove.

Will we be on Mars? Maybe a research station... I doubt a full blown colony. It's just high difficulty to live there.

Will we have space tourism in space stations? You betcha! We have it now... but then it will be somewhat... more common.

Flying cars? Please no... folks drive bad enough as is. Like they feel they need to speed in the parking lot only to brake 60 feet later. Now imagine them pulling the same crap but flying lol. Realistically even if we could... it's a terrible idea.

 

War? Drones. More drones. War is hell 9.0 lol. Infantry will be a harder sell as a job against peer nations with FPV (first person view) drones. Since everyone will fear drones like WW1 infantry feared crossing into no man's land. They have a kill zone, and if you're in it, no mercy is shown. Infantry won't be obsolete, but getting recruits who will be willing to fight against FPV drones will be hard. I have seen the war footage from modern war... that's how it is. Human drone controllers are detached about killing because they are not literally on the battlefield. It's like a videogame where racking up kills is all you do... only it's real.

The internet: Every country, even poor ones should have good internet by then. Globalism will be even more a thing than already.

Movies: By then hopefully someone has done a good Superman series of movies (besides Christopher Reeve's) after the Snyderverse was cancelled and whatever Gunn is planning came to pass. At any rate all those movies will be considered old and will be freely available to watch anyway... just like many old movies are today.

What do you think? What technological progress do you predict in 2125?

Edited Saturday at 11:56 AM by Spacescifi

[DDE]

  On 3/29/2025 at 7:58 AM, Spacescifi said:

They have a kill zone, and if you're in it, no mercy is shown.

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Said kill zone is 20-25 km. Vehicles have it worse than infantry, hence the reappearance of pack animals on the battlefield.

[Nuke]

yea. if we need to get out of here in a hurry, we could use old boom boom. of course i guess that requires going nuke happy. perhaps we can do something more sane. fusion based propulsion perhaps with physical fusion targets initiated in a magnetic nozzle by a light gas gun. or perhaps a big photon drive. old boom boom is nice because it would take plutonium away from people who would use it on other people.

really its not the drives its the power systems. drives get you from point a to point be but power lets you thrive in a hostile environment. do that long enough you can mine enough nuclear material for another stack of pulse units. then you just need to launch a minimum of 2 missions to other stars. if everybody does this, you can benefit from exponential growth and allow a human empire to expand into the greater cosmos. granted this is a disjointed empire with travel times too long to allow any interstellar trade or anything of the like. people will live and die on the same planet for the most part, assuming you choose to live on planets. slow communication is possible so you could participate in a non-real-time information and cultural exchange.

problem is without the fusion (or really good fission) all this is smoke in the wind. you couldn't even survive on the space ship in interstellar space let alone on any potential destination that your species did not personally evolve for.

there perhaps is the possibility of colonizing bodies in the oort cloud, which could dangle us a lightyear or more away from earth. if perhaps this expands out a couple light years, and say alpha centauri has a cloud that extends out a couple light years, you could probibly jump systems with only a delta-v equal to the relative velocities of the two stars. you could do it on plasma drives and a fission reactor.

as for the state of the world, the pendulum has merely started to swing the other way, the thing is its moving and not still. it will be back after some unknown period of time. the future will be different or it will be the same, or both. possibly many times each.

Edited Saturday at 11:38 PM by Nuke

[Spacescifi]

  On 3/29/2025 at 11:55 AM, Nuke said:

yea. if we need to get out of here in a hurry, we could use old boom boom. of course i guess that requires going nuke happy. perhaps we can do something more sane. fusion based propulsion perhaps with physical fusion targets initiated in a magnetic nozzle by a light gas gun. or perhaps a big photon drive. old boom boom is nice because it would take plutonium away from people who would use it on other people.

really its not the drives its the power systems. drives get you from point a to point be but power lets you thrive in a hostile environment. do that long enough you can mine enough nuclear material for another stack of pulse units. then you just need to launch a minimum of 2 missions to other stars. if everybody does this, you can benefit from exponential growth and allow a human empire to expand into the greater cosmos. granted this is a disjointed empire with travel times too long to allow any interstellar trade or anything of the like. people will live and die on the same planet for the most part, assuming you choose to live on planets. slow communication is possible so you could participate in a non-real-time information and cultural exchange.

problem is without the fusion (or really good fission) all this is smoke in the wind. you couldn't even survive on the space ship in interstellar space let alone on any potential destination that your species did not personally evolve for.

there perhaps is the possibility of colonizing bodies in the oort cloud, which could dangle us a lightyear or more away from earth. if perhaps this expands out a couple light years, and say alpha centauri has a cloud that extends out a couple light years, you could probibly systems with only a delta-v equal to the relative velocities of the two stars. you could do it on plasma drives and a fission reactor.

as for the stat of the world, the pendulum haw merely started to swing the other way, the thing is its moving and not still. it will be back after some unknown period of time. the future will be different or it will be the same, or both. possibly many times each.

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Ugh. At least the present does not seem to be a repeat... since we have yet to unearth any remains of advanced technology that is millions of years old. This aint like Stargate that's for sure.

Edited Saturday at 12:14 PM by Spacescifi

[StrandedonEarth]

  On 3/29/2025 at 11:55 AM, Nuke said:

as for the stat of the world, the pendulum haw merely started to swing the other way, the thing is its moving and not still. it will be back after some unknown period of time. the future will be different or it will be the same, or both. possibly many times each

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The wheel of ka (or time if you prefer) keeps turning..

[darthgently]

  On 3/29/2025 at 1:07 PM, StrandedonEarth said:

The wheel of ka (or time if you prefer) keeps turning..

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With plate tectonics recycling any civ prior to some time point would be invisible to our archeology at this point.  But I read something recently that seemed to rule out the possibility of a previous civ but can’t remember the specifics

[magnemoe]

  On 3/29/2025 at 1:12 PM, darthgently said:

With plate tectonics recycling any civ prior to some time point would be invisible to our archeology at this point.  But I read something recently that seemed to rule out the possibility of a previous civ but can’t remember the specifics

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Plate tectonic is not really recycling so much land, mostly sea bottom. Yes its some then you create mountain ranges like Himalaya during collisions but its so much the last 300 million years. 
Ice is an much more common destroyer. Prehistory of Norway start less than 10.000 years ago after the ice started melting. 
And I put an cut off time at 300 million years as you need advanced enough animals that they could evolve intelligence and have an design who make tool use practical. More realistic an two legged dinosaur is your fist go. 

And not technological.  One think who could survive being under ice for a million years is an old mine, yes it will fill with silt who turn to stone. But it would look very weird and its likely one place you also want to mine. 
And you find this channels of other rock and the ore is gone here, probably also find fossils of mining equipment junk. I'm very sure steel will fossilize much better than bone as it breaks down much slower.
Glass, ceramic, probably copper and aluminium last thousands of years so it will be fossilized or the original material. 

As for something as widespread as humans today, we would discovered it in the 19th century even if half an billion years ago based on the last 500 million years. 
So many glass bottles for one, mines, tunnels landfills, aluminium engine blocks.

[Mr. Kerbin]

  On 3/29/2025 at 7:58 AM, Spacescifi said:

Flying cars? Please no... folks drive bad enough as is. Like they feel they need to speed in the parking lot only to brake 60 feet later. Now imagine them pulling the same crap but flying lol. Realistically even if we could... it's a terrible idea.

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Those are already available for preorder, silly.

[magnemoe]

  On 3/29/2025 at 8:55 PM, Mr. Kerbin said:

Those are already available for preorder, silly.

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Guess you need an pilot licence to fly one
And the reason for the car part as you can not land or take off with an helicopter most places who is densely populated as they are loud. So you need to drive out to an place you can take off and fly to destination, here you also need an landing place and drive to location. The only way to reduce noise is larger slowing rotating rotors and you become an helicopter again, and probably much easier to make an pretty silent light helicopter than an quadcopter. 
One 80 mm fan of four 40 mm   

[Mr. Kerbin]

 

[Nuke]

  On 3/29/2025 at 1:12 PM, darthgently said:

With plate tectonics recycling any civ prior to some time point would be invisible to our archeology at this point.  But I read something recently that seemed to rule out the possibility of a previous civ but can’t remember the specifics

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considering that the natural place to build a civilization is on the coastline, if you were to build on the coast while most of the earths water was tied up in glaciers (say at the end of the ice age), then those cities would be underwater now. divers have found plenty of under water ruins that nobody can explain, but generally the difficulty of exploring the seafloor has pretty much slowed down any archeology of those areas. the glaciers themselves could have wiped out any pre-ice age settlements. science requires evidence but the past existed whether or not any recognizable evidence survived and was found.

however go back too far and the planet can no longer support modern human life, too little or too much o2, too hot, too many predators, etc. so the window for human existence is significantly narrower than the window for life on the planet. and granted i dont think you will find anything more advanced than an agrarian town that maybe existed 10k years before we have evidence for agriculture. geological processes can destroy evidence, but only at geological timescales. environmental changes on the other hand occur on significantly faster time scales.

[Nuke]

  On 3/29/2025 at 9:53 PM, Mr. Kerbin said:

 

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problem i have with flying cars is if you can fly, why do you need a car. all you need is a light vtol that is capable of take off and land from a single standard size parking spot. i dont want to know what kind of regulatory nightmare this would cause. having to deal with the faa and the dmv seems like asking too much of the general public's patience.

Edited Saturday at 11:45 PM by Nuke

[StrandedonEarth]

I would assume that for flying cars to be mainstream, they would fly themselves. All you would do is tell it where you want to go and it would take you to the closest available landing spot, while you're playing Kitten Space Agency. For proper maintenance, private ownership is unlikely, it would simply be transportation-as-a-service

Edited Saturday at 11:58 PM by StrandedonEarth

[darthgently]

 Stuck in traffic?  Is saving time worth the money of calling a carry-all?  Just use the app!  The carry-all from the novel Dune comes to mind, but smaller, for a “flying car” solution for when you need your car at the end of the journey.  An automated flying hauler could be hailed that would carry your car to its destination.  Why rage on the road when you can sigh through the sky?  For a nominal fee.   

 

 

[darthgently]

  On 3/29/2025 at 11:28 PM, Nuke said:

considering that the natural place to build a civilization is on the coastline, if you were to build on the coast while most of the earths water was tied up in glaciers (say at the end of the ice age), then those cities would be underwater now. divers have found plenty of under water ruins that nobody can explain, but generally the difficulty of exploring the seafloor has pretty much slowed down any archeology of those areas. the glaciers themselves could have wiped out any pre-ice age settlements. science requires evidence but the past existed whether or not any recognizable evidence survived and was found.

however go back too far and the planet can no longer support modern human life, too little or too much o2, too hot, too many predators, etc. so the window for human existence is significantly narrower than the window for life on the planet. and granted i dont think you will find anything more advanced than an agrarian town that maybe existed 10k years before we have evidence for agriculture. geological processes can destroy evidence, but only at geological timescales. environmental changes on the other hand occur on significantly faster time scales.

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I was thinking in regards to fantastical notions of an intelligent native species prior to humans, but yes, humans are riverine and coastal critters generally and our deeper history is mostly under water now

[Nuke]

  On 3/30/2025 at 12:49 AM, darthgently said:

I was thinking in regards to fantastical notions of an intelligent native species prior to humans, but yes, humans are riverine and coastal critters generally and our deeper history is mostly under water now

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now you are getting into silurian hypothesis territory. even some of the other proto-human subspecies may have had something resembling civilization, lost in the scope of long time.

[SunlitZelkova]

  On 3/29/2025 at 7:58 AM, Spacescifi said:

What technological progress do you predict in 2125?

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2034 will mark the start of the Great Eclipsular Uprising, which will halve the global population and result in the foundation of the Gunschtenstein Techno-Anarchy. The deceased consciouses will be retrieved by the Neo-Orion Energiya Pulse Hurricane Neo-Orion Space Probe of Greatness that will be launched in 2037 on the 100th anniversary of the Hindenburg Disaster and reach Aldebaran in 3.8 half-decades.

These consciouses will be rescued from the Aldebaran Trans-Physical Tribe of Unknowns and transferred into the surviving half of the population.

These Uber-Humans will possess the ability to solve problems at a stunning rate surpassing that of the prior humans, because the First Conscious creates problems and the Second Conscious solves them, eliminating the prior need for an entirely separate biological entity to create problems while another solves them.

This will significantly improve the Earth's energy consumption, halving its needs while doubling its effiency. Red Bull-Shell Ltd. will debut the world's first fusion reactor in 2053.

From there, Our progress will be unstoppable. Mass production of consumer goods will be possible by 2070, with Quadrillionaire Level Standards of Living achieved for every Uber-Human by 2080. The global population will again begin growing in 2061 as we establish the first Space Homesteads, after fighting the Bacterial War on Mars between 2050-2053, which will be won despite not achieving any of its goals. Uber-Humanity will be turning out colonization rockets like sausages, and will bury the notion of demographic crisis!

By 2095, every home in the world will have a small fusion reactor in its basement, regulated by AI and allowing the redirection of all large power plants to the production of energy for the Starpanel Terra-Factory, which encompasses the entire Sahara Desert. With Starpanel orbital platforms being launched on SpaceY (formerly known as the Musk-Bezos Corp) Universevessel-Ultraobese Spaceships of Progress every 72 seconds, the Exxon-Monster-Nabisco-Shark-Mitsubishi-Dyson Sphere of Sunpower will become fully operational, harvesting the energy of the Sun directly, for the needs of all of Our homesteads in the planets and Earth itself.

  On 3/29/2025 at 7:58 AM, Spacescifi said:

Do we have enough time though.... provided we don't nuke ourselves silly so that we have the time to progress technologically?

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Sorry... in 2097, Spacebook, the Kendama-Matryoshka Brain-Device for Computational Purposes of Great Importance, becomes self-aware, and launches a hydrosonic missile salvo from the underwater missile silos of Europa towards the Intra-Solar System Anarchichal Capital in Kokomo, Indiana. This triggers the Buckeye-Michigander Hyperwar, the largest conflict in post-human history. Although millions of cowardly young Uber-Humans will fight side-by-side from the Battle of Acidalia Planitia to the Siege of Fresno, this will cause Spacebook to rage quit Uber-Humanity in 2124, bringing about the Blackening of Jupiter and the collapse of the X-Microsoft Consortium's monopoly on adult AI chatbots.

This will result in a fall of civilization not seen since the collapse of the Pre-Humiliation Qing Empire. 2125 will see what remains of humanity in a sorry state, with the average Uber-Human lazing around the office and chatting with coworkers about the upcoming Pseudo-Yugoslavian Smooth-Mariachi concert instead of blazing a frontier so We can do the whole thing AGAIN but this time with cool smooshy Vega instead of the lame spherical Sun.

Luckily, Uber-Humanity won't stand for this, and will quickly move to secure power in the Upstairs Hallways of the Capitals of the Solar System and restore post-humanity to its greatness. Fifteen days after the Blackening of Jupiter, the second-place winner of the 2109 Boris Yeltsin torso impersonation contest will announce on Threads that the Golden Age of Humanity is just beginning, meaning that Our goals have been achieved and we can only expect unending happiness and progress for the rest of time. Marking this momentous and weighty day in history will be the second flight of the Space Launch System, launching a colony of three Wooly Mice on a 100-year journey to Alpha Centauri where upon landing they will recover the Cure For Cancer and then transmit the information on the back of the receipt to Earth, so we can get a refund from the Smiley Man who sold it to Us 43 years ago.

[Spacescifi]

  On 3/30/2025 at 8:14 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

2034 will mark the start of the Great Eclipsular Uprising, which will halve the global population and result in the foundation of the Gunschtenstein Techno-Anarchy. The deceased consciouses will be retrieved by the Neo-Orion Energiya Pulse Hurricane Neo-Orion Space Probe of Greatness that will be launched in 2037 on the 100th anniversary of the Hindenburg Disaster and reach Aldebaran in 3.8 half-decades.

These consciouses will be rescued from the Aldebaran Trans-Physical Tribe of Unknowns and transferred into the surviving half of the population.

These Uber-Humans will possess the ability to solve problems at a stunning rate surpassing that of the prior humans, because the First Conscious creates problems and the Second Conscious solves them, eliminating the prior need for an entirely separate biological entity to create problems while another solves them.

This will significantly improve the Earth's energy consumption, halving its needs while doubling its effiency. Red Bull-Shell Ltd. will debut the world's first fusion reactor in 2053.

From there, Our progress will be unstoppable. Mass production of consumer goods will be possible by 2070, with Quadrillionaire Level Standards of Living achieved for every Uber-Human by 2080. The global population will again begin growing in 2061 as we establish the first Space Homesteads, after fighting the Bacterial War on Mars between 2050-2053, which will be won despite not achieving any of its goals. Uber-Humanity will be turning out colonization rockets like sausages, and will bury the notion of demographic crisis!

By 2095, every home in the world will have a small fusion reactor in its basement, regulated by AI and allowing the redirection of all large power plants to the production of energy for the Starpanel Terra-Factory, which encompasses the entire Sahara Desert. With Starpanel orbital platforms being launched on SpaceY (formerly known as the Musk-Bezos Corp) Universevessel-Ultraobese Spaceships of Progress every 72 seconds, the Exxon-Monster-Nabisco-Shark-Mitsubishi-Dyson Sphere of Sunpower will become fully operational, harvesting the energy of the Sun directly, for the needs of all of Our homesteads in the planets and Earth itself.

Sorry... in 2097, Spacebook, the Kendama-Matryoshka Brain-Device for Computational Purposes of Great Importance, becomes self-aware, and launches a hydrosonic missile salvo from the underwater missile silos of Europa towards the Intra-Solar System Anarchichal Capital in Kokomo, Indiana. This triggers the Buckeye-Michigander Hyperwar, the largest conflict in post-human history. Although millions of cowardly young Uber-Humans will fight side-by-side from the Battle of Acidalia Planitia to the Siege of Fresno, this will cause Spacebook to rage quit Uber-Humanity in 2124, bringing about the Blackening of Jupiter and the collapse of the X-Microsoft Consortium's monopoly on adult AI chatbots.

This will result in a fall of civilization not seen since the collapse of the Pre-Humiliation Qing Empire. 2125 will see what remains of humanity in a sorry state, with the average Uber-Human lazing around the office and chatting with coworkers about the upcoming Pseudo-Yugoslavian Smooth-Mariachi concert instead of blazing a frontier so We can do the whole thing AGAIN but this time with cool smooshy Vega instead of the lame spherical Sun.

Luckily, Uber-Humanity won't stand for this, and will quickly move to secure power in the Upstairs Hallways of the Capitals of the Solar System and restore post-humanity to its greatness. Fifteen days after the Blackening of Jupiter, the second-place winner of the 2109 Boris Yeltsin torso impersonation contest will announce on Threads that the Golden Age of Humanity is just beginning, meaning that Our goals have been achieved and we can only expect unending happiness and progress for the rest of time. Marking this momentous and weighty day in history will be the second flight of the Space Launch System, launching a colony of three Wooly Mice on a 100-year journey to Alpha Centauri where upon landing they will recover the Cure For Cancer and then transmit the information on the back of the receipt to Earth, so we can get a refund from the Smiley Man who sold it to Us 43 years ago.

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Cool story my russian or european bro... (because few Americans can talk that way and the dripping sarcasm seems to be a cultural thing as you're not the first to have it).

[RCgothic]

If talking "before the sun burns out" timescales, it's also worth considering "before the stars around us burn out" as well. Where's the nearest stellar nursery?

Might also be worth considering "before Andromeda hits us" as well 

[Spacescifi]

  On 3/30/2025 at 2:37 PM, RCgothic said:

If talking "before the sun burns out" timescales, it's also worth considering "before the stars around us burn out" as well. Where's the nearest stellar nursery?

Might also be worth considering "before Andromeda hits us" as well 

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That reminds me of the scene in the New Krypton comic where Superman and 100,000 Kryptonians fly to redirect a moon's orbit (they stole one of jupiter's moons to use it as their own for their new planet they were terraforming).

Due to a brief war with the Thangarians which wrecked Kryptonian technology that would have put the moon on the correct orbit, the kryptoniams had to manually redirect it to keep it from crashing into their new world.

The somewhat amusing scene comes later when Alura (leader of the planet and Supergirl's mom) tells Superman that according to their calculations several billions of years later New Krypton would be flung out of the solar system and earth would fall into the sun... because of the decisions they made that day.

And at those time scales Superman was actually OK with it.

Edited Sunday at 03:11 PM by Spacescifi

[magnemoe]

  On 3/30/2025 at 2:37 PM, RCgothic said:

If talking "before the sun burns out" timescales, it's also worth considering "before the stars around us burn out" as well. Where's the nearest stellar nursery?

Might also be worth considering "before Andromeda hits us" as well 

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Sun does not burn up as in blows up into an red giant. That is in around 5 billion years or as long as earth has been around. That is an serious long time. Now the sun is getting brighter, so earth will be hotter in 500 million years and might be to hot for life in an billion. This is not something an advanced space faring civilization would have any problem with however. 

As for 2125 that is harder to predict, How do you predict 2025 in 1925? The computer at the 1950 level was scifi. Planes was mostly biplanes but an technology who had promises. Same with cars both would improve a lot. 
For ships it was an switch from coal to oil, oil was more expensive but ocean liners could refuel faster and the cabins for the ones handled coal could be used as 3rd class cabins. 
The world would be richer and stuff would be more common and new stuff would be invented.

Now for colonizing space, its going very well in 2125, leo is busy, multiple spin gravity space station most for industrial use but plenty for science and tourists. All the rich nerds are free interns after all  
Price has also dropped, guess an week in leo is below $100K if cheap. Hotels on the moon if you don't want to slum it in leo, multiple Mars bases like Antarctica. 
Asteroid mining is an thing and is an growth industry but an focus on orbital resources and water. 

Edited Sunday at 04:19 PM by magnemoe

[Spacescifi]

  On 3/30/2025 at 3:43 PM, magnemoe said:

Sun does not burn up as in blows up into an red giant. That is in around 5 billion years or as long as earth has been around. That is an serious long time. Now the sun is getting brighter, so earth will be hotter in 500 million years and might be to hot for life in an billion. This is not something an advanced space faring civilization would have any problem with however. 

As for 2125 that is harder to predict, How do you predict 2025 in 1925? The computer at the 1950 level was scifi. Planes was mostly biplanes but an technology who had promises. Same with cars both would improve a lot. 
For ships it was an switch from coal to oil, oil was more expensive but ocean liners could refuel faster and the cabins for the ones handled coal could be used as 3rd class cabins. 
The world would be richer and stuff would be more common and new stuff would be invented.

Now for colonizing space, its going very well in 2125, leo is busy, multiple spin gravity space station most for industrial use but plenty for science and tourists. All the rich nerds are free interns after all  
Price has also dropped, guess an week in leo is below $100K if cheap. Hotels on the moon if you don't want to slum it in leo, multiple Mars bases like Antarctica. 
Asteroid mining is an thing and is an growth industry but an focus on orbital resources and water. 

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I personally doubt we will have a bunch of mars bases... with humans on them. Maybe robotic or drones but not people. Because mars is incredibly hostile to life, and the irony is that small populations have a better chance at survival if anything goes wrong when compared to bigger ones... even though that has it's own disadvantages.

To live on mars for any extended period and not get lethal cancer you need to live underground like a mole. To do that you need heavy industry to build tunnels first.

On top of that you have to grow fruit and veggies from the martian soil and make a filter out the toxins of mars from leeching into the food you eat.

It's not like Matt Damon's movie where he survives off using his own fecal matter to fertilize potatoes which somehow had green leaves after growing. In real life we have done an experiment using an analogue to martian soil and you know what kind of leaves the plants grew?

They were yellow. There is no way at least some of the martian toxins won't get into the food you grow on mars and into the bodies that consume them.

Edited Sunday at 05:15 PM by Spacescifi

[RCgothic]

Burning Earth doesn't necessarily end the solar system's habitability. Parts could remain habitable as the sun expanded, so the deadline for getting out might be on the order of 4.5 billion years.

The Andromeda collision is also in about 4.5 billion years.

The nearest supernova candidate is IK Pegasi at 150 light years. Apparently type 1A supernovas are particularly violent, and I is likely to be one of those. Could occur in the next billion, they're unpredictable as depends on the rate of matter consumption from the companion star.

The closest major stellar nursery is the Orion Nebula at about 1350 light years away.

The absolute closest is the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex at approx 450 light years, about 100 times further away than Alpha Centauri.

Edited Monday at 06:06 AM by RCgothic

[Nuke]

  On 3/30/2025 at 2:37 PM, RCgothic said:

If talking "before the sun burns out" timescales, it's also worth considering "before the stars around us burn out" as well. Where's the nearest stellar nursery?

Might also be worth considering "before Andromeda hits us" as well 

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its worth nothing that dwarf stars, with the longest lives, are the most common type.

i view the andromeda collision as an opportunity to go intergalactic.

Edited Monday at 03:44 AM by Nuke

[magnemoe]

  On 3/30/2025 at 2:37 PM, RCgothic said:

If talking "before the sun burns out" timescales, it's also worth considering "before the stars around us burn out" as well. Where's the nearest stellar nursery?

Might also be worth considering "before Andromeda hits us" as well 

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Well if you can do interstellar travel you can definitely colonize space