Should we wait?

[dbmorpher]

I have a question for you all.

Suppose a form of FTL drive is possible, or an Orion Nuclear Drive becomes legal.

NASA wants to send a colony to Alpha Centauri or Tau Ceti.

However due to the fact that technology advances most of our transportation technologies would have been surpassed and there may already be a civilization at the planet we wanted to colonize!

So the question is: should we send a mission as soon as possible or wait until more convenient technology becomes available?

[Camacha]

You are talking about what is called Incessant Obsolescence Postulate. A lot has been said an done about that, you might want to delve into that

Although FTL might be a different matter: some think travel is perceived as instant for anything travelling at the speed of light, so terms like sooner and later might become less relevant.

[Streetwind]

Although FTL might be a different matter: some think travel is perceived as instant for anything travelling at the speed of light, so terms like sooner and later might become less relevant.

This applies only if you actually travel at the speed of light without any tricks. Just genuine fast velocity. The reason for this effect is time dilation. However, we will never travel like this, because even as travel time becomes instant, the energy required to perform that travel becomes infinite. It is extremely impractical to go for a pure velocity approach. Even if current estimates of the energy required to operate an Alcubierre warp drive range around "a ball of antimatter the size of Jupiter", that is still downright cheap compared what it takes to push even a tiny probe anywhere near the speed of light.

Should humans ever travel faster than light, they will do it by cheating their way around the speed limit, not by reaching it.

So the question is: should we send a mission as soon as possible or wait until more convenient technology becomes available?

If you're interested in all things space development, I highly recommend following this weekly youtube show: https://www.youtube.com/user/spacevidcast/videos

Unfortunately I forget which, but one of the episodes broadcast in 2014 so far discussed this exact question in detail. Still, my personal opinion is that it's worth watching all of them anyway The year's episodes begin with the aptly named "The first Spacevidcast of 2014", and you can work your way forwards from there.

[ZetaX]

Even if current estimates of the energy required to operate an Alcubierre warp drive range around "a ball of antimatter the size of Jupiter", that is still downright cheap compared what it takes to push even a tiny probe anywhere near the speed of light.

Having 10 times the ships mass as kinetic energy would already be rather close to the speed of light. After that, additional energy will essentially only go into a much shorter flight time from the ship's crew point of view, but not from the outside.