What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?

[sanman]

What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?



Our biggest worry may be the aliens we can't see

[M.E.T.]

What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?



Our biggest worry may be the aliens we can't see

Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

[TrevorMonty]

Statistical we wouldn't be first or last. There are  trillions of planets out there. Life on earth has existed for few 100million years and we've gone from ape to spacefaring in 100,000years.

[dondar]

I am not sure we can call "humanity" a spacefaring  civilization quite yet. "Spacefaring" as a word is an evolution of seafaring, which has very practical meaning. Seafaring is the use of sea for transportation or travel. There is no practical use of space quite yet.

About time table for the "first".  It took ~1 bln years to go from automata to a single cell. It took another 1.5 bln to learn harvesting of (sun) energy within cell, it took yet another 1.5bln for the transition into multi-cell communities which spiraled into  what we are taking yet another 1bln years.
Let see: stable sun, post Fe elements (which means our Sun is a foster  star formed from the leftovers of previous stars probably after multiple generational cycles), no fancy gravity/radiation quirks in the area (this alone kills any chances for the central cluster in our galaxy), quite specific elements composition in the planet crust, an external source of some fancy/low cycling weak energy (we have Moon for that) which is needed for mild atmospheric mixing, temperature ranges facilitating forming and continuous existence of the low energy bonds between elements.

So yes. It is quite possible we are the first "in the reachable area". (hard to talk about general uniqueness in the limitless universe).

[Phil Stooke]

"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation. 

[ulm_atms]

Depends on your measurement size.

In a 5yl radius from Earth?.....good chance but not given.

In this quadrant of the Milky Way?......0.000001% chance....maybe.

Anywhere else in the universe?.....Absolutely not.

I am of the thought that we are not special in the universe and life is out there everywhere.  Given the universe's currently agreed upon age, we are young.  There could easily be billions of civilizations throughout the universe that have come, spaced, and gone before Earth existed.

But if we are among the first?  I hope we have humanities's issues sorted out by then.  We don't need to push our problems/issues to the stars.

[dondar]

"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

I am talking about space. We (the humans) do very small steps on the "walking distance" from our home. Mars rovers etc. are just very few experiments on the level of first pre Columbus experiments with the sea navigation.
Small experiments is not use. They are just experiments, the knowledge they provide is very conditional and almost always very situational. The data about Mars are practical if Mars will be ever used. Which is not.

More of it it's quite easy to make very solid arguments that generally "Space" drive is about to end completely and there will be nothing after. Your country (just like the rest of the world) is undergoing through very significant social and cultural changes. Basically confucian nonsense (moral licensing is a powerful drug) is winning the world. I remind that most human present civilizations are static historically and are focused on the past.

[Twark_Main]

"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

I am talking about space. We (the humans) do very small steps on the "walking distance" from our home. Mars rovers etc. are just very few experiments on the level of first pre Columbus experiments with the sea navigation.
Small experiments is not use. They are just experiments, the knowledge they provide is very conditional and almost always very situational. The data about Mars are practical if Mars will be ever used. Which is not.

Phil admits that "Mars rovers might not qualify as practical," but you never address the second half of his post.

More of it it's quite easy to make very solid arguments that generally "Space" drive is about to end completely and there will be nothing after. Your country (just like the rest of the world) is undergoing through very significant social and cultural changes. Basically confucian nonsense (moral licensing is a powerful drug) is winning the world. I remind that most human present civilizations are static historically and are focused on the past.

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?

[laszlo]

"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

In English "seafaring" comes from a combination of "sea" and the Germanic word for "journey" via Middle English and its strong German roots. It literally means "sea journey". Changing what is being traveled on/in gives us "spacefaring" or "space journey/travel". None of the uses you mention involve travel. They just whiz around the Earth, never leaving or arriving. The GEO satellites don't even do that relative to the Earth. Crew or no crew, they're not traveling. The general public understands that at a gut level and that's one of the main reasons that it lost interest in space once Apollo ended.

If a true spacefaring society is equivalent to at least the Phoenicians and Vikings, what we have now is the riverside society with canoes to tend the fish traps and weirs and some people spending time in a duck blind out in the middle of the river (ISS).

[dondar]

"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

I am talking about space. We (the humans) do very small steps on the "walking distance" from our home. Mars rovers etc. are just very few experiments on the level of first pre Columbus experiments with the sea navigation.
Small experiments is not use. They are just experiments, the knowledge they provide is very conditional and almost always very situational. The data about Mars are practical if Mars will be ever used. Which is not.

Phil admits that "Mars rovers might not qualify as practical," but you never address the second half of his post.

Everything he mentioned is about Eath.It is not about "space-faring" even it is not not about doing anything in space. It is just jumping a bit and look back at Eath. It is about using space border as an advantaged area for Eath activities. It is not faring.
More of it. Such activities are orthogonal to space-faring. It's like surround your port with chain barriers and than wonder why nobody sails.

More of it it's quite easy to make very solid arguments that generally "Space" drive is about to end completely and there will be nothing after. Your country (just like the rest of the world) is undergoing through very significant social and cultural changes. Basically confucian nonsense (moral licensing is a powerful drug) is winning the world. I remind that most human present civilizations are static historically and are focused on the past.

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?
[/quote]
It is subj for a special big post because there are few arguments each requiring substantiation. And I am missing routinely prepositions in my speech, so there's that. 
For a quick reference what I am talking about (as in "direct results of what is happening generally" and how it is going to happen in the future everywhere) compare EA of Boca Chica spaceport and FEIS of Brownsville port expansion.

[Vahe231991]

"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

In English "seafaring" comes from a combination of "sea" and the Germanic word for "journey" via Middle English and its strong German roots. It literally means "sea journey". Changing what is being traveled on/in gives us "spacefaring" or "space journey/travel". None of the uses you mention involve travel. They just whiz around the Earth, never leaving or arriving. The GEO satellites don't even do that relative to the Earth. Crew or no crew, they're not traveling. The general public understands that at a gut level and that's one of the main reasons that it lost interest in space once Apollo ended.

If a true spacefaring society is equivalent to at least the Phoenicians and Vikings, what we have now is the riverside society with canoes to tend the fish traps and weirs and some people spending time in a duck blind out in the middle of the river (ISS).

An interesting link regarding the question of whether mankind could truly become the first spacefaring civilization:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/10/14/are-humans-earths-best-chance-to-become-a-spacefaring-civilization/?sh=5f1ec26b7d84

[darkenfast]

I have a sneaking suspicion that before a civilization can become truly interstellar, they are exterminated by their machines, who then go dark.

[Vahe231991]

I have a sneaking suspicion that before a civilization can become truly interstellar, they are exterminated by their machines, who then go dark.

People who think that humanity could become the first spacefaring civilization should recall that attempting interstellar travel at the speed of light is tempered by Einstein's theory of relativity stipulating that time slows everything down, especially spacecraft.

[dondar]

"There is no practical use of space quite yet."

Really?  I admit that Mars rovers might not qualify as practical, but why are communications, environmental monitoring, GPS, surveillance, and so on not practical?  Or are you only counting crewed flight as spacefaring?  If so I don't agree with that limitation.

In English "seafaring" comes from a combination of "sea" and the Germanic word for "journey" via Middle English and its strong German roots. It literally means "sea journey". Changing what is being traveled on/in gives us "spacefaring" or "space journey/travel". None of the uses you mention involve travel. They just whiz around the Earth, never leaving or arriving. The GEO satellites don't even do that relative to the Earth. Crew or no crew, they're not traveling. The general public understands that at a gut level and that's one of the main reasons that it lost interest in space once Apollo ended.

If a true spacefaring society is equivalent to at least the Phoenicians and Vikings, what we have now is the riverside society with canoes to tend the fish traps and weirs and some people spending time in a duck blind out in the middle of the river (ISS).

An interesting link regarding the question of whether mankind could truly become the first spacefaring civilization:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/10/14/are-humans-earths-best-chance-to-become-a-spacefaring-civilization/?sh=5f1ec26b7d84

good example of why American habit of early specialization in .... sucks.
Let start with the basic: "Theory of evolution" is not about "survival of the fittest" neither it is about those "best to adapt" etc.
It is always about "good enough" and  "barely sufficient" efforts. You don't have to build a full blown brick house to survive, a small leaking cave is actually enough. Somewhere. The mere fact of the immense diversity of life on our planet is sufficient argument for exactly that.
This argument is actually critical here, because there is no reason to believe that the evolutionary path our civilization takes is "general" and is "inevitable".  Basically most of what we use now we own to a couple of hundreds people who decided to write letters to each other some 6 centuries ago. And many many coincidences and lucky chances on the way up to now.

[stormhelm]

Good point..

[sanman]

Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

The farther away we are from them, the longer it will take for them to get to us -- and the more opportunity they have to age before coming into contact with us.

What would be the most likely differences in the type of "first contact" we'd experience from aliens who originate from within our solar system, as compared to aliens who originate from beyond our solar system?

[laszlo]

good example of why American habit of early specialization in .... sucks.

I don't understand what you mean by this, Please explain.

[Slothman]

Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

The farther away we are from them, the longer it will take for them to get to us -- and the more opportunity they have to age before coming into contact with us.

What would be the most likely differences in the type of "first contact" we'd experience from aliens who originate from within our solar system, as compared to aliens who originate from beyond our solar system?

The ones closer to us, if they exist,  will likely be alive and the ones coming from far away will be more likely to be dead when they arrive.

Space travel is never trivial, unless you go into science fictional levels of technology where you snap your fingers and a spaceship appears and you can travel close to the speed of light. But I suppose we're talking about reasonable, "known to us" means of propulsion as well as manufacturing and outfitting (i.e. no magical force fields to contain hull breaches).

The longer they have to travel (just imagine sitting on top of each other for 1000 years, classes/factions are going to form, in-ship wars may be inevitable) the more likely it is that some technical failure, sabotage, uprising or other stuff happens that damages their ship and renders it uninhabitable.

So, either a long distance species coming to us is extremely peaceful (towards each other and probably towards outsiders) or dead.

[etudiant]

Grabby aliens again. Don’t like that theory. Basically built on the assumption that because we don’t see evidence of them out there, they must be expanding fairly close to the speed of light, to account for the fact that their visible light does not reach us significantly before they do.

Requiring a rather contrived constraint that the older they are, the further away they are (to avoid a situation where a billion year old civilization is in e.g. the Andromeda galaxy, which should have made it visible to us within at most a few million years, so hundreds of millions years ago from the present).

Why would older civilizations necessarily be more distant from us. There is no logical reason for that to be the case.

The simpler alternative is that they’re just not there in the first place.

The farther away we are from them, the longer it will take for them to get to us -- and the more opportunity they have to age before coming into contact with us.

What would be the most likely differences in the type of "first contact" we'd experience from aliens who originate from within our solar system, as compared to aliens who originate from beyond our solar system?

The ones closer to us, if they exist,  will likely be alive and the ones coming from far away will be more likely to be dead when they arrive.

Space travel is never trivial, unless you go into science fictional levels of technology where you snap your fingers and a spaceship appears and you can travel close to the speed of light. But I suppose we're talking about reasonable, "known to us" means of propulsion as well as manufacturing and outfitting (i.e. no magical force fields to contain hull breaches).

The longer they have to travel (just imagine sitting on top of each other for 1000 years, classes/factions are going to form, in-ship wars may be inevitable) the more likely it is that some technical failure, sabotage, uprising or other stuff happens that damages their ship and renders it uninhabitable.

So, either a long distance species coming to us is extremely peaceful (towards each other and probably towards outsiders) or dead.

Agree with that assessment, which incidentally simply echoes 'the meek shall inherit...'.
One should also adjust for the sheer improbability of technically intelligent life, with much less than 10,000 years of existence in the at least 1 billion years of life on earth.

[Scooter]

I have a suspicion, could be wrong, that Humans are the only species to build spacecraft and the Earth is the only habitable planet.

I don't have much confidence in the concept of aliens.