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ActonofMAM t1_j2np65u wrote

Reply to comment by strvgglecity in Pulling together different technologies to make interstellar colonization possible by matthewgdick

Nothing like the round trip speed of even Age of Sail travel on Earth between different continents, no. But Earth and the colony, later colonies, could communicate at lightspeed and share data. If the colony system has enough resources, and the colony ships with a wide enough selection of human DNA, that's all that would be needed.

Mind you, I'd expect each system's human race to speciate. Maybe even on purpose.

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strvgglecity t1_j2nrnxz wrote

One-way communication to the nearest star would take 4.5 years, 9 years to get an answer. There would be no functional purpose for communication, no opportunity for conversation.

Further, the resources required to keep humans alive are enormous - each inhabitant of the new planet would require about 75,000 pounds of food and 86,000 litres of water, which is unlikely to be mined or produced on-planet for at least the first several hundred years while building would occur.

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UniversalMomentum t1_j2p6596 wrote

Of course there is use to share data between worlds, that's just silly. You think because they can't IM there is no use for communication. GO HOME YOUR DRUNK!

You don't have to send humans in big ships, you can send tiny ground based laser powered probes that setup a receiving station and then beam the human mind as data that can go the speed of light. None of that put you up against the fundamental forces of the universe like trying to carry enough fuel and food to bring humans through space or pretending you can keep human in stasis for thousands of years and not have them turn to mush.

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