Dungeonmancer t1_isth4we wrote on October 18, 2022 at 4:10 PM

Reply to comment by Hussar_Regimeny in The Europa Clipper mission may be as exciting as a manned mars mission and it’s only two years away by Wide-Escape-5618

I remember when James Webb was 10 years away. I also remember waiting several years for Curiosity, and also Cassini.

This is just the pace of the space travel. I look at it as a bonus, you get to celebrate twice. Once at launch and again at destination.

alvinofdiaspar t1_isu2dgr wrote on October 18, 2022 at 6:29 PM

The MEGA trajectory is relatively fast - not as fast as direct but not bad at all (compared to say Galileo, Cassini or even ESA’s JUICE).

grchelp2018 t1_isu7sno wrote on October 18, 2022 at 7:04 PM

Its a technology limitation. We can and should make transit times faster. The universe is so large that even speed of light is slow. We'll never be able to do anything outside our immediate neighbours with such slow speeds.

Dungeonmancer t1_isua68x wrote on October 18, 2022 at 7:19 PM

Absolutely. Technology is our limitation right now, but theoretically if technology keeps advancing eventually the speed of light will be our limitation.

Even the ludicrously fast speed of light is prohibitively slow to explore much of the universe. Perhaps we will find a way around it, but science hasn't come close to the science fiction yet in that regard.

It could be warp drives etc or some kind of effectively FTL travel are possible, but if not the speed of light might just be an impassable barrier preventing long distance exploration, which would be tragic.

themainemane t1_isw3rut wrote on October 19, 2022 at 3:04 AM

I've always thought it as human lifetimes are the limitation, maybe it's not light that's slow in the universe but it's that were just too short in time to do or experience anything on large scales, but as you said maybe one day the speed of light won't be a barrier anymore 👀

Pm_me_some_green_tea t1_it0o9kg wrote on October 20, 2022 at 1:59 AM

I'd say light is definitely the limitation. If we could move at light speed we would still never reach 96% of the known universe because of it's rate of expansion, no matter how long are lives were.