I’m going off my college physics and astronomy classes here. And I’m old. So things may have changed, and I may have forgotten things. But if I remember correctly, quantum foam, or the basic level of quanta is roiling with “wormholes” that appear and disappear like bubbles in a soda. My professor said it would be cheaper (from an energy consumption perspective) to catch one and manipulate it than it would be to create one fresh. Even then, the targeting, tracking, then trapping 1 end (Nevermind both ends), holding on to it, expanding the orifice to a useable size and then stabilizing it. Well, it isn’t just a matter of available energy. You would also need energy to produce the needed exotic particles and anti matter on an ongoing basis needed to feed and control this one end of the wormhole. I think we, as a class, calculated a guesstimation that you would need millions’s of Dyson spheres (around a red dwarf, meaning 100% of a star’s output) worth of energy just to produce exotic particles (that we haven’t discovered yet) to use to manipulate and stabilize the entry. Nevermind feeding it enough exotic particles and antimatter to make it large enough to use, or build a tunnel of safe passage for travelers. And you would still have the other end whipping around the quanta trying to evaporate. But it can’t because your dumping all this energy into it. so it’s constantly shedding all the energy, exotic particles, and antimatter that you are pouring into it, out the other end. This would require more energy at an ever increasing pace. There would be no way to recover all that energy as we understand physics today. I also remember that the interior of a wormhole would be lethal to human life as well? Again, I’m old and so is my information. A good book about this, even though it may be a bit dated now, is “Blackholes and Timewarps” by Kip Thorne. It was a great read.

You are quite right.

Exactly! It’s a real twist.

Got to thinking about your “there is no line” comment. I don’t have a direct response to that, other than opinion. And that is that there is no line AS LONG AS there is an equal amount of responsibility, education, and understanding developed with the new technology. A good example of what I mean to avoid by my statement is America having Nuclear weapons. Our country is just 300 years old. We have no stable culture (other than extremism) and no depth of wisdom as a nation. And yet we have nuclear weapons. It’s like giving a toddler a loaded gun. Now, you’ll ask me how to make my desires happen. And that’s when the crickets start to chirp. Cause I got no idea, lol

I once read a sci-if book written by LE Modessitt where the culture had shifted from what was possible to what was best. Certain percentages of safety features had been removed from all tools and vehicles, laws were written to enforce education/training requirements before access was given to most technology. Tech dependency (to cars, calculators, etc) were frowned upon (much like Dune’s accounting for the lack of AI tech). According to the book it led to a slower society overall, but an individual freedom to advancements based on a persons willingness to learn. I wish I could remember the book title. It was very interesting. I think it was a good conceptual start to answering this question from a population level perspective. The overall point being that ideally, access to all things would be practically based on need, and voluntarily, based on a willingness to learn. This could provide growth, without loss of basic cultural knowledge while still allowing forward progress.

Experts aren’t experts until they are historians. And I get that. So take this for what it is. Every expert I’ve read says that this AI explosion is not the one everyone fears. The AI’s being developed now are more akin to a smart hammer, than a replacement for a roofer. It will be a useful tool, not a human replacement.

That’s not a good comparison, sailing, to space travel. The distances are orders of magnitude different. A sailor could leave harbor and arrive somewhere within their lifetime, and have enough of it left to set up shop and build some kind of life. With current propulsion technology you could leave earth today and not arrive at our closest neighboring solar system (Alpha Centauri) in 372 generations (assuming EVERYONE lived to 100 in every generation). That’s 37,200 years one way. Think about it this way, the humans that left on a generation ship for Alpha Centauri, would leave humans, and very possibly arrive as a different branch in our developmental tree. That’s how much time it would take without some super luminal propulsion.

Technically, the generational ship would leave with you in it. Then your great, great, great, great grand children would land where we had already colonized due to better tech. That said, the only practical use for a generational ship is to send it out with no intention of landing anywhere for long. Which would require the tech to make what you need along the way from whatever you find.

Before we could even begin to discuss crew for a generational ship. We would need to develop technologies that would mimic a complex, fully enclosed ecosystem, the infrastructure to safely transport that ecosystem through the many dangers of space outside of our heliopause, and the tech to maintain that structure. When we say a “long way off”. What you should read is “not within a generational time line where the details of our lifetimes would be remembered accurately”. The people that will successfully pull this off are so far in our future, they won’t have an accurate understanding of what our lives are currently like or the events that make up our lives. So their decision criteria is probably beyond our ability to guess.