How much is that in football fields per kiloparsec?

It absolutely is. Space is stupidly vast, and our fastest theoretical speed is stupidly slow. And even the energy requirements to get to an even reasonable percentage of the speed of light is stupidly high.

Still, we're still in diapers in terms of technology that isn't impossible. We still don't have a good way to explore our very own solar system, even our closest neighbor. We don't have the means to do long-term power in space, to build on other planets, etc.

I think the next century is going to be just that, spearheaded soon by Starship hopefully. Develop the tech to stay out there longer, further, reliably, sustainably. Only then, with some major improvements in propulsion tech, we might start looking at interstellar travel.

I don't think "sooner or later" is a good understanding.

Everything we know points towards FTL being entirely impossible. Warp drives are math cheats, that don't really comply with our current understanding of physics.

They are, more likely than not, impossible, and will always be.

You can't really know how far it is, how large it is, or how fast it's moving. A large object moving very fast very far away will look just like a much smaller object moving much slower much closer to you.

Given your description, it sounds like a plane.

Certainly, but isn't it always? You go outside with your telescope to watch something awesome that has a narrow window, and all you get is wet.

You can see up to magnitude 6 objects in ideal atmospheric conditions, and if no bright objects are nearby in the sky.

Go watch it with the naked eye. Take the 40 bucks, and invest them on gas, soda and food. Find the darkest area you can reasonably drive to (darksitefinder.com), and go there with your family, to a nice park, beach, or any other nice area. Make a picnic out of it. Just lay on the grass and enjoy watching the stars. Just being well outside a city will make the sky look amazing (because of light pollution).

If you have the luck of getting a clear sky, you'll have a great time and be able to see it just fine. If you have cloud covering instead (welcome to the world of astronomy, the weather is always a harsh mistress), you'll still have a great time outside with your family, and your kid will never forget it.

>That's why I said it's uncertain at best, at which point you replied that you're certain. Obviously we can't look into alternate realities so I don't know why you'd reply that you'd be certain.

Because we have history. We've seen what happened previously to other developments the government didn't mess with, and the private market doesn't drop things like the government does. It doesn't find something new and then puts it on the backburner for years. The government does. All the WWII up to Apollo progress was then made up by decades of stagnation.

>I gave specific examples, fusion power

That has gone nowhere and will most likely never go anywhere.

>and space travel

Which was in the hands of private individuals before, until the government took over, and then they took care that nothing happened in it for decades, and only now we're rescuing it from the government's incompetent hands.

>"Governments destroyed the world"? It really feels like I'm getting into a political argument here with no clue what your politics are. Government and private industry aren't blood enemies in some epic battle of good vs evil, most of the time they work hand-in-hand to build a functioning society with pros and cons of each. The pros of government funding is that they'll fund advanced technology long before any private investor would.

The government is everyone's enemy. There are no pros to government funding other than cronyism and corruption.

But that isn't a fair assessment. The world was in chaos during the entirety of WWI, and then afterwards with the great depression, and afterwards because of WWII. So it was a messy time, bad for business. Governments destroyed the world, and your argument is "but private industry wasn't doing so well back then".

And that proves what? That's how the free market works. Some succeed, some don't. The Wright brothers made many mistakes when it came to business. The thing is, their failure wasn't the failure of the industry. Plenty of other manufacturers quickly showed up, and started selling planes like crazy. The wright brothers models where more expensive, and less well marketed.

>You're using an example where it was government funded efforts, namely through WW2, that advanced aviation in leaps and bounds and created the modern aviation industry.

Did it, though? It mostly achieved the opposite. It concentrated power unfairly on a few large companies, heavily regulated the market, and stalled progress for decades.

>At best it's uncertain whether government slows down progress. Government funding seems to still be the only way to pay for technology where the return is too far in the future and too risky to be worth the investment for private investors.

No, it isn't uncertain. Before governments started messing with the market so much in certain areas, those areas where entirely private. Even trains where initially private. Undersea cables. The telegraph.

>Why would you say that government stagnates the private sector? If the private sector saw a profit in it, what's stopping them from funding, building and launching their own right now?

This is the usual BS with government funding. The government enters an industry, heavily regulates it, then becomes the primary customer before the industry has a chance to develop. They arbitrarily and unfairly fund a few large contractors, to the point where it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to compete with them, because they are receiving fortunes in government money. And then you look at it and say "See? This wouldn't have happened without the government".

Think about SpaceX. Getting into the launch market, where monsters like ULA and its parents Boeing/Lockheed where so well established thanks to the government, getting billions, and all the launches? How about launching itself. Wanna build your own launchpad? Good luck with that, think about how hard BC was and still is to get going thanks to regulations. The government already had all the land that was good for launching, and they weren't sharing. They made SpaceX pay for Vandenberg, and then still didn't let them launch from there in the end. Add to that ITAR, and all the other stupid regulations.

The government never helps, all it ever does is get in the way.

The military was in NO way involved in development or funding. Years later, they saw the capability and showed up to get their hands on one. So what? Lots more where sold in the free market to regular citizens.

Why would you think that?

Think of the closest example, airplanes. Airplanes exist. We didn't need a government-funded air race to get them. The very first airplane was entirely developed and funded by private capital.

The truth is, had there been no space race or NASA, we would've gotten something like SpaceX far, far sooner.

Government involvement didn't help, it stagnate space development for decades by keeping private endeavors out of it. It's still messing with them to this day.

On the contrary. You're probably thinking of the health industry in the USA. Guess what has ruined it? The government. It's in a state where it isn't fully government-run, but it isn't really private either. It's overregulated and with an insanely large government presence that messes everything up.