The future of space travel

its more beneficial to solved the problems on earth first before we start to carry them into space

Good for them, however they've still got a ways to go as far as space travel goes, this particular launch wasn't even a manned flight.

When they can get a man on the moon, then I'll be impressed with the exploits of the Chinese Space Program. So far, only the US has achieved this objective...

Sadly, we need serious paradigm shifts in advanced technology for deep space travel and especially in our own lives and society as a race before we ever seriously consider exploring the solar system and beyond in manned missions.

As Riebens hints, the last thing we need to do is to drag our problems, wars and society ills to the rest of our solar system, much less to any stars and solar systems beyond our own.

let me put it this way:

they need to do shitloads of things before space exploration can be done on manned missions that go further than the moon.

all the mental and physical problems they will run into like
ships will need gravity or else muscle reduction --> once they get to a place with gravity they are fucked
spending years in a little shell locked up with few people --> ouch
communication with severe delays between sender and receiver

and so on

well it#s 3 days until the end of the mars500 experiment, look it up

Here in the vast infrastructure and technology of the US Government, we already have the ways & means of extended space travel & exploration. We just need the revenue to construct a vessel so large ( essentially self-sustaining ) that can make the journey. The guidance systems alone would have to be in the 100's of redundancies for accurate calculations, reactor measurements, graviational pulls and slingshots. Radar systems would need to be able to "see" 100s of 1000's of kilometers due to the speed of the vessel and so forth.

But as Op pointed out, we need to solve our problems here first, before the world can endeavor such a feat.

I saw this on the news

Here in the vast infrastructure and technology of the US Government, we already have the ways & means of extended space travel & exploration.

cough mars climate orbiter cough

Maybe the answer to our problems, lies among the stars .

Problem, Space is Huge.
Answer, Shrink and expand space.
We should have the ability to do this before trying to travel these insanely long distances.

Its so wonderful where we live, why do we need to travel anyway?

...because mankind is so bright that we already destroyed most of the needed enviroment we are living in. It´s not the question if we need a new planet somewhen more when.

Neutrinos are faster than light speed. A good beginning.

Nah cmon - traveling faster than light, how the heck do you tend to take a look to the environment around you to determine if the place would be worth to stay...

Didn't they recently have some particles in the LHC go slightly faster than speed of light? So many interesting things to ponder these days

Don't think that they have speed nor even faster then light at the LHC. The relative speed between particles maybe - but thats just math to be able to calculate with it.
Something like the calculating with the square root of -1 ;D

Generally said and with that back to the topic. I find it quite OK that China is now part of a global space program. I am also on the side that space programs should be held by governments and keeping the private sector only at a minimum. Otherwise if it will be part and sponsored by the private sector it could be limited by those who "own" it. Space is for everyone - thus its more than correct that governments keep the space programs active. Its necessary otherwise the ISS would fall on all our heads soon^^

And having a kinda global development into the right direction will probably make it a bit easier to share costs and advance the complex technology to make space travels soon valuable. Something like the next milestone - bringing people to mars, with a slight chance to be able to bring them back...

Quote from Huor

Don't think that they have speed nor even faster then light at the LHC

They have them mate.

Quote

[...] Researchers on the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment recorded the arrival times of ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos sent from Cern on a 730km journey through the Earth to the Gran Sasso lab.

The trip would take a beam of light 2.4 milliseconds to complete, but after running the experiment for three years and timing the arrival of 15,000 neutrinos, the scientists discovered that the particles arrived at Gran Sasso sixty billionths of a second earlier, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 billionths of a second.

The measurement amounts to the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light by a fraction of 20 parts per million. Since the speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second, the neutrinos were evidently travelling at 299,798,454 metres per second. [...]

Source: The Guardian Thursday 22 September 2011 23.32 BST

Sometimes we will be able to travel that fast - if we do not destroy ourselves or our planet before. And their are far more possibilities than using endless energy to acclerate mass. It´s just a matter of time (much time ).

The topic is the future of space travel, isn´t it?

We don't need to travel anyway, just to learn how to visit other places out of our physical form.Oh almost forget important part, which is...who will exploit all this brave new worlds...and how...hmmm we must be "there" to dig dig dig...>_>

how can be 20 PPM faster be such a massive discovery? Thats just about 6000 m/s faster. Lets book this under - primeval measurements didnt yet revealed the real speed of light
Considering that even airplanes grow in length during their normal flight speed of nearly 1 mach. And then compare that with traveling with the speed of light which is appr. 100.000 times faster i wouldnt want to sit in such an object. Besides this i believe i wouldnt have any fun traveling that fast. Nothing to watch - nothing else than a few light particles that move next to you^^