Comments by "justgivemethetruth" (@justgivemethetruth) on "Mars is the Next “New World," And We’ll Set Foot on it Soon. | Big Think" video.

>> eventually we need to move out to other solar systems in other galaxies. The nearest galaxy is Canis Major and it is 25,000 light years from Earth. That means it would take 25,000 years to reach if we could go the speed of light. Since we do not move anywhere close to the speed of light - the fastest thing we can reach today is 25 miles per second ... which is 7451 times slower than light. So if we could make a ship to go to the closest galaxy and we could get that ship up to 25 miles per second it would take 25,000 * 7451 = 186 thousand years to make that trip. I think this guy has been watching too many Science Fiction movies. We are talking about transit times much longer than the number of years human beings have existed. And what for ... so we can screw us and destroy life all over the galaxy as we have done on Earth? I think maybe we should spend a little time growing up and not kill ourselves and our planet off first.
1
kokofan50 Your claims are full of holes. The first thing is that while you may get a drive that will get the maximum speed up to something substantial, that would be the maximum speed, not the average speed. A ship would be accelerating for half the trip, and then decelerating for the other half. In the darkness of interstellar space a solar sail is not going to help much by the way. Then there is the fact that we really do not know what is out there between solar systems of galaxies, and at a high speed like that even dust could destroy a ship. I think you max speed of 10% the speed of light is a fantasy for a large generation ship. Considering that our fastest thing is not even .02% of the speed of light, speculating about 10% is mere folly.
1