Gliese 581 is all the proof I need.

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star in the constellation Libra that's been getting some press lately because a planet was found in the "Goldilocks Zone," a small ring of habitable temperatures where liquid water might be found on solid planets. The star is 20.5 light years away, making it relatively close as far as astronomy goes. A lot of people are claiming this discovery as humanity's next destination, the second earth we've been searching for and dreaming about for years.

Well, I've done some math to figure out exactly how far this planet is, in terms that are more easily understood. Warning: I am not an astronomer or mathematician. These numbers came from sources online, and might not be accurate.

A light-year is a massive distance, we understand that. 20.5 light years, in terms of miles, comes out to around 120,439,334,310,000 miles. That's one-hundred-and-twenty trillion, four-hundred-and-thirty-nine billion, three-hundred-and-thirty-four million, three-hundred-and-ten thousand miles, or 24,641,915,694.5 round trips from New York to Los Angeles. In other words, Gliese 581 is really far away.

Now take into account the speeds of the space shuttle. In orbit, this technological marvel goes a blazing 17580 miles per hour in orbit. Pretty fast, but not nearly fast enough. At that speed, the trip to Gliese 581 would take 781,534 years. That's longer than humans have been throwing pointy sticks at each other by about six hundred millenniums. Now, in theory, we could use the gravity of the sun to slingshot a spacecraft at speeds of about 100,000 miles per hour, though a conventional ship would not survive the g-forces, or be able to escape the sun's gravity well. But, let's say for a second that we achieve that herculean feat. We get a ship going 100,000 miles an hour. We still have to go the 20.5 light years. At that speed, the trip is cut to a much more manageable 137,393.719 years. That's less time than humans have already existed, at least. Only 4580 generations! Unfortunately that's enough that whatever settlers happened to be sent would probably be only mostly-recognizable as humans.

However, all this math and these big bleak numbers prove to me one thing: We need to work on our tech. Humanity is going to need to expand eventually, and we're going to need some serious ships to do so. I'm not naive enough to think that humans will achieve faster-than-light speeds, but we should be able to approach light speed before too terribly long. Hell, if we could get to Gliese in 200 years it would be worth it. If we had a viable chance at making the trip in 1000, I'd sign up. But right now, when you can measure the travel time in thousands of generations, it's not worth speculating. We need to up the ante and make it viable.

That is all.

I guess I'm blogging again.