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From: KFL@MIT-MC.ARPA ("Keith F. Lynch")
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <[MIT-MC.ARPA].708613.851106.KFL>
Date: Wed, 6-Nov-85 22:01:16 EST
Article-I.D.: <[MIT-MC.ARPA].708613.851106.KFL>
Posted: Wed Nov  6 22:01:16 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Nov-85 04:55:31 EST
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Organization: The ARPA Internet
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    Date: 24 Oct 85 13:05:55 GMT
    From: decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!dipirro@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Are we
    having fun yet?)

    Most people agree that as long as speed-of-light restrictions apply, it is
    impractical for intelligent life forms to travel to different star systems
    (unless, of course, their solar system is about to blow up).

  I certainly hope this is wrong, since I seriously doubt that faster-
than-light travel will ever be possible.
  I don't see why it should be impractical.  Certainly it would take
enormous amounts of energy to travel insterstellar distances in reasonable
amounts of time, but you can get any distance in an arbitrarily short
amount of time, thanks to relativistic time dilation, if you have the
energy and don't mind the fact that much greater lengths of time are
passing on earth and at your destination.
  Arthur C. Clarke has pointed out that you can get as far as the
Andromeda galaxy, two million light years away, within a human lifetime
if you accelerate and decelerate at 1 g (the acceleration of gravity
experienced on earth).  And if you double the acceleration, the time
goes down by a factor of four.
								...Keith