I was wrong on my numbers. We should think in real terms.
You’d need about 10,000 shuttle main engines in sequence just to build up a decent speed (say, 1/100th light speed).
I don't consider it at all coincidental that as soon as you realized just how badly wrong you were about how long it would take to get to another star system at near-lightspeed, you decided to focus instead on what is currently possible. The problem is, you're so narrow-minded that you think you know something and have to have the fact that you're wrong shoved in your face pretty hard to accept it. Except then you just fixate on something else that supports what you already believe. And you act like that false certainty means something and cop a 'superior' attitude to everyone else.
Yes, it's true that with
existing space flight technology, other stars are out of our reach. But so what? Since you apparently haven't realized it, technology improves over time. We went from a computer that filled an entire room, ran at 100 kHz
[1], and could only run one operation at a time, to computers that you can carry inside a briefcase, run at speeds in excess of 2 GHz
[2], and can run dozens of programs at the same time, in less than 70 years.
More to the point, we went from basic rocket propulsion technology to a spacecraft that could take people to the moon and return in about two decades. After that, we basically let it sit and stopped seriously pushing space flight technology, aside from incremental improvements, so for all practical purposes, we're using stuff that's only slightly better than we were using during the heyday of the space program. If we started seriously pushing it again, I think we'd start seeing significant improvements in the technology again.
That page you linked actually acknowledges this very issue not long after that quote you made, probably without reading most of the page.
"But all of those propulsion issues are really trivial. Here is the real problem with traveling to Alpha Centauri. Suppose we chose a method of travel, and set out for a trip among the stars. Suppose that, generations from now, our descendants arrived at a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. They might be greeted by brass bands and crowds of earthlings – who left later, but traveled via a more efficient process – and so made the trip in a shorter time."
So you thought that was a clever communication. Typical.
I'll grant that he should have told you what the acronym meant instead of leaving you to guess. That's why I simply told you what it meant. You might think about that before you make any more snippy comments.
