Talk:Interstellar travel

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This formerly on the page included statement in the "Interstellar missions not for human benefit" section,

"For biotic ethics, and their extension to space as panbiotic ethics, it is a human purpose to secure and propagate life and to use space to maximize life."

violates Wikipedia's requirement for publicly accepted, peer-reviewed sources for statements, and hence I correctly removed it.

--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.192.195.234 (talk) 03:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

High priority & urgency: The following section,

"Interstellar missions not for human benefit Explorative high-speed missions to Alpha Centauri, as planned for by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, are projected to be realizable within the 21st century.[105] It is alternatively possible to plan for uncrewed slow-cruising missions taking millennia to arrive. These probes would not be for human benefit in the sense that one can not foresee whether there would be anybody around on Earth interested in then back-transmitted science data. An example would be the Genesis mission,[106] which aims to bring unicellular life, in the spirit of directed panspermia, to habitable but otherwise barren planets.[107] Comparatively slow cruising Genesis probes, with a typical speed of c / 300 {\displaystyle c/300}, corresponding to about 1000 km/s {\displaystyle 1000\,{\mbox{km/s}}}, can be decelerated using a magnetic sail. Uncrewed missions not for human benefit would hence be feasible.[108] For biotic ethics, and their extension to space as panbiotic ethics, it is a human purpose to secure and propagate life and to use space to maximize life. "

must have this part removed "For biotic ethics, and their extension to space as panbiotic ethics, it is a human purpose to secure and propagate life and to use space to maximize life. "

and substituted with an improved, formalized version of the following line of reasoning (including several already existing scientific sources to be used to argue the point) by someone else as I'm busy enough informing, warning, educating people all around the world currently on this and currently don't have the time or experience for Wikipedia article editing so that it fits established norms: "Explorative high-speed missions to Alpha Centauri, as planned for by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, are projected to be realizable within the 21st century.[105] It is alternatively possible to plan for uncrewed slow-cruising missions taking millennia to arrive. These probes would not be for human benefit in the sense that one can not foresee whether there would be anybody around on Earth interested in then back-transmitted science data. An example would be the Genesis mission,[106] which aims to bring unicellular life, in the spirit of directed panspermia, to habitable but otherwise barren planets.[107] Comparatively slow cruising Genesis probes, with a typical speed of c / 300 {\displaystyle c/300}, corresponding to about 1000 km/s {\displaystyle 1000\,{\mbox{km/s}}}, can be decelerated using a magnetic sail. Uncrewed missions not for human benefit would hence be feasible.[108] For biotic ethics, and their extension to space as panbiotic anti-ethics, it since has been scientifically proven to be the absolute worst possible to commit macro-crime in the entire universe for any advanced civilization to "secure" the billion years long dominant pain and suffering of millions of wildlife animal species of which for some of them quintillions of individuals were to then exist at any point in time of an exo-biosphere to maximize life suffering as consequence of utterly extremely irresponsible, reckless, irreversible forward contamination by which hubristic people were to be playing godevil, and hence ethically it has been in ultimate conclusion determined that it must be averted at all costs.

Proof:

On the topic, the most general, really absolutely undeniably impeccable argument (relying on far weaker binding, so more generally applicable, evident axioms) would be the following:

"1. Macro-Ethical Scale of Evolution of Life: Certainly, if evolution of life happens somewhere or not is a very big deal in (macro) ethical terms since easily millions of species can be subjected to it, be involved in it, for several hundreds of millions, possibly even billions of years.

2. Macro-Ethical Importance of Evolution of Life: Now, what also is surely very agreeable is that evolution can play out in extremely many different ways and with extremely large variety in its short- and long-term dynamic, with that depending on all kinds of events (of various qualitatively different types) happening during it at all or not, or later or sooner. And so the window, or (in terms of all in the process aggregated joy and suffering) distance between the worst kinds of an instance of evolution of life and the best kinds of it surely is astronomically huge, providing the subject matter with monumental relevance, importance due to its scale. And this is independent of where (i.e. wholly on the negative side or between the negative and the positive side, or entirely on the positive side) such an interval or window consisting of the whole range or spectrum of cases of evolution of life between the worst and the best cases lies on any continuous axis (from - infinity to + infinity) meant to account for the ethical evaluation of the whole, once everything of ethical relevance related to it has finished happening.

3. Nearly guaranteed expectable decision-making- or design-improvement, rapidly in short time: Also, certainly any randomly intentionally or accidentally, maybe even unnoticed, kind of initiated instance of evolution elsewhere would not with any sufficiently high likelihood result in a form of evolution of life that is anywhere close among whatever the better actually plausible possible cases of it may be. And at the same time, science and technologies progress rapidly and surely can keep progressing speedily for millennia, if not hundreds of thousands of years, putting humanity then into a position with far greater holistic overview and comprehension of the matter. And given how gargantuan of a macro-ethically important matter this is, even if in the future we only could turn it into e.g. a 5% (relative to the window width) better version than any now possibly as such then irreversible version of evolution of life, the absolute difference would be unimaginably titanic.

4. Humanity's historical, contextually as empirical reference frame relevant, abysmal track record: As our history repeatedly shows, humanity does not have a track record of managing complex large-scale matters anywhere near perfectly right, the 1st time around, in part due to unaccounted for side-effects. Huge problems tied in with them are more the norm than an exception. And on top of this, unfortunately there is several factors that likely make it harder for contemporary people to care about this topic, such as all the crises we had and still have here on earth, but also that it's about a huge risk for others, not ourselves, and it'd not be humans (though it could also eventually lead to species with human level intelligence being subjected to it) but wildlife animals (which generally are by people judged to have a lower priority of care compared to other humans), and the disaster would unfold far in the future (long past the lifetime of anyone that lives currently) and far away, and the means by which it'd happen would be in a very subtle manner of which the comprehension, understanding of all that is made less accessible by the interdisciplinary complexity of the subject and that it has to be explained in rather little time, as it doesn't take long anymore for future space missions and activities in general carrying these grave risks with them. And so it seems that just about all odds stand in opposition rather than in favor of people taking it seriously with the right mindset about it.

5. It holds true that there is lack of any urgency or need for near-future final decision-making, by which to lock humanity out of otherwise currently still available, significant alternatives.

Conclusion: Unchallengeably, unquestionably it makes sense and is entirely far safer for humanity to have discipline, patience, and hold itself back from all its outer space activities that carry at least the slightest forward contamination risks.

Besides all of this, the same general line of reasoning would apply for all intelligent aliens with exo-biospheres of different biological constitution analogously. And not just that either, but all alien civilizations would have to account for all biologically distinct kinds of evolution of life possible in the universe - for if distinct kinds do exist - depending on the general distribution of habitable candidate worlds specific to each of them individually, and so in particular, intelligent aliens would have to account for our DNA-based kind of biosphere, and vice versa, humanity would have to account for the possibility of the emergence of biologically distinct cases of evolution of life.

As reminder: The climate, biological and nuclear and chemical threats, autonomous A.I., microplastics, and other topics - in our history, humanity had to learn after mistakes were already made, which often times turned into burdens that later generations had to carry. While for these cases the - still devastating - consequences may be more limited in scope, I think when it's about the cosmos, it'd be wiser to approach this matter in a more reluctant, mindful manner, with long-term foresight, and without forgetting about ethics. Power & knowledge demands responsibility in its use, and it cannot be allowed for anyone to play god with exoplanets by kick-starting evolution of life there. And just because the universe contains so far uninhabited but habitable hells, this doesn't mean we should even just infinitesimally risk populating them, especially in those instances in which they are so far away that it is utterly impossible to control what happens there. Contamination of celestial bodies with rapidly exponentially in numbers growing multi-cellular microbes would constitute a forever irreversible point of no return, especially for those several very near-future missions aiming at those moons estimated to be most capable of allowing life on them & therefore carrying the highest contamination risks: Enceladus, Europa, Titan, Ganymede, Callisto, Triton. As reference, even the microbes on the ISS eventually started to for their metabolism consume the cleaning substances meant for sterilization. And according to John Grunsfeld, the associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Mars already has been contaminated with microbes by accident. Let's think of the possibly thousands or even millions of future generations that will judge us, our behavior. If nothing's done about it, the clock until forwards-contamination happens keeps ticking down. The entirety of humanity together - including whatever the future can be - does NOT sit on the most populated Trolley Problem track, and we ought to better know our due place in this universe and act accordingly. Those who do not understand the all-species-encompassing, dominantly widespread extent of pain can never understand true peace. To express the matter in a metaphor, a chain is only as strong as its weakest element, and for ventures into new technological and scientific frontiers, history repeatedly demonstrated that the weakest element is at the beginning, when the knowledge and experience with a subject matter is the smallest (without the entirety of people being entrustable to act carefully enough, namely in accordance to this circumstance), especially regarding long-term consequences and far away, subtly and with delay accumulating large-scale effects of which their prevention can require having predicted them long ago already. So it seems extremely concerningly plausible that if (interplanetary or interstellar) forwards-contaminations happen ever at all (until finally never anymore), that it happens within this very - new space rush mentality plagued - century (which then were to negatively affect generations across thousands of future centuries). Positive & negative (alike other SI-units of measurement very well quantifiable) feelings - by the precise causal means of emergence via a specific set of neuro-chemical processes - contribute to and in summation determine the development of the value and meaning generated within our universe, independent of who experiences those feelings - it solely matters if they actually happen and therefore need to be accounted for. And absolutely no principle ought to get in the way of the in its logical position unique axiomatic principle of total sum of overall generated scalar levels of well-being maximization across all time, not even the principle of justice (as it isn't absolved from scrutiny in ethics either and isn't allowed to cause misery), though just solely precisely in those instances of it in which following it were to be required to come at an unavoidable cost in terms of reducing the total sum of overall generated well-being, since otherwise, justice serves the well-being maximization principle as well. To quote the most famous physicist: "Compassionate people are geniuses in the art of living, more necessary to the dignity, security, and joy of humanity than the discoverers of knowledge." Interstellar directed panspermia en masse, if ever perpetrated, potentially causes up to a - once initiated naturally self-feeding and out of control - near eternal chain-reaction of cosmos-wide calamity, and therefore this warning message is about nothing less than saving the Milky Way galaxy (or even the world beyond it) from the worst possible case scenario that could ever befall it. Here is a quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson: "For every moment of triumph (and for every instance of beauty), many souls must be trampled." Furthermore, in case appeals to reason or negotiations may fail, interception of forwards-contamination-risking spacecraft enacted by nations on earth's crust that grasp the non-negotiably imperative importance of preventing kick-started entire evolution of life processes by irreversible biological forwards-contamination may unnecessarily risk international misunderstandings of (far less harmful but still) grave consequences alike mutually assured destruction. Not only is humanity an "early game" civilization relative to the development of the universe, but we are also located in a so-called Super Spiral, the largest known kind of galaxies, and on top of this, we are a pre-galaxy-collision civilization as the Andromeda galaxy is approaching, which further increases the possible extent of naturally in magnitude upwards-cascading contamination processes, and all of this together - relative to nearly any other circumstance a civilization could find itself in - provides all that much more in the universe uniquely important reason and necessity for humanity to be utmost extremely careful with respect to outer space activities and to make sure to not risk irreversible forwards-contamination at all. In this, our world, if a person wants to be regarded as an adult, serious person, they must learn to accept that the correct Trolley problem solution is person-identity-independent; one has to have the guts to make the right decision independently of where one stands personally.

Also, on the topic of Fermi's Paradox, it might be worthwhile considering the plausibility of the following hypothetical explanation: Ethical explanation

It is possible that ethical assessment of general forms of evolution of life in the universe constitutes the central issue which intelligent alien species' macroscopic decision-making, such as for the topic of natural panspermia, directed panspermia, space colonization, megastructures, or self-replicating spacecraft, revolves around. If the result of utility evaluations of enough and sufficiently in time extended initial or lasting portions of expected or prospective cases of evolution is among all other ethically relevant factors the dominant ethical concern of intelligent alien species, and if furthermore a large enough negative expected utility is assigned to sufficiently common forms of expected or prospective cases of evolution, then foregoing directed panspermia, space colonization, the construction of megastructures, sending out self-replicating spacecraft, but also active attempts to mitigate the consequences of interplanetary and interstellar forms of natural panspermia may follow. While in the case of space colonization it might ultimately stay too uncontrollable to - by technical or educational means - ensure settlers or emerging space colonies themselves consistently keep acting in accordance to the awareness of by colonizer considered major ethical dangers accompanying physical interstellar space exploration, and for the case of interstellar self-replicating spacecraft, due to potential prebiotic substances in interstellar clouds and exoplanets' atmospheres and soils, it may forever stay impossible to ensure their sterility to avoid contamination of celestial bodies which may kick-start uncontrollable evolution processes, reasons to forego the creation of a megastructure, even if such may be beneficial to an intelligent alien species and also to some other intelligent alien species imitators, may mainly have psychological origin. Since certain megastructures may be identifiable to be of unnatural, intelligent design requiring origin by foreign intelligent alien species, for as long as the by an intelligent alien species expected number of (especially less experienced or less far developed) from them foreign intelligent alien species capable of identifying their megastructure as such is large enough, the by them rather uncontrollable spectrum of interstellar space endeavor related influences this may have on those foreign intelligent alien species might constitute a too strong ethical deterrence from creating megastructures that are from outer space identifiable as such, until eventually a lasting state of cosmic privacy may be attained by natural or technological means.

And so consequently, the steady-state solution of the Fermi Paradox consists of naturally emerging civilizations that just stay on their home-world, hide and by their location of emergence are assigned a region of space around them in which they can exercise local cosmic intervention operations for the macro-ethical good, until a galaxy is covered by regions of civilizations' local influences, similar to a mathematical minimal packing problem, but for covering a galaxy with the least required amount of civilizations in order to keep as much of it overall as sterile as possible for as long as possible. And for the case of a spiral galaxy, chances are that the majority - if not all - of such civilizations will inhabit star systems moving together with the main-stream of stars around the galactic center, since for wrong-way-driver star systems, due to their severely increased interaction rates with different galaxy regions, both the emergence of a civilization as well as their continued long-term presence is at far higher risk. The only exception to this general behavior might arise near the very end of the universe's development when galaxies have ran out of material with which to keep stars burning, darkened severely with "the lights having gone out", and planets have cooled out sufficiently far, so that the risk of accidental or intentional, direct or indirect causation by civilizations of lasting, uncontrolled evolutions of wildlife has upon astronomically slow, gradual decay finally diminished to a sufficiently low level as to potentially conceivably provide macro-ethical allowance or even justification for civilizations to not have to hide and be silent anymore.

Here is the core of the theory of everything that matters:

1. Axiom of Importance: The ethical importance of an issue increases alongside the number of therein involved sentient lifeforms, the time duration during which they are affected by it, and the vastness of the affected space to the extent to which changes of it affect the lifeforms. Or more directly, it increases with the absolute difference in caused, resulting time-integrals over all (with receptor-specific intensities weighed) pleasure & pain receptor-signals for any and all sentient beings.

2. Extreme case: By the in the above statement defined abstract, general standard, according to the current body of humanity's knowledge, general forms of evolution of life (if on earth or on exoplanets) forever constitute the most ethically important issue to exist in the universe: With billions of species - each with numerous individual lifeforms - together with durations on the scale of billions of years, and spacial extension of at least a whole planet, it dwarfs any other conceivable ethical issue's level of importance.

3. Valuation Axiom for the extreme case: According to many scientific studies, such as by Richard Dawkins, Brian Tomasik, Alejandro Villamor Iglesias, Oscar Horta, pain and suffering dominates over joy for animal wildlife in general forms of Darwinian evolution of life due to the global war-like situation commonly framed as survival of the fittest (rather than the demise of all unfit), and therefore - when accumulated across all logically entangled parameters such as duration and count of involved individuals - instances of such forms of evolution of life has to be kept at a minimum in the universe, as there never was and never will be anything that could be more important, to change the conclusion of this Anti-Panspermia-implying directive.

1. Special Cosmos Ethics Theorem: Exoplanet-Wildlife-Development-Control-dependent Anti-Panspermia Directive for Humanity The current state of the art of scientific evidence and ethics without exception imperatively demands that humanity does NOT engage in outer space activities of kinds that could even just infinitesimally likely risk introducing life to for any kind of lifeforms habitable worlds, for at least as long as humanity's practical capability of controlling the up to astronomically vast consequences of interstellar space projects doesn't sufficiently improve in a for interstellar space endeavors safety guaranteeing, critical manner.

Proof (by contradiction): This conclusion deductively follows from the concerningly plausible, by many scientific studies supported, Axiom that general animal wildlife - not only as it has been throughout evolution on earth, but on a more general level that would apply to exoplanet life of our biological kind, too - for the vast majority of it is dominated by pain and suffering rather than joy (reference: Center for Long-Term Risk).

Assume the existence of a counter-example: It could be argued that IF overall worthwhile to exist life on a larger scale were to rely on previous evolutionary animal wildlife's existence and that the former were to safely come from the latter, that THEN it could possibly be better for evolutionary animal wildlife to come into existence than not.

Proof (by Ethical Dominance Principle) of the impossibility of the existence of counter-examples: However, given that aforementioned, dominant wildlife animal pain and suffering in its amount and hence importance and priority for macro-scale decision-making increases by the duration throughout which such a miserable, in itself unwantable state persists, and that in the case of general forms of evolution of life, we have to expect that it can last for extraordinary long times of what essentially is involuntary, if avoidable unnecessary torture by the banal means of nature's own ruthlessness, namely that it can last for billions of years, and furthermore that these time-spans are unavoidable if it shall lead to intelligent species, we can therefore conclude that the severity of this issue dominates every other to this date conceivable, plausible ethical issue, since all other ethical issues absolutely pale in comparison to the magnitudes of magnitudes by which this central ethical issue overshadows them all, in such a uniquely outstanding way that risking billion years full of suffering for thousands of individuals of at any time billions of wildlife exoplanet animals each can for nothing in the world be a by any standards reasonable sacrifice to make.

Therefore, by humanity's current full body of knowledge, what happens to wildlife animals part of any actual, prospective, or potentially risked to exist instances of evolution of life constitutes the single most dominating, for ethical macro-scale decision-making behavior sole determinant factor of consideration.

Corollary 1.1: Time-Global Anti-Panspermia Directive for Humanity If humanity is never able or can never be able to safely control exoplanet wildlife's entire development for the purpose of guaranteeing its & all by its own activities potentially emerging foreign exoplanet wildlife's pain-less flourishing, for any exoplanet wildlife risked to emerge or exist as consequence of humanity's outer space activities, then it follows that humanity shall NEVER engage in activities that risk causing such.

2. Central Cosmos Ethics Theorem: General Anti-Panspermia Prime Directive If the result of wildlife well-being evaluations of enough and sufficiently in time extended initial or lasting portions of expected or prospective cases of evolution of life is generally among all other ethically relevant factors the dominant ethical concern, and if furthermore a large enough unavoidable negative expected wildlife well-being has to be assumed of sufficiently common forms of expected or prospective cases of evolution of life, then imperative necessity of complete prevention of all preventable forms of contamination or panspermia follows.

Corollary 2.1: Anti-Panspermia Directive on local Star System Contamination Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking contamination of a celestial body within the local star system with (not necessarily extremophile) micro-organisms is to be prevented. This includes causing the emergence and spread of micro-organisms on a celestial body of the local star system, potentially followed by eventual interstellar transportation of by it emerging (extremophile) micro-organisms on the celestial body via natural panspermia, such as meteorites entering such celestial body's atmosphere to pick the organisms up and continue towards interstellar space via sling-shot.

Corollary 2.2: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Space-Faring Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking space-faring activities are to be prevented. This includes not only space probes, satellites, solar sails, and light sails but also von-Neumann-Probes (self-replicating Spacecraft), (replicating) seeder ships, and space-faring of individuals where the Anti-Panspermia abiding behavior of them and later generations after them cannot be ensured.

Corollary 2.3: Natural Anti-Panspermia Directive Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable natural litho-panspermia processes are to be prevented. This includes (extremophile) micro-organism transportation methods via space dust, meteorites, asteroids, comets, planetoids, planets, and debris ejected into space upon celestial body collisions.

Corollary 2.4: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Mega-Structures Any construction of a mega-structure that at least infinitesimally - due to literally far reaching psychological influences - risks contamination or panspermia being risked or pursued via outer space activities from any other - for the detection of such mega-structure in astronomy engaging - alien civilization is to be prevented.

Corollary 2.5: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Super Geyser and Super Volcano Eruptions Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable natural super geyser and super volcano eruptions on a by life inhabited planet that can reach beyond its exosphere are to be prevented, or altered so they safely don't risk contamination or panspermia anymore.

Corollary 2.6: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Space-Flight Infrastructure Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable space-flight infrastructure construction or use is to be prevented, or at least sufficiently restricted, controlled, and regulated.

Corollary 2.7: Anti-Panspermia Directive on Science, Technology, and Knowledge Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable scientific or technological activities or knowledge is to be prevented or irreversibly deleted, or at least sufficiently restricted, controlled, and regulated. This includes solar sail and light sail related technology, science, and knowledge. This may at first glance seem to be excessive, but for comparison, by magnitudes far less in their potential damage severe dual-use technologies are classified & are subject of strict continual control, too.

Corollary 2.8: Anti-Panspermia Directive on (Mass) Psychology Any at least infinitesimally contamination or panspermia risking, preventable psychological influence is to be prevented, or at least sufficiently restricted. This includes the propagation of news of any astronomical discovery of a bio-signature or techno-signature or celestial body of special interest such as habitable exoplanets.

Remark: The importance of prevention measures for types of panspermia (according to the above general line of reasoning) depends on the level of (lack of) controllability of the potential long-term consequences (in terms of kick-started evolution of life) that may emerge as result from such, and for the purpose of differentiating in a reasonable manner that has this control-related parameter in mind, it makes sense to differentiate between interstellar and interplanetary panspermia, as at least it seems more plausible that interplanetary panspermia - if it were to happen - would be easier and more timely to control (although not necessarily sufficiently controllable).

Also, to cite the animal suffering Wikipedia page's top paragraph with sources (though there is many more, namely 244 of them):

Wild animal suffering is the suffering experienced by nonhuman animals living outside of direct human control, due to harms such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation and malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, and killings by other animals,[1][2] as well as psychological stress.[3] Some estimates indicate that these individual animals make up the vast majority of animals in existence.[4] An extensive amount of natural suffering has been described as an unavoidable consequence of Darwinian evolution[5] and the pervasiveness of reproductive strategies which favor producing large numbers of offspring, with a low amount of parental care and of which only a small number survive to adulthood, the rest dying in painful ways, has led some to argue that suffering dominates happiness in nature.[1][6][7]

[1] Tomasik, Brian (2015-11-02). "The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering". Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism. 3 (2): 133–152. doi:10.7358/rela-2015-002-toma. ISSN 2280-9643. [5] Dawkins, Richard (1995). "Chapter 4: God's Utility Function". River Out of Eden. London: Orion Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-297-81540-2. [6] Horta, Oscar (2010). "Debunking the Idyllic View of Natural Processes: Population Dynamics and Suffering in the Wild" (PDF). Télos. 17 (1): 73–88. [7] Iglesias, Alejandro Villamor (2018). "The overwhelming prevalence of suffering in Nature". Revista de Bioética y Derecho. 2019: 181–195.

For reference, here are scientific estimates on the number of existing animals on earth at any time throughout hundreds of millions of years (with the exception of humans and livestock, of course): Humans: 8 billion Livestock: 24 billion Birds: 100 billion to 400 billion Mammals: 100 billion to 1 trillion Reptiles: 100 billion to 100 trillion Amphibians: 100 billion to 100 trillion Fish: 10 trillion to 1 quadrillion Earthworms: 100 trillion to 100 quadrillion Terrestrial Insects: 100 quadrillion to 10 quintillion

An opinion position - especially if it were based on a bambi fantasy worldview emerging from cognitive dissonance - opposed to all these facts would be severely anti-scientific and with public communication I'm making sure for the long-term future for when humanity may look back into what is then history, to document people's development of opinion positions on this utmost critical matter. In case the previous arguments haven't been convincing enough yet, there has been not a single invention or technology by humanity that was immediately perfect, and because this gives immensely strong reason for expecting a forwards-contamination event to have abysmally miserable consequences and given the scale that's at stake, humanity must have more discipline and patience with respect to physical outer space exploration at the very least for the next centuries, and on top of this, stubbornly money-focused market and business incentives even worsen the situation further by steering humanity towards rushing into the outer space frontier which though absolutely, non-negotiably ought to be refrained from, as if there weren't already enough crises due to several historical mistakes of the very same nature. The urgency of this matter easily beats even the urgency of the climate crisis by at least a decade, where - for comparison's sake - even if a climate crisis were to cast disaster onto earth for thousand years, its scale were to still be not even a hundred-thousandth of how long wildlife suffering throughout entire evolutions of life last.

The advocacy of physical outer space exploration (which plausibly risks over short astronomical time turning into an - up to at most some point of eventual saturation - cascadingly magnifying catastrophe once an ice moon were to be contaminated, since many of them have geysers spewing material out more than 100 kilometers and past their exospheres into space from where space rocks can catch and carry them to the next celestial body, allowing for an escalatory feedback process) will in the long run age very poorly, since physical outer space exploration via possible contamination negligently risks quintillion times mass torture of future wildlife animals, and constitutes an extremely irresponsible form of arrogant hubris by daring to play god with foreign worlds despite great lack of understanding of the very long-term consequences. Unlike in the Sorcerer's Apprentice's situation, for humanity there will be no magical sorcerer Pankrates to rid the spirits that his apprentice once called. "

--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.192.195.234 (talk) 02:46, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

There is currently a debate on deleting an article about the Vacuum to Antimatter-Rocket: https://wiki.alquds.edu/?query=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Vacuum_to_Antimatter-Rocket

I have suggested keeping it because:

I believe it's the only spacecraft proposal on using Schwinger pair production for uncrewed interstellar travel.

JBIS is one of the most prestigious journals on interstellar tavel: https://www.jbis.org.uk/paper/2011.64.378

Centauri Dreams (https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2016/08/02/the-evolution-of-antimatter-propulsion/) is written by Paul Gilster, an expert on interstellar travel: https://www.planetary.org/profiles/paul-gilster

Space.com and Interesting Engineering and reliable secondary sources as far as I'm concerned.

Cheers. ExoEditor 03:36, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Prime Targets for Interstellar Travel

You can tell that this article is going with very dated information where it says that there are 59 known stellar systems within 40 light years of the Sun, containing 81 visible stars. That's what it says in the Prime Targets section and it is right over the table but there must be hundreds of known star systems within 40 light years of the Sun. Should we maybe say that there must be much more than 59 known star systems within 40 light years of the Sun, containing much more than 81 visible stars, for example, or can someone do better? PS: You can find it in Zubrin's book and it's all over the internet and it's right in Wikipedia itself. Patriot1423 (talk) 20:22, 30 June 2022 (UTC)