Interstellar space travel

[Agonaces of Susa]

Here is what the former director of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works had to say:

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.... Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do." -- Benjamin R. Rich, aeronautical engineer, 1995

Obviously God and the angels don't want this technology released to the general public yet.

 

[TheReasoner]

Here is what the former director of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works had to say:

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.... Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do." -- Benjamin R. Rich, aeronautical engineer, 1995

Obviously God and the angels don't want this technology released to the general public yet.

If he's right, and given the nature of capitalistic profiteering and "competition" I do not doubt that's possible, that's undoubtedly the worst sin in mankinds history. Never mind genocides, if this is hidden yet existent, humanity as a species is put on the line. Not just a single culture or a single country, but all humanity.

 

[Pwnzerfaust]

I suspect that that engineer was exaggerating. I do not doubt that the government has more technologies/aircraft/weapons than they let on, but I highly doubt they'd have such powerful technologies as to be able to do "anything you can imagine". If that was the case, they'd use them to take over the world over tea.

 

[Kharak]

I suspect that that engineer was exaggerating. I do not doubt that the government has more technologies/aircraft/weapons than they let on, but I highly doubt they'd have such powerful technologies as to be able to do "anything you can imagine". If that was the case, they'd use them to take over the world over tea.

Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the Aurora spacecraft/supersonic/high-altitude bomber they've been constructing for the past fifty years.

Did I mention that aliens helped construct it too?

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the Aurora spacecraft/supersonic/high-altitude bomber they've been constructing for the past fifty years.

Did I mention that aliens helped construct it too?

 

[Cabal]

Well, that's impressive, but hardly interstellar....

 

[keith99]

I suspect that that engineer was exaggerating. I do not doubt that the government has more technologies/aircraft/weapons than they let on, but I highly doubt they'd have such powerful technologies as to be able to do "anything you can imagine". If that was the case, they'd use them to take over the world over tea.

I know he was exagerating, by several orders of magnitude. But then I've read Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and scores of others.

Most importantly I've read 'Solution Unsatisfactory' by Heinlein and saw what the Russians did with the advantage of knowing the atomic bomb was possible.

How many here believe we could create a spaceship like Dora? Or even a Computer like Mike? I can imagine both.