So it begins. 😎

PS: btw is Gliese 581 in the elite games?

But that's good, right?

Btw as far as I understand it most of this is just hype. The planet is nothing like earth. It is perhaps the same distance from the sun as venus, perhaps closer and is tidally locked so that it always points the same direction into the sun, which means no day and night.

In one of the articles it does mention this and says that perhaps people could live in the 'temperate' zone of continuous sunrise, but a tidally locked world like this would produce some intense storms. All that hot air trying to escape.

Its certainly more like earth than a gas-giant, but no-ones ever going to be living there. Mars is a more hospitable environment to us.

I had a search for it in Pioneer but couldnt find it 🙂 But that doesn't mean its not in the elite games as there are some changes.

Maybe. If it does have life, it might be full of brain sucking space goats http://www.tojam.ca/games_2007/space_goat.asp or worse...........Micro$oft executives 😮

I thought these facts on Gliese 581 were interesting:

# Diameter - 1.2 to 1.4 times that of the Earth

# Mass - 3.1 and 4.3 times that of the Earth

# Average surface temperature - between -24F and 10F (-31C and -12C)

# Distance from the Earth - 20 light years or 118,000,000,000,000 miles

# Time needed to travel to Gliese 581g in a rocket travelling one tenth the speed of light, or 19,000 miles per second - 200 years

# One of six planets to orbit the star Gliese 581

# Length of year - 37 Earth days

# Gravity - similar or slightly higher than Earth

# Distance from its sun - around six million miles

# The planet orbits a red dwarf which is 50 times cooler and a third the size of our Sun

# Composition - rocky with liquid water and atmosphere.

Looking at those facts it doesn't look like a vacation spot that's for sure. We would probably have to like in a dome or in an enclosure most of the year. And with really only half of the planet seeing sun light it limits colonization spots. Can't remember physics too well but if the gravity is greater on this planet things would be heavier and we would probably start to shrink after some generations of breeding on the planet. But the simple fact that it is 200yrs away at our current engine technology is a huge let down.

I wonder how they worked that out? IIRC Gravity is a direct by-product of mass, so if something has 4 times the mass of Earth, then it has 4 times the gravity too... That would be like living on the most extreme parts of a rollercoaster : Puling 4Gs all the time

Personally I don't see how they could guesstimate any of these values, I have yet to see a good pic of the planet itself. How can they get this information by looking at pics like this:

I have yet to find a pic that even zooms in to show the planet and the sun together. I think they are just guessing what the compositional make-up of the planet is.

You might have a hard time finding a pic D1 I think this all done by looking at how much a star wobbles and analyzing the light from the star and probably a bit of guessing.

What... they call that science 🙂

I guess none of this matters until we can travel the speed of light or faster. Because even then it would take 20yrs to get there. I guess we are going to be stuck on Earth for a long time. So quit getting my hopes up and just start some colonies on the Moon and Mars.

Well I think it would be 20 years for us stuck on Earth, but for those on the spaceship travelling light speed, it would take much less time, which means you would need less oxygen and fuel ect as the trip to them is much shorter.