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Comment by bouncycastle | Hacker News Reader

If there is intelligent life somewhere out there, when they travel to space, I wonder if they also insist on operating technology that is at least one generation back, for the reason of "proven reliability"? I'd say probably yes. If we ever get a visit from them, that "shmux semiconductor" will be the old model...

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"Greetings humans! Our vessel has arrived to destroy your planet! Please wait a few months though because this is the old model that takes a while to charge up, sorry about that..."

https://youtu.be/2XUnMiERBj4

It's interesting to see you speculate that it would be a culture that prioritizes reliability. I could also imagine that it is more like the Vikings or Polynesians where some fishermen pushed technology further than before and ended up somewhere new. That kind of "bravery" or experimentation has sometimes played of in past circumstances much better than some kind of architected reliability / safety focused approach.

It has to safety oriented. Space is death. Advanced civilizations can probably harness that danger like we do fire and electricity but we still f#@$ it up burning buildings and cars. Thus we spend time and energy with fire safety. Space is a different ballgame

I still think the parent has a insightful comment. It's interesting to compare the hybrid between deep care and deep recklessness of Belters in various scifi (e.g. The Expanse) vs. historical oceanic explorers on Earth. Setting off across the ocean in little more than a canoe doesn't seem particularly safety oriented, and maybe there is a civilization that evolves a similar approach to space. That could be as simple as "spray and pray," or more deceptively sophisticated like Polynesian navigation.

Given the nature of space travel, it will likely be a very old model indeed. Unless they have FTL!

If they don't have FTL (including no time effects) they will never come. Space is too large to go anywhere useful. The nearest start is ~4 light years away, at 1/10th the speed of light (vastly faster than we know how to go) it is 40 years to get here! We have done a lot of searching for life and haven't found it, the closer the planet is, the more likely we are to find it, thus I think it is safe to concluded there is no life within 20 light years or so. At 20 light years communication via radio is hard to establish just because turn around time for questions won't be answered in a lifetime. (It will be interesting learning about their Roman Empire history, but if they explain science and there is even one thing we don't get the person who sends the what do you mean question is retired/dead before the answer arrives - unless a few years latter we figure it out anyway.

Take the civilization 20 light years away, either they left before they even know we existed (we didn't have any emissions that indicated intelligence, though they might be able to detect life), and so they are not equipped to deal with us. If they want to take over - they didn't break enough weapons because they didn't expect to need them.

Even if life is common in the universe, it isn't common in any area where an intelligent civilization can expect to actually reach without FTL.

Interesting! I did the calculation and it's actually worse than that...

Alpha Centauri is just 4.37ly away. With an acceleration of 0.00227g, mass of 1t, and max velocity of 0.1C (10% of C), it will take 86.33 years to reach Alpha Centauri for those on the spaceship, assuming you also want to stop at the destination. (Calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/space-travel#space-tr...)

5G base station/terminal power usage isn't very optimized yet.

its so they can have some planned obsolescence

Lots of profit in those service contracts.

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