The only way to truly become a spacefaring civilization is to first learn how to time travel. Think about it, if we leave Earth and spend time on other planets and then return, decades (even centuries) could have passed on Earth and what we left behind would be unrecognizable. Unless we traveled through Space AND Time!

This is an intriguing concept and touches on some profound physics and philosophical implications for humanity’s future in space. You’re suggesting that to genuinely become a space-faring civilization, we’d need to conquer time as well as space to make interstellar travel viable and meaningful. Here’s a deeper look at why:

Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us that time moves differently depending on relative speed and gravity. For a spacecraft traveling near light speed, time would pass slower on board than on Earth. While crew members might only experience a few years during a deep-space journey, they could return to find that centuries have passed on Earth. This is known as “time dilation,” and it leads to a time gap between the explorers and those they left behind.

Consequence: Without time travel, there’s a disconnect: travelers become chronologically isolated from the civilization they came from, making it hard to sustain connections or bring back knowledge that’s still relevant to those left behind.

For true space colonization, we need to ensure that settlements on distant worlds maintain cultural, technological, and biological continuity with Earth. Even with vast resource sharing, the human experience is still fundamentally tied to Earth’s history, evolution, and continuity. To prevent disconnection from our origins, managing time becomes essential so that colonists and Earthlings evolve together culturally and socially, rather than diverging dramatically over millennia.

Consequence: Time travel could allow these distant colonies to remain in sync with Earth, preventing “cultural drift” and allowing civilization as a whole to retain a cohesive identity.

To venture into space without understanding time fully might result in a limited perception of the universe. In other words, time could be as crucial a “dimension” as any physical distance. Consider how time travel would let us revisit lost opportunities or even access resources that are “gone” from our timeline. By treating time as an active dimension in travel, space-faring missions could explore across time, not just space, allowing us to adapt our technology and culture in ways that remain resonant across eras.

Consequence: Space travel with time integration would allow humanity to adapt without losing touch with the past, letting us respond to changes on Earth, troubleshoot emerging challenges, and retain the flexibility to stay connected with our origins.

Mastering time travel for space purposes would also mean facing the ethical and paradoxical implications of altering history or “returning” to past eras. Should we treat history as changeable, or do we merely observe? Could altering past choices help humanity prevent catastrophes, or would that risk destabilizing progress? In seeking to keep our civilization cohesive across vast distances, these considerations become vital, as space and time travel would also mean acknowledging and respecting the flow of history.

In essence, learning how to travel through time might be the bridge to making space travel meaningful and integrated into our species’ identity, allowing us to explore the stars while remaining anchored to our origin—Earth and our collective human experience. Without this, we risk becoming space-faring in a disjointed, fragmented way, leaving behind a past and a world that might become unrecognizable over time.

So, in theory, any space traveler is tied by time to their origin.

Yes, exactly! Any space traveler is fundamentally tied to their origin in time, not just in space. This “temporal tether” to Earth’s timeline arises because of the intrinsic relationship between time and space that Einstein’s theory of relativity describes. In fact, every traveler carries with them a timeline that progresses differently than the timeline of those left behind, depending on their speed and gravitational influences.

Without control over time, space travelers remain subject to time dilation and other effects, making their personal timeline diverge from Earth’s. When they eventually return, they’re bound to a future that may have developed vastly differently, with people, societies, and even technologies that might seem alien. Time, in this sense, becomes a boundary that limits not only their ability to communicate with their origin but also the relevance of their journey to their own culture and history.

So, if we want space travelers to remain connected to Earth’s timeline, we’d need a way to bridge the time gap—to somehow “sync” their timeline with that of Earth’s, or allow for controlled travel through both space and time. This would mean going beyond just moving through physical distances and tackling time as a fully navigable dimension, aligning the traveler’s journey with the timeline they originally left.

So, for now, we are stuck here?

Yes, in a way, we’re “stuck” in the sense that our ability to explore space is limited to the physical and temporal boundaries of our current technology and understanding. We can send spacecraft relatively short distances in astronomical terms—just to our own Moon, Mars, and the outer edges of our solar system. But to explore farther without a way to handle the time gap effectively, we face serious obstacles.

For instance:

1. Time Dilation and Loneliness in Exploration: Even if we could travel to nearby stars, the travelers would age far more slowly than people back on Earth, leading to an emotional and practical disconnect from the world they left behind. Without a way to control the time they experience, any return trip would effectively make them “strangers” in their own future.
2. Generational Missions: Currently, without time travel, the only feasible way to reach distant worlds would be through generation ships, where multiple generations would live and die aboard the vessel before reaching the destination. But this approach raises questions about whether the journey would even matter to the descendants of the original travelers, who might never see Earth again.
3. Technological Limitations: Our spacecraft are constrained by current propulsion technologies that make interstellar travel incredibly slow. Even the closest stars are light-years away, meaning they’d take thousands of years to reach with our current propulsion. The speed we need would itself cause significant time dilation effects, exacerbating the disconnection from Earth.

So, while we can explore our solar system to some extent, we’re “stuck” from a practical perspective when it comes to the greater galaxy and beyond. Until we find a way to either travel faster than light or navigate both time and space together, we’ll remain mostly bound to our cosmic neighborhood.