The math isn't really the main limiting factor to getting close to stars.
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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Learning math is what makes you realize that
Yeah but a little bit of meth and you'll surely figure it out.
That or the right job application and a lot of propellant and oxidizer - but seriously, don't do that. It didn't end well for Icarus. Gravitationally-driven open-core fusion reactors are best admired from a safe minimum distance.
lot of propellant and oxidizer
You can only realistically get close to one of them that way.
You are better off studying plasma containment fusion. And that's a fuckton of math.
Oh no. You can get close to any star of your choosing with only minuscule amounts of reaction mass if you start out in vacuum away from significant gravity wells - eventually. Granted, the star in question may or may not have gone supernova or collapsed into a black hole by the time you arrive, but I doubt that'll make a lot of difference to the person doing it at that point.
With that said, I'm not about to discourage anybody from taking an interest in fusion of the up-close-and-personal-kind. And if people aren't into the math of Magnetohydrodynamics? Well, first off, sucks to be them, but second: Then donate to the cause to pay those who are. Fusion is fucking awesome, and we desperately need it.
Even fusion constrains you to the limits of the rocket equation. Laser sails on the other hand, could let you put the bulk of your propulsion system in orbit of the sun or something where you don't have to carry it with you.
...safe maximum distance.
FTFY.
Fair.
If you learn just a little bit of math you can realize that no one else is getting anywhere near them either.
Next year, Voyager I will have traveled 1 light day. It will also be over 49 years old at that time. Think about that for a moment. Almost 50 years to travel the time it takes light to travel in a single day. Our closest star is Proxima Centauri at 4.25 light years away. To reach Proxima Centauri, Voyager I would need to travel ~77,500 years. Voyager 1 is one of the fastest man-made objects in existence and it would take far longer than the entire history of civilization to arrive.
Space is big.
Nah, just take a positional average and you're pretty much in the middle of one!
Artists can get intimately acquainted with them anytime.
That’s because math is fundamentally flawed.
Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone, they get all upset about it.
Interesting! Could you elaborate on this? I'm intrigued to know the intrinsic flaws.
It has to do with creating measuring devices out of what we can empirically derive, and building successive generations off of those. It’s fine for our local system but by the time you get intergalactic (or quantum) with it, flaws start to propagate themselves bigly.
I can’t reveal more at this time or Big Math will get suspicious.
Big Math comes knocking: “you mean Big Physics?”
quoi? Oh désolé, je ne sais pas. Vous devez avoir le mauvais numéro.
*sounds of fleeing*
Kurt Gödel wrote a whole paper on it.
He used math to show that all statements, in any language, can be expressed as math statements. He then proved that it's impossible to create any consistent set of math statements that completely describes everything.
That doesn’t make it fundamentally flawed. I also can’t completely describe all muscle movement involved and yet I can walk.
Gödel’s incompleteness theorem has to be the most overhyped thing since a certain cat. For logicians, it mainly means that “is it probable” is a valid question for prepositions that are otherwise vastly esoteric in nature.
I kept reading stairs but yeah both I guess
Same thing with video games
Eh, I remember just googling space stuff and absorbing info and that alone had enough dopamine. My world was so small before I got access to the internet, when I was a kid, I had a children's book about science stuff, stars, but they barely had much info. Internet access was so magical. Unlimited information.
I interpreted this to mean that you need to learn a lot of math in order to have a career in astronomy. I don't think OP thought it was possible to actually go to the star and math was the limiting factor.