Because they're running out of House Elves. And everyone knows that House Elves are domesticated Martians.

 

As it is doable by individuals - it needs just single person that would think that it may be really interesting or cool.

Some sort of science exists in HP universe, including astronomy - so purely scientific space exploration may also exist in some form.

It is possible that in potions (or something else) rocks from the Moon/Mars/etc are used (and new ones are better than meteorites or are necessary in large amounts).

With magic interstellar space travel moves from "maybe it will be feasible within next centuries" to "really big project", so it may be nice to check whatever there are other civilizations in our galaxy, to avoid very unpleasant surprises.

 

I think some of you guys are either (a) overestimating the abilities of the flying enchantments on brooms or Arthur's flying car or (b) underestimating the speed necessary to make orbit.

From what I can tell nothing in the HP universe flies faster than about 200 km/h. That's not exactly slow, but even a pretty low LEO orbit requires about 28,000 km/h. Now just because it's not seen doesn't mean it's not possible but it seems unlikely to me that the bog standard flying enchantment(s) would do the trick.

I mentioned before in this thread that I had an idea for a wizard space program but I also came up with ideas why wizards had never left the Earth that I didn't include in that outline. One idea I had was that Wizards didn't have the necessary technical knowledge (for instance understanding orbital velocity. It's not necessary the most intuitive thing in the world). Another idea I had was that there were certain limitations to spells and enchantments that were just not known by the magical world.

For instance, a hypothetical magiconaut recognizes that apparating 160 km is not terribly difficult. This wizard also recognizes that breathable air thins as elevation increases. So in preparation for the inaugural spaceflight in the HP universe, he casts the bubblehead charm and apparates straight up. He reaches 160 km successfully. The bubble immediately pops and he dies grasping for air in thirty seconds. His corpse burns up on reentry a scant minute or so later. This example demonstrates both problems: one is technical (the aforementioned orbital velocity question; he apparated but did not impart the necessary relative velocity on himself) and the other is a (potential) magical problem. We know the bubblehead charm works well in atmospheres with a pressure of 1 or above, but we don't know how well it would cope with near vacuum.

After a series of such early failures I think the magical world would give up on the idea. And while it is possible that the magicals have complete and total knowledge of what their muggle counterparts are doing, I don't think it is actually practical for them to know what every department and division of the government is doing at a time (for instance the fact that they knew the American president was calling the British Prime Minister shows only that they knew the PM's schedule; considering Kingsley was "working" for the PM at the time shows where they got that knowledge. It doesn't mean that they know the ins and outs of the entire government). And considering how widespread blood purity and racism against muggles is in the magical world I'd guess that many wizards would delude themselves that it was a prank and not actually real.

 

I silently assumed that flying enchantments work by generating force - and bludger flying for multiple hours with over 1g acceleration (necessary just to counteract gravity) may as well be used to accelerate spaceship en-route to the Moon.

But yes, it is possible that levitation keeps things away from ground and it will not work in space or maybe entire magic fails in space, enchantments work by providing speed, not acceleration (see brooms in HPMOR) or magic is weird in some other way. Or maybe everybody believes that it have some problems like this as ones that tried this turned into meteors.

But if enchantments used in available flying equipment work by generating force and it is not refusing to work in space, than it is perfect way to move spaceships, as it escapes the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation (it works without any fuel).

Something that may achieve around 1,4g acceleration requires only around 13 minutes to reach 28,000 km/h velocity on orbit (1 g up to keep from failing, 1g horizontal to accelerate) once it is at height of intended orbit. It should be within reach of typical bludger. Time to reach LEO is within hours for something moving at 100km/h.

 

I would argue that the rocket equation isn't that tyrannical to wizards anyway; they have expansion charms that increase volume without increasing mass. And relatively speaking fuel is cheap.

In general I think there are a lot of ways that a sufficiently clever wizard can make it into space (There is a part of me that is a fan of a Jules Verne-esque wizarding artillery piece shooting someone into space). But I don't think it can be as simple as "I put a flying charm on it" otherwise it would be too easy and would be omnipresent in the HP books. Therefore, I believe there must be some otherwise unexplored limitation. And from a literary perspective creating a challenge that characters must overcome is really just a good idea.

 

"otherwise it would be too easy and would be omnipresent in the HP books"

I am not sure. In the first place amount of people that are interested in any way in space and astronomy is low. To my surprise most people have no idea about existence of things like ISS or Hubble telescope. Some are surprised by fact that artificial satellites exist. I think that it may be possible that wizards have space program, even way more advanced than our but Ron and Harry were completely uninterested, and it was never relevant so it was not mentioned by Hermione. Obviously it was never intended or mentioned by Rowling, but it may be fully canon compatible.

Going even further - thanks to much lower population of magical world amount of people that tried anything is so low that nobody had significant success.

 

And then it turns out that the UFO from area 51 was caused by a random wizard trying to make a car fly. Or that all UFO sightings are for similar reasons.

 

No, that makes magic too powerful, too game changing. There have to be hard limits well before that. In my opinion, anyway.

Wait, what? Are you talking about wizards? I could see them being ignorant of this quite easily. If you're talking about real life, however... I categorically refuse to believe anybody is that uninformed.

This whole discussion is fun. I believe that wizards have never made it into space, partly because Muggles have to be better at something for the world to be balanced.

 

@mknote: You might be surprised at what people just don't know, the ISS and Hubble being the least of things. For example, I still have no idea who Jennifer Aniston is.

 

I am talking about real people. I recently started trying to catch ISS and most of people that was interested in what I am doing (standing in the middle of park during night, checking notes and staring into sky) were surprised that something like ISS exists. I tried asking random people on the street and disturbingly high amount of people had no idea that something like artificial satellites exists, almost nobody had knowledge about ISS or Hubble telescope. At least nobody here thinks that evolution is conspiracy theory like it happens in USA. See also http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/22/publics-knowledge-of-science-and-technology/ for similar poll with a bit better sample (one of questions: "Electrons are smaller than atoms: yes - 47%, no - 27%, don't know - 25%").

Among wizards? Muhaha. Even among Muggleborns it would be 1 in 3000 that was already astronomy fan at age of 11. Plus maybe some that have some real contact with Muggles.

another sad but entertaining story about ignorance: http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~det/phy2060/heavyboots.html

 

Except that's an apocryphal story with no actual hard data. The guy says "he heard it from a friend who heard it from friend" or some such. But also of note: in that (quite probably fictional) study most people got the answers correct. So I doubt the idea that "most people" don't know about the ISS or Hubble; many people certainly. For one thing, ISS and Hubble are probably a little more esoteric than some other space projects. But I also doubt that most people wouldn't know, for instance, that astronauts have stepped on the moon. I'm just very skeptical of such a claim.

 

You keep trying to set scientific limits to a fundamentally non-scientific concept. Magic takes every single law of physics and fucks it until it begs for mercy

Let's go through a couple, shall we? Starting with the big one.

Theory of Special Relativity - Apparation is instant travel between two points.
Theory of General Relativity - Levitation. Apparation again. Time travel.
Thermodynamics - Eternal flame. Gemino Curse. Aguamenti. Conjuration and transfiguration in their entirety
The entire subject of Chemistry - Potions.

If magic is capable of violating gravity, thermodynamics and relativity with some of the most commonly used spells why can it not defend against nuclear weapons? As far as breaking physical laws are concerned, if you're able to laugh in the face of thermodynamics you're pretty much capable of anything.

That said, magic does have limits. You can't raise the dead. You can't conjure food. You can't heal wounds inflicted by dark magic. You can't heal a person who has been Kissed by a Dementor.

You just need to stop thinking of magic as something that fits into the real universe. Think of it as closer to divinity than to reality, where special people are capable of impossible things and the only people able to counter them are other special people.

 

Are you sure that it is instant?

 

If it's not it's at least faster than light.

 

No! NO! Will not accept! I will fuck magic up before I accept! It will be made to work!

Sorry, I just get a little worked up over this subject. I will grant you that there are certain... things that... appear to violate... certain laws... But, it can be made to work... Physics is obviously not a complete description of the Harry Potter universe, so physical laws need to be modified somewhat to fit the observed phenomena... Or I don't think I could be in the fandom anymore...

God, I am such an anal physicist... and I use too many ellipses...

You, uh, got some proof of that? The speed of light is really, really fast, i.e. you could cross the diameter of the Earth 23.5 times in a single second at that speed.

This is kinda the sticking point. I cannot do this. Cannot. Impossible.

I need familiarity. That's probably why I don't like high fantasy such as Lord of the Rings – it's unfamiliar. Harry Potter, however, ostensibly takes place in the real world in modern times – something I'm familiar with. I'd like my physical laws too. I'm fine with the unfamiliar thing (magic) as long as there's some familiarity (physics, Muggles) as well.

I just realized that I'm rambling only partially coherently. I feel kinda loopy right now, not all there... So take this post with a grain of salt, I suppose. It seems right at the moment, but I might very well come back and edit it when I'm in a better state of mind.

 

I don't disagree that magic is extremely powerful, violating every law of physics we've intuited in as many ways as is possible. Whatever magic is, it's capable of amazing, wonderful things. That said, it doesn't mean that wizards are necessarily able to do everything that magic is capable of producing.

In my mind it's not about actual limits of magic but functional ones. Wizards figured out they couldn't hold on to a broom or sit properly on a carpet faster than 200 km/h so they never invented a flying charm that could exceed that. They never thought they would need a bubblehead charm at near-vacuum pressures so it might not work in that situation. Harry can't just sit from his dorm room at Hogwarts and cast a self guiding killing curse to end Voldemort. These things may very well be possible, but in my opinion it seems likely that wizards just don't know how to do them yet.

Wizards' knowledge of magic and the world is not complete. This means that by necessity there is a limit to what wizards can do with what they know at that exact moment. Could someone expand beyond what wizards believe to be possible? We know this to be true because it happens in the books a number of times (Harry surviving the killing curse — both times, Voldemort making a large number of Horcruxes, etc.). Anyway that's my thoughts on the subject.

 

I think you're in the wrong fandom then. If it helps, think of it in terms of religion rather than reality. I doubt it will, but Wizards are closer to God than anything in the real world.

May have been an exaggeration on my part there. Still, teleportation is teleportation. Given that magic doesn't appear to use energy at all the difficulty shouldn't really be one of power but of skill.

---------- Post automerged at 09:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:30 PM ----------

Oh, I agree entirely. I think that magic, especially old magic, is capable of anything and that it's just a matter of time and understanding until wizards can do anything they want to. After all, we've seen enough loopholes and exceptions to the rules as stated to give us an idea of how magic works.

 

I think the most fundamental violation of physics HP magic offers is that it breaks conservation of energy. That's pretty fucking fundamental.

 

Pfft.

Sofia would have laid the smack down on him while Dorothy held him down with her Amazonian strength, then Harry would have joined them for a late-night slice of cheesecake. End of story.

Of course, being forced to watch something you don't like is enough to cause resentment in anyone, so your misguided proclamation of a Voldemort victory is quite understandable, and I sympathize.


Now, if we were talking about Brighton Belles, yeah, Voldemort probably had them skinned and turned into leather hammocks.

 

POD/Plot Bunny

The magical gene is indeed dominant and wizards out-breed muggles during the times of the Roman Empire. Obviously would be total AU, with muggles existing only in history books.

Hogwarts would exist, but it would be somewhat different from canon. One change is that Slytherin does not leave school, as muggleborns simply do not exist to be an issue. Blood purity would be replaced with classism and dark magic.

Harry would exist (because of course), but Lily would be a pureblood witch.

The main conflict/plot of the story would be war between "Britain" and a rogue nation founded by Voldemort many years prior. Harry is not the Boy Who Lived, but there is a Prophecy about him (different one though).