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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#171

Post by nickparker »

bsdetector wrote: post #97
nickparker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting back is actually much easier, and we won't send anyone until there's a return ship ready for them on the ground. Mars escape velocity is ~5 km/s compared to 11 km/s for Earth, so right off the bat it takes half as much delta-v to get off Mars. The numbers get even more attractive when you consider that Mars's atmosphere is so thin you can use vacuum-optimized engines on the surface. It's a near-certainty that…

What I meant is, until Mars is self-sustaining and eventually capable of recolonizing Earth. Colonists rocketing back to a nuclear wasteland or planet infected with super-viruses won't protect us from extinction. And it's much easier and cheaper just to have underground bunkers than to bring a few people back from Mars on a rocket right after some disaster.

Civilization isn't the human species, it's a higher level and far more fragile thing.

If a small fraction of civilization survived a global disaster in bunkers, it's very possible they would regress during the aftermath and never achieve a global society like ours again.

A self sustaining civilization on Mars guarantees not just our survival in the Darwin sense, but our continued technological advancement and expansion.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#172

Post by jdfr »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #73
tcoppi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout human history, there has always been a new/unexplored land to emigrate to for new opportunities or to escape political persecution. Nowdays there is nowhere left for someone in the West to emigrate to that is not substantially the same or worse. Mars and the stars could potentially offer that opportunity, which might be why some people are excited.

Why not the oceans? Much easier to populate than Mars.

This video (wanderers) does not give a reason, but it sums up quite nicely the way I feel it: https://youtu.be/YH3c1QZzRK4

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#173

Post by nitrogen »

slg wrote: post #113
tcoppi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout human history, there has always been a new/unexplored land to emigrate to for new opportunities or to escape political persecution. Nowdays there is nowhere left for someone in the West to emigrate to that is not substantially the same or worse. Mars and the stars could potentially offer that opportunity, which might be why some people are excited.

I think that is taking an overly optimistic view of the past. No other time in history has it been easier or cheaper to pick up your life and move and the truth is that almost anywhere in the "west" provides better living conditions and less persecution than anyone from even a few generations back could hope to receive.

These debates always end up with people talking past each other. One side will say that present living conditions are better than they ever were in the past. The other will say that past frontiers provided freedoms and opportunities that aren't available today. Both these things are true -- you are talking about different things.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#174

Post by ravenstine »

BurningFrog wrote: post #116
ravenstine wrote: post #107

I have a better idea: Let's focus all the money and effort we would spend on getting to Mars and living on its wasteland, and use it to understand the human mind and digitize it into a realm not individually constrained by physics? I actually think that may be a more realistic and practical goal, and our quality of lives could be much better. I mean, what do we really get from living somewhere like Mars? A storage co…

Humanity can work on more than one project. We're 7 billion people.

That point is not in dispute. What I think would be better than spending the amount of effort and time to get to Mars, which I am unconvinced solves our long term problems in any way, would be to better pool those resources into solving the root issues that afflict humanity like aging, pathogens, degenerative diseases, the need for so much food, the pollution we create, and the resources we consume. Working towards changing the human into something better, whether it be through improving our own hardware(biology) or bringing us into a digital realm(cognition). If we don't do that sooner, we're more likely to continue to suffer from the problems we are inevitably facing and end up, as I said earlier, turning planets into mere storage compartments. We can certainly do multiple things at once, but resources are not infinite, and I don't think all avenues of spending those resources make sense.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#175

Post by orky56 »

dev1n wrote: post #112
maerF0x0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brings up a good point. Why mars first? Why not a moon colony first?

Some possible reasons; Mars has a c02 atmosphere, water ice, it has a ~24 hour day as opposed to the moons 28 day-day, Earth and Mars have similar sizes.

Why does the Mars 24.5 hr day versus the Moons 28 day-day matter? What are the consequences of this big difference between Earth day and the moon/Mars day?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#176

Post by BinaryIdiot »

dsabanin wrote: post #103
sfeng wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given hundreds (or thousands) of years, yes.

Yeah, I don't argue it can't be done in thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of years. I'm just saying it's probably unwise to focus and spend time and money on this right now. We probably won't even make it to that day. It's better to learn to live on Earth responsibly and then maybe, once we've learned our lessons, start looking further.

I don't understand this sentiment. It's so incredibly backwards.

What do you do for a living? Your profile says you work on DeployBot.com. Why? We have so many problems on why are you working on something to deploy code? Shouldn't you be working in medicine to help those in need? You shouldn't you be working on reducing CO2? You shouldn't be working on any code deployment tools until we solve healthcare. It's really irresponsible.

Do you see the issue here? There is no reason someone can't spend their money (or company's money) to pursue a goal they're passionate about.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#177

Post by chriswarbo »

cbau wrote: post #110
maerF0x0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This brings up a good point. Why mars first? Why not a moon colony first?

Musk just addressed this. Mars has an atmosphere of CO2 and Nitrogen, so we can grow plants, a day length similar to Earth's (24.5 hours), and is larger.

> and is larger

I see this as a disadvantage; the major difficulty of space exploration is getting out of the Earth's gravity well. I don't think it's wise to fall back into another one.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#178

Post by BinaryIdiot »

dsabanin wrote: post #84
codeulike wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the end of the video. I think he intends to terraform it. Edit: looks like he's aiming for a city of 1m people in the short term, Terraforming in the long term.

We can't solve simplest problems on Earth (like re-capturing CO2 for example), but believe we'll be able to terraform a planet to which we haven't even been able to send a human yet?

Watching the presentation I don't see Elon saying that. Likely when we can terraform Mars we can also recapture CO2 and terraforming would be far away. Perhaps you should watch the presentation before commenting negatively on it?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#180

Post by __jal »

slg wrote: post #113
tcoppi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout human history, there has always been a new/unexplored land to emigrate to for new opportunities or to escape political persecution. Nowdays there is nowhere left for someone in the West to emigrate to that is not substantially the same or worse. Mars and the stars could potentially offer that opportunity, which might be why some people are excited.

I think that is taking an overly optimistic view of the past. No other time in history has it been easier or cheaper to pick up your life and move and the truth is that almost anywhere in the "west" provides better living conditions and less persecution than anyone from even a few generations back could hope to receive.

I think you're forgetting that there are dreamers, crazies and malcontents that historically have been more than willing to risk everything to make a go somewhere new or get away from their civilized peers.

Persecution is certainly one motivator, but hardly the only one. Some people are driven to explore, some are religious nuts looking for whatever they look for, some just hate civilization or people or their family or whatever, some can't explain their motives.

Civilization isn't for everyone.

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