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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#311

Post by ElComradio »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #183
mikeash wrote: post #148

Some of the comments here make me think of crabs in a pot pulling down the ones who try to climb out. Nobody's making you participate in this venture. If you don't like it, then you're free to go do whatever it is you do like. You might think Musk could better direct his efforts and resources elsewhere, but most other billionaires don't do anything all that interesting, they just invest their money in mundane stuff,…

Simple. They are jealous they are on the sidelines.

In the same way nerds got beat up because the jocks are just jealous of their brains?

There can be criticisms of a plan to send a few people to die in a metal box millions of miles away at incredible cost that do not require jealousy as a motivator.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#312

Post by goatlover »

mikeash wrote: post #295
pharrington wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Successful terraforming becomes easy once we can send alot of rockets to a destination? We are emperically terrible at sustainably making our own planet more hospitable to human life, how is Mars easier? I'm actually bewildered here; just baby me and spell out how the Mars colonization process works if the only significant requisite is being able to move things from point A to point B. Do not dodge by saying we've co…

Terraforming isn't necessary. Growing food is probably a necessity, as even this cheap transport isn't that transport, but you can do that in greenhouses. Water is available. Energy is available in the form of either solar or nuclear. Getting the colony to be self-sustaining is hard, but it boils down to getting enough people and infrastructure there that they are able to build everything they need on site.

We have bases on Antarctica, and they're not self sustaining. Consider that Antarctica is far more liveable and closer than Mars.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#313

Post by Symmetry »

optforfon wrote: post #194
cbau wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has an "atmosphere" It's 0.00628 atm according to Wikipedia. That's effectively a vacuum. You can't have liquid water on Mars. So you can grow plants in some kind of transparent pressurized place... Just like on the Moon.. or on a space station

But it's still much easier to grab even a thin gas than it is to mine anything. An extremely convenient source of both carbon and nitrogen is going to be a huge benefit in terms of trying for long term sustainability. The Moon does have plenty of oxygen in various minerals and hydrogen in the polar ice but you need more than that.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#314

Post by enraged_camel »

davidw wrote: post #257

Jeez, they should have done some vetting of the people asking questions. Some of these are horrible and a waste of time.

Yeah, the guy who said he was at Burning Man and wondered how we would deal with human shit on Mars made me cringe.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#316

Post by mxfh »

dudus wrote: post #277

Watching live the announcement and presentation by Elon on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg Where the hell did they get this audience from? Is this hosted on a frat house with some academic invites? There's a dude jokingly saying that burning man felt like mars with a lot of shit and no water, there's a guy plugging his comic book, there's a guy making a joke on how we should send Michael Cera to Mars, a g…

It's super weird, also that refueling question:

People have to wait weeks in space to just get refueled?

Why not send 4-5 tankers (supposedly reusable) up first and then refuel almost instantly? That thing seems really low scale/budget.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#317

Post by tjr »

dcposch wrote: post #301
grecy wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody's making you participate in this venture. If you don't like it, then you're free to go do whatever it is you do like. I can't agree more. I've seen HN degrade into that kind of discussion over the last 2 years and it really disappoints me. Part of me wishes HN had a really strong moderator that slapped down nay-sayers. If you're not contributing something valuable, comment deleted.

Just an idea: sentiment analysis has gotten pretty accurate. What if HN included sentiment in the sort algorithm? The post score you see would stay the same (upvotes minus downvotes). You'd just multiply the sort score by, for example, 1.25 for posts positive in tone and 0.8 for posts with negative tone. So if two comments have about the same number of upvotes, the nicer one appears higher up. Criticism or disapprova…

If that worked at all, it could be applied before the comment was even posted. Warn the user that their comment looks inordinately negative, and ask if they would like to revise before submitting.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#319

Post by [deleted] »

oldmanjay wrote: post #306
wmccullough wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to, but it got to the point where the hivemind has pushed me away. I have noticed recently that HN is becoming self-aware. More than ever, I'm seeing comments by good users telling the bad ones to take their bad attitude elsewhere. The contrarianism going on really drove me away. I started to believe that there were people feeling the need to be contrarian just to appear more intelligent than the other users.

If you see a hive mind on HN that says more about your thought process than this site.

[deleted]

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#320

Post by the_watcher »

pharrington wrote: post #216
mikeash wrote: post #148

Some of the comments here make me think of crabs in a pot pulling down the ones who try to climb out. Nobody's making you participate in this venture. If you don't like it, then you're free to go do whatever it is you do like. You might think Musk could better direct his efforts and resources elsewhere, but most other billionaires don't do anything all that interesting, they just invest their money in mundane stuff,…

Alot of people react negatively to overt emotional manipulation. Musk's live stream is called "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species." The only actual information in his talk was about the new line of rockets he's building. Transportation is certainly Musk's specialty, but with the information given combined with what we already know about the man's companies, he cannot even begin to address the scope of the opening…

> Human colonization, in this context, is a bait-and-switch

A switch with what, exactly? If he's just trying to make money, just space tourism alone would be more than enough, since he could charge the same as he'd charge for a Mars trip . Also, if your goal is to colonize Mars, a pretty critical step one is getting humans to Mars. It's not some nefarious plan.

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