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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#381

Post by lmm »

grecy wrote: post #237
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,…

> 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.

I think it's the opposite trend actually over the last two years. HN has become a lot more positive. Frankly I think it's reduced discussion quality a lot; people are unwilling to be frank and point out flaws.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#382

Post by ythl »

Osiris wrote: post #347
ythl wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my case, I see trying to start a Mars colony as a death trap. It's the illusion of carrying on the human race, but it's really just dooming a bunch of pioneers to a grim fate in an extremely hostile environment. I think making a south pole colony would be hard enough, let alone a Mars one.

Why should your opinion dictate what other people try to accomplish?

I'm not saying "don't try", I'm just saying "I think what you are attempting is foolish and that you are just going to kill a bunch of people", that's all. I can express an opinion about a potentially deadly venture, can't I?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#383

Post by andor »

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…

Where the hell did they get this audience from? Is this hosted on a frat house with some academic invites?

The announcement was held at the "International Astronautical Congress". "The IAC is attended by the agency heads and senior executives of the world's space agencies." [1]

[0] http://www.iac2016.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronautical_Co...

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#384

Post by moogly »

arcticfox wrote: post #297
dev1n wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dumb question: it can't be coincidence that our days are almost identical in length. Why are they?

I'm not sure the premise is correct. Why can't it be coincidence?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#385

Post by goatlover »

Osiris wrote: post #347
ythl wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my case, I see trying to start a Mars colony as a death trap. It's the illusion of carrying on the human race, but it's really just dooming a bunch of pioneers to a grim fate in an extremely hostile environment. I think making a south pole colony would be hard enough, let alone a Mars one.

Why should your opinion dictate what other people try to accomplish?

How is an opinion dictating anything other than expressing someone's skepticism?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#386

Post by 3minus1 »

serge2k wrote: post #272
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,…

> So why are you upset with this one and not all those others? Because most others aren't constantly being worshipped by people on HN and the like. Musk worship was the reason I stopped bothering with the technology subreddit.

Bingo! Aside from his dot-com successes, his other ventures are still in the early stages with uncertain futures. History could prove him a visionary or merely foolhardy. I don't get the hero-worship.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#387

Post by mattbush »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #356
ythl wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my case, I see trying to start a Mars colony as a death trap. It's the illusion of carrying on the human race, but it's really just dooming a bunch of pioneers to a grim fate in an extremely hostile environment. I think making a south pole colony would be hard enough, let alone a Mars one.

Which immediately suggests a way to help with the Mars plan - in the time SpaceX and (hopefully) others are building the transportation architecture, someone should go out there and try to set up a self-sustaining colony on the pole or in the middle of a desert. Data and experience collected will be invaluable and directly useful for the Mars mission.

One smaller but related effort in that direction is the year-long Mars habitat simulation in Hawaii that concluded a month ago: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/29/491794937/...

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#388

Post by moosey »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #93

I'd really like to see us taking space seriously. While I'm still here. One of my earliest strong memories was the last moon landing. This was followed by years of "Tomorrow's World" and "Horizon" telling us about the Moon bases, Mars bases and orbital platforms that would soon follow. We got Skylab and some very interesting probes. I'm a tiny bit disappointed in that. We were meant to be en route to Starfleet Comman…

I find it interesting that when watching old movies, few got the communications networks of the future right (edit: meaning that they are always behind the curve. We've advanced a lot more than expected). Other than perhaps "Ghost in The Shell".

But on the other end, we have lots of movies expecting much more from us on the 'space' end of things. Many movies that occur in space have us already having permanent moon bases in the timeline.

"Seveneves" by Neil Stephenson mentions our modern communications software at one point in the book, how it alters our brains, and how future civilizations avoided the same fate intentionally. However, I'm not about to make a causality assessment between our communications software and our lack of advancement in space (or any other scientific/technical endeavor for that matter).

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#389

Post by Klathmon »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #371
wmccullough wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're my hero! This attitude is why I quit regularly contributing to this site. Any time any single person does something positive, some armchair "expert" comes out the woodworks to tell you how it won't work or can't work.

> Any time any single person does something positive, some armchair "expert" comes out the woodworks to tell you how it won't work or can't work. All public forums go bad once they reach a certain size. Since everything is on a gaussian curve (fat mediocre middle, and two asymptotes, one for greatness, the other for the opposite end), it's just pure statistics that junk comments will start creeping in once the popula…

In some ways HN is designed to combat this. You need to "earn" downvotes with contributions, and the sites UX is designed in a way to slow down low effort comments, and to make comments sit for a bit before allowing replies (with workarounds if needed).

The things that aren't features (like the lack of notifications) also help.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#390

Post by ravenstine »

savagej wrote: post #335

troll

What makes you think I'm trolling? I like the idea of space travel as much as the next person; I just remain unconvinced that colonizing Mars or even deep space really solves any existential problems for humanity beyond... providing more space. There's nothing radical about not believing that space travel is an answer to anything in and of itself. Apparently there's something deeply wrong for not agreeing with Elon Musk, yet nobody has stepped up to say anything except "troll".

Seriously now, what's troll-like about thinking that there's more promise in improving the human being than in colonizing Mars? If anything, diverting resources to improving the human hardware might get us to Mars faster. Granted, I'm not sure I'd want to go there, but something like Mars could become much more like visiting a national park once you don't have to worry about things like oxygen, radiation, extreme temperatures, etc.

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