I missed most of the livestream. Why did they just close it? I thought it was possible to simply go back on it. Did they not want people to do that before editing it first?
Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
391–400 of 1001 posts
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would never say "it won't work", but I do think we humans have a tendency to turn to technology to solve our most basic problems, while the real solutions lie within us (where most people never look). I believe we should first learn to clean up our act on planet Earth before we export anything of our existence and what we do. To me, the real revolution that needs to happen is a spiritual one - a statement that will…
Meditation can go hand in hand with space exploration. Besides that, Musk is doing two things at the same time. He tries both to protect the earth (Tesla, solar power), and initiate a base in case something happened to our home. Spirituality alone won't help you survive winter, regardless of how developed your mind is.
> Spirituality alone won't help you survive winter, regardless of how developed your mind is.
It's funny that you would say that - you may want to take a quick look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6XKcsm3dKs
(The main site is: http://www.icemanwimhof.com/)
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#393Some 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,…
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.
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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree --- Mars is a pit. It's a barren desert at the bottom of a great big hole. Its biggest, and perhaps only, advantage is that it has an atmosphere, and gas is so much easier to deal with for ISRU than anything else, as you don't need to mine it: just open a valve and suck it in. I notice Musk's ISRU plan is to mine ice; I do wonder how he's going to do that, as it won't be easy. But... you know what... if you c…
I've nothing against Mars, more surprise that it's not via lunar orbit staging as the last several explanations of how we'd get there that I've seen. Like it was a big obvious advantage. Mars first has the enormous advantage that it's tangibly in progress, however early, rather than being a great NASA idea that isn't getting funded. So I don't actually care which if only one is having rockets built. I saw enough arti…
Mars is sexy and looks like a place --- people can see the pictures from the Mars rovers and imagine themselves being there. It's got weather and wind and interesting landscapes. It's featured in myths and legends for so long that it has a special place in people's heart. I can totally see it being used as the end goal of a fairly long plan.
The Moon's not very sexy. It's all dusty blacks and greys. Everyone knows it's a dead rock, we've already been there, and public consciousness is dominated by the Apollo program pictures of astronauts in gigantic, bulky spacesuits.
(This is mostly perpetrated by NASA unaccountably not sending any decent rovers to the Moon. Even the most recent lander, China's Chang'e, deliberately landed in the most boring place they could find. There aren't any interesting pictures of the moon because we haven't been anywhere interesting.)
ISRU's hard there, too. There's water ice you can mine, but carbon? I don't know where you'd get that.
But... if I were building a water ice mining plant destined for Mars, I'd want to test it somewhere. The Moon's a good place. So now I've landed an ITP ship with a mining rig. I'm going to load it with scientific instruments, too. And scientists. In fact, I might as well land two; it's good practice for Mars. And we're mining water, so we might as well use it, and help test the recycling systems. After all, the Moon's close enough that you can dash back to Earth in an emergency; it's the ideal place. We've got two ships; let's use one to recycle the crew on the other, and leave it there long term; there's plenty of interesting science to do, and it's all excellent practice.
So I'd be really surprised if a long-term presence on the Moon didn't sneak into this plan by the back door. And then if a carbon source were to be discovered in large enough quantities for meaningful ISRU, then sourcing methane from the moon would slot neatly in.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a phrase I'm fond of: The man who says it can't be done needs to get out of the way of the man who's doing it.
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.
I don't understand the abject lack of imagination, or optimism, or whatever it is, that makes some people believe that mildly complicated engineering challenges are somehow impossible. Do you think no one in SpaceX has thought about this for more than five seconds?
Obviously it's not completely trivial to sustain humans on Mars, but there is literally no reason to believe we couldn't accomplish it using current levels of technology, to say nothing about whatever we're going to invent over the next fifty years.
Keeping humans alive on Mars starting from now is vastly easier to comprehend than putting a man on the moon starting from 1950. I wonder how many armchair pessimists there were for the space program back then.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#396Some 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,…
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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Facilities for re-supply are so close and economical there is no incentive to make them self-sustaining. But it could be done.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#398Some 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,…
Seriously, this 1000x. if we are going to survive the next millennia, we need to get off this rock.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#399Some 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,…
I agree, but the tension is healthy. HN wouldn't work if everyone was overwhelmingly positive or overwhelmingly negative. We need skeptics as much as we need optimists to keep our sense of reality in check. The 90's Dotcom Bubble was arguably driven by unchecked optimism.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So why are you upset with this one and not all those others? I'd venture that's because it somehow silently challenges the humanocentric point of view that many (unconsciously, mostly) hold onto. Why would anyone seemingly cling so much onto that pale blue dot unless it's held as deeply special in some way?
Because we don't have access to another pale blue dot. Turning Venus, Mars or one of the gas giant moons into a livable planet in any way comparable to Earth is a gigantic long term undertaking.
I didn't mean "special" in a practical way but in a "spiritual" (for lack of a better term, not necessarily tied to religion) one.
We have no chance of achieving that if we keep on endlessly postponing each step towards it. And as far as rocky space dots go, Mars looks incredibly close to Earth.