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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#411

Post by ythl »

weatherlight wrote: post #398
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,…

Seriously, this 1000x. if we are going to survive the next millennia, we need to get off this rock.

I still think it's many, many orders of magnitude easier to survive on a messed up earth than on a fresh Mars or Venus.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#412

Post by wyager »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29
davidw wrote: post #6

This is so pleasant to see after being bombarded with US presidential politics. Science, hope and progress!

What about going to a different planet makes you think we won't just be taking those same problems with us? The earth isn't the problem - The problem is the human brain. We aren't genetically capable of processing the world we have built. Expect there to be Trump IV vs Clinton IV 2117 hosted live on Mars if we haven't made significant improvements in human engineering.

> What about going to a different planet makes you think we won't just be taking those same problems with us?

It'll just be wealthy people for a long time. Wealth is strongly correlated with intelligence, peace, and other desirable factors. Perhaps the social baseline will be a lot higher. This is hard to predict given that we don't really know what the psychological and epigenetic effects of going to mars will be.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#413

Post by elliotec »

MarcScott wrote: post #222

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocea…

- President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962

http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#414

Post by Gracana »

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 hackaday is a good example of a community with similar (techie) people to HN that has gone further down the same path of negativity, cynicism, and salt. HN is great and the moderators here do a good job (I'm always impressed by the way dang handles issues), but I do think some sort of push is needed to get us off of that path.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#415

Post by greglindahl »

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.

Here's one example, and references to several others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#416

Post by dcposch »

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…

Yeah, that aspect was cringeworthy.

Lesson learned: if you're running a big event with Q&A, always always either restrict it to qualified people or vet the questions before they're asked.

Don't allow a general audience to just form a line in front of a microphone.

--

If you're an organizer hosting Elon Musk, the heads of the major national space agencies, and the leadership of all major aerospace companies, you don't want to give some assclown 60 seconds of microphone time to ask whether there will be enough Portapotties on Mars.

--

Thought experiment: I'm sure that this video will get over 1m views on Youtube. 1m * 60s = about two years of people's time

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#417

Post by monk_e_boy »

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…

> that burning man felt like mars with a lot of shit and no water

It was one of the dumbest things I've heard in a while. Do these people not realise that these comments will go down in history. Also the "like, I was, like, thinking, like" valley girl talk was very odd (I'm from the UK) to hear as I didn't think people, like, talked like that in real life.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#418

Post by wyager »

djsumdog wrote: post #77
bsdetector wrote: post #47

We won't really be an interplanetary species until we can get back from Mars. Imagine being colonists on Mars without the ability to be totally self-sustaining without technology and supplies from Earth and nuclear war breaks out. It's going to be a long time before any Mars colony can survive on its own.

The first colonists will most likely not come back. Make no mistake, people are going to die in the first several runs. This will be one of the most dangerous endeavors mankind can attempt. As far as war breaking out, we're not going to make it to Mars in our current state. I don't think Mars is viable until we enter a post scarcity world. I find it unlikely we can even attempt it if we're still in a money based econ…

> I don't think Mars is viable until we enter a post scarcity world.

Why? Moving a few thousand humans to mars really isn't that expensive, in money or energy.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#420

Post by zaphar »

humanfromearth wrote: post #135
maerF0x0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Better yet, why not asteroids first? If we really want to be living in space, don't switch one gravity well for a much shittier one.

Well for one thing living in a gravity well is healthier for humans. We don't do very well long term in 0 gravity. Our systems work best when gravity is helping things along.
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