Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 1001 posts

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#471

Post by elevensies »

kchoudhu wrote: post #426
elevensies wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Mars colonisation increase the chances of Earth becoming (more of) a corporate dystopia? If not, then if there is a chance of a Mars colony which supports your values what are you losing by the attempt? [edit: this is awkwardly phrased ... it is like a free roulette shot, it may or may not pay off, but if it's "free" the net value is positive.] And I also think if colonisation ever was big enough to absorb a sig…

The scenario in which the bet does not pay off results in 1 million people and their descendants being stuck in a terrible situation, with distance making aid or relief impossible at scale. This is something that could be mitigated by making sure that the first planet we colonize isn't some kind of unregulated fief belonging to the first person who threw enough cash at the problem of getting people to Mars. Which is…

That is true, if it succeeded for a while and then failed it could produce a casualty count on the order of Gulf War 1. Not doing it could result in civilisation extinction via nuclear war or asteroid strike. I still favour doing it, but I see how reasonable people could disagree.

I believe Elon said it would take 40-100 years for the population to reach that point, and he is saying that there will be a return mechanism, and a probably an extreme labour shortage which favours a strong bargaining position for both the entrees and the Mars local population. Ideally I'd like to see the return ticket + life support until the next return flight provided as part of the entrance fee to minimise risk, but there is still the problem of enforcing the contract.

[EDIT: I don't consider this a "fair" argument so I left it out, but as an aside, if minimising pain is your goal then mass sterilisation is the optimal strategy IMO -- there is no reason to continue the human race which will certainly produce millions of people in pain -- and if you have another goal which requires human existence to fulfil, then decreasing our extinction probability should be a huge priority]

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#472

Post by nixos »

Did he talk about the future land ownership/governmentship of his colony?

Will it be a personal dictatorship of Elon?

Unlike Earth, once you're there, there's nowhere to go without his blessing.

You can't just "move next door".

And knowing how "locked down" his Tesla cars are, it'll be interesting to see how he'll deal with a rebellious colony.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#473

Post by anexprogrammer »

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,…

We need a lot more like Musk, whether you agree with space or not. Investing their resources in crazy ideas of their heart, some might just work.

We don't progress the species with digging up more rocks, building more stuff, selling more stuff, or dare I say it, finding a new way to get a cab.

A few more vastly wealthy eccentrics building teams to play with space, fusion (carefully I hope), generation, or whatever pipe dream they have could easily make up for some of the global short termism.

Does it matter if he sells enough tickets to Mars to profit? I doubt it. I don't think that's the point. The moon landings were excellent for helping humankind dream big, Mars will be too.

What will the moon landing conspiracy theorists do then? :)

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#474

Post by eevilspock »

tomrod wrote: post #458
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Pedantic point: not everything is Gaussian. Income, for example, doesn't go below zero. It may not even be log-normal, but rather a power distribution. Pedantic point aside, you bring up an important point. Can behavioral incentives be aligned to avoid the bottom side of participation?

And who or what algorithm decides which end is bottom?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#476

Post by Grishnakh »

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.

>someone should go out there and try to set up a self-sustaining colony on the pole or in the middle of a desert.

That's already been done. It was called "Biosphere II", set up in the Arizona desert. It failed.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#477

Post by mikeash »

goatlover wrote: post #465
mikeash wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, do you have something against goats?!

I know, right? Maybe we can engineer a hardy Martian goat that can eat the algae that puts oxygen into the air. Martian goats produce C02 and fertilize the soil. Now you have a source of dairy and meat for our future colonists. Imagine kids in the future, growing up dreaming of being goat herders on Mars.

I think you'd want the goat to consume CO2, not produce it. There's already plenty of CO2 there. Other than that, your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#478

Post by Your_Creator »

Forgive me but I love this stuff, thinking about how much quantum mechanics has taught us about the universe makes me absolutely giddy. I haven't even watched this yet and I can tell you this:

To achieve multi-planetary status, we need to make ourselves less fragile than we currently tend to be. What I mean by that is that if we devoted half as much time, money and resources as we do to wage endless wars and collectively shifted our focus to medical advancements such as the technology we need to keep ourselves alive in the hostile environments we'll encounter in space, our astronauts very likely could be traveling in self contained, iron man-like suits by now.

Aside from that, we may have to upgrade our own physiology so;

We NEED nanotech that can repair us, keep us healthy and help us adapt OURSELVES to new environments that have enough of the proper elements. Can you imagine being able to Evolve On Demand so that you can breathe a different atmosphere and derive whatever your body needed from it? I can.

If relativity holds then planets that are either bigger or moving faster might have a very different local space-time from what we're used to, so imagine if jet lag was so severe it hospitalized you.

We need artificial intelligence capable of both supervised and unsupervised learning to run and monitor our environments, our medical conditions - both physical and mental. The 'quantified self movement' actually has a very, very useful purpose here.

We need to be able to repair a ship while it's in space. We need to be able to repair an environmental suit while standing or perhaps trapped in a volcano that ejects molten Dihydrogen Monoxide on Titan.

We need real, functioning, scanning, recording, data-analyzing Tricorders. Yes, if if weren't obvious by now, I AM a total Star Trek nerd and if we want to explore space, we need those mobile forensic labs that will allow us to truly see the universe and ALL of its wonderful colors. I could go on, but then someones' R&D department is gonna have to pay me.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#479

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

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 pretty sure everything about the particular properties of our solar system is, strictly speaking, a coincidental result of the initial conditions of the big bang. But to speculatively address the intent of your question, I'd guess it has to do their relatively similar size, solidity and distance from the sun.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#480

Post by microtherion »

giarc wrote: post #188
40acres wrote: post #149

I'm surprised Elon has not improved his public speaking abilities.

He is likely very efficient with his time. Improving public speaking skills is not an efficient use of his time for someone in his position.

Since his "position" involves advocating for a whole bunch of literal and figurative moon shots, investing in public speaking skills is a HIGHLY efficient use of his time.
Post reply on HN