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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#861

Post by lsadam0 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #584
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.

What would you prefer? Rolling applause for every idea anyone presents? One benefit of criticism is we might get to read an angle of attack we hadn't thought of and thereby improve our ideas and designs. Sure, when people blow off an idea by saying "pointless, let's save the baby dolphins first" I don't find those comments helpful, but HN almost always has far more in-depth critiques. Edit: fixed a word

I completely agree with you. The frustration I feel, in the case of SpaceX, is that I am perceiving most of the criticism to be "It's hard, so don't try". That's not helpful or constructive.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#862

Post by simonh »

grecy wrote: post #843
simonh wrote: post #835

I'd expect the first rocket, or several rockets to actually stay on Mars at least for a while. 1. It means you have somewhere to live and even if you set up habitats it acts as a fallback habitat. 2. You'll need a return to Earth option if things go potato shaped. 3. It can manufacture fuel in advance for future visiting ships so acts as a backup to their Sabatier reactor and other important systems. 4. Once you have…

> I wonder if these will be capable of operating automatically They have said many times the F9 lands itself completely autonomously, because when it's happening on Mars the signal delay will be too great for them to do anything from Earth anyway. Given that, I'm going to take the leap and say the whole thing will be autonomous. I also think it makes sense so you don't need trained "pilots". You can pack the thing wi…

I'm thinking about things like operation of the Sabatier reactor, refueling operations, inspection and cleaning of the engines prior to re-launch from Mars? There's an awful lot more to a round-trip mission that just automated launch and landing.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#863

Post by kchoudhu »

justrossthings wrote: post #616
nickff wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read the trilogy (as well as "2312"), I must agree that it was poorly written, with some very poorly constructed characters. Having said that, and despite my distaste for and disagreement about the political outcomes, the technical vision was very interesting.

Any recommendations? I am about to finish Red Mars

Left field suggestion: The Honor Series. Start with "On Basilisk Station".

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#864

Post by saiya-jin »

Brakenshire wrote: post #847
f_allwein wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a line in the film “Interstellar” that stuck with me: “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.” Now the film plays in a dystopian future, but I think the quote is still appropriate for us as a civilization. If Elon can change that, all the better.

Honestly, the quote is a reflection of a distorted understanding of reality transposed over from utopian science fiction. The stars are incredibly far away, and are overwhelmingly utterly hostile to human life. The 'dirt' is one of the very few places in the galaxy, perhaps the only place, actually well suited to human life, and the ecosystems that support it. If our understanding of fundamental physics is correct, t…

it's rather about dreaming beyond our current situation rather than trying to just get over this day to get to tomorrow and repeat.

as for physics - we don't have even standard unifying theory that would work in all situations, so there is some room to grow our knowledge. we observe a lot of powerful and strange stuff happening in cosmos, but these are natural things - matter seems to be doing couple of variations of same cycle - group by gravity till planet/star is born, exist for some time, explode/die slowly/collapse/go exotic. who can say what will happen when we literally take matter, energy and spacetime into our hands?

But before we will reach these situations, our society will change completely, probably many times. implants, prolonging life endlessly, going completely into digital existence and who knows what. why would inter-galaxy travel matter if we would exist in endless sea of some data banks?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#865

Post by hacker42 »

randomsearch wrote: post #769
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,…

I think the problem here is one of misanthropy. I'm not saying it applies to all those commenting negatively, but one commonly held philosophy amongst some of my geek friends is this logic: "the world is terrible and people are terrible" -> "there's no point trying to improve things" -> "I don't need to improve things" It's essentially an argument that allows people to live a defeatist (selfish?) life without feeling…

> failing to appreciate the subtleties in how progress is made

What are these subtleties? Why is it better to invest energy into space instead of sustainability? It's just heartbreaking that we can't remotely get as excited about sustainability as we can about romantic memes of curiosity and history books. Is the 'subtlety' that we just got to accept this as a fact about human nature and hope for sustainability as a byproduct?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#866

Post by nurettin »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #832
nurettin wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to learn from "armchair experts" about the challenges that lie ahead for such forays. Instead I am seeing that the discussion devolved to over-sensitive drivel. This might not be your initial intention, but you caused this. HN bunch is courteous and precise and that is generally best applied to topics which require expertise. You triggered them to defensive mode and by now most are accusing you of fanboyi…

> You triggered them to defensive mode and by now most are accusing you of fanboyism in the most courteous and precise way possible. > I hope you set an example to future commenters on what not to write. Oh go fuck yourself. Every thread is full of armchair experts, and every thread is full of know it alls who get defensive whenever you say something they don't like, go find a different thread and stop whining. Who t…

Apology accepted.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#867

Post by grecy »

simonh wrote: post #862
grecy wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if these will be capable of operating automatically They have said many times the F9 lands itself completely autonomously, because when it's happening on Mars the signal delay will be too great for them to do anything from Earth anyway. Given that, I'm going to take the leap and say the whole thing will be autonomous. I also think it makes sense so you don't need trained "pilots". You can pack the thing wi…

I'm thinking about things like operation of the Sabatier reactor, refueling operations, inspection and cleaning of the engines prior to re-launch from Mars? There's an awful lot more to a round-trip mission that just automated launch and landing.

All of those things for a modern airliner used to require humans all the time, then as we got better at it, humans are used less and less in the loop.

Refueling is an easy autonomous one.

Eventually you'd only need to inspect and clean the engine every x flights, etc. and maybe you just do that each time it's back on Earth.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#868

Post by dotancohen »

tempestn wrote: post #754
Udo wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make no mistake, people are going to die in the first several runs. I agree, and I would even say this is the main challenge of the project long term - whether we have the stomach for seeing hundreds of people blow up on the launch pad, suffocating in interplanetary space, or dying from exposure on Mars when a hab block fails (and all of that possibly repeatedly). For some reason we don't have problem sending milli…

"Personally, I would choose to go even if there was a 50% chance of blowing up on the launchpad." Do you really mean that? In the real world, knowing there's a 50/50 chance your life would end, you would take that risk for the chance to be a frontier colonist on Mars?

I'd do it too.

I'd do it with a 1/4 survival chance, and I'm far from suicidal. Some things are worth more than my life. Cynically, just the personal adventure would be enough for me to risk my life to land on Mars.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#869

Post by saiya-jin »

BurningFrog wrote: post #423
lallysingh wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you get there, what do you do? Just go back?

I assume different people do different things... Tourism would be an obvious sustainable Moon industry. That does fit your description :)

highest hike in our solar system - Olympus Mons!

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#870

Post by paulintrognon »

doikor wrote: post #834
randomsearch wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem here is one of misanthropy. I'm not saying it applies to all those commenting negatively, but one commonly held philosophy amongst some of my geek friends is this logic: "the world is terrible and people are terrible" -> "there's no point trying to improve things" -> "I don't need to improve things" It's essentially an argument that allows people to live a defeatist (selfish?) life without feeling…

"the world is terrible and people are terrible" -> "there's no point trying to improve things" -> "I don't need to improve things" This is kinda a stupid position to hold as statistically for the average human on this planet everything today is better then it was yesterday and most likely will be better tomorrow then today.

Source? I am not sure this is true. I am not sure you can prove people today are happier than people yesterday.
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