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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

spacex.com

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#921

Post by TeMPOraL »

Pinckney wrote: post #888
mikeash wrote: post #875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No ground in reality"? Sure, the plan is extremely ambitious. But it relies on no fundamentally new technology and comes from someone with a proven track record in the field. They're talking at almost seven years before the first Mars launch with this system. I'll remind you that seven years before Apollo 11, this was the state of the art for American spaceflight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_LV-3B Further, M…

The technology to put people on Mars is not fundamentally new. The technology to make such a colony self sustaining is. We've never built any habitat which is entirely self sufficient even just in food, water, and air. Even the ISS needs resupply to generate breathable air. Even simple problems like "how do we replace failed bolts" will require resupply from earth for a long time. I'm also dubious of the economics of…

Elon actually had to state this point explicitly on the livestream because it seems to be not getting to people - SpaceX is not in business of colonizing Mars, it's in business of getting colonizers to Mars (and back). I.e. transportation infrastructure. Elon leaves setting up a colony to other people. That's why he keeps repeating that the idea is to drop the price per person to ~$200k - he seems to believe that if he can pull this off, the rest will be done by others.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#923

Post by hx87 »

martindevans wrote: post #377
dcposch wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an idea: sentiment analysis has gotten pretty accurate. What if HN included sentiment in the sort algorithm? The post score you see would stay the same (upvotes minus downvotes). You'd just multiply the sort score by, for example, 1.25 for posts positive in tone and 0.8 for posts with negative tone. So if two comments have about the same number of upvotes, the nicer one appears higher up. Criticism or disapprova…

That presumes that the negative comments are always the ones derailing the discussion. For example: "I think these questions at IAC are great, it's good that people get a chance to at a technical conference" "Wtf is with these stupid questions at IAC? They should be asking about "

Then perhaps use sentiment analysis to remove the derailing part of both negative and negative comments?

i.e.,

"I think these questions at IAC are great,..."

"...they should be asking about "

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#924

Post by oldsj »

saiya-jin wrote: post #864
Brakenshire wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Someone's been reading Gary Egan

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#925

Post by hx87 »

mintplant wrote: post #258
mikeash wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're free to advocate for other things, but most of the critics aren't doing this, they're just shitting all over this idea and then making vague waves in the general direction of other ideas. Further, why so much focus on this particular billionaire, who at least is focusing pretty hard on driving progress even if you don't agree on the precise direction, and ignoring all the ones just wasting it, or being activel…

> Further, why so much focus on this particular billionaire, Personally, I'm worried by the fact that it's a billionaire driving this, nevermind which one in particular. If and when SpaceX colonizes Mars, what sort of life will the people up there live? Will it be a Musk dictatorship? A corporate fiefdom? Rich people remaking society in their own image wasn't exactly the space dream I grew up with.

> Rich people remaking society in their own image

If that were actually the case, then there would be no poor people, and we can all at least agree that all other things being held constant, a society where no one is poor is better than one where some people are poor, right?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#926

Post by hacker42 »

varjag wrote: post #901
hacker42 wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not seeing it. People are following the super stimuli of rockets, history etc. while further contributing to pollution and resource depletion. We need a culture that is satisfied with much less, one that overcomes the tragedy of the commons. Tesla might contribute a bit in that regard, but SpaceX is outright opposed to it. If you want to convince people of the future, there are more effective and reliable ways o…

Cryonics requires constant power to the fridges for years, its carbon footprint is terrible.

AFAIK it's not so bad at large scale and with brains only.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#927

Post by hx87 »

lmm wrote: post #795
onewaystreet wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do you care if Musk and SpaceX have a reality-distortion field? Worst case (or best case for you) is that he fails and you get to gloat.

Popular false beliefs always seem harmless until they suddenly aren't. The principle of explosion means that one false belief can justify literally any course of action, and by the time people start on a harmful course it's too late.

For the principle of explosion to work you have to actually confirm that a belief is false, or at least calculate a justifiable probability that it is false. You can't just assume that it is false and extrapolate from there.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#928

Post by hx87 »

nixos wrote: post #709
onewaystreet wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do you care if Musk and SpaceX have a reality-distortion field? Worst case (or best case for you) is that he fails and you get to gloat.

The same reason Apple bothers me. Today, I don't care. His clients know what they're getting involved with, and if they don't care, I don't either. My concern is when he does go to Mars, he'll have hundreds of people signing up not realizing that he's putting lives on a beta rocket.

He's very upfront about the risks to the first visitors/colonists. His first screening questions for applicants is literally "Are you prepared to die?"

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#929

Post by legolas2412 »

caconym_ wrote: post #916
andrepd wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it's progress, no doubt. There's no question about that. What me and other skeptics argue against is these kinds of overly futuristic announcements that have no ground in reality, yet have people praising them like they are some kind of achievement by themselves. Elon Musk grandly announces: I'm going to make humans an interplanetary species. This is such a grand and far reaching goal that were it to be achieved i…

SpaceX is showing that this sort of thing is within reach. Before the last few years, I would have looked at the current state of the art and politics of rocket technology and space exploration and dismissed this plan as a fanciful dream that could never happen. SpaceX has been killing it, though. They've been building new engines, landing rockets, and it's only a matter of time until they re-fly one; this is the sor…

Yeah, SpaceX is doing good work, being economical like many other space agencies and yet being able to land back the stage 1 booster. Of course, they haven't reused even one yet, and have not studied the effects of multiple reuses.

But going from this to imagining a space taxi and a space settlement? There is so much work that needs done first, effect of radiation on people? Effect of lower gravity? Effect of high concentration of heavy metals on plant life? Recycling everything? Making propellant on Mars? And so much more, he just hand waives it saying that is easy, all their idea relied on was reusing their booster 1000 times, even when they have not reused it once! If I wanted science fiction (not that I think it is impossible), I would read a book.

It's really like the Wright brothers doing their first test flight, and then imagining a commercial airline system, complete with Boeing 777, airports and hell even SR71 Blackbird. It's just too far off, and feels like a sci-fi con. Plus you can see what kind of people this thinking attracts, like that idiot who thinks that Burning man is what mars is going to be like, completely ignoring the thin atmosphere, lack of gravity, cold temperatures, and all its' effect on humans, plant and building materials.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#930

Post by hx87 »

sAuronas wrote: post #536
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,…

Every time I hear him talk about Mars (placing it before curing cancer), I think "if only he had grown up wanting to eradicate poverty." Still...rather than think ill of his idea - and work - we should celebrate his innovation and the way he will inspire others. As I thought about how he is perfecting rocket technology, I wandered off on a tangential rocket technology (thought) that would tract nuclear rockets launch…

Eradicating poverty is a political problem. Going to Mars is an engineering problem. Political problems are orders of magnitude harder to solve than engineering ones.
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