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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#941

Post by mzw_mzw »

lmm wrote: post #792
mzw_mzw wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a weird sort of fear of potential corporate dystopias that just ignores all the actual government dystopias that have existed throughout history. Plenty of government colonies were dictatorships, fiefdoms, attempts at building bizarre and broken societies. Many people reading this live in nations that originated in exactly that fashion.

There have pretty bad corporate dystopias in history too. The East India companies, Belgian Congo etc. Many nations with dystopian origins are fine now, sure, but there was a lot of suffering along the way; I don't think it's unreasonable to want to prevent that.

The point is that there have been plenty of purely governmental dystopias -- far more than there have been even pseudo-corporate ones like the ones you describe -- but we don't have people fretting about how we shouldn't have the government run Mars colonization due to that.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#942

Post by kaonashi »

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.

Then we should probably prefer levels of organization that have a track record of pulling off these types of feats, instead of private sector wanking.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#943

Post by z3t4 »

If you are going to have a gigantic ship able to carry a hundred people there will be exponential costs. And 90% of the cost would be getting it into orbit. And then there will be maintenance costs.

I think it would be better to just launch many small and cheap ships, then just leave them in space or let them crash into mars after dropping cargo by parachute with some air cushions. They could be carried into low orbit by a jet airplane, then use "dumb" rockets like water under high pressure in cheap lightweight tanks. And heat it up to vapor temperature using then sun.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#945

Post by greglindahl »

legolas2412 wrote: post #929
caconym_ wrote: post #916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Where in the recording did he say it was easy?

And where in the recording did he say it was going to be hard?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#946

Post by johnfjacobi »

freehunter wrote: post #932
johnfjacobi wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only thing that makes sense is to keep living like we are the only life in the universe uh...we aren't.

Prove it, with actual hard evidence. Show me real, actual, living life that exists right now. Until then, it's hypothetical and it would be insane to put our species at risk of extinction if there is the possibility that we're the only life in the universe.

Maybe we're speaking past each other or using terms with different definitions. Either that or you're arguing from a sort of Cartesian standpoint. Because you're question has obvious answers: dolphins, trees, literally everything underneath the umbrella term of "biosphere"...

And if you only mean conscious life, (1) I'm not sure why that is a special consideration, but I am familiar with the discussions around this point; (2) it is more than possible that certain animals, like other primates, dolphins, whales, etc., have some degree of conscious experience, and it is also more than possible that we won't find anything more obvious than that on another planet.

Edit: Ah, I see. You were saying there is no life in space. I was thinking more along the lines of, "what about all the environmental damage we will do in order to travel to outer space." I just didn't realize that I should have included that concern in my initial comment, since for some reason I thought it would be obvious.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#947

Post by caconym_ »

legolas2412 wrote: post #929
caconym_ wrote: post #916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

I think there are some false equivalencies in here. There are real serious challenges to be overcome, especially (as you say) dealing with the radiation exposure over >= 3 months in deep space, and we've seen the serious health issues Apollo astronauts have suffered from after enduring the same sort of exposure for a comparatively short time. But overall, the science and engineering are largely in place; to do this it will take scaling, integration, and refinement all on a massive scale, but it really isn't like e.g. going from the Wright flyer to SR-71. The latter was unimaginable back in the day of the former, which simply isn't the case for SpaceX's plan or it would be getting a lot more flak from real experts than it apparently has been (though, let's be honest, SpaceX are the real experts now).

And, again, nobody's saying it's anything other than a long shot, not even Musk himself. But a lot of people seem to be pooh-poohing it for bad reasons. For instance, the awful quality of the audience at the Q&A does not in reality tell us anything about SpaceX's ability to execute on some or all of this plan. In fact, I think Musk was ready for much more challenging questions than he ended up receiving (how could he not have been?)

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#948

Post by rebootthesystem »

phs318u wrote: post #666
rebootthesystem wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN achieves excellent S/N, even with some negativity. It's run very, very well. I go back to USENET and pre-internet fora. In some cases it was impossible to have intelligent conversations because six users "owned" the list. Nah, this is really good. Negativity and all. I've run into moderators a few times and, in retrospect, it's always fair and justified.

This. I too go back to Usenet and Compuserve. I'm really close to giving up on Slashdot altogether. I've only recently come across HN and love it. Vast majority of discussions are polite, thoughtful, considered and interesting. There are almost zero personal attacks and very few content-free comments. It reminds me SO much of the early days of the net. My greatest fear is that HN too shall fall to the trolls and numb…

Compuserve was excellent. Made good friends in many parts of the world through various discussion groups.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#949

Post by gcb0 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #703
Klathmon wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways HN is designed to combat this. You need to "earn" downvotes with contributions, and the sites UX is designed in a way to slow down low effort comments, and to make comments sit for a bit before allowing replies (with workarounds if needed). The things that aren't features (like the lack of notifications) also help.

There's also a quite-active, and largely effective, moderation effort by @dang and ... I forget the other mod, scbc or something like that. I've been making comparative studies of a few communities (HN, Reddit, G+, Imzy, Ello), and it's interesting to see how various ones work. In particular, there's a tremendous culture against the types of even indirect personal attacks at HN which fly in spades elsewhere. I saw @d…

and what level of derailment would you call this thread? it has probably two comments on the video contents, and all the rest is about which community stays on topic better.

the irony is too damn high

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#950

Post by djokkataja »

kumarski wrote: post #739

I wrote a brief blog post on some of the major challenges to get this going. Musk's hesitancy to a deadline is great. :) It makes sense, hard to predict the future. http://engineersf.com/12-reasons-spacex-wont-fly-a-manned-mi... There's a ton of cool problems lurking around the corner. I hope humanity backs the public part of this public-private partnership. 1. Cargo Capacity — Scaling is Hard. 2. Proper Maintenance…

All of these problems can be worked on in parallel, so I'm not sure why you think it would be "impossible" to do before 2030. Unlikely, sure.

Also, Musk specifically mentioned that they weren't planning to use parachutes with this architecture, so you can scratch #9.

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