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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#961

Post by xixi77 »

kchoudhu wrote: post #210
justrossthings wrote: post #101

Required reading: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson/dp/...

I just finished reading these books for what seems like the millionth time, and Mr. Musk hasn't even begun to answer the questions they raise. What is the legal structure going to be on the 1MM person colony? Who gets to go? What are the transplants allowed to do there? Who rules? Who do the rulers answer to? Are we going to Terraform Mars? If yes, under whose auspices and with what restrictions? FTR: this is Elon Mu…

While I wouldn't personally mind a "corporate dystopia" (or at least a sci-fi version of such) on Mars at all, it seems exceedingly unlikely, even conditional on the success of the whole enterprise -- for one, there wouldn't be any actual profits to be made there for a very long time :)

BTW, I haven't read these particular books, and perhaps they are different from other KSR stuff that I've seen, but at this point I would honestly take pretty much anything over what he would consider an ideal or even a good society. It kinda puzzles me why people who value things like caution, leasure, and social cohesion above actual progress so insist on calling themselves 'progressives' -- they certainly have a right to their opinions, but couldn't they have picked a term that was less of a misnomer?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#962

Post by zardo »

orky56 wrote: post #175
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.

Why does the Mars 24.5 hr day versus the Moons 28 day-day matter? What are the consequences of this big difference between Earth day and the moon/Mars day?

The temperature swings on the moon are a major engineering challenge. 500f difference between noon and midnight.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#963

Post by zardo »

aggie wrote: post #761
intrasight wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the company goes belly-up while you're there?

If you can accept the risk of unpredictable, potentially-horrible death, you can accept the risk of getting stranded. There would probably be suicide measures for a scenario where life support runs out.

>There would probably be suicide measures for a scenario where life support runs out.

That's a problem that really just takes care of itself.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#964

Post by gohrt »

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…

It's a childish dreaming that imagines we can must our home to find somewhere better. Powerful visionaries dream of making our home better.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#967

Post by saiya-jin »

oldsj wrote: post #924
saiya-jin wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

honestly never heard that name, short googling incoming

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#968

Post by sgt »

jernfrost wrote: post #810
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,…

Agree, I wrote a medium article about exactly this phenomenon partly inspired by you: https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/the-crab-people-and-space-expl... I've been annoyed by this attitude for quite some time now. You see it all the time. Same deal with Tesla an Model S. Because not everybody can afford it, and because not all power is renewable an electric car like Tesla Model S seems like some sort of terrible crime. W…

Tesla cars are extremely popular in Norway though - I was in Bergen a few months back and electric cars were everywhere.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#969

Post by simonh »

gohrt wrote: post #964
saiya-jin wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a childish dreaming that imagines we can must our home to find somewhere better. Powerful visionaries dream of making our home better.

Where do you live? Is it Odluvai Gorge? The reason humans don't all live in Africa and in fact have colonized almost every inhabitable corner of the planet is because as a species overall we don't think like that. In fact it's the reason we as a species still exist. Life naturally expands to colonize new environments. That's essential because environmental change is inevitable whether it's climate change, volcanic activity, excessive predation or disease. Diversity of location, genetics and culture are essential tools of species survival.

Diversity in every way possible is in our Genes. Even within our own cultures, if it's possible for people to live a certain way you're highly likely to find at least some people living that way. Some of these ways of living seem pathalogical. Travelling people, isolationist survivalists, even homeless people but if civilization were to collapse, as it has many times in many places in the past, some of these people would be superbly adapted to survive it or even thrive.

For any given place, eventually catastrophe is almost inevitable. We are all the descendants of people who survived some catastrophe or other by moving out before it struck. All of us. In fact that's true of every surviving species on Earth. It's a strategy that works. Let's keep doing it.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#970

Post by simonh »

david-given wrote: post #204
anexprogrammer wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the moon would be the obvious place to start, especially as the NASA plans I've seen for Mars have been based on using a space station at a Earth-Lunar Lagrange point, and associated moonbase, as ideal staging post. That and I might one day afford a ticket. I guess direct to Mars is sexier. :) (I'm behind live too.)

I agree --- Mars is a pit. It's a barren desert at the bottom of a great big hole. Its biggest, and perhaps only, advantage is that it has an atmosphere, and gas is so much easier to deal with for ISRU than anything else, as you don't need to mine it: just open a valve and suck it in. I notice Musk's ISRU plan is to mine ice; I do wonder how he's going to do that, as it won't be easy. But... you know what... if you c…

> I notice Musk's ISRU plan is to mine ice; I do wonder how he's going to do that, as it won't be easy.

Load up the icy dirt into a chamber using a digger, heat it up and precipitate out the water vapor. The only potential problem is separating out other volatiles, but fractionation is pretty basic tech.

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