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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

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Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#991

Post by sctb »

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…

Personal attacks are not OK on Hacker News. Please don't do this.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#992

Post by sctb »

afsina wrote: post #798
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,…

To me, reason for this is that most of those HN posters are people with progressive-left tendencies. They will never like the idea that a capitalist will be the one doing this kind of job far better than the collective (state).

> ...most of those HN posters are people with progressive-left tendencies...

If you have data about this, please share, otherwise avoid making unsubstantiated generalizations about the community. It's a predictable rhetorical device that doesn't move us towards gratifying our intellectual curiosity.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#993

Post by wwarner »

beau26 wrote: post #644
wwarner wrote: post #636

I'm skeptical for two reasons. Living on Mars won't be like living in California at all. And two, building a colony there will be very, very, even catastrophically costly, so yes it will hurt everyone else who chooses not to participate. There are only so many platinum mines. Resources should be focused here. Think about it: how much water and air have left Earth to date? A miniscule amount, all due to space explorat…

>Earth Loses 50,000 Tonnes of Mass Every Year. According to some calculations, the Earth is losing 50,000 tonnes of mass every single year, even though an extra 40,000 tonnes of space dust converge onto the Earth's gravity well, it's still losing weight. scitechdaily.com/earth-loses-50000-tonnes-of-mass-every-year/

10 tons lost a year. Point taken, and very interesting. But it's still small compared to 100 tons of cargo going to Mars 1000 times to build a new civilization on an uninhabitable planet.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#994

Post by zigzigzag »

Grishnakh wrote: post #884
cbhl wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the pilgrims originally sailed to North America from England, it took on the order of two or three months. A six month trip to Mars seems reasonable in that context.

The pilgrims didn't have to worry about being subjected to deadly cosmic radiation. They could also bring various tools with them and build habitats in their new home using readily-available materials, and grow food there from seeds (though they should have picked a more southerly landing spot...). They also didn't have to worry about having pressurized environmental suits just to walk around outside once they made l…

No, they just had to worry about weird diseases, storms destroying their boat en-route, not having any clue where they'd land or what the territory would be like, and being attacked and killed by angry natives. Oh and they were doing it all with pretty basic "science".

None of those problems exist on Mars. Others exist, but you can't just directly say it was easier.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#995

Post by andygates »

abecedarius wrote: post #571
zaphar wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for one thing living in a gravity well is healthier for humans. We don't do very well long term in 0 gravity. Our systems work best when gravity is helping things along.

You spin up your station. You're not limited to whatever accidental value holds on the planetary surface. This was all studied back in the 1970s and 80s, and free-space development makes way more sense: http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/

And this adds a whole new set of engineering challenges and project risk. Nobody's spun up anything bigger than a rocket stage to date.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#996

Post by danblick »

peeters wrote: post #670
rtpg wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are the advantages of a Mars colony? It's not like we'll be shipping things back to Earth. I'm for exploration and all that but there's a pretty good point. Figuring out how to make the desert habitable on this planet is a pretty good test run for the Real Deal.

> what are the advantages of a Mars colony? Survival of our species. Protection from an extinction event on Earth. Stepping stone to further expansion (interstellar).

This argument about Mars protecting us from an extinction event on Earth any time in the next 250 years seems like baloney. If that's an actual concern I would invest in something Earth-based first (e.g. underground bunkers).

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#997

Post by DennisP »

internaut wrote: post #983
Pinckney wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is, thank god, incorrect. We have closed loop systems for food, water and air. I have in front of me a shelf of books relating to closed loop systems. They were designed for two purposes, space…

I'd love to see the sources on closed-loop systems.

Small note on helium-3: if you can get net energy from He3 fusion, you can also get it from the easier D-D reaction. The output of D-D is half He3, and half tritium which decays to He3 with a 12-year half-life, so you can breed He3 from deuterium and get energy in the process.

The D-D reaction does produce neutron radiation but it's lower energy than D-T neutrons and more easily shielded. The fusion startup Helion is attempting a hybrid D-D/D-He3 reactor, and says only 6% of the energy output would be in the form of neutron radiation.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#998

Post by thecrow1213 »

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…

Thank you for this sir. I'm with you, Elon has accomplished a breadth of amazing things fairly early in his career. If you don't find that astounding then GTFO IMHO

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#999

Post by lza »

andrepd wrote: post #822
jernfrost wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

" What me and other skeptics argue against is these kinds of overly futuristic announcements that have no ground in reality,"

I am pretty sure this is exactly the kind things people said about going to the moon, build a machine that can add numbers together faster than humans etc... lol

"This is such a grand and far reaching goal that were it to be achieved it would be by far, by very very far, the most important achievement of the human species so far. So far I've seen him put a rocket in orbit and land it again.* So excuse me if I tamper my enthusiasm."

What have people see NASA do when Kennedy announced landing a man on the moon? Would they be able to accomplish if people would tamper their enthusiasm? I don't think so. They had to invent technology that didn't exist to accomplish it and I believe this needs the same thing. Hence the reason I am stoked about it.

Someone who grew up admiring the achievements in space and technology(I was born the same year the Voyagers left earth) that kind of dreaming and willingness, set me on course as a child to study science and work in tech. I am very excited to see announcements like this. Because without dreaming it up and setting a direction we would stagnate. Just like NASA did with the space shuttle program.

Helping out and working on a CubeSat project that is going to be launched in June 2017, I see how much work it is to even communicate in leo never mind beyond that(I can't even begin). Yet I can barely contain my excitement :)

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#1000

Post by throwanem »

Gracana wrote: post #853
throwanem wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackaday comments have never not been salty, and I say that as someone who's followed that site since before the pictures were in color. I'm not sure there is a useful comparison to be drawn.

I was there in those days too. Maybe it didn't change, I just got sick of it.

The way I recall it is that I was the one who changed. Of course, I haven't gone back to check, so I may be wrong about that.
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