Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Let's Colonize Titan

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 508 posts

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#341

Post by tehchromic »

overgard wrote: post #306
tehchromic wrote: post #266

I find the "colonize other planets" dream of the secular/scientific community to be most like the "you'll go to heaven when you die" idea in religious paradoxy. You would think we might have experimented with teraforming uninhabitable place here on earth - the bottom of the Mariana, or Death Valley. If that was a snap, then we might contemplate Moon or Mars or Titan. But in fact we are systematically rendering our ow…

This is such a weird argument. You're basically saying "our political wisdom has not caught up to our technological prowess, so we should avoid undertaking this great technological challenge." It just doesn't follow. If the 20th century taught us anything it's that technology doesn't wait for politics to catch up. If anything technology tends to drive political change (for better and worse), and so the notion that gr…

I actually agree with you. I think that chasing dreams and visions, ie "the afterlife" is a better motivator than scolding and regulating ourselves. Even so, I think at the level of intellect and organizational administration, it's important to have the line between reality and fiction extremely clear, so I don't mind saying so.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#342

Post by Neeek »

khedoros1 wrote: post #250
chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add that there is poor, and inconsequential information directed at people on how to mitigate the causes of climate change. For instance, I've seen in my surroundings a disproportionate emphasis on recycling. Whatever happened to reducing and re-using? While recycling reduces our need to extract more resources, it still requires energy to transport to processing facilities and process. The real issue is not c…

My commute is 12-15 minutes by car and 55 minutes to an hour and a half by bus (assuming the buses were actually on time, which is unrealistic here). Plus either time to make and pack a lunch, or the time to walk to a fast food restaurant near work for lunch. Plus a similar commute time back. It's somewhat faster (but more dangerous) to ride a bicycle. If my goal is a fast, safe commute, I don't have a realistic opti…

Get a moped. Safer than your pushie if your lacking the infrastructure, the only reason riding a bike is so dangerous anyway is the amount of cars on the road. Notice that basically all the cars on the road have 1 person and 4 empty seats every morning? You're burning all the fuel to basically move an empty car around, a 50cc moped is burning 36 times less fuel per power stroke than my corolla (ignoring combustion efficiency, I'm sure the car is better but you lose basically all in moving the damn thing).

Without the thing being electric it isn't the perfect solution (also can't do highway travel), but I feel like it's something not a lot of people consider for short, city/suburban commuting.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#343

Post by c22 »

seszett wrote: post #7

> It might be possible to live suspended by balloons high in Venus’s atmosphere, but we can’t see how such a habitation would ever be self-sustaining. I think they're a bit too dismissive here. I'm a great fan of the colonisation of Venus, and don't really see a problem with self-sustaining stations in a place with pressures and temperatures naturally fit for humans, with lots of sunlight for energy and lots of CO2.…

I figure people will likely get to Mars first but I've always imagined the first permanent off-world colony would be on Venus.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#344

Post by c22 »

samstave wrote: post #281
c22 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you're only doing it to safeguard against extinction level events why not just set up multiple contingency populations underground here on this planet? They won't have to travel as far after the event.

I think the idea is to seed the extra planets BEFORE the ELE... If an ELE hits, few would be around to make even that short trip to the bunker.

You misunderstand, I suggest creating a self reliant population actively living below ground (or at the bottom of the ocean). They have to be able to survive indefinitely without help from the surface, but so would a martian colony to weather an ELE.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#345

Post by rocky1138 »

I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, but it hardly seems realistic to make such grandiose plans for a place we've never landed rovers or other equipment successfully.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#346

Post by rocky1138 »

I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, but it hardly seems realistic to make such grandiose plans for a place we've never landed rovers or other equipment successfully.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#347

Post by eponeponepon »

rocky1138 wrote: post #345

I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, but it hardly seems realistic to make such grandiose plans for a place we've never landed rovers or other equipment successfully.

We have landed successfully on Titan - we even took a photo or two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)#/media/Fi...

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#348

Post by Groxx »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #320
stcredzero wrote: post #310

Although the atmosphere lacks oxygen, water ice just below the surface could be used to provide oxygen for breathing and to combust hydrocarbons as fuel. Red flag! It's a nonstarter to extract oxygen from water, use it to burn a hydrocarbon, then try to come out with more useful energy than you started with. This might have some use as an energy storage scheme, as storing hydrocarbons can be cheaper and more energy d…

wouldn't the same weak gravity imply less dense atmosphere to support wings, evening out?

Quantity reigns in this sense. E.g. Venus has a similar gravity as Earth (though a bit less), but the atmosphere is 93 times more dense at "sea level".

One of the theories for why Earth doesn't have a similarly dense atmosphere is because we have the Moon - a large gravitational body nearby strips away the atmosphere enough to prevent the endless buildup like Venus has.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#349

Post by flukus »

vacri wrote: post #290
samstave wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is to seed the extra planets BEFORE the ELE... If an ELE hits, few would be around to make even that short trip to the bunker.

What kind of event is in your mind that gives people less than, say, an hour's notice?

Full scale nuclear war maybe? Much of the population would only have a few minutes notice at best.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#350

Post by anigbrowl »

banach wrote: post #322
anigbrowl wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm european and while I share your attitudes your policy prescriptions come off as shallow and naive. It'd be hard to find a forum where people are more aware of things like the upsides of renewable energy than they are on HN, for example. You think the answers are simple, we think your answers are well-intentioned but simplistic.

One of the main issues with the current societal debate is that simple issues are being presented as complex. This makes us incorrectly expect complex solutions to our issues.

Getting millions of people to change their utility calculus is in fact a complex problem. You remind me of a beauty contestant mentioning support for world peace, an abolition of hunger and so on....goals which virtually everyone agrees to be worthy, and yet which have proved strangely difficult to implement despite their apparent 'simplicity.'
Post reply on HN