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Let's Colonize Titan

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#361

Post by repsilat »

stale2002 wrote: post #314
repsilat wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if everybody eats twice as many animals as they do now and moves further away from their workplaces, Earth will remain a more livable place than Titan. Maybe that isn't true if we kick off a nuclear war, but it probably still is. Global warming? Titan's atmosphere is literally not breathable, and the outside temperature is colder than any place on Earth. Food scarcity? Nothing grows on Titan. If you're growing i…

You are only focusing on the drawbacks of titan, and not on its significant benefits. Titan has practically limitless amounts of fuel in the form of oceans of flowing hydrocarbons. Titan should be though of as a resource, not necessarily as a sprawling multi-billion person supporting planet.

> You are only focusing on the drawbacks of titan, and not on its significant benefits.

I only talked about the (meagre) utility of Titan as a life-raft in the foreseeable future because that's what this thread is about. I didn't argue against visiting or colonising it because that would have been off-topic.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#362

Post by akwaryo »

acchow wrote: post #190
banach wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the pursuit of knowledge is a really good way to spend your time, but I do not like when simple solutions to real problems are sidelined in favor of the latest buzzword-oriented technology fetish. In times when the president-elect has announced that he is shutting down NASA's climate change research, ostensibly to fund space exploration, I think we need to remind ourselves that any work we chose to pursu…

I think we should colonize other planets because we can. Not as a solution to any problem. I will defer to The West Wing to explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yUHnERJ0zs

Just because we can, but we can't.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#363

Post by BobTheCoder »

banach wrote: post #106

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecos…

Hi,

I think both are highly valuable. But I agree that it is remarkable that we appear to be putting in little effort into trying to resolve our societal issues.

I think a new system is required. https://opensocialism.com is my very alpha initial version that I'm trying to iterate on. Are you interested in helping? :O

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#364

Post by babyrainbow »

etangent wrote: post #243
babyrainbow wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Changing the human nature however, is not trivial by any measure... We don't have to change human nature. We just need to change human behaviour. Changing human behaviour is very easy. Just replace every Ad currently in use with an eco friendly message. Make eco damaging behaviours "uncool" and there goes our young generations eco damaging behaviours. Facebook and google can do this in an year, if they put their min…

> Make eco damaging behaviours "uncool" As 2016 had shown, we're well past the point where it was possible for a centralized (or even moderately stratified) entity to declare certain behaviors "uncool". Changing human culture without changing human nature introduces huge arbitrage opportunities for malicious actors and demagogues and increases overall existential risk.

>s 2016 had shown, we're well past the point where it was possible for a centralized (or even moderately stratified) entity to declare certain behaviors "uncool".

Which event has shown?

> Changing human culture without changing human nature introduces huge arbitrage opportunitie...

What has "culture" to do with this? Behaviour is not the same as culture. Some one might have a habit of throwing garbage on the roads/public places. That is not his culture, that is behaviour, and is easily changed once he find himself in a place where that behaviour is frowned upon.

That is what I am talking about. It is easy to accomplish, but it is not going to happen. Because that means less consumption, and everything about todays world is about pushing towards more and more consumption. Imagine the impossibility of seeing a billboard that says "Do you really need that new SUV?".

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#365

Post by stickfigure »

flukus wrote: post #349
vacri wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Crazy as it sounds, full scale nuclear war is not an extinction level event. Catastrophic, no doubt, and might reduce the human population by a couple orders of magnitude -- but unlikely to kill off all the humans. There just aren't that many bombs (~17,000 is a high estimate) and the earth is really really big. "Nuclear winter" appears to be overdramatized in fiction.

There's quite a lot of semiserious discussion of exactly this question on the internet; this is just a rough paraphrase of the consensus. It can make for a fun couple hours googling.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#366

Post by gus_massa »

pavlov wrote: post #15
philip142au wrote: post #8

This article has no good reasons for Titan, it doesn't discuss water, it doesn't discuss energy or how to grow food. It says that because you can fly there and there are dunes and a liquid surface in some places its like Earth, but that doesn't help us to survive at all. To survive we need water, food and energy. How are we going to get that from Titan as opposed to Mars?

Water and energy are discussed briefly: On the surface, vast quantities of hydrocarbons in solid and liquid form lie ready to be used for energy. 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. Travel difficulties aside, endless piles of hydrocarbons lying around ready to be used by people who don't need to wear…

Actually the sentence you copied is so wrong from the chemical/energetic point of view that it paints the rest of the article very unrealialable. Read the comment by stcredzero: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051651

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#367

Post by brownbat »

I would like to read a serious scientific case for the pros/cons of colonizing the sea floor so I can have it on standby, as a comparative baseline for these sorts of pieces.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#368

Post by owly »

arikrak wrote: post #360
owly wrote: post #355

How about colonizing Earth with like minded people who are dedicated to saving it?

What will you do with everyone else? Sounds like they may cause problems. I think to save Earth we'll need to eliminate those who aren't like minded... "Quick unplug the AI, it's gone bad!"

AI may be a better option to save us at this point.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#369

Post by ValleyOfTheMtns »

banach wrote: post #106

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecos…

Ah, this old argument. Always pops up in topics like this and it's still as naive as before.

The lessons learned from colonising other worlds will allow us to better manage Earth, much like past space exploration has already done.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#370

Post by beefman »

sgentle wrote: post #32

So, the argument is let's not go to Mars because we'd have to deal with cosmic rays. Instead, let's go to Titan, which has an atmosphere, but is ridiculously cold and rains methane. Also, we can't go there because it's nearly thirty times the distance. Plus we'd still have to deal with cosmic rays along the way. I'm not convinced.

Also, the rad dose-rate on Mars is utterly harmless.
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