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

Don’t stage off Starship

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 136 posts

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#61

Post by _ph_ »

chr1 wrote: post #44
PaulHoule wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to use a Starship to put a solar sail factory on an NEO and send the sails to Earth-Moon L1 to block sunlight to buy us some time. If you think you can change human nature fast enough to curb climate change you should think again; introduce new energy sources that are cheaper than fossil fuels and you can make them.obsolete.

"buying some time" would be the most underwhelming use of such a technology. If you are putting large enough sunshade to change the climate, you can use it to actually control the weather, make sahara green, make siberia warm, melt greenland ice sheet in controlled way moving it to antarctic.

Making the Sahara green is a good idea, Siberia warm, much less so. Actually the thawing of the perma frost is currently one big danger, as it would release a massive amount of greenhous gases (mostly methane).

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#62

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #49
drenginian wrote: post #5

Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…

“A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.” Add it to the long list of things Blade Runner got so right about the future. I stopped reading this article because in all the rocket talk, nowhere did it acknowledge just how completely inhospitable Mars will be once you finally get it there. Every single aspect of the planet is not conducive…

> nowhere did it acknowledge just how completely inhospitable Mars will be once you finally get it there

And you really legitimately think that they did not know about this piece of information from the children's book about space? They don't mention it because it is so ubiquitous and common sense that they assume everyone knows it, not because they managed to "miss the memo" about Mars. The idea is that we terraform Mars with technology to make it liveable, not that we just go there and try to build a hut from dirt and call it a day.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#63

Post by wongarsu »

zozbot234 wrote: post #30
drenginian wrote: post #5

Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…

Yes, we aren't colonizing the Gobi Desert and we're supposed to colonize Mars? What a silly idea.

Running out of room on Earth isn't the issue here. And as the other comment notes, we are pretty good at colonizing deserts if we want to (we are also good at making deserts, but that's another problem).

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#64

Post by randallsquared »

Udik wrote: post #37
mkl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at (way) sub-light speeds, it's probably possible. Whether it's automated self-replicating ships (possibly carrying humans as gene sequences), or generation ships (seems pretty hellish!), a number of people have estimated mathematically that it's doable. Estimates vary wildly, of course, as there are many unknowns, but basically exponential growth gets unintuitively fast. Some links (there are many more pages to…

This is not "travelling" any more. This is sending spores hoping they will take root somewhere, but they will be forever disconnected from us, in space and, more importantly, in time . What's this mania you have of disseminating yourself? Even if you build ships that carry human genes sequences and send them on a million years trip, who is going to benefit? The sequences you sent?

> What's this mania you have of disseminating yourself?

Life. It's what living beings do. If some group of living beings stop doing it, there are fewer of them, later.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#65

Post by [deleted] »

Udik wrote: post #37
mkl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at (way) sub-light speeds, it's probably possible. Whether it's automated self-replicating ships (possibly carrying humans as gene sequences), or generation ships (seems pretty hellish!), a number of people have estimated mathematically that it's doable. Estimates vary wildly, of course, as there are many unknowns, but basically exponential growth gets unintuitively fast. Some links (there are many more pages to…

This is not "travelling" any more. This is sending spores hoping they will take root somewhere, but they will be forever disconnected from us, in space and, more importantly, in time . What's this mania you have of disseminating yourself? Even if you build ships that carry human genes sequences and send them on a million years trip, who is going to benefit? The sequences you sent?

[deleted]

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#66

Post by justinclift »

credit_guy wrote: post #11

Two aspects in favor of mini-starships 1. economies of scale: if you manufacture 12 engines smaller by a factor of 10, the total manufacturing cost is not going to be 20% higher, but most likely 2-3 times lower. 2. engineering knowledge: more smaller engines means more engineers. Some of whom would leave to start their own startups, or to join Blue Origin, or Skunkworks, or some other aerospace company. That's not ne…

> 2. engineering knowledge: more smaller engines means more engineers.

Not necessarily (by much). Automated production is a thing.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#67

Post by sp332 »

MayeulC wrote: post #6

> while storage tanks can be built from local materials Just use the starships themselves. Actually,to further reduce cost, I would design starship to be useable as a Mars habitat: even fuel tanks could conceivably be converted into living quarters,I guess. Further the efficiency by recycling other parts of the starship as building materials. Also, most of the reasoning in this article revolves around power plant mas…

The trouble is that the Starships need to refuel very quickly after landing to hit their return launch window. If you need to generate all the fuel right then, you need a much larger fuel plant. If you can store the fuel ahead of time,before the Starship has arrived, you can use a much smaller fuel plant, but you need storage space.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#68

Post by sp332 »

smoyer wrote: post #16

I have a few interesting questions ... to be fair, I've done no science or math to make a conclusion but there would certainly be a sense of irony involved. 1. Could the green-house gases produced to launch a civilization to Mars be the final straw that breaks our eco-system's back? 2. What are the moral implications of terra-forming Mars and moving a small population there, knowing that the population remaining on E…

Each launch puts a few hundred tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, not counting emissions during construction. So each one is not a disaster, but if they're doing a ton of launches per year that adds up quickly.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#69

Post by chr1 »

_ph_ wrote: post #61
chr1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"buying some time" would be the most underwhelming use of such a technology. If you are putting large enough sunshade to change the climate, you can use it to actually control the weather, make sahara green, make siberia warm, melt greenland ice sheet in controlled way moving it to antarctic.

Making the Sahara green is a good idea, Siberia warm, much less so. Actually the thawing of the perma frost is currently one big danger, as it would release a massive amount of greenhous gases (mostly methane).

You would do it in a controlled manner so that the amount of released gases from arctic is compensated by gases absorbed by greening deserts.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#70

Post by PaulHoule »

chr1 wrote: post #44
PaulHoule wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to use a Starship to put a solar sail factory on an NEO and send the sails to Earth-Moon L1 to block sunlight to buy us some time. If you think you can change human nature fast enough to curb climate change you should think again; introduce new energy sources that are cheaper than fossil fuels and you can make them.obsolete.

"buying some time" would be the most underwhelming use of such a technology. If you are putting large enough sunshade to change the climate, you can use it to actually control the weather, make sahara green, make siberia warm, melt greenland ice sheet in controlled way moving it to antarctic.

Increasing CO2 is very bad for the oceans and has mixed effects on crops. We may want to remove carbon with biochar, iron seeding, etc.

Fast or thermal breeder reactors with a high outlet temperature (e.g. Fast Flux Test Facility) coupled to a low cost gas turbine generator set could push fossil fuels out of the market in some places.

Post reply on HN