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Don’t stage off Starship

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Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#91

Post by justapassenger »

Faark wrote: post #85
anoncake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...

For a start, people having a problem with our current society on earth can build a life away from it. Have you ever noticed racists yearning for "their own" homeland? With a self-sustaining colony on mars, the tech should be available for them to build one. I'd love reading about their attempt to govern something independent with no one else to blame. Many people also like having bigger goals to strive for, and this…

Your average racist is not wealthy enough to spend trillions of dollars to find a new place for themselves.

And I’ve yet to see racist ideology that says “OK guys, we got some invaders here, time to pack and look for a new place for us, they won”.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#92

Post by mLuby »

ppaattrriicckk wrote: post #53

Personally I think it'd be interesting to compare the expected price/weight to how much it cost to cross the Atlantic back in the 1600s. Does anyone happen to have any good references for goods/people crossing back then? For instance, one person writes on Quora[0] that between 1600 and 1800 one could cross the Atlantic from Europe by becoming an indentured servant, working 4-7 years for someone. By looking at the ave…

That's a good point. Though it's worth remembering that the Americas held valuable resources just ready for collecting (eg furs, timber). So far, that's much less true of extraterrestrial lands (yeah yeah, He3).

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#93

Post by mLuby »

GuB-42 wrote: post #7

When talking about big rockets, it is hard not to talk about Sea Dragon. It was a rocket where the entire design is based on the "bigger is better" philosophy. The design was simple. No need for lightweight, high-tech materials, because it is big. No need for highly efficient high pressure engines, just make one that is bigger. That thing would have dwarved the Saturn V. The name "Sea Dragon" comes from the fact it w…

Awesome 1min clip of Sea Dragon launching from the ocean from "For All Mankind."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRMDcC0QvFQ

Really gives you the sense of scale.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#94

Post by mLuby »

tsimionescu wrote: post #76
missosoup wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species' Spreading across n>1 planets would literally move our species up on the Kardashev scale. Achieving that is one of the very few things anyone is doing on this planet, which is fundamentally beneficial to our species. > Also, putting more economic and political power in the hands of the many instead of concentrating it all in afew hu…

The Kardashev scale is essentially sci-fi. In a couple hundred years when we have an actual chance of having a functioning colony on a planet and not some playground for a handful of people, there will be a measurable advantage to humanity for this. And democracy, even as limited as it is today, has been the only system which has brought any amount of peace around here. And I'm not attacking Musk specifically, he is…

Whether individuals shouldn't be worth billions is orthogonal to whether governments or companies should spend money on opening new technological and territorial frontiers.

The Kardashev Scale is just a scale, like the Richter Scale. It's not sci-fi, though there being aliens at higher levels on that scale is.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#95

Post by tsimionescu »

missosoup wrote: post #88
tsimionescu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kardashev scale is essentially sci-fi. In a couple hundred years when we have an actual chance of having a functioning colony on a planet and not some playground for a handful of people, there will be a measurable advantage to humanity for this. And democracy, even as limited as it is today, has been the only system which has brought any amount of peace around here. And I'm not attacking Musk specifically, he is…

> The Kardashev scale is essentially sci-fi. Okay. And we're embarking on a mission that would achieve an 'essentially sci-fi' objective. With the funding of a billionaire that you chose to shit on over the rest, that instead embark on.... Sex crimes? Petty regional politics? Rent seeking? Expanding their empires? Setting their offspring up to follow in their steps? I don't follow.

Again, I'm not particularly hostile to Musk, he was just the one who came up. Do you want me to list some others I dislike? The surviving Koch brother, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and many others are very bad as well.

To me, a Mars mission is going to be as impactful to the vast majority of humankind as a fraction of how important the discovery of the Americas was the peasantry of Europe (since the Americas were at least immediately habitable). It would be little comfort to know that there is a little colony on Mars, completely dependent on Earth exports while the Earth itself is declining around us. If we don't solve the climate crisis on Earth, there will be no Mars colony, not in th curent world, I hope this much is clear.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#96

Post by anoncake »

ben_w wrote: post #46
anoncake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...

Mars is significantly less hospitable than either the summit of Mt Everest or Antarctica; by developing the necessary tech to colonise Mars, you could re-populate the Earth after any environmental catastrophe short of the planet being physically dismantled. One more immediate benefit is that the ability to refuel on Mars is identical to the ability to take CO2 out of the air and turn it into (un)natural gas. Doesn’t…

It's not about Earth, it's about the humans on it. Being able to repopulate Earth after they all died isn't all that helpful.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#97

Post by anoncake »

Faark wrote: post #85
anoncake wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...

For a start, people having a problem with our current society on earth can build a life away from it. Have you ever noticed racists yearning for "their own" homeland? With a self-sustaining colony on mars, the tech should be available for them to build one. I'd love reading about their attempt to govern something independent with no one else to blame. Many people also like having bigger goals to strive for, and this…

We've got plenty of land on Earth that we don't exactly consider habitable but still beats Mars. That is not why sending our racists to Mars is a ludicrous idea.

> this one might cause less conflict than those wanting to reorganize society in whatever direction.

Is that the "go to North Korea/Chile/Somalia" argument on steroids?

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#98

Post by maccam94 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #12

Is 'Starship' even a real thing? Last I heard, it was an empty stainless steel can ('aerodynamic model') that blew over in a strong wind. Has that changed? Are they actually going to try and make this a real launch vehicle?

The Starship Hopper flew a couple hundred meters up into the air using the new Raptor engine, hovered, and then landed. A full size prototype had a fuel tank fail a pressure test due to some bad welding. The most recent fuel tank pressure test succeeded, so it's looking like a 20km altitude test flight will happen in the next few months.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#99

Post by disambiguously »

snowwrestler wrote: post #57
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…

I think you’ll get downvoted but I largely agree with you about the futility of the exercise. The complexity of the Earth’s system for sustaining life still far exceeds our understanding, and I think going to Mars will at best turn out to be a powerful way to learn that we cannot replicate it. The typical moral justification is that the Earth may be threatened and so it would be prudent to have some humans somewhere…

> Well the number one threat to Earth is an impact event.

Challenged— that’s the number one natural threat to (human civilization on) Earth. Or maybe the number one threat assuming we survive the next thousand years.

The number one threat at this moment is deliberate annihilation of the ecosphere by a very small number of insane humans.

The number two threat is negligent annihilation of the ecosphere by a plurality of merely shortsighted humans.

Not only is a Mars colony uniquely susceptible to these existential risks, the process of building one could plausibly make them worse.

Space folks like to talk a lot about how the technology you use to survive in space is technology you can use to live better on Earth. They don’t like to talk about how the technology you use to get to space is the same technology you use to murder human civilization anywhere it hides.

I wonder why.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#100

Post by Haga »

I still think company's and privat persons shouldn't own nukes. Everyone in orbit by virtue of location has the power any warlord dreams about. Don't make tech advances for the best people, make them against the background of the worst people.
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