111–120 of 136 posts
Since it seems we are on the verge of having an off-planet colony, I'd like to launch a couple questions: 1- What are the colonists' fundamental rights and who protects them? 2- Under what jurisdiction will they be? 3- Who owns the air? 4- If someone can't pay for their air or food, what happens?
Has SpaceX even had a successful manned space flight yet? I don't think we're quite on the "verge" of colonizing space...
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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?
Hardly anyone who suggests that the racists move to Somalia believes that the racists, after doing so, should be free to take over the place and rule over, displace or genocide the Somalis. Conversely, if this offer were actually on the table, I'm sure plenty of racists would step up to take it.
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> Well the number one threat to Earth is an impact event. If we can hypothesize a rapidly growing lift capacity, why not use that mass budget to develop a solar-system-wide system for detecting and if necessary altering the trajectory of potential impacting objects? It would be WAY better to protect the Earth than any other backup plan. Detection is a solved problem. Altering the trajectory of an asteroid requires a…
Conversely, of course, the trajectory of a non-threatening near-Earth asteroid can be known well in advance, but there’s no obviously benign reason for anyone to bring a lot of delta-v to one. So having a steady traffic in commercial heavy lift could be a positive externality as well, for whoever wants to find a close-call asteroid that has been recently marked as 100% safe and give it a little nudge.
Weaponizing smallpox and distributing it in major airports is the lower bound of effort. Anything that exceeds this is not worth worrying about.
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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.
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…
I'm incredibly curious as to how much that cost will be vs. a mid-career employee's 401k. If a middle class family with a decade or so of experience could cash theirs in, would they be able to afford to go?
"Hey honey, let's cash in our retirement plan and doom our children to a life where they'll never see the sky except through a visor or viewscreen and never again feel the wind on their face."
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I'm incredibly curious as to how much that cost will be vs. a mid-career employee's 401k. If a middle class family with a decade or so of experience could cash theirs in, would they be able to afford to go?
Why the heck would anyone want to do this? "Hey honey, let's cash in our retirement plan and doom our children to a life where they'll never see the sky except through a visor or viewscreen and never again feel the wind on their face."
I'd like to help maximize the opportunities for that small fraction, personally.
Since it seems we are on the verge of having an off-planet colony, I'd like to launch a couple questions: 1- What are the colonists' fundamental rights and who protects them? 2- Under what jurisdiction will they be? 3- Who owns the air? 4- If someone can't pay for their air or food, what happens?
> Since it seems we are on the verge of having an off-planet colony Has SpaceX even had a successful manned space flight yet? I don't think we're quite on the "verge" of colonizing space...
Since it seems we are on the verge of having an off-planet colony, I'd like to launch a couple questions: 1- What are the colonists' fundamental rights and who protects them? 2- Under what jurisdiction will they be? 3- Who owns the air? 4- If someone can't pay for their air or food, what happens?
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…
It's worth pointing out that, had Elon Musk not dedicated 17 years of his life to building those very resources, they likely wouldn't now be available to anyone at all.
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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. If we can hypothesize a rapidly growing lift capacity, why not use that mass budget to develop a solar-system-wide system for detecting and if necessary altering the trajectory of potential impacting objects? It would be WAY better to protect the Earth than any other backup plan. Detection is a solved problem. Altering the trajectory of an asteroid requires a…