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

It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

techeffect.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 325 posts

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#121

Post by [deleted] »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #110
macspoofing wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The future of humanity is not only on earth. Where are you going to go? Outside of Earth, there is no place for us in the entire Solar System. Sure we may build some research stations here and there, just as we did in inhospitable places on Earth (like Antarctica), but there's no long-term option anywhere. Interstellar travel is science fiction, but even if it wasn't, there is no place for us to go as well.

We can change Mars in large ways. Lots of stuff written about that. Heck, we could redirect an icy asteroid to collide, providing water, atmosphere and heat. On the order of decades from now.

[deleted]

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#122

Post by RobertoG »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #108
macspoofing wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The future of humanity is not only on earth. Where are you going to go? Outside of Earth, there is no place for us in the entire Solar System. Sure we may build some research stations here and there, just as we did in inhospitable places on Earth (like Antarctica), but there's no long-term option anywhere. Interstellar travel is science fiction, but even if it wasn't, there is no place for us to go as well.

You make the place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder Obviously this is far beyond our current level of technology, though.

It's absolutely not beyond our current level of technology. Unfortunately, there are not economic incentives yet.

Now, this(1) it's beyond our current level, but one can dream.

It's obvious to me that this is the most probable future and I would not be surprise if, at some point, most humanity is living in this kind of environment instead of planets.

Planets have a lot of disadvantages.

(1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Ring_(habitat)

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#123

Post by xlm1717 »

How bizarre to try to make space exploration a Republican issue. The author posted stats that 72% of Americans say it's essential for the US to remain a world leader in space exploration. That is definitely higher than the percentage of Americans who are registered Republicans.

Everything has to be politicized these days.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#124

Post by lm28469 »

keiferski wrote: post #92

I don't know, I can't help but feel like nearly all of our solutions to contemporary problems involve space travel, specifically self-contained space travel (i.e., when spaceships become within an order of magnitude as affordable as houses or automobiles.) The universe is essentially limitless from a human point of view, so to be perpetually stuck on Earth seems like a failure of perspective. - Oppressive government…

Yeah in a perfect world maybe. The problem is that we're facing issues on a relatively short term here and if we don't manage to solve them there will be no way out. If stopping the current destruction of our home planet is 1/100 difficulty, terraforming Mars would be 90/100, leaving the solar system for an already hospitable planet would be 101/100.

We're much better are polluting and creating useless gadgets than we're at long term meaningful technological innovation.

> Oppressive government controlling you or your land? Move elsewhere in the solar system.

Migrants can't pay for proper boats to cross the Mediterranean but they'll pay for interplanetary travel ?

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#125

Post by mkaic »

macspoofing wrote: post #115
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can change Mars in large ways. Lots of stuff written about that. Heck, we could redirect an icy asteroid to collide, providing water, atmosphere and heat. On the order of decades from now.

>We can change Mars in large ways. No we can't. The gravity of Mars is always going to be a problem. The lack of magnetic field is always going to be a problem. Most of its atmosphere was lost to space and there is not enough water on the planet to replenish. >we could redirect an icy asteroid to collide, providing water, atmosphere and heat. I read the Mars trilogy too. >On the order of decades from now. Sure.

We could make an artificial magnetic field for it. Beyond current technology but seems like a viable option a hundred years from now.

I agree low gravity would be a problem, but life finds a way, right? Current generations of humans wouldn’t do well in 1/4 G, but maybe we’ll see significant adaptations 100 generations down the line! Who knows?

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#126

Post by sigstoat »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112
phizy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a powerful argument for 'we must be alone', because it's an equally powerful argument for 'space colonization is nearly impossible.' You're saying things are "certainly possible" but you don't have a shred of evidence to support that belief. It's more likely that you're vastly underestimating the cost of maintaining a life-supporting ecosystem independent of the benefits of a billions of years of evolutionar…

That thinking is about a decade out of date. The number of expolanets that are in the habitable zone grows geometrically. Some think every star has some planets. Simple chance makes it possible to find agreeable destinations nearly everywhere. And 'evolutionary adaptation' is irrelevant. We can change ourselves (are changing ourselves) genetically already. That will only increase. The result will be a species more ad…

> Some think every star has some planets.

20 years ago, before we had direct evidence of exoplanets, we had evidence from the spectrum of stars that about 80% of the ones which had grown large enough to swallow any of their planets had previously had gas giants.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#127

Post by staplers »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #110
macspoofing wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The future of humanity is not only on earth. Where are you going to go? Outside of Earth, there is no place for us in the entire Solar System. Sure we may build some research stations here and there, just as we did in inhospitable places on Earth (like Antarctica), but there's no long-term option anywhere. Interstellar travel is science fiction, but even if it wasn't, there is no place for us to go as well.

We can change Mars in large ways. Lots of stuff written about that. Heck, we could redirect an icy asteroid to collide, providing water, atmosphere and heat. On the order of decades from now.

Human climate management shouldn't give anyone hope.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#128

Post by bryanlarsen »

res0nat0r wrote: post #102
Dig1t wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is not to impact the lives of individuals. The goal is to preserve intelligence in the event of a catastrophe. As far as we know, we are the only part of the universe that is capable of consciousness. The argument is that it is worth going to great lengths to insure against species-wide disasters (e.g. runaway global warming, giant meteor, World War 3) Its macro-level thinking versus micro-level.

The earth becoming uninhabitable due to climate change is going to happen way sooner than any pipe dream of folks trying to live on Mars, if they were really concerned about preserving the human species they would be putting billions of dollars into that instead.

> if they were really concerned about preserving the human species they would be putting billions of dollars into that instead.

But they have. Bezos has invested heavily into Rivian, and Musk into Tesla.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#130

Post by [deleted] »

wrs wrote: post #42
MereInterest wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. Large-scale geoengineering will be necessary sooner or later on Earth. However, it almost certainly has failure modes that we don't know about, and won't know about until we can experiment with it. Testing the effects on Earth, with nearly 8 billion people, is wildly reckless. Testing the effects…

I agree in a very theoretical and academic way, but practically speaking, how long will this testing take? We already risked the 8 billion lives with the accidental geoengineering we’re doing now.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN