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

techeffect.substack.com

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

#251

Post by m4rtink »

RobertoG wrote: post #122
travisoneill1 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah - I'm a bit alarmed on how many people can't think out of the blue ball (sorry for the pun) - there are many many ways we can build our own environments as needed about anywhere in space given some resources and energy.

Also while Earth is pretty ideal, it is not perfect - for example some places in Japan can be regularly hit by earthquakes, tsunami, flooding, Typhoons and even volcanic eruptions!

If done right, habitats could be much better than planetary environments.

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

#252

Post by carapace »

I am against the over-romanticizing of space colonization. It's not going to be like Star Wars or Star Trek. It's going to be like living and working deep in a mine that you can never leave.

But this is garbage.

Never mind the "space travel takes away from solving Earth problems" B.S. which was old and stupid when I was a kid, the "technology = fascism" Godwin's Law dig is infra dig.

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

#253

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

johnmorrison wrote: post #13

This is frankly a blatantly wrong and quite foolish argument. Space exploration has already created many significant benefits for humanity on Earth , by advancing hundreds of new technologies with terrestrial applications and launching satellite networks that support a safer, more peaceful world for humans, with improved agricultural efficiencies as well as advanced warning and a better understanding of extreme weath…

> You'd have to be ideologically possessed or completely ignorant of reality to believe this anti-space bs.

I don’t think asking a government to get it’s priorities straight is “anti-space bs”. I’m not from the US, but I too would be mad if I saw the gov talk about man in the Moon/Mars while I don’t have healthcare and the country is on fire.

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

#254

Post by m4rtink »

nine_k wrote: post #226
FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of asteroids that have more wealth than the entire US federal debt. Consider all the precious metals ever mined on the planet. Now consider this is litterally scratching the surface of the total contained within the planet. Note, these dense metals will be concentrated toward the planets core, due to gravity. The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass, but it is all spread thinly and relative…

Imagine that you deliver 100 thousand tons of gold, platinum, etc to Earth. How would the prices change? Inside the asteroid belt there's nobody to trade in gold with, at least not yet.

Well, it should enable many things that are currently prohibitively expensive due to the cost of materials.

You know, people don't buy stuff (just) because it looks nice and shiny but to use to to do things. Aluminium used to be more expensive than platinum yet we survived it's price tanking & it made practical airplanes and drink cans possible!

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

#255

Post by johnmorrison »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #253
johnmorrison wrote: post #13

This is frankly a blatantly wrong and quite foolish argument. Space exploration has already created many significant benefits for humanity on Earth , by advancing hundreds of new technologies with terrestrial applications and launching satellite networks that support a safer, more peaceful world for humans, with improved agricultural efficiencies as well as advanced warning and a better understanding of extreme weath…

> You'd have to be ideologically possessed or completely ignorant of reality to believe this anti-space bs. I don’t think asking a government to get it’s priorities straight is “anti-space bs”. I’m not from the US, but I too would be mad if I saw the gov talk about man in the Moon/Mars while I don’t have healthcare and the country is on fire.

A sufficiently large country is always on fire, somewhere :p

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

johnmorrison wrote: post #13

This is frankly a blatantly wrong and quite foolish argument. Space exploration has already created many significant benefits for humanity on Earth , by advancing hundreds of new technologies with terrestrial applications and launching satellite networks that support a safer, more peaceful world for humans, with improved agricultural efficiencies as well as advanced warning and a better understanding of extreme weath…

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by tingol »

happytoexplain wrote: post #74
tingol wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? The first thought they had was fuck NASA and they completely ignored the trillions being spent on the US military complex?

This is a false dichotomy.

I was mocking a false dichotomy... Covid crisis -> we have to cut space funding.

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

#258

Post by Rebelgecko »

ogre_codes wrote: post #198
save_ferris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that great advancements have cost. The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet. If people start to think that space exploration could yield a solution to an increasingly uninhabitable climate on Earth, it could create a scenario where we spend even more on space exploration and less on addressing Earth's climate.

> The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet. In order to make this argument, you have to first figure out what percentage of NASA's budget is spent on space exploration versus things like GPS systems, weather satellites, climate monitoring, solar monitoring, physics experiments, etc etc, which have direct or indirect benefits to things happen…

Not that this negates any of your other points, but GPS comes from the US defense budget, the Space Force is spending a few billion per year on it

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

#259

Post by ogre_codes »

frank2 wrote: post #208
ogre_codes wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet. In order to make this argument, you have to first figure out what percentage of NASA's budget is spent on space exploration versus things like GPS systems, weather satellites, climate monitoring, solar monitoring, physics experiments, etc etc, which have direct or indirect benefits to things happen…

Maybe the US should spend less on defense and should refrain from sending humans to Mars.

As far as I'm concerned, this is akin to suggesting you shouldn't back up the data on your computer because it distracts from protecting your working installation. You can do both—invest in a back-up strategy, while investing more money and vigilance in protecting the primary source.

Space exploration is more though, because not only is space exploration an investment in a back-up plan, it brings very real benefits home to earth. The whole point of exploration is that you don't know what you are going to find or what the repercussions of what you find will be.

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

#260

Post by m4rtink »

dragonwriter wrote: post #216
FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of asteroids that have more wealth than the entire US federal debt. Consider all the precious metals ever mined on the planet. Now consider this is litterally scratching the surface of the total contained within the planet. Note, these dense metals will be concentrated toward the planets core, due to gravity. The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass, but it is all spread thinly and relative…

> The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass That seems...quite high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt "The total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon."

I don't think the mass is as important as accessible mass - let's say you can mine up to 4 km deep (the deepest mine on Earth at the moment) & you can't easily do that any, there might be ocean, glacier, or even a city on top of the resource you want to mine. That limits you even further for terrestrial mining.

Asteroid on the other hand are mostly just a few kilometers in size with a very few being bigger than tens of kilometers. That might quite possibly open much bigger mining volume than what's currently avalable on earth - rather than a big sphere with much stuff inaccessible due to being too deep, you now have millions of chunks floating around with a lot of stuff to dig through in the 4 km limit. No oceans, cities or glaciers to block you as well.

And the arbitrary 4 km limit most likely does not really apply for asteroids - they are all long cooled down & the gravity is negligible so nothing should really limmmit you from digging hundreds of kilometers through Vesta looking for valuables. Also some findings indicate that processes that lead to dilution of minerals on earth might have taken place after asteroids formed, so it might be possible to find the stuff we look for in quite a pure and ready to use state.

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