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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

#291

Post by credit_guy »

About 250 years ago a bunch of guys on a remote land, far, far away from the "civilized world" came up with a wild idea that all men are created equal and are endowed with some inalienable rights, and started a big social experiment that turned out to be quite successful. And then Europe took notice and copied it eventually. The main thing that Europe got from America was not cheap tobacco, or cotton or rum. It was an idea.

Those who think there's nothing of value on Mars to bring back to Earth, don't realize that ideas have more values than minerals or crops. The colonists that we'll send to Mars will form societies that will experiment with new social contracts. They'll come up with new solutions to social dilemmas. And some of these solutions will just be good. And we'll benefit tremendously from them back here on Earth.

Or maybe I'm just a dreamer.

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

#292

Post by cthalupa »

defterGoose wrote: post #289
cthalupa wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terraforming planets in a meaningful way anytime soon is a pipe dream, but someone in 200 years very much could get in their space car and go to a different space habitat. O'Neill cylinders have already been mentioned here. There's no scientific reason we are aware of that would make living in artificial habitats worse than living on a planet, and a lot of reasons that it would be better. It's just that those of us t…

> There's no scientific reason we are aware of that would make living in artificial habitats worse than living on a planet, and a lot of reasons that it would be better. It's just that those of us talking now live on a planet, and find the idea of continuing to live on a planet comforting. But this is just so obviously backwards. Your assumption is that an artificial environment would be monotonically better to live…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder

These are possible (if not remotely practical) with our current level of materials science and solve for both the gravity and cosmic ray/radiation issues. There's lots of other designs that should go larger, but require further advancements in things like carbon nanotubes, etc. to be possible.

As for why it would be better - control. No worries about pollution. No worries about earthquakes, volcanoes, or other natural disasters. No droughts, no hurricanes, no tornadoes.

No one is talking about living on space stations like the ISS - we're talking about building purpose built large scale structures that are designed from the ground. And these aren't things that are the realm of science fiction authors and futurists with no grounding in reality or physics - they're things that have been and continue to be seriously researched by NASA and other space agencies.

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

#293

Post by Balgair »

aftbit wrote: post #270
soylentcola wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine that any colony would be dependent on Earth (for survival) for quite a while. I think that it would take a certain level of self-sufficiency in order to reach a point of not being controllable by earth. Being far away is one thing, but when I look at how powers on Earth exert influence and control over others, it seems you also need to be self-sufficient (protection from blockades, trade embargoes, or…

Maybe that will be MAD for the 23rd century - you blow up our habitats, we'll drop rocks on your cities.

It may be a bit more like the Triangle Trades of old [0].

Raw/rare materials and elements are mined in the Belt and are then sent to Earth for use in manufacture. You pick up the high quality goods and tools from Earth and ship them to Mars/Moon. Since there is water on Mars/Moon, you grow food, 'wet' supplies, and unfinished goods in the weaker gravity well for shipment to the Belt. These arrive in the Belt and you repeat the process, profiting at every spaceport.

As the metropole has overwhelming manpower/firepower due to it's high class manufacturing base and population, the threat of violence is just plain bad for business all around and is discouraged.

Now I'm gong to speculate very hard: Eventually, the lesser manufacturing base (Moon/Mars) will gain in economic and political power as their frontier life becomes more civilized and independent of the metropole. And they may try to declare independence fully. However, in the case of Moon/Mars, you're looking at a fully independent multi-generational extraterrestrial biospheres at that point and probably millions of people, if not 10s of millions, to run the whole thing. Lots of people that have never been to Earth and never plan on going. I really don't see that much trade/mining would be needed to go to Earth to build up and support permanently independent biospheres of a few generations of native Martians/Moonies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_trade

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

#294

Post by forest_dweller »

vagrantJin wrote: post #184
zanny wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just that it's a very long-term and theoretical value, and at this particular moment in history there are much more pressing concerns. Like blowing up people living in mud huts in deserts going by US economic priorities. A regime largely in place to protect biased trade relations for cheap materials and goods from around the world and more importantly (to those orchestrating the regime) to the line the pockets…

> Like blowing up people living in mud huts in deserts going by US economic priorities. A regime largely in place to protect biased trade relations for cheap materials and goods from around the world and more importantly (to those orchestrating the regime) to the line the pockets of select defense contractors. Haha. How on earth did they convince US citizens that indeed sending highly trained soldiers each worth thei…

The same thing throughout history again and again. A country will become wealthy and then they typically will build their military and then go on wars to justify it. It isn't anything that is US centric.

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

#295

Post by mr_toad »

Justsignedup wrote: post #93
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…

I think it is important to understand differences: The future of humanity is not only on earth. Too much risk, too limited resources. HOWEVER the future of humanity in space is NOT "tomorrow we lift off a giant spaceship with everyone on it." If we survive a few hundred years we might see some amount of human civilization outside of earth, but for many hundreds of years after more practical space tech comes about mos…

> why would we want to when we already have a perfectly terraformed planet we're already on

Sure, you can stay here. But then in a few thousand years the descendants of the people who did leave turn up with advanced weapons and ideas about bringing you the “benefits of civilisation”.

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

#296

Post by mr_toad »

marta_morena_28 wrote: post #219
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…

> We can prioritize both, and frankly, life on Earth will be better the more we priotitize space exploration, not worse. This is a pretty baseless claim. Space exploration, within the next 50 years, will yield utterly nothing for humans on earth. We want to colonize Mars or the Moon? Great, but what for? You know how much all these things cost? Trillions per large economy. With that money you can do quite a lot to in…

> What we need

Who’s we?

Global collective decision making seems to be less likely to happen in the next century than having people on Mars.

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

#297

Post by PrinceKropotkin »

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…

I'm a big fan of space exploration, but it's very difficult to argue that it's going to be a net positive until we can actually colonize mars. That could still be hundreds of years off. Furthermore, the idea that spending on the "space force" or whatever is going to enrich the public domain is beyond naive. NASA is functionally dead.

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

#298

Post by aeternum »

Udik wrote: post #247
jodrellblank wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but Mars is smaller than the Earth. Even best case for teraforming all of it into paradise and shipping half the world's population there gives ~one more population doubling time to being "full" again. Planets are not an efficient way to make surface living space with all that matter inside them. Whatever you think of the difficulty or possibility of it, it will be easier to work out how to support 2x…

Mars is the size (surface) of the Pacific Ocean. And infinitely less habitable than the Pacific. We could settle a few billion people in entirely self-sufficient and zero-impact communities floating on the Pacific and it would be absolutely cheap and straightforward compared to doing the same on Mars.

Yet it will take only a single asteroid, massive volcanic eruption, or giant H-bomb explosion to render the planet inhospitable to all those billions of people.

The risk of staying on a single planet is crazy.

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

#299

Post by dmitriid »

deadmetheny wrote: post #244
dmitriid wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those explorers always have the luxury of going back to civilisation after relatively short excursions into the unknown. I doubt many people are willing to live the entirety of their lives in constant danger and constrained resources. And even fewer of those people will have the skills needed to run a complex technological society (and you will need a lot of technology to survive on Mars).

>Those explorers always have the luxury of going back to civilisation after relatively short excursions into the unknown. I doubt many people are willing to live the entirety of their lives in constant danger and constrained resources. Yet a very large majority of North America is descended from people who did exactly that.

The very large majority comes from people who settled way after the early colonists.

And those, who settled, came here looking for a better life, which should tell you about the conditions they were coming from.

And that is especially true for the many of the early colonists.

But the most important thing: we no longer live in the 1500-1600s which is a very important factor overlooked by everyone breathlessly talking about enduring hardships on Mars

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

#300

Post by LoSboccacc »

Retric wrote: post #143
jupp0r wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think would prevent a self sufficient colony on Mars in a few hundred years? I don't see any fundamental obstacles to it.

Self sufficient requires a manufacturing base to include everything needed to sustain it’s self, including redundancies. Going from zero humans on mars to 100’s of millions is a massive bootstrap problem with minimal incentive for the the people involved or the multiple years worth of earth’s GDP to get to that point. It’s like the “self replicating” 3D printers where they can produce 98% of the structure by weight a…

you're moving the goalpost from self sufficient to 100 millions humans, and the two are very lightly correlated.

beside, earth manufacturing is biased toward efficiency and low cost, with the driver of capital gain, not sustainability, you don't actually need lcd if crt are good enough and could be manufactured in situ.

sure it won't make for a good nor a pleasant standard of living, but then again, that's moving the goalpost.

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