81–90 of 106 posts
just look at https://i.ytimg.com/vi/p5fdbowk7X8/maxresdefault.jpg yucatan peninsula crater photo and try and picture the Dinosaurs and that big boom, cloud of dust and it's like c'mon, no brainer. We need N planets not just 1 planet.
Yet? It seems the writer is debating a view that Elon doesn't have. His goal is to begin the process of making Mars habitable, I'm not aware of anyone with the position that Mars is currently as nice as Earth. Terraforming Mars is a long term vision and not one we'll see in our lifetimes. If we don't take steps towards achieving that goal then of course it will always seem lofty. Martian greenhouses may sooner emulat…
> I'm not aware of anyone with the position that Mars is currently as nice as Earth. Ann Clayborne?
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I think the issue is that we face truly existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, which has not been the predominant cause of strife for our history thus far (world wars, the thread of nuclear exchanges, etc.). So it is hard to say it is impossible, but it is even harder to say that it will be achievable.
> existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, Nah. This just comes off as alarmist. We might accelerate a naturally occuring process ever so slightly but it is by no means an exinction event. You underestimate the homo sapiens ability to adapt to their surroundings. Berbers live in deserts, eskimo in ice tundra - arguably the very extremes of human habitats. You can throw everything at them short of a s…
> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need. She's talking about the man who accelerated our transition to electric cars by years, who is significantly lowering the cost and acceptability of solar power, is enabling the transition of the grid to renewables through the Tesla Megapacks, is pouring billions into battery R&D which will be critical to a green trans…
But ze electric cars and push to megapaks.. No one!
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I take your point; I think maybe this line of discourse is to prevent the "savior" line of thinking, whereby all manner of ills will be addressed by technological advancement, and the day-to-day drudgery of improving our current situation is lessened. The aspirational nature of it is - of course - grand, but maybe a more inward, introspective, look at our current situation would be better in the long-term.
We'll take important steps to ensure the continuity of our species by making it multi-planetary. The risks are diverse and well known such as climate change, thermonuclear war, geomagnetic reversal, asteroid impacts, etc. Some of these are within our power to change, but others -- such as the asteroid impact -- are more easily mitigated by colonizing two worlds (than overcoming not just the politics but the physics p…
Not a popular opinion among rocket surgeons but you know what they say about hindsight.
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All the elite needs is fewer people taking up resources. Otherwise, everything is perfect for them. The status quo could last from now to eternity. This is kind of how the Egyptian civilization worked. They went 2000 years without a lot of change. Just an endless "sustainable" cycle. I like the comparison between the Canaanite religion and Judaism. The elites are Canaanites and dealt with their not being enough for e…
“ This individualistic struggle to survive is what culturally has led to the huge technological innovations in the west.” I don’t think that is the consensus view. It was more to do with the university system, the scientific method, and the invention of capital markets. That and a huge influx of free resources and gold that came from the discovery of the Americas. Also of course the Middle East was annihilated by Ghe…
Fixed that for you (agree with the rest).
Another quote from Carl Sagan: For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. The appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our su…
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Personally, I'd like to see his enthusiasm more focused toward space megastructures, such as O'Neill Cylinders and Dyson Swarms. It seems to me that humanity would benefit a lot more from mastering industrial-scale manufacturing and construction in space than sticking ourselves in another large gravity well.
That's basically Bezos's vision. Well Bezos's vision is to move manufacturing off of Earth and into Space, turning Earth into a gigantic park.
> Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need So all the hand-wringing about the inhospitality of Mars is just fluff, this is really the gist of the article. The "fault" of Musk is not that he is pushing humans to Mars but that he is not "helping those in need", whatever that means. Are people like Bezos, Ellison, Cook, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin etc (arguably group…