Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system. • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#41

Post by netcan » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:16 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #23

cletus wrote: post #6

That's a good, grounded assessment of the scale of the problem. I too believe that the human colonization of space, even near-space (ie within the orbit of the Moon) is a long way off. The energy costs are simply too high and resources too cheap on the Earth to make it viable (in spite of typical SF fodder of asteroid mining). This is a problem because with 6.5 billion people we're using up resources. Fast. Anyway, I…

Simple probability dictates that it is only a matter of time before a sufficiently large body travels through the Solar System with sufficient velocity (including direction) to reach somewhere else in sufficient time (but not too fast that we can't perform an orbital intercept) that we can essentially build a colony on it. Not really. You could also say that "simple probability dictates that it is only a matter of ti…

Why is that your guess?

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#42

Post by redthrowaway » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:25 AM UTC

He's already allowed for nanofactories and artificial wombs, so why send humans at all? Send frozen sperm and eggs and have the robots make the people once they get there. Now, all of a sudden, the length of the journey doesn't matter. Fling probes off willy-nilly at nearby and distant stars. If they get there, great. If not, you've only lost cash.

Edit: The cool thing about this is that, assuming these technologies come to fruition, the entire project could likely be financed privately by a group of wealthy backers. You wouldn't need the massive bureaucracy of NASA or their dependency on Congress. You'd simply develop, test, then manufacture the (likely quite small) probes, then send them up and out on commercial rockets.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#43

Post by wladimir » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:30 AM UTC

pers3us wrote: post #17

I guess i have heard this kind of argument before. In the movie book "Around the world in 80 days". Its not possible or you can't do travel all around the globe in 80 days. Still someone did it, sooner or later someone will do it, and see it takes us nearly 24 hours to make a complete rotation around the earth. Some day we will even reach to Proxima Cetauri.

Indeed. I like the OP as a SF writer, but I have to disagree with him in this case. All you can say for sure is "With our current knowledge of science and level of technological development we will never leave the solar system".

If you would have said a man would walk on the moon 100 years ago, you'd be regarded as crazy.

What happens in the far future is impossible for us to predict right now. 100 years ago we didn't know everything there is to know, and now we don't either. History is full of these kind of closed-minded extrapolations.

Appropriate other post on the frontpage right now: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2639701

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#44

Post by chaostheory » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:30 AM UTC

“Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”

James Arthur Baldwin

That being said, I don't disagree with most of the post.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#45

Post by brianbreslin » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:38 AM UTC

Steko wrote: post #21

cletus wrote: post #6

That's a good, grounded assessment of the scale of the problem. I too believe that the human colonization of space, even near-space (ie within the orbit of the Moon) is a long way off. The energy costs are simply too high and resources too cheap on the Earth to make it viable (in spite of typical SF fodder of asteroid mining). This is a problem because with 6.5 billion people we're using up resources. Fast. Anyway, I…

I think the main challenge is whether there will actually be any desire to colonize in the first place. By the time we acquire the means to leave the solar system society will have transformed so completely that it's impossible to predict what our goals will be. Resources and population are not likely to be problems at all though.

Resources have always been a problem throughout history and prehistory.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#46

Post by netcan » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:39 AM UTC

RomP wrote: post #39

A little over 100 years ago the humanity just learned how to overfly one football field. In space, today, we're in pre-aviation days: we're still using hot air balloons for transportation. We make them lighter than air (i.e. shoot them up in space) and let the wind (i.e gravity) to carry them places. Imagine the most educated human 120 years ago is being told about planes heavier than air, air transportation over oce…

A very valid anti-Darwinian argument was that if the sun was made out of something similar to coal (densest known energy source at the time) evolution would not have had the time to take place. Far to many generations are required. They even allowed a two or three orders of magnitude to account for possible unknowns (maybe the sun has super coal) and still were didn't have enough time to make rats into cats, nevermind lizards into birds.

The argment was valid argument till when" The Curies? Einstein?

100 years is a long time to figure stuff out. Thinking in millenia is impossible for us. "What would William the Norman have thought of all this?" is a pretty ridiculous thought and that's not even a whole thousand years ago. Nine year old crack babies today are more literate than most of his learned advisors and better technology meant sharper swords, less leaky boats and smoked bread. Their objections to the idea would have involved Loki chasing you around in a canoe.

Lets not get too cocky.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#47

Post by rosser » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:46 AM UTC

netcan wrote: post #41

scott_s wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple probability dictates that it is only a matter of time before a sufficiently large body travels through the Solar System with sufficient velocity (including direction) to reach somewhere else in sufficient time (but not too fast that we can't perform an orbital intercept) that we can essentially build a colony on it. Not really. You could also say that "simple probability dictates that it is only a matter of ti…

Why is that your guess?

Not the GP, but, in short, because space is very, very big, and very, very empty.

By way of extremely loose analogy, consider a large pea (1 cm in diameter) hanging by a string in the middle of a football stadium. Let's say that represents our solar system (minus the Oort cloud) and its environs. That's a slightly scaled-down version of Stross' analogy, where the diameter of the solar system (again, minus the Oort cloud) is about an Imperial foot. Now, without aiming, start firing individual molecules around the space. Those molecules are roughly to scale with a rogue planet.

On average, how long do you think you'd have to keep shooting molecules around before one of them passed within an inch of the pea? Within a centimeter? What about actually hitting it?

Even that's stretching the actual probabilities to the point of breaking, because your molecules are already in the neighborhood. For a more realistic example, take our 1cm pea and put it somewhere in some hypothetical space the size of the Milky Way, itself 6.4 * 10^9 AU in average diameter. At our scale of 1cm = 30 AU, the Milky Way would be a little over 200k KM across, or slightly more than half the distance between the earth and the moon. Now start shooting molecules around that space — from random locations, in random directions, again without aiming — and give me a call when one of them hits the pea...

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#48

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:47 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#49

Post by rsaarelm » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:50 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #42

He's already allowed for nanofactories and artificial wombs, so why send humans at all? Send frozen sperm and eggs and have the robots make the people once they get there. Now, all of a sudden, the length of the journey doesn't matter. Fling probes off willy-nilly at nearby and distant stars. If they get there, great. If not, you've only lost cash. Edit: The cool thing about this is that, assuming these technologies…

If you can build robots smart enough to keep babies alive and raise them not to end up stone-age level feral children, you could probably save some effort, skip the human part entirely, and just send the robots to do colonist stuff.

Re: Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.

#50

Post by DavidSJ » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 5:53 AM UTC

benwr wrote: post #5

"The future extinction of the human species cannot affect you if you are already dead": I thought one of the implications of evolution was that we have a vested interest in protecting our genes, rather than acting solely on individual-level self-interest. Edit: What on earth would cause you to downvote this? Edit2: Thanks. I would still appreciate a comment if I'm 'doing it wrong.'

Evolution is perfectly "happy" to sacrifice the interests of the species for those of the individual organism or gene.

That said, we're not slaves to evolution and can make our own choices for our own reasons.