One of the World’s Longest-Running Experiments Sends Up Sprouts

I recall an episode of a daily TV series in Japan where they found seeds from a several thousand year old archaeological dig, which yielded a still viable magnolia tree when planted today.

And there was that story just recently about bacteria found in the deep mantle, dormant for a couple million (?) years, that grew when cultured.

Amazing how patiently life can wait for the moment to be revived again, with no promise or knowledge of when the day may come.

A lot of the earth is frequently inhospitable to plant life, so it makes sense that the ones that have survived to the modern day would be able to cope with hard times.

Check out the Death Valley super blooms, they are amazing. Vast areas of the desert will just spring to life, polinate and spread seeds for the next generation, many/most of which will not grow for years.

https://rove.me/to/death-valley/super-bloom

Romantic prepper fantasies. With a couple hundred people, the bus factor of a tech society is wildly negative. Meaning, you'd need miracle spawns of workers already trained to keep up with just maintenance.

On Mars the whole thing would just collapse and people suffocate once the parts shipments from Earth were disrupted for a substantial period.

The reason for going to Mars is not to avoid mankind’s mistakes (e.g. global warming) but to avoid the great filter in whatever form it takes.

> We should be shaming them for wasting money vs. spending those billions to force real change on Earth to fix the climate situation here which will come due long before any off world living will be anywhere close to reality.

That's a false dichotomy, and just as much of a fantasy utopia as the 'solve our problems by moving to Mars' crowd:

- Space exploration and technology is an investment, not a waste.

- Space technology is not in competition with climate fixes, it helps. The most obvious example is Earth observation satellites, which are monitoring vegetation, cloud cover, ocean height, atmospheric composition, natural gas flares, forest fires, volcanic emissions, etc. right now. More long-term, reducing launch costs (like SpaceX is attempting with Starship) would increase the viability of solutions like space-based solar (24/7 sunlight, no atmosphere or cloud attenuation, no limit on surface area, no competition with agriculture/housing/etc., much less material/structure thanks to micro-gravity, etc.)

- Meanwhile there are billions being wasted on vanity projects (superyachts, palaces, etc.), and on actively harmful activities (the US war budget comes to mind), which are far more suitable targets than space tech.

- Online comment threads aren't going to change the spending habits of billionaires. Sure, if someone's making bullshit claims online (like 'moving to Mars will avoid climate change' or 'we should fix the climate before spending money on space') then calling them out can be good (hello!); combatting misinformation can sway the public discourse, even if just a little bit. On the other hand, armchair philosophising between like-minded individuals achieves absolutely nothing.

Finally, it's probably worth saying w.r.t. 'long before any off world living will be anywhere close to reality': off world living will never become reality if we (as a species) don't bother trying. Self-sustaining colonies on Mars, the Moon, etc. will probably take centuries, but only if we keep taking baby steps in that direction today. Before Falcon 9, the industry was pretty content to milk a few cash-cow rockets for inflated government contracts. Now re-usability is becoming expected (e.g. ULA's hand-waving platitudes about one day catching Vulcan's engines). Starship is a huge gamble, but I'm happy someone is trying it. The Human Landing System award from NASA is both encouraging (an experienced third-party doesn't think the gamble's odds are too bad), hilarious (the lunar gateway station would be dwarfed by its "landing module"), and hopefully a face-saving way for NASA to loosen its ties to SLS/Orion/etc. (forcing the "old guard" to up their game).

We should absolutely call out these particular billionaires for their terrible labour practices, tax dodging, market manipulation tweets, monopolising, etc. We should also call out billionaires in general for not doing enough to help the climate emergency. We should also call out governments for allowing these tax-dodgers to wield such economic power in the first place. We should also call out governments for their lacklustre climate efforts. And so on. Yet criticising space investment is a nonsense strawman.