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There’s no planet B

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Re: There’s no planet B

#191

Post by palata »

roryisok wrote: post #41
mabbo wrote: post #32

Let's set aside the part that making a planet where we could live is hard. Just presume we did that, to start. Let's talk Logistics . Presume there are only 1 billion people left on Earth when we decide it's time to go. How do you get them there ? The gravity well holding us here (and holding the air down so we can breath it) is pretty darn strong. Today we're hoping to get cost-to-orbit down to around $100/kg. I wei…

The idea of finding another Earth is not so much about moving everyone from Earth to somewhere else, but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation in additional places. If an asteroid is going to wipe out Earth, we can't evacuate 8 billion people, or even 8 million people. but if we had a few generations of colonists in domes on Mars, or floating in the clouds on Venus, or somewhere else, the species its…

I genuinely don't get the "save the human species" argument. We are living a mass extinction which is caused by the human species. So one species (humans) is essentially destroying most of the variety of life.

If you care about preserving humans, why don't you care about preserving life? Of all the miracles of evolution, ending up with a few humans surviving on Mars is not a success in my book.

Re: There’s no planet B

#192

Post by palata »

renewiltord wrote: post #142
paulryanrogers wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we're crazy to keep all of our existential eggs in a single basket and hope it all works out. While the cost to colonize elsewhere is "mine the earth to a wasteland" it does make sense to preserve the basket we have. At least until we can afford to buy another basket without ruining the original.

Ultimately, you will protest and we will build. And we will both get what we want: we will get our rockets and you will get your protests. Everyone is happy.

If you could go back to your building instead of writing that kind of comments, I would be happy.

Re: There’s no planet B

#193

Post by palata »

college_physics wrote: post #56

> There’s No Planet B The mere need to state this suggests we are facing a serious problem internalizing our condition. We are not taking seriously the implications of human choices and actions when multiplied by billions. The sustainability of our living on Earth was not even a visible problem 300 years ago [0]. It is far more of a problem now and could become a terminal problem 300 years from now. 300 years is noth…

We don't have a lot of generations before major changes happen.

I believe that we won't prevent anything: we'll just try to survive to whatever happens, more or less successfully.

Re: There’s no planet B

#194

Post by kbelder »

alienalp wrote: post #78
roryisok wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of finding another Earth is not so much about moving everyone from Earth to somewhere else, but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation in additional places. If an asteroid is going to wipe out Earth, we can't evacuate 8 billion people, or even 8 million people. but if we had a few generations of colonists in domes on Mars, or floating in the clouds on Venus, or somewhere else, the species its…

In reality this is just a fantasy. It is not possible for a healthy human to really care about survival of human race in case of something catastrophic happening and wiping out humanity.

Because you don't, and you can't imagine you're not an exemplar of health?

Re: There’s no planet B

#195

Post by palata »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #35
simiones wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they do when it's followed by "we shouldn't keep all our eggs in one basket". The only possible (though still extremely flimsy) reason for creating a Mars colony is if we think we can eventually make it self-sustaining. A non-self-sustaining colony on Mars is worse than useless.

sure - however a non-self-sustaining colony on Mars might be the first hundred years, a self-sustaining colony may be the end goal but end goals may be long out.

But we need civilisation to survive on Earth for those hundred years first. And right now it's not looking good.

Re: There’s no planet B

#196

Post by palata »

karmakaze wrote: post #33
chriswarbo wrote: post #2

> This futuristic dream-like scenario is being sold to us as a real scientific possibility, with billionaires planning to move humanity to Mars in the near future. As far as I'm aware, no billionaire has ever said anything about "moving humanity" to Mars or anywhere else; except to dismiss such claims as nonsense. Nobody is "planning" such a thing; let alone for "the near future". Musk wants there to be a colony on M…

It's absurd to think that any rational person thinks that finding a suitable or terraforming a planet is a viable alternative to preserving the one we have. At the most living on Mars could be seen like a bomb-shelter for the privileged few, but even then not very soon so they'd also need life extension to make that work. At the same time, there's no reason not to continue to explore and expand. That's what tribes di…

Is it? To be it sounds absurd to care about preserving the human species, and completely forgetting about biodiversity. Yet it really feels like some seemingly rational people think that sending a few humans to Mars matters, "to preserve the species"...

Re: There’s no planet B

#197

Post by palata »

ReptileMan wrote: post #71
hooby wrote: post #63

Even if we manage to terraform and colonize another planet - that's not going to save us, if we destroy that other planet as well. And whatever other planet we do terraform and colonize is going to be a lot more fragile and a lot easier to destroy than earth is. If we can't manage to not destroy earth, there's no way we can manage to keep another planet going. So, we really should do everything to train and master th…

If we have the technology to terraform a planet ... we can totally clean up the Earth too ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIOSnKX96E&t=1s This piece by Konstantin Kisin rightfully pointed out that the only peaceful way out of the bind is with technology.

I, for one, believe that technology is the problem, not the solution.

Re: There’s no planet B

#198

Post by palata »

benreesman wrote: post #176
nostrademons wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a bit worse than "bad world war". A lot of the people currently alive are alive because of relatively fragile technological developments (eg. the Green Revolution, global shipping, globalized finance) from the last 50-60 years. World population was 3B in 1960, now it's 8B. Take away fossil fuels and globalization and I'd expect many of these people to die. (Well, everybody's going to die, but die without lea…

I hope I didn’t imply that it’s a minor thing, and if I did I regret it. Climate change (to the extent that our computer models of chaotic phenomena are directionally accurate which I think they are) is going to be devastating. I don’t think that it’s going to kill of 85% of people, because to your point it will happen over time: a failed harvest here, a flooded city there over decades or centuries. We will have the…

While I tend to agree with your points, I think that you underestimate the problem by limiting it to Climate Change. Climate Change hasn't started yet, and we are living a mass extinction. Remove all CO2 from the atmosphere today, and we are still in a mass extinction.

Then comes the energy problem: we don't have any viable alternative to fossil fuels. Solar/Wind infrastructures are growing fast thanks to fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are not unlimited (peak conventional oil was 2008, peak oil may be now, peak LNG may be 2038). So we are slowly running out of time in terms of energy resources (given how much time it takes to build a nuclear plant).

"Technology will help" ignores that technology brought us here, but also that technology takes time, and energy. Without the CO2 problem, nothing says that our society would not collapse because we can't replace fossil fuels.

Re: There’s no planet B

#199

Post by palata »

lucas_membrane wrote: post #184

If we want to give a planet like Mars -- less sunlight, slower spin, less gravity, different tides and magnetism, different tilt of its axis -- a habitable and sustainable earth-like environment, can that be done even if given an adequate supply of everything? To get earth-like atmosperic pressure, the atmosphere has to be taller on account of the reduced gravity. To get earth-like warmth, more greenhouse effect is r…

The article actually talks about that, concluding that the atmosphere would most likely be unbreathable, whatever we do. So it says that we would live under domes, with the daily risk of a life-threatening leak.

Re: There’s no planet B

#200

Post by palata »

roryisok wrote: post #183

So many posts on here (and I suppose the original post too) are making this a binary argument "Either we fix Earth, or we go to Mars". What happened to doing both? They're not incompatible with each other. We don't have to destroy Earth to build a Martian colony. We don't have to abandon the space program to fix climate change. Everyone's looking for a fight today.

Actually, more than Climate Change, we face an energy problem. The more we use fossil fuels, the greater the climate problem. But even if we keep burning oil, it's not unlimited. So sooner or later we will have to decide what we do with the energy we have, and at that point it conflicts.

If the goal is to reach Mars in a hundred years, chances are that we run out of fossil fuel before that. Maybe we should start preparing for a world with less energy. And artistic performances like sending people on Mars don't sound like a constructive way to use that energy.

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