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There’s no planet B

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Re: There’s no planet B

#201

Post by palata »

pfdietz wrote: post #12
truculent wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When going boldly requires shared resources and has knock-on effects for everyone, shouldn't we all have a say?

No? I mean, if people who have money want to spend it on something like that, why should we have a say? It's their money, not ours. EDIT: ah, the perennial game of rationalizing taking from others when they aren't doing what you want them to do.

Interesting take. I believe that individuals should not have more money than entire countries.

One should simply not be allowed to have too much money. The fact that they are doesn't mean I should accept their polluting my sky.

Re: There’s no planet B

#202

Post by yarg »

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…

Well the first thing that we'll need to do is compute this in terms of actual resources, rather than money - which is a tokenised abstraction from value, and arguably an inflated one.

So the raw material and energy requirements to leave the planet carrying people and everything they'll need on the other side.

Things will be different once there's been a reasonable build up, but if it's an evacuation we won't have time for that.

And things on Earth will be falling apart evironmentally, politically and geopolitically.

And what of the political systems on the other side? Work 80 hours or get out of my bubble?

Re: There’s no planet B

#203

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

tuatoru wrote: post #100
ben_w wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. While I would be actively surprised if the Moon, for example, had every element necessary for semiconductors, one of the things I absolutely do expect to be possible on its surface is 3D printing an extremely clean clean-room. Furnaces? Well, I think it would take a polishing step after printing, but if you have aluminium you can do a rough parabola out of it and focus sunlight on a patch of regolith. Can you t…

> one of the things I absolutely do expect to be possible on its surface is 3D printing an extremely clean clean-room. My understanding is that there is lots of very fine dust near the surface of the moon. It's continually being bombarded with micrometeorites that kick up the dust. So perhaps a moderately cleanish room.

In addition to that, not 'well rounded' by erosion like sahara sand, instead still very sharp edged, abrasive. And electrostatically charged by being bombarded with particles over long times. Creeping into every seam and seal. Not good to breathe in at all.

There was a scene in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) S02E01 where a solar storm surprised some astronauts on the surface, where they couldn't make it into shelter in time. One got toasted, another barely made it into a cave, and watched from there.

It looked like invisible drops of torrential rain, splashing down hard, and stirring the dust up, like in slow-motion capture of a drop of water, impacting, and stirring things up.

I don't know how realistic that is, but I liked it as a conceptual visualization, at least.

Edit: Think of something like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber at large scale. Where the medium is stirred up dust.

Edit: A there it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzlP403rUGA

Re: There’s no planet B

#204

Post by alienalp »

kbelder wrote: post #194
alienalp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because i am very objective person and this is just hard fact. It may be healthy to think that way but just not the reality.

Re: There’s no planet B

#205

Post by palata »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #180
tamaharbor wrote: post #160

Why don’t we learn how to adapt to a changing earth rather than go elsewhere?

Because you can't adapt to a planet-killing asteroid. That's what the backup is for. Yes, you should focus on a primary, but that's no excuse to not have a backup.

A very unlikely planet-killing asteroid. I can live with the odds.

To those who can't, may I ask a question? When you walk in the street to go to work, do you wear bullet-proof gear in case someone shoots you? I mean it may happen, just like the asteroid. It just feels weird to not accept some risk.

Let's face it: space exploration is cool, that's all. No need to find excuses :)

Re: There’s no planet B

#206

Post by paulryanrogers »

yellowapple wrote: post #161
giantrobot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just magic woo though. You can't just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors or furnaces to smelt metal. Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion. You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it.

It's space. Orbit is in all likelihood cleaner than your average clean room. Planets/moons add dust and thin atmospheres as concerns, but that's quite obviously easier to mitigate than the "dust and much thicker atmosphere and microbes and moisture" that Earth-based clean rooms have to mitigate. As for bootstrapping industry beyond Earth, the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extr…

> the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extraterrestrial supply chain is far below necessitating stripmining the Earth bare - obviously, since we were able to bootstrap terrestrial industry just fine without (yet) doing so.

Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars.

You may be underestimating how special Earth is as a home, and vastly overestimating how suitable Mars would be for carbon-based life.

Re: There’s no planet B

#207

Post by MrOwnPut »

palata wrote: post #205
MrOwnPut wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't adapt to a planet-killing asteroid. That's what the backup is for. Yes, you should focus on a primary, but that's no excuse to not have a backup.

A very unlikely planet-killing asteroid. I can live with the odds. To those who can't, may I ask a question? When you walk in the street to go to work, do you wear bullet-proof gear in case someone shoots you? I mean it may happen, just like the asteroid. It just feels weird to not accept some risk. Let's face it: space exploration is cool, that's all. No need to find excuses :)

> A very unlikely planet-killing asteroid

There's heavy evidence there's already been a mass extinction once from an asteroid.

> I can live with the odds.

You may be able to, but a lot of people don't want to gamble the existence of the human race if there's a chance we don't have to.

You may also live with the odds of no backup to a database, but others here will attest to the importance...

> Let's face it: space exploration is cool, that's all. No need to find excuses :)

Well, you asked "why do this and not focus on Earth", so I gave you one reason.

But yes, I agree, space exploration is cool all on it's own, so I don't see what the complaint is.

Re: There’s no planet B

#208

Post by giantrobot »

ben_w wrote: post #173
TomSwirly wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you have aluminium Where are you going to get that, or any other raw material? Robot miners? We don't have those on Earth yet. How do you purify it? All our chemical processes require huge quantities of free air, and of very cheap water, neither of which you have on Mars. Where do you get the power for all of this? Solar panels don't behave well during sandstorms, the sun isn't very bright there, and how many so…

> Where are you going to get that, or any other raw material? Bootstrap with whatever the initial mission payload is. It's not like anyone is proposing magically teleporting there without stuff , IIRC even Musk's optimistic idea is still several no-humans flights for each passenger flight. > Robot miners? We don't have those on Earth yet. Sure we do. TBMs. Not all of which are manned. A few of the missions on Mars ri…

> Sure we do. TBMs. Not all of which are manned.

To ignore the massive difference in scope and scale between a space probe with a tiny rock drill and a tunnel boring machine, TBMs require literal tons of lubricants/coolant to operate. Even if you had a 100% electric TBM none of its parts are going to move without lubrication. Even "unmanned" TBMs aren't fully autonomous, they have a small army of squishy people in hard hats adjusting fasteners, checking feed lines, repairing damage, and generally maintaining the machine.

TBMs also going to be orders of magnitude more difficult to build for use on the Moon or Mars. They're incredibly dry environments, dryer than most places on the surface of the Earth. The dust is electrostatically charged and literally creeps along surfaces into seams and seals. The dust is also incredibly abrasive. Machinery does not like dust, machinery will hate Lunar and Martian dust.

In actual operation machinery does not look showroom pristine. It gets dirty and needs to be bathed in lubricants and coolants. Dust, dirt, and shavings get everywhere except in the cleanest of cleanroom environments and those take tons of effort to maintain.

Everything around you was manufactured with a very long tail of infrastructure. You can't just build a PV factory on Mars. You need to first build the infrastructure to build infrastructure before you can lay the first 3D printed brick for a factory. Even if you've got that infrastructure and factory you need a whole supply chain of refined materials to feed the factory to get solar panels.

It's not a handful of unmanned Starship missions, it's a hundred missions with no failures landing billions of dollars of basic infrastructure just to start building more infrastructure. The whole endeavor also needs to use technology like autonomous robotic mining rigs and autonomous mining rig support robots that don't even exist on Earth. I honestly don't understand trivializing the amount of infrastructure and complexity required to manufacturer things here on Earth let alone anywhere else in the solar system.

Re: There’s no planet B

#209

Post by yellowapple »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #206
yellowapple wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's space. Orbit is in all likelihood cleaner than your average clean room. Planets/moons add dust and thin atmospheres as concerns, but that's quite obviously easier to mitigate than the "dust and much thicker atmosphere and microbes and moisture" that Earth-based clean rooms have to mitigate. As for bootstrapping industry beyond Earth, the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extr…

> the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extraterrestrial supply chain is far below necessitating stripmining the Earth bare - obviously, since we were able to bootstrap terrestrial industry just fine without (yet) doing so. Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars. Y…

> Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars.

There is no ecology (at least to anyone's knowledge) on Mars to destroy in the first place, nor is there one in orbit or on the Moon or anywhere else other than Earth. "Sustainability" is therefore not a factor except in the sense of raw resources - and in the infinity of space that's a lot of raw resources at our disposal.

> You may be underestimating how special Earth is as a home, and vastly overestimating how suitable Mars would be for carbon-based life.

What makes you think I may be underestimating or overestimating (respectively) anything? Earth is special, which is precisely why we should be maximizing the preservation of the one thing that makes it special: its biosphere. That maximization entails moving everything that is even merely irrelevant (let alone actively harmful) to said biosphere off of Earth; anything less than literally all human industry (and all human population aside from non-industrialized peoples and maybe conservationists/biologists and their support staff) being moved to orbit and beyond represents a failure to achieve such maximization and puts that one special thing in jeopardy.

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