Science fiction and the death of the sun • Hacker News Board

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#111

Post by ubermonkey » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 3:01 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #43

Reason077 wrote: post #18

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 2007 film Sunshine is another great example of this genre. Rather than abandoning a frozen earth due to the dying sun, they send a mission to deliver a bomb into it to "restart" it. A real all-star cast featuring not only a young Cillian Murphy, but a young Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Cliff Curtis, and Rose Byrne! Highly recommended, despite never satisfa…

> Seems to me that adding humans to the mix greatly increased the complexity and risk of the mission. We spent the last few years watching robots with state of the art 21st century technology and software crash on the moon repeatedly, and yet, in the 1960s a few hot shot test pilots could stick a landing on their first try. Given the choice between robots and humans, I’ll take the humans.

That's an astonishingly bad take that requires gratuitous cherry-picking of data.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#112

Post by ubermonkey » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 3:13 PM UTC

fractallyte wrote: post #67

Animats wrote: post #3

> "Now-disgraced sci-fi patriarch John W. Campbell..." What did he do?

He relished challenging readers' thinking and preconceptions. You can make up your own mind - there's a collection of his Astounding/Analog editorials in this book: https://archive.org/details/collectededitori0000john And then there's this, Jeannette Ng's acceptance speech for the John W Campbell Best New Writer Award: https://youtu.be/sQ58zf0vzB0?feature=shared (She began by calling him "Joseph Campbell", with the a…

>He relished challenging readers' thinking and preconceptions.

Yes, on things like (checks notes) segregation. Huh.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#113

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 3:32 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #43

Reason077 wrote: post #18

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 2007 film Sunshine is another great example of this genre. Rather than abandoning a frozen earth due to the dying sun, they send a mission to deliver a bomb into it to "restart" it. A real all-star cast featuring not only a young Cillian Murphy, but a young Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Cliff Curtis, and Rose Byrne! Highly recommended, despite never satisfa…

> Seems to me that adding humans to the mix greatly increased the complexity and risk of the mission. We spent the last few years watching robots with state of the art 21st century technology and software crash on the moon repeatedly, and yet, in the 1960s a few hot shot test pilots could stick a landing on their first try. Given the choice between robots and humans, I’ll take the humans.

Read about missions like gemini 9. Its a sheer stroke of luck the moon mission worked, it could have easily failed and there would have been no rescue.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#114

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 3:34 PM UTC

rk06 wrote: post #91

Reason077 wrote: post #18

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 2007 film Sunshine is another great example of this genre. Rather than abandoning a frozen earth due to the dying sun, they send a mission to deliver a bomb into it to "restart" it. A real all-star cast featuring not only a young Cillian Murphy, but a young Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Cliff Curtis, and Rose Byrne! Highly recommended, despite never satisfa…

> despite never satisfactorily explaining why they require a manned spacecraft to do the job rather than sending a robotic drone ship. Seems to me that adding humans to the mix greatly increased the complexity and risk of the mission. As a software engineer, this statement baffles my mind. like how could anyone in right mind trust software to make right choices in prod on first try?

You think a manned mission obviates software?

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#115

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 3:37 PM UTC

RaoulP wrote: post #46

andrewflnr wrote: post #35

This hammered home for me how incredibly recent are a lot of the scientific discoveries we take utterly for granted. Even before nuclear energy, atoms themselves were only confirmed to exist in the 20th century. Everyone knows about plate tectonics, but that was confirmed in the 60s or something.

After this morning's earthquake I was thinking how, without any theory of plate tectonics (or previous theories, if any), an earthquake must truly feel like the wrath of god. I wonder if it's been the seed for any myths.

Maybe it wasn’t actually trumpets that brought down the walls of Jericho after all

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#116

Post by rk06 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #114

rk06 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite never satisfactorily explaining why they require a manned spacecraft to do the job rather than sending a robotic drone ship. Seems to me that adding humans to the mix greatly increased the complexity and risk of the mission. As a software engineer, this statement baffles my mind. like how could anyone in right mind trust software to make right choices in prod on first try?

You think a manned mission obviates software?

No, but manned mission can override software if unexpected scenarios are encountered. You can't expect software team on earth to account for all possibilities for a first time mission.

Software can be tested for individual operation. But can't be relied for end to end co-ordination.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#117

Post by ranger207 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

To add yet another entry into the genre is Asimov's _The Gods Themselves_, where humanity exchanges energy between themselves and a parallel universe with different physical laws, only to discover those physical laws are leaking over and will result in the destruction of the Sun. The middle section is the story of the aliens in the parallel universe and is an interesting look at a three-sex species, and it makes me wonder how Asimov would interpret modern LGBTQ issues.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#118

Post by vpribish » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 5:40 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #43

Reason077 wrote: post #18

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 2007 film Sunshine is another great example of this genre. Rather than abandoning a frozen earth due to the dying sun, they send a mission to deliver a bomb into it to "restart" it. A real all-star cast featuring not only a young Cillian Murphy, but a young Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Cliff Curtis, and Rose Byrne! Highly recommended, despite never satisfa…

> Seems to me that adding humans to the mix greatly increased the complexity and risk of the mission. We spent the last few years watching robots with state of the art 21st century technology and software crash on the moon repeatedly, and yet, in the 1960s a few hot shot test pilots could stick a landing on their first try. Given the choice between robots and humans, I’ll take the humans.

it's a movie. they wanted, like, human drama which is substantially more difficult if the main character is not alive.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#119

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 5:47 PM UTC

rk06 wrote: post #116

kjkjadksj wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a manned mission obviates software?

No, but manned mission can override software if unexpected scenarios are encountered. You can't expect software team on earth to account for all possibilities for a first time mission. Software can be tested for individual operation. But can't be relied for end to end co-ordination.

All the controls they have use software to do work. Its not like a car you can’t rebuild your engine or jerry rig a solution yourself in outer space. If things don’t go as planned usually people just die, heroic MacGyverism is for hollywood.

Re: Science fiction and the death of the sun

#120

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 6:07 PM UTC

strogonoff wrote: post #104

alistairSH wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which then leads me to wonder... The risk vs reward calculation for human-involved missions is necessarily higher than robotic missions. Is that additional cost an order of magnitude higher? IE, we can afford one and only one human mission, but three robotic missions? Does the math work out in favor of the single high-success mission, or the three slightly lower success missions? Obviously depends on the expected suc…

I am not sure such utilitarian math is the true solution, attempts to put a number on the value of human life seem all silly. I would rather say that the failure of a robotic mission costs an amount X, while the failure of a human mission intuitively has infinite price.

Conversely setting human life to infinity cost quickly breaks down with the trolley problem. Any problem where groups a or b are going to die then whatever group is bigger lives, even if it doesn't make sense, such as group b is all very old and group a is very young but slightly smaller.