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Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

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Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#131

Post by sorcerer-mar »

Teever wrote: post #108
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a bogus argument then mount a counterargument. The question is simple: what is worth mining in space? So far we have... "maybe platinum." Maybe! Aside from the conspicuous absence of math, "maybe platinum" isn't remotely important enough a factor in earthbound mining to justify asteroid mining on the basis of preserving earth, obviously.

What's worth mining in space? Everything that we can mine in space. That seems glib but I'll elaborate. By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes. So how do we do it? We don't need to start sending fleets and fleets of crafts into space which is energetically expensive and time consuming, what we need to do is deve…

> By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes.

... but this won't happen unless it's economically advantageous, with all risk, transit, and upfront investment included

We already don't have the political will to force single-digit increases in cost of output to reduce environmental damage. Why would we then?

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#132

Post by southernplaces7 »

I love to dream of interstellar space travel, but it's only a fun dream, with no practical road to it outside the fantasy landscape of essentially magical technology.

That doesn't have to stop us from much more practical and realistic striving though.

We have an entire universe in mini right here around us in the form of our own solar system, filled with so many resources that we probably couldn't over-consume them in millennia, and possible extra-planetary homes for billions of us using technologies that are just this side of realistic.

We're still talking about at least decades of fantastically costly investment, but at least it would begin as investment for a shining future within a human lifetime.

Colonizing the solar system doesn't sound as impressive on text as stories of strange and wonderful alien landscapes in distant star systems, but I don't think anyone being able to gaze with their own eyes from the peaks of Verona Rupes 90 years from now would care.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#133

Post by sorcerer-mar »

pfdietz wrote: post #95
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a bogus argument then mount a counterargument. The question is simple: what is worth mining in space? So far we have... "maybe platinum." Maybe! Aside from the conspicuous absence of math, "maybe platinum" isn't remotely important enough a factor in earthbound mining to justify asteroid mining on the basis of preserving earth, obviously.

Look at those goalposts shift! I don't need to argue things are practically mineable in space to rebut the point. I just need to argue if they aren't practically mineable, energy consumption isn't a reason. I have already given you the counterargument. > we have maybe platinum Those making the energy argument need to rebut every possibility. The "it takes to much energy to ship back" is ludicrously wrong for platinum…

You maybe forgot what thread you're in. Scroll up to the first comment I replied to to remind yourself of where the goalposts are. In fact in my very first comment I mentioned there "can't be many!," and indeed there are not. We have "maybe platinum if we can just drop it into the atmosphere with no reentry vehicles or if we can autonomously build reentry vehicles using material we find in space."

So far that's the best answer, so thanks for providing it.

You may also find in your scrolling that I did not say "it takes too much energy to ship back." I said "What resources are on asteroids that justify the energy expenditure to get from space and back?"

Obviously getting down is not the expensive part. We've all heard of gravity. Getting the equipment up that is needed to get stuff down is. This is also due to gravity.

I'm afraid you misread my first comment and responded as if I thought it was energy expensive to drop stuff onto earth.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#134

Post by sorcerer-mar »

jiggawatts wrote: post #93
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a lot easier to imagine the economic output of simply raising all of the current Homo sapiens out of poverty and into economic productivity, no? Then we can use all of that new productivity to start working toward the next rung? Our economy is not currently throughput limited on water or space so I don’t find this compelling.

These people are dreamers that grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek. The world painted by those shows has lodged in their minds, and no amount of logic will shake it loose. In the past, I've challenged the "Let's colonize Mars!" people to do something that's far easier : Move to Bouvet island, now.[1] This is a frozen uninhabited rock that is nonetheless a tropical paradise compared to Mars. It's far easier to re…

I am going to steal this haha. I think you may need to give them the opportunity to ignite some high explosives upon departure though to satisfy the boy-want-boom component.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#135

Post by Oleksa_dr »

Even if we get there, will there be any benefit to civilization, maybe there are no habitable worlds there and it is not possible to profitably extract valuable resources for future travel. In my opinion, the most realistic thing is to come to an understanding of how our body/brain works. Then learn how to transfer consciousness from a living shell to a machine (with an emulsified environment for nerve endings, and so on). To learn how to print bodies, even if it takes as many years as it takes to grow in natural conditions. Between solar systems or even galaxies, our digital consciousnesses will travel, maybe even copies and once in n years, synchronized in some exact or not. That is, to achieve immortality in a “digital” way, then time will not play a role. Another problem is spacecraft, so that they can travel with sufficient autonomy for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years (this is probably the main problem).

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#136

Post by sorcerer-mar »

tenthirtyam wrote: post #126
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a bogus argument then mount a counterargument. The question is simple: what is worth mining in space? So far we have... "maybe platinum." Maybe! Aside from the conspicuous absence of math, "maybe platinum" isn't remotely important enough a factor in earthbound mining to justify asteroid mining on the basis of preserving earth, obviously.

I recently read "Delta-v" and the sequel "Critical Mass: A Novel" by Daniel Suarez. They're very much fiction but there is a certain amount of science underpinning the arguments and I enjoyed that aspect. And the author even states that he's trying to get across, with solid arguments, why humanity should begin planning asteroid mining ASAP. In brief, the arguments are: Firstly we're now at a point where we have lots…

This is predicated on it being worthwhile to colonize the moon or Mars, no?

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#137

Post by dakial1 »

imoreno wrote: post #109

With Alpha Centauri being only 4 light years away, interstellar travel seems almost feasible. But then you consider all the inconvenient details, and realize such a journey would have to take hundreds, maybe thousands or even more years on top of some incredible advances in rocket tech. If you go to something like Trappist (40 ly) at 0.01c (very optimistic), it's not just that everyone you know will be dead when you…

I love science fiction because they usually try to play these scenarios in a somewhat feasible future. The 3 Body Problem series (more specifically the 3rd book) goes well into what it would take for humanity to be interestellar even without lightspeed or wormholee tech.

Avoiding spoilers it would basically be through hibernation and/or generational ships. Which basically implies of losing all ties to earth and anyone/anything you left there.

But, then again, why would nations invest in such expensive endeavours if there is no prospect of seeing something back out of it. I imagine only an emergency situation would cause this no?

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#138

Post by Teever »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #131
Teever wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's worth mining in space? Everything that we can mine in space. That seems glib but I'll elaborate. By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes. So how do we do it? We don't need to start sending fleets and fleets of crafts into space which is energetically expensive and time consuming, what we need to do is deve…

> By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes. ... but this won't happen unless it's economically advantageous, with all risk, transit, and upfront investment included We already don't have the political will to force single-digit increases in cost of output to reduce environmental damage. Why would we then?

What sort of things do you think are necessary to change for this to happen?

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#139

Post by expenses3 »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #136
tenthirtyam wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read "Delta-v" and the sequel "Critical Mass: A Novel" by Daniel Suarez. They're very much fiction but there is a certain amount of science underpinning the arguments and I enjoyed that aspect. And the author even states that he's trying to get across, with solid arguments, why humanity should begin planning asteroid mining ASAP. In brief, the arguments are: Firstly we're now at a point where we have lots…

This is predicated on it being worthwhile to colonize the moon or Mars, no?

No. The best thing you can do with a lot of mass in LEO is construct solar power stations that beam energy down to Earth in the form of microwaves. This is what the second book, Critical Mass, gets into. Receivers on Earth wouldn't provide as much power as solar, but would be much easier to construct and work 24/7, no matter the weather. This would be highly useful for reducing climate change and increasing climate resilience.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#140

Post by lofaszvanitt »

Everyone suffers from the sci-fi delusion. We can't solve the problem of large-scale wildfires (sending helicopters and planes to drop water on forest fires is not a viable solution) and we can't even do large-scale terraforming on our own Earth. We have to use containers to transport liquids and solids from one place to another. We cannot control the weather, yet people fantasize about travelling into space. It's delusional, isn't it? It's borderline ridiculous.

And we have these human-centric systems that are unusable and inefficient, not to mention a terrible economic system that rewards the virus-like entities in society.

We aren't going anywhere.

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