Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#101

Post by swagasaurus-rex » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #98

einrealist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be even better if we could spend this amount of money to fix the problems we already have on this planet, like global warming, pollution and hunger and stuff.

Explorer to Queen Izzabella (or whomever): "We'd like to sail west and find a shortcut to the Indies." Queenie: "Sorry. We've got poverty and people who are hungry here, you'll have to wait." (400 years later) Descendant of that Explorer: "Can we go now?" Queenie: "Sorry, still haven't solved that poverty stuff. Go do some farming or something." ---- A lot of the "poverty and hunger stuff" is caused by corruption and…

A man named Thomas Malthus proposed an explanation why this is and will always be the case, back in the early 1800s.

Populations will always grow, even if there aren't enough resources for the next generation. As a result, some catastrophe must happen to keep the population in check: war, disease or famine.

These days we like to think that we've escaped the malthusian limit, as first world nations tend to have a naturally shrinking population.

Of course, we haven't solved any other of our philosophical vices, I'm inclined to think this isn't any different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#102

Post by onewaystreet » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

revscat wrote: post #88

avz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fundamentally a question of the balance between our efforts focused on the long-term vs those focused on the short-term. Space exploration offers significant benefits long-term but generally provides no immediate pay-off next quarter. I'm personally baffled by the desire to focus all our resources on the short-term. The questions of the long-term future of humankind and our place in the universe, make the imm…

> Another important point is that a lot of our problems here on Earth are entirely self-inflicted (e.g. inequality, pollution, global warming) and so they can't simply be fixed by throwing money at them: they need political transformation. Yes, but so long as global warming is a threat then the notion of humanity expanding to the stars is a pipe-dream. If the planet becomes incapable of supporting advanced social str…

None of that is going to happen anytime soon. Market forces (oil prices are down now, but in the long term they will go back up forcing us to move to cleaner alternatives) as well as the beginning effects of global warming (flooding) will force us to change long before the planet becomes uninhabitable.

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#103

Post by Ygg2 » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 6:22 PM UTC

tomr_stargazer wrote: post #43

Ygg2 wrote: post #19

Amazing video. I especially like the world play here. Latin Planetes (as in planets) means wanderer. The name of this film can be understood as Planets.

Ancient Greek actually – apologies for being nitpicky. 'A planet (from Ancient Greek ἀστὴρ πλανήτης (astēr planētēs), meaning "wandering star")' > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet

Yeah, but judging from Google's etymology of the word it seemed to suggest plananan as greek word for planet, and not planetes.

I went for the more similar sounding one.

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#104

Post by martythemaniak » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #78

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is apparently being made into a TV series now. This guy must work on the visuals for that. He gets it; he really, really gets it.

I read KSR's Mars Trilogy after hearing about it repeatedly on /r/spacex and I highly recommend it. In fact, given that it is a 20 year old work at this time, I think it has stood the test of time very well.

I'm glad to hear it's being made into a tv series, but I worry that you really need a high budget to make it come alive (like Game of Thrones)

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#105

Post by jeangenie » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 6:49 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #22

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #4

Wow; that was incredible. I wish it were three hours long. That dude floating in that debris belt (ring of Saturn?) -- that looked a bit dangerous. Hopefully he had a force field around him. There's so much out there, just waiting for us to get off our duffs and explore. We have much of the technology; if we could just stop spending trillions on machines of war and instead spend it on machines of exploration....

> There's so much out there, just waiting for us to get off our duffs and explore. We have much of the technology; if we could just stop spending trillions on machines of war and instead spend it on machines of exploration.... I agree with this 100%. But while we're moving outward, however slowly, don't forget Sagan's Caveat: "Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all…

> The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life.

I often reflect on this sentiment and have half-convinced myself that the current definition of 'life' we use in this sense to be far too limited to capture the infinite diversity of existence.

In other words, our explorations will never reveal any creature like us (or other known forms of life on Earth) because the life that develops in other environment will be uniquely suited and predicated on existing in that environment exclusively.

I would add to what Sagan said: the whole universe is alive in ways we have not yet even conceived or be capable of conceiving.

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#106

Post by disputin » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 7:13 PM UTC

devgutt wrote: post #81

disputin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 years? How do you figure that?

I think that we already have all the elements to make this leap. I am not being naive, only optimistic.

I'll be one of the first to cheer, but even with the pope and co changing their minds about what god likes and doesn't like every other year, there are billions more.

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#107

Post by einrealist » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 8:17 PM UTC

avz wrote: post #54

einrealist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be even better if we could spend this amount of money to fix the problems we already have on this planet, like global warming, pollution and hunger and stuff.

This is fundamentally a question of the balance between our efforts focused on the long-term vs those focused on the short-term. Space exploration offers significant benefits long-term but generally provides no immediate pay-off next quarter. I'm personally baffled by the desire to focus all our resources on the short-term. The questions of the long-term future of humankind and our place in the universe, make the imm…

I would agree, if space exploration was initiated under better terms than the Cold War. We started to send rockets into space in order to become better with annihilation of the opponent. We were really lucky that it turned into something we have today. But that will not last. Privatization of space travel is already underway. That bears the question: Who benefits?

I am afraid that if we invest in space exploration and colonization, we would shift priorities from saving this world to escaping it. Only a few would be able to escape it - those who have the resources.

(It is kind of what the movie Interstellar is about.)

We need to save this world first, before we can allow ourself to "infect" other worlds. If we cannot sustain on this planet, e.g. stop global warming in the next years, we are doomed and it becomes impossible to even think about shooting a single human into space again. If we need to test things in space for that, I'm fine with that. But lets not lose track of our short term problems.

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#108

Post by Steuard » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 8:18 PM UTC

grondilu wrote: post #97

evaneykelen wrote: post #41

Frustrating to realize that perhaps only 1 or 2 years of Earth's military spending would enable mankind to achieve this (approx $1700 billion/year). Not saying we don't need to spend money on defense, merely taking one the world's expenditures as a yardstick. It would be so great if mankind is able to cooperate in the colonization of our solar system.

> It would be so great if mankind is able to cooperate in the colonization of our solar system. We already collaborate for the exploration of the solar system, via robotic probes and giant telescopes. That's good enough. Colonization is an all different matter, and a weird one if you ask me. Earth is the largest place with a solid ground in the Solar system, and it's by far the most hospitable. Settling on an other p…

The history of the human race is a long succession of people contributing for something that other people will benefit from. Sometimes just knowing that you're enabling the dream is enough.

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#109

Post by einrealist » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 8:24 PM UTC

avz wrote: post #100

coryt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Space exploration offers significant benefits long-term but generally provides no immediate pay-off next quarter. Really? What about all the inventions discovered during the space race...The biggest impact inventions being integrated circuits, satellite communications and GPS, but there were so many others like Corningware[1], Tempur foam [2], LEDs, Freeze Drying Technology, etc [3] that one could argue provided man…

These short-term benefits are minuscule compared to both the costs and the long-term benefits. There are more cost-effective ways of developing better frying pans, pillows and small blinking lights than running a space exploration program. OTOH, there is no other way to ensure long term survival of human civilization than diversifying our real estate away from one planet. The only reliable way to argue for space expl…

> The only reliable way to argue for space exploration is by explaining how important the long-term benefits are.

It is a gamble. Gambling is nice as long we have the resources. Global warming can eat those easily.

Re: Wanderers: a short film of humanity's expansion into the Solar System [video]

#110

Post by rbanffy » Sun, Nov 30, 2014, 8:24 PM UTC

einrealist wrote: post #46

evaneykelen wrote: post #41

Frustrating to realize that perhaps only 1 or 2 years of Earth's military spending would enable mankind to achieve this (approx $1700 billion/year). Not saying we don't need to spend money on defense, merely taking one the world's expenditures as a yardstick. It would be so great if mankind is able to cooperate in the colonization of our solar system.

It would be even better if we could spend this amount of money to fix the problems we already have on this planet, like global warming, pollution and hunger and stuff.

Plain and simple, either our species spreads or we die.

We die not only because we can't seem to solve our immediate problems (I bet global temperatures will cross the +6 Celsius in this century) but we die the next big space rock hits Earth or the next time Yellowstone erupts, or the next time some weird highly energetic phenomenon we are absolutely clueless about roasts our high atmosphere just enough it starts letting the sun's UV through.

It's stupid to colonize other worlds and ignore our current problems because they'll kill us before we get there, but it's equally stupid to ignore the long-term problems of putting all our eggs on a single planetary basket around a single star. While I'm quite sure the Sun will not blow up on the next quarter or before the next couple elections, I'm quite sure it'll not last forever and really think it'll eventually misbehave in some deadly fashion. There are several mass extinctions in fossil record and I'd much prefer our species would not end up as a museum curiosity for the following civilisation.