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SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

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Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#141

Post by wallace_f »

staticelf wrote: post #135
wallace_f wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, aka the basic, but always true "guns vs butter" lesson. Who wants to live in a technologically sophisticated world if most of the spending goes to war, surveillance, bailing out rich bankers, healthcare insurance, and just housing, anyways?

That is the issue you get when you do not spend money on science though. Compare the NASA budget to the US military budget. What if you would reverse that? Don't you think we would be better off in every way possible?

Of course. What about all the other things I mentioned as well? There are so many more--what about for profit prisons?

As technology increases our suicide rate isn't really consistently declining. Our prison population has increased. Technology cant make those improvements alone. We need improvements in governance, culture and education for this to happen.

Technology can be used for good or bad. By itself, it is just a tool, it's up to us to decide if we are going to end up in a police state with constsnt surveillance and tyranny, colonize Mars, create weapons that can wipe out most of humanity, solve healthcare problems, etc.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#142

Post by Asdfbla »

Making life multiplanetary seems like one of the least important issues of our times to me: either we figure out how to make life on earth sustainable in the medium term (next 50-100 years) or we do not have enough time to become multiplanetary anyway (since that will take centuries, and we will likely never leave the solar system anyway).

So it seems a bit premature to concern yourself with interplanetary ambitions before we are even sure if we can maintain our own planet (which is, and will remain for an extremely long time, the only place for autonomous life in space that humanity has).

Then again, maybe I'm nitpicking since it's not like Musk demands the whole world to commit its resources to his ideas. If he wants to play around with adventurous Mars trips that's fine.

Edit: Of course I'm also aware that Musk is still using his money better than many other wealthy people, so more power to him. This comment was mostly about space exploration vs. sustainable life on earth, all other things being equal.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#143

Post by feborges »

bicubic wrote: post #80
evanlivingston wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be really excited about a future where everyone had access to clean water. Going to space is fun and exciting. The future of space travel is going to be interesting, but it essential that when we imagine the future that we do so while recognizing the glaring problems of today.

The lack of access to clean water and most of the bad stuff happening around the world is not an engineering problem, it's a political problem. Elon Musk's passion lies in engineering, not in politics. So while your sentiment is fine in a vacuum, I don't think it fits on this thread, and it's certainly not a sound criticism against advancing space colonization. In fact, there's a sizable sentiment that this planet is…

Engineering is a political act!

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#144

Post by ygra »

grondilu wrote: post #81
ajmurmann wrote: post #25

So what's the carbon footprint of one of these launches? Did I understand correctly that we can make the fuel by taking CO2 from the atmosphere? That would make the footprint negative, would it? That seems to good to be true.

CO2 extraction for methane production is planned on mars, where the relative ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere is much higher. On Earth, CO2 is only 0.04%, which makes it quite difficult to extract.

He also noted it's a long-term plan on Earth. Use solar power and extract CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#145

Post by olau »

evanlivingston wrote: post #84
bicubic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of access to clean water and most of the bad stuff happening around the world is not an engineering problem, it's a political problem. Elon Musk's passion lies in engineering, not in politics. So while your sentiment is fine in a vacuum, I don't think it fits on this thread, and it's certainly not a sound criticism against advancing space colonization. In fact, there's a sizable sentiment that this planet is…

I don't mean to antagonize Elon Musk himself. What I wanted to point out is that the future doesn't exist in a vacuum. While some people are jumping around on mars others will be unable to put food on their table. It saddens me to see that things that make people most excited about the future are the development of technologies that don't address issues of inequality. Why would our political failures not follow us to…

I think it's a harsh view of human nature that doesn't allow for individuals to have individual motivations.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#146

Post by DavidSJ »

Asdfbla wrote: post #142

Making life multiplanetary seems like one of the least important issues of our times to me: either we figure out how to make life on earth sustainable in the medium term (next 50-100 years) or we do not have enough time to become multiplanetary anyway (since that will take centuries, and we will likely never leave the solar system anyway). So it seems a bit premature to concern yourself with interplanetary ambitions…

We may always face existential risks. We now know of some concerning the next 50-100 years, but in 100 years we may know of different ones. Planetary redundancy conceivably aids our chances with those risks as well, so is a project best begun now, whatever the lead time. I don't want us always just solving the present crisis. We should think about the distant future too.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#147

Post by ascorbic »

alexnewman wrote: post #99

If I am flying a rocket plane and my normal landing site has bad weather what does the rocket do? Maybe they can have robot boats all around the world to catch them!

If it's a half hour trip it'll not be hard to predict bad weather before you take off.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#148

Post by simonh »

Asdfbla wrote: post #142

Making life multiplanetary seems like one of the least important issues of our times to me: either we figure out how to make life on earth sustainable in the medium term (next 50-100 years) or we do not have enough time to become multiplanetary anyway (since that will take centuries, and we will likely never leave the solar system anyway). So it seems a bit premature to concern yourself with interplanetary ambitions…

I don’t understand why this argument gets made particularly concerning space exploration. Somehow it’s ok for humans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year on each one of entertaining movies, going on holidays, playing computer games, sports events, etc but a few tens of billions of dollars spent on space will imperil the long term survival of the human species and leave millions of people starving in Africa. That attitude seems crazily disproportionate.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#149

Post by ygra »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #118
modeless wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said the heat shield ablates for Mars trips but not Earth trips (not sure why). If so then propellant should be the only important consumable. Of course this level of reusability and reliability has never been achieved before, but the whole thing depends on it.

> He said the heat shield ablates for Mars trips but not Earth trips (not sure why) Falcon 9 presently lands completely without any heat shield, because it just uses it's engines to reduce velocity until they are not needed. In principle, you can always replace heat shields with fuel like this. Mars trips need to bleed velocity aerodynamically because the craft cannot bring enough fuel. Presumably a sub-orbital hop o…

Falcon 9 has a heat shield around the engines. Since they are going into the atmosphere engines-first it's going to be hot there. The engine bells sticking out from there don't care (much, since the entry burn reduces speed enough). Most of the speed reduction for the landing happens via aerobraking, not by using the engines.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#150

Post by simonh »

evanlivingston wrote: post #75
Osmium wrote: post #11

Honestly, Elon's presentations are some of the most impressive, inspiring I've ever seen. And the way he just stumbles out words and sentences that are completely revolutionary... casually dropping these absurd, incredible statements. I find it incredible. If anyone else was saying this, was showing these graphics, you'd think it was just wish fulfillment; a fantasy. And I'm sure their timeline is a bit aggressive. B…

I would be really excited about a future where everyone had access to clean water. Going to space is fun and exciting. The future of space travel is going to be interesting, but it essential that when we imagine the future that we do so while recognizing the glaring problems of today.

Which use of resources is the biggest affront to you, given a preference to spend resources on access to clean water. Humans spending hundreds of billions of dollars on movies per year, or humans spending a coupe of tens of billions of dollars a year on making our species multi-planetary?

How come this argument only gets dragged up when we’re talkign about space, but not when we’re talking about movies, holidays, computer games, etc. It just seems weirdly disproportionate.

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