Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience • Hacker News Board

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#181

Post by nosianu » Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 9:53 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #170

nosianu wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Send a computer Those age too. Especially out there without the earth's shields. If you make one that lives longer than a human it's already quite the feat, add only a bit more radiation, it only gets worse. Computers are much worse with failures than brains too. The nice thing about biological systems is the self-assembly from tiny molecule parts. Worst case, you can create a closed system with birth/death renewal…

The notion of a general-purpose molecular assembler or nanofactory appears to be a pure fantasy. We don't even have a theoretical approach to making that happen.

> a pure fantasy

Yes it is, but what does that have to do with my comment? It does not change anything I wrote regardless of if it was already real, is feasible but not now, will never be possible.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#182

Post by _w1tm » Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 12:13 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #148

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…

It's always a bit revealing, with these kids of interstellar missions, how people reveal their own unseen biases. Clearly such a mission is beyond the capabilities of our world currently. Like, obviously such a mission is something that capitalism cannot accomplish. That communism or anarchism or any -ism just cannot do. And I think that when people look at jaunts out to Alpha Centauri and think in terms of cost, the…

We have to figure out interplanetary travel first. Crawl before you walk.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#183

Post by _w1tm » Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 12:22 PM UTC

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #152

tenthirtyam wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It's a certainty that Mars is far far less hospitable than Earth even in the worst of the climate change outcomes. I suppose the most useful thing about colonizing Mars would be for species survival - e.g. the Giant-Asteroid-Strikes-the-Earth-but-luckily-not-Mars scenario. In any case, a nearby planet or its orbit would seem to be the most logical place to start for any supervillain species seeking to coloniz…

I haven't done the math but I suspect if we really cared about that risk, it'd be orders of magnitude easier to build far better asteroid detection and deflection systems. The reason we haven't is because in reality we don't care much about that risk relative to the costs of addressing it (even with the cheapest possible solutions, which are not "colonize another planet").

> The reason we haven't is because in reality we don't care much about that risk relative to the costs of addressing it (even with the cheapest possible solutions, which are not "colonize another planet").

You’re making a big jump to conclusions there. Globally we (EU and US) do care about this risk and in fact are spending hundreds of millions per year.

Or at least we were spending that amount. There’s some idiots cutting that budget in NASA AFAIK.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#184

Post by sorcerer-mar » Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

_w1tm wrote: post #183

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't done the math but I suspect if we really cared about that risk, it'd be orders of magnitude easier to build far better asteroid detection and deflection systems. The reason we haven't is because in reality we don't care much about that risk relative to the costs of addressing it (even with the cheapest possible solutions, which are not "colonize another planet").

> The reason we haven't is because in reality we don't care much about that risk relative to the costs of addressing it (even with the cheapest possible solutions, which are not "colonize another planet"). You’re making a big jump to conclusions there. Globally we (EU and US) do care about this risk and in fact are spending hundreds of millions per year. Or at least we were spending that amount. There’s some idiots c…

No, you're misunderstanding my point. I'm aware money is being spent on this.

Let's say being multiplanetary gives you 99% risk mitigation of asteroid decimation.

My point is that we could pursue that level of risk mitigation via detection and deflection methods by pouring more money into it.

It is obviously far cheaper to achieve 99% risk mitigation by dumping money into detection and deflection than it is to colonize another planet to the point of self-sufficiency.

A couple trillion dollars might get us to a basic self-sustaining colony on Mars, but you could defend earth, and all of its immense natural and man-made assets, to a similar degree for orders of magnitude less money. We already choose not to do this because we don't care to achieve that level of risk mitigation even at the lower price point.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#185

Post by sorcerer-mar » Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 1:10 PM UTC

Teever wrote: post #180

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"this" == produce political will to protect the environment at the expense of industry? Not too sure! Probably one part is to disabuse people of the notion that we have alternatives available if only we could just dedicate more brainpower to space travel. The real answer is to eliminate the tradeoffs through scientific innovation. As mentioned elsewhere, the real way to protect earth (and our species) is to produce b…

Do you think that humans will ever colonize other bodies in the solar system, or build large scale artificial habitats that house hundreds of thousands of people? If so, when do you think this will start to occur? 50 years from now? 100? 200? If not, why not?

Depends on your definition of "colonize". In the hundreds of thousands of people range, no we are several hundred years away (if ever).

Mostly because outer space sucks and there's no reason to be there, as evidenced by the inability for anyone in this thread to come up with compelling reasons to do it aside from "ah the adventure!" (from people who haven't done anything that could be described as 'adventure' here on earth, ever).

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#186

Post by econ » Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #97

econ wrote: post #28

You first have to build the perpetual motion engine and the reactionless drive. Current thinking is quite hostile to doing the work. You might not be able to build the things you think you can. You certainly won't build the things you think you can't.

I am not aware of any approaches that even remotely could deliver a perpetual motion engine or a reactionless drive. You need something to start from but there is nothing in sight.

We have lots of things that didn't seem possible. The first barrier isn't finding the previous art. You are not even supposed to talk about it.

How strange was nuclear before innital discovery?

I'm not aware of [other] approaches that will allow us to travel to the stars.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#187

Post by kbelder » Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

jvm___ wrote: post #7

bregma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The universe has a loooooot of stuff in it. In fact, technically, there's nothing here . It's all out there .

The Sun: 99.86% of the solar system's total mass. Jupiter: ~0.095% of the total mass, and ~71% of the non-solar mass. Saturn: ~0.03% of the total mass, and ~19% of the non-solar mass. Uranus and Neptune: Contribute a small percentage to the remaining non-solar mass. All other objects: (inner planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, comets, etc.) account for less than 0.002% of the solar system's total mass. Your bra…

insignificant to whom?

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#188

Post by pyuser583 » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 2:11 AM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #148

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…

It's always a bit revealing, with these kids of interstellar missions, how people reveal their own unseen biases. Clearly such a mission is beyond the capabilities of our world currently. Like, obviously such a mission is something that capitalism cannot accomplish. That communism or anarchism or any -ism just cannot do. And I think that when people look at jaunts out to Alpha Centauri and think in terms of cost, the…

Some of my favorite sci-fi deals with monasticism and space travel.

If you were to create a constitution for a multigenerational space trip, it might look like the Rule of St Benedict. Many of the monastic rules were intended for “families” whose lifespan were intended to infinite.

There’s already some very good sci-fi on this topic, but it seems most of it is quite old. Most recent would be Babylon 5, that I know of.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#189

Post by pyuser583 » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 2:13 AM UTC

krunck wrote: post #16

The comment by Benjamin Stockton on the article page is spot-on: >I just wonder if humanity’s adventurous nature is leading us away from a proper focus on the sustainability of our civilization, our specie, and our fragile planetary environment? But we still need spaceflight at least for planetary defense against asteroids, mining asteroids(so we don't have to mine Earth), etc.

It hasn’t distracted us at all. We need the secular spirituality space travel, and just gazing at the stars, offers.

Re: Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

#190

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Jun 28, 2025, 12:03 PM UTC

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #143

expenses3 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

NASA did a feasibility study of this even accounting for future technology improvements/cost reductions and it doesn't seem to come close to earthbound alternatives, especially nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is more stable, less maintenance, less risky, less upfront and ongoing environmental damage, less vulnerable to all sorts of risks, and produces way way more energy. > We find the SBSP designs are more expensiv…

> especially nuclear fission

Since nuclear fission is enbarrassingly uncompetitive on Earth, where is this "especially" coming from? The comment seems to be impeaching the credibility of the study, if it concluded nuclear on Earth would be the top contender non-fossil energy source.