Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More Everything Forever

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 321 posts

Re: More Everything Forever

#191

Post by bluefirebrand »

ryandrake wrote: post #116
alabastervlog wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars is extremely terrible. I don't understand why we'd want to colonize it, versus any number of other things we could do with that immense effort. Visit it, sure, I guess, maybe, but colonize? LOL why?

There are places on Earth that are probably 3-5 orders of magnitude less terrible than Mars, and we don't even have a reason to colonize those areas. Let alone a cold, barren, lifeless, radiation-covered, nearly atmosphere-less rock.

One of the cool things about humanity is that we do stuff that doesn't seem to make much sense, like set sail in a direction without any idea if there is even land out there

The reason to colonize Mars is to see if we can

For a lot of people that's a sufficient reason

And frankly it may be worthwhile because if we can colonize Mars we may be able to colonize a large asteroid full of resources that we need, or something else

Or create a chain of fueling station colonies on planets on the way to a new, habitable planet

Who knows. But sometimes we just should set sail and see what happens

Re: More Everything Forever

#192

Post by mikeyouse »

ojbyrne wrote: post #188
mikeyouse wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source for any of those claims? It's pretty well known after a few weird political fights that she grew up in a tiny house in Yorktown and that her dad died when she was a freshman in college and that her mom was a house cleaner. [her childhood home: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhCMERUXUAAY68Z?format=jpg&name=... ]. Hard to square with her family "owning multiple brownstones". Trump's dad gave him millions of dollars…

Wikipedia supports the claim that she was an intern for Ted Kennnedy, but none of the rest. Interestingly she has an asteroid named after her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez

Right - the rest is pretty much nonsense. She grew up in a 2-bedroom house and went to the ~4th best school in Boston and we're supposed to believe she's some long con plant? Just silly.

Re: More Everything Forever

#193

Post by peterlada »

pasquinelli wrote: post #190
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 years optimistically!? That's an incredibly pessimistic timeline, maybe one of the most hardline "nothing ever happens" outlooks I've ever heard articulated.

that's crazy to say. mars is very cold and very dry and not shielded from radiation and doesn't have much air and that air isn't breathable. i wouldn't say we've settled antarctica, which is on our planet and has air. 100 years would be a wild amount of time for us to settle mars.

Add to that a soil and dust that's toxic to humans. Our biology, unsurprisingly, is only compatible with a single planet.

Re: More Everything Forever

#194

Post by GauntletWizard »

mikeyouse wrote: post #175
GauntletWizard wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOC was an intern for Ted Kennedy before being strategically placed in a "bartending" position as part of her background grooming. Her family owned multiple New York Brownstones in the rich part of the city. She has as much claim to humble background as Trump.

Source for any of those claims? It's pretty well known after a few weird political fights that she grew up in a tiny house in Yorktown and that her dad died when she was a freshman in college and that her mom was a house cleaner. [her childhood home: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhCMERUXUAAY68Z?format=jpg&name=... ]. Hard to square with her family "owning multiple brownstones". Trump's dad gave him millions of dollars…

Here's the New York Posts' investigation: https://nypost.com/2019/02/23/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-no...

The actual land records that prove this are impossible to link, for reasons that are charitably described as "Monstrous incompetence of government officials".

Re: More Everything Forever

#195

Post by Unit327 »

Spivak wrote: post #171
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 years optimistically!? That's an incredibly pessimistic timeline, maybe one of the most hardline "nothing ever happens" outlooks I've ever heard articulated.

Eh, it's a reasonable prior. The timeline is "it will never happen" until the leap forward happens that makes it "within 2 years." Basically the same as air flight. You can't know when the leap will happen so it's basically picking a year that seems far enough off to be pretty darn sure.

It doesn't require a leap forward, we could put boots on the ground with 1990s tech.

Re: More Everything Forever

#196

Post by Unit327 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #174
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 years optimistically!? That's an incredibly pessimistic timeline, maybe one of the most hardline "nothing ever happens" outlooks I've ever heard articulated.

Have you read about the natural conditions on Mars? I doubt there will be a permanent settlement in a thousand years.

I think you are both on different pages about settlement vs just a visit.

Re: More Everything Forever

#197

Post by travisgriggs »

dmonitor wrote: post #103
margalabargala wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. Secondly, there's not a huge need to develop a new rocket. We've delivered lots of one-way cargo to Mars using the Atlas V; something like the SLS could deliver much more, plenty for a couple humans to get there and not die. We've already laun…

We also haven't specified if we're sending live humans to Mars. Just shuck someone onto the next rover we send over and call it a night. Sending a live human, or group of humans, on a suicide mission in the name of bragging rights as a species would be really bleak. I doubt you'd get much political support for a Mars mission without a return plan, or at least a sustainability plan.

To some degree, wasn’t the exploration of the poles that took place at the beginning of the previous century similar? For country and glory. Motivated tons of men to have a go at the foolish. Many died, some prevailed. After all that we get to maintain a station there.

Don’t take this as support of mars colonoziation which I think is a fools errand. Just pointing out that “suicide mission” seems to actually be motivational to the intrepid adventurer.

Re: More Everything Forever

#198

Post by Unit327 »

johnea wrote: post #145
margalabargala wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. Secondly, there's not a huge need to develop a new rocket. We've delivered lots of one-way cargo to Mars using the Atlas V; something like the SLS could deliver much more, plenty for a couple humans to get there and not die. We've already laun…

And Zeroly, there's absolutely 0 reason for people to go to Mars, AT ALL. This whole idea is the stupidest thing I've heard people seriously discuss. What would be the point? If you want to experience "life on Mars", bury a cargo container in your back yard, and live in it for a year. If there's some burning need to go live underground, as you would on Mars, why not just do it in Nevada? The grocery store is a lot cl…

Humans are better at exploring and doing science than rovers, they could get things done a lot quicker and better. They can repair things and are very adaptable. A mission to spend 6 months on the surface would be great. Perhaps not worth the risk and expense though.

Re: More Everything Forever

#199

Post by golol »

>“We are here now, in a world filled with more than we could ever reasonably ask for,” Becker writes. “We can take joy in that, and find satisfaction and meaning in making this world just a little bit better for everyone and everything on it, regardless of the ultimate fate of the cosmos.”

I don't like this mindset. Be grateful for what you have. Maybe the world is not that great yet for many people and we should aim to improve things substantially, not marginally. This is something that the shuffling around of ressources on a political level can never achieve. Those dreaded tech entrepreneurs have correctly identified technology to be the only way substantial improvements can happen. So then it all blils down if you can make things happen and here the article and some comments here just claim, well, they NEVER deliver!

Re: More Everything Forever

#200

Post by hcknwscommenter »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #183
ryandrake wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider what it takes just to keep McMurdo Station (staffed by only 200-1000 people) running on Antarctica, and that's on our own planet . I don't know what the cost is, but according to [1] the budget for the US's Antarctic program overall was $356M in 2008. And it depends on reliable logistics to get people and things to and from it. From there, step up to the ISS, which costs about $4B/year to maintain and operat…

Which makes it just a matter of priorities. If the USA spent 10% of its defence budget for a year on it, we'd be done. Would humanity benefit more from a Mars base than it does from 10% of the USA's defence budget? Almost certainly. Though, to be fair, there are a lot of other things we could spend 10% of the USA defence budget on that would benefit humanity a lot more in the short term.

10% is not even 100 billion. You are wildly optimistic. 100B a year is likely closer to the cost of just maintaining a mars base. The cost to actually build one is likely an order of magnitude higher.
Post reply on HN