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It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

techeffect.substack.com

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Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#211

Post by bserge »

jschwartzi wrote: post #117
ButWhatFor wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this - this has been the difficulty with things like science and research since the dawn of time... you study one thing and then hopefully if you have a lot of people studying multiple things one hugely amazing thing eventually falls out when one person gets lucky. It leads to a very delayed gratification despite very real near term costs. So it’s easy to attack the costs and focus and prioritization…

It's also a tool to pacify people with empty promises of a better future. The way that it's being used as a distant future utopia is like the way promises of Heaven are used in Abrahamic religions to convince people to suffer in the here and now. A lot of people would choose to suffer some now in order to go to some peaceful space colony where they don't have to live with any of the consequences for our biosphere. Th…

Why is it "either, or"? Tackle both problems. For climate change, space tech is invaluable - we already have the ability to build a solar shade in orbit, it's just extremely expensive. With better space technologies, the cost will go down massively.

The bigger problem is that there's no political will. It will have to be an effort by all countries.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#212

Post by goatlover »

ben_w wrote: post #188
nsxwolf wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've demonstrated that we can heat planets up.

Unfortunately what we’ve demonstrated is that we make bad decisions if they’re cheap; that we have heated up the plant is merely because it happened to be the case that fossil fuels could power a population growth from 1 to 8 billion in a century and a half. The tech is available, it’s the politics that I doubt.

The politics of terraforming a barren plant to make more suitable for colonization is going to be different from that of our home world.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#213

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

nine_k wrote: post #163
RobertoG wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely not beyond our current level of technology. Unfortunately, there are not economic incentives yet. Now, this(1) it's beyond our current level, but one can dream. It's obvious to me that this is the most probable future and I would not be surprise if, at some point, most humanity is living in this kind of environment instead of planets. Planets have a lot of disadvantages. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org…

There can't be an economic incentive, only political ones. Much like pilgrims who founded Massachusetts, founders of space habitats will be groups of people who don't enjoy living on Earth badly enough (due to persecution, or because of desire of some grand reforms) to fund a move elsewhere. I bet the first Martian colony will quickly be recognized as a place not controllable by any Earth government, and that will be…

There are hundreds of asteroids that have more wealth than the entire US federal debt.

Consider all the precious metals ever mined on the planet. Now consider this is litterally scratching the surface of the total contained within the planet. Note, these dense metals will be concentrated toward the planets core, due to gravity.

The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass, but it is all spread thinly and relatively easy to access.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#214

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

dmitriid wrote: post #187
eindiran wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Y]ou need to accept [that] everyone on Mars [will] live in relative poverty for generations. I think this point is by far the easiest one to address. Historically, there have always been people willing to do dangerous things (ie exploring the Arctic / Antarctica). I don't think you'd have any trouble finding people willing to give up their Earth lifestyle for a chance to explore the "frontier" even with the knowle…

Those explorers always have the luxury of going back to civilisation after relatively short excursions into the unknown. I doubt many people are willing to live the entirety of their lives in constant danger and constrained resources. And even fewer of those people will have the skills needed to run a complex technological society (and you will need a lot of technology to survive on Mars).

Colonists to the new world of the Americas didn't count on going back.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#216

Post by dragonwriter »

FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #213
nine_k wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can't be an economic incentive, only political ones. Much like pilgrims who founded Massachusetts, founders of space habitats will be groups of people who don't enjoy living on Earth badly enough (due to persecution, or because of desire of some grand reforms) to fund a move elsewhere. I bet the first Martian colony will quickly be recognized as a place not controllable by any Earth government, and that will be…

There are hundreds of asteroids that have more wealth than the entire US federal debt. Consider all the precious metals ever mined on the planet. Now consider this is litterally scratching the surface of the total contained within the planet. Note, these dense metals will be concentrated toward the planets core, due to gravity. The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass, but it is all spread thinly and relative…

> The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass

That seems...quite high:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt

"The total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon."

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#217

Post by Rebelgecko »

>the reality is that the GOP wouldn’t make these things a priority...

The author seems to be mixing up a tweet with the actual party platform. You can't say that they're making it a priority until we start to see NASA budget increases of the magnitude we saw during the Apollo era. Until they put their money where their mouth is, the tweet is just marketing fluff

>This myth not only allows the government to ignore the ongoing climate crisis on Earth, which scientists say could reach an irreversible tipping point in less than 10 years

Bullshit. No one thinks that humanity is going to have self-sustaining colonies on the moon or Mars within 10 years. Our government may be ignoring climate issues here on Earth, but it's not because they expect to leave the planet

>At a time when American unemployment the worst since the depression era

This article was published today. Why is the author citing unemployment statistics that were published 7 months ago? It seems like intentional cherrypicking

>It might or might not be a coincidence that the news of SOFIA discovering water on the moon came just days after the GOP announced their otherworldly priorities for a second term.

Is there any evidence that it's not a coincidence, or is the author just trying to spread FUD? How much influence does Donald Trump have over Nature's publication schedule?

>Is it space exploration or is it a decent standard of living at home? Is it the moon, Mars, or Earth?

This is a false dichotomy if there ever was one. For a decade, the US military spent more money on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan than we did on NASA. Imagine what NASA could have accomplished if our military only occupied temperate regions

Edit: another thing that bugs me is this implication that NASA spending is orthogonal to quality of life here on Earth, as if they were just launching billions of dollars into the ether. What would communities like Huntsville AL look like if NASA's budget was 0'd out? How much of the climate science they quote earlier in the article would have happened without NASA funding?

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#218

Post by bserge »

Animats wrote: post #175
johnmorrison wrote: post #13

This is frankly a blatantly wrong and quite foolish argument. Space exploration has already created many significant benefits for humanity on Earth , by advancing hundreds of new technologies with terrestrial applications and launching satellite networks that support a safer, more peaceful world for humans, with improved agricultural efficiencies as well as advanced warning and a better understanding of extreme weath…

Space exploration has already created many significant benefits for humanity on Earth, by advancing hundreds of new technologies with terrestrial applications Velcro! Tang! Teflon! Computers! NASA PR used to make a big thing of that. But those things didn't come from NASA's space program. The ISS was a huge disappointment. It's the best argument for not putting people in space. Hugely expensive, and not very useful.

That's like sailing on the ocean to the point where you can't see land and calling it the best argument for not exploring any further...

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#219

Post by marta_morena_28 »

johnmorrison wrote: post #13

This is frankly a blatantly wrong and quite foolish argument. Space exploration has already created many significant benefits for humanity on Earth , by advancing hundreds of new technologies with terrestrial applications and launching satellite networks that support a safer, more peaceful world for humans, with improved agricultural efficiencies as well as advanced warning and a better understanding of extreme weath…

> We can prioritize both, and frankly, life on Earth will be better the more we priotitize space exploration, not worse.

This is a pretty baseless claim. Space exploration, within the next 50 years, will yield utterly nothing for humans on earth. We want to colonize Mars or the Moon? Great, but what for?

You know how much all these things cost? Trillions per large economy. With that money you can do quite a lot to increase our life here on earth. What we need right now is not space exploration, we need tech to combat climate change and to combat the general destruction of ecosystems on this planet.

Like it or not. The earth is not an eternal resting place for humans, but we are not going to leave it anytime soon either. So for the next 100 years we need to keep this thing going at the very least. 100 years, at the current levels of destruction (which is as it looks like only going to increase) is going to be tough. Space is not where to look, we don't have the tech to colonize space and we are not gonna get it fast enough to just abandon earth right now.

Re: It’s dangerous to think humans have a destiny outside Earth

#220

Post by defterGoose »

tehchromic wrote: post #140

I can appreciate that no one wants to hear cautionary words about our loftiest ambitions. However, I believe it's worth reflecting carefully on the topic. One way to look at the dream of escaping the planet and colonizing space is in mythological terms. One comparison in particular is good and this is the idea of the afterlife or heaven which for centuries were as real and attainable as a Mars colony to you and I. Fo…

This is much more reasoned than the invective that both poles are throwing out. Incidentally, you come to the conclusion I myself agree with, which is that right now (and when one is learned about the science involved), it is hard to see investment in space travel as much more than a distraction from our real problems.

In other words, let's not jump out of the raft and into the ocean with a life preserver until we can see a ship approaching.

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