Don’t stage off Starship • Hacker News Board

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#31

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

missosoup wrote: post #10

drenginian wrote: post #5

Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…

Of all the wealthy 'out of touch' people to complain about, you choose the one guy with a risky but rewarding vision that will benefit all of our species if achieved, instead of everyone else sailing on their super yachts and buying elections and molesting children?

The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species' if a handful of us get to visit Mars, or even if there were a small colony there.

What would benefit our species is drastically reworking the economy to stop the massive waste and production of greenhouse gasses (which Musk may have slightly improved with Tesla, credit where credit is due).

Also, putting more economic and political power in the hands of the many instead of concentrating it all in afew hundreds or thousands of people would go a much longer way towards improving our species than some 'colony' on Mars.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#32

Post by tasogare » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

drenginian wrote: post #17

namaemuta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a short-sighted attitude. Colonizing Mars opens the door to a lot of advances in many, many fields. At first it will be difficult and expensive as it has happened with every new advance in the past. Precisely because of it, people will think of ideas to improve all the process and related problems. And presenting those new problems that we aren't facing now can lead to solutions that could be used in other commo…

Sounds vague. I’d say do like bill gates and put the billions directly into worthwhile causes instead instead of suggesting the trickle down will be unquantified but amazing.

Bill Gates is funding some humanitarian ventures without thinking to the next decades externalities it has. 100% feel good and PR actions, yet questionable in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#33

Post by NikolaeVarius » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #18

Udik wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea of colonizing Mars only makes sense in the head of a teenager who read to much bad sf. Our whole idea of spaceships crossing empty space and founding colonies on other planets is just a projection on the past successes of the age of discoveries, when actual ships crossed the oceans and reached new continents. But those continents were perfectly habitable, with tons of resources, plants and animals th…

Musk isn't an engineer.

I always wonder what threshold people use for this term . This is a site where a person with 4 weeks bootcamp experience call themselves a software engineer

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#34

Post by fsloth » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #9

drenginian wrote: post #5

Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…

I think the idea of colonizing Mars only makes sense in the head of a teenager who read to much bad sf. Our whole idea of spaceships crossing empty space and founding colonies on other planets is just a projection on the past successes of the age of discoveries, when actual ships crossed the oceans and reached new continents. But those continents were perfectly habitable, with tons of resources, plants and animals th…

There is no fundamental law of nature discovered so far that would stop us from colonizing other worlds. The problems seem to be related to either a) financial b) psychological c) engineering or d) physiological domains.

Once a human society learns how to thrive on a single colony there is no reason it could not spread across the planet.

You are right of course that interplanetary colonization is completely different thing from the European colonization of Americas.

But it's quite silly to think it is childish. The thing is, we don't know what it would be like.

So you could be proven right ("what a silly idea this was, let's go home") or you could be proven wrong (it turns out humans can thrive elsewhere and we become an interplanetary species).

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#35

Post by anoncake » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #32

drenginian wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds vague. I’d say do like bill gates and put the billions directly into worthwhile causes instead instead of suggesting the trickle down will be unquantified but amazing.

Bill Gates is funding some humanitarian ventures without thinking to the next decades externalities it has. 100% feel good and PR actions, yet questionable in the grand scheme of things.

Externalities such as?

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#36

Post by ekianjo » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #7

When talking about big rockets, it is hard not to talk about Sea Dragon. It was a rocket where the entire design is based on the "bigger is better" philosophy. The design was simple. No need for lightweight, high-tech materials, because it is big. No need for highly efficient high pressure engines, just make one that is bigger. That thing would have dwarved the Saturn V. The name "Sea Dragon" comes from the fact it w…

The Orion interplanetary ship would also have been huge - it was planned to be able to reach Jupiter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propu...

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#37

Post by Udik » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

mkl wrote: post #21

Udik wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we wait until we get a warp drive engine? Because thinking of reaching anything further than our solar system with our current physics (not technology- that we can improve by building stuff) is more silly than trying to cross the Pacific ocean with help of a floating rubber duck.

Even at (way) sub-light speeds, it's probably possible. Whether it's automated self-replicating ships (possibly carrying humans as gene sequences), or generation ships (seems pretty hellish!), a number of people have estimated mathematically that it's doable. Estimates vary wildly, of course, as there are many unknowns, but basically exponential growth gets unintuitively fast. Some links (there are many more pages to…

This is not "travelling" any more. This is sending spores hoping they will take root somewhere, but they will be forever disconnected from us, in space and, more importantly, in time.

What's this mania you have of disseminating yourself? Even if you build ships that carry human genes sequences and send them on a million years trip, who is going to benefit? The sequences you sent?

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#38

Post by justanotherc » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

drenginian wrote: post #5

Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…

The world will never agree on the best way to spend money. So why don't we just let people spend their own money the way they choose?

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#39

Post by missosoup » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #31

missosoup wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the wealthy 'out of touch' people to complain about, you choose the one guy with a risky but rewarding vision that will benefit all of our species if achieved, instead of everyone else sailing on their super yachts and buying elections and molesting children?

The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species' if a handful of us get to visit Mars, or even if there were a small colony there. What would benefit our species is drastically reworking the economy to stop the massive waste and production of greenhouse gasses (which Musk may have slightly improved with Tesla, credit where credit is due). Also, putting more economic and political p…

> The whole point of the parent comment was that there is no benefit for 'our species'

Spreading across n>1 planets would literally move our species up on the Kardashev scale. Achieving that is one of the very few things anyone is doing on this planet, which is fundamentally beneficial to our species.

> Also, putting more economic and political power in the hands of the many instead of concentrating it all in afew hundreds or thousands of people would go a much longer way towards improving our species.

“The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” - Winston Churchill.

I'm not defending the actions of most of those wealthy individuals, but handing the reigns of power to the masses is a historically proven recipe for failure. Moreso now than ever with the advent of ML driven voter manipulation.

And singling out Musk is laughable. Musk and Gates are perhaps the only two that aren't cartoon level evil villains. I don't understand how anyone could possibly be shitting on Musk for his Mars vision, even if it's folly, when all the other people with comparable wealth are too busy rigging elections, fucking up the poor, and destroying our natural resources.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#40

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #35

tasogare wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates is funding some humanitarian ventures without thinking to the next decades externalities it has. 100% feel good and PR actions, yet questionable in the grand scheme of things.

Externalities such as?

One externality I have seen mentioned goes as follows: fewer childhood malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa mean more unemployed or under-employed young men being tempted to cross the Mediterranean, exacerbating political tensions in North Africa and Europe. But obviously, if you are a philanthropist and saving every human life is your chief concern, then such thinking can seem repugnant.