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Don’t stage off Starship

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Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#41

Post by warent »

Udik wrote: post #13
bobcostas55 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddy, we're gonna dysonsphere every sun in the galaxy. Mars isn't arrogant, it's just that we have to learn to crawl before we start running.

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.

There's no point waiting for something which may never happen. Traveling outside of the solar system is 100% possible with our current understanding of physics and is just a matter of resources/ logistics, meanwhile "superlight speed" is currently 0% possible with no guarantee that it ever will be possible.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#42

Post by DennisP »

ForHackernews wrote: post #15
bobcostas55 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddy, we're gonna dysonsphere every sun in the galaxy. Mars isn't arrogant, it's just that we have to learn to crawl before we start running.

Love the optimism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

It's entirely possible that the Great Filter is behind us. If life itself is extremely rare, then the only life that exists will necessarily have passed through it, and will look out on a near lifeless universe.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#43

Post by russdill »

This seems to completely miss the point of the Starship architecture. With orbital refueling, staging as discussed in the article, or a smaller Starship isn't something that would provide a big savings anyway.

Big Starship or small Starship, you get the same Delta-V assuming both are fully fueled. In fact, you'd probably get more Delta-V out of a large Starship since you might be able to get a better mass fraction.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#44

Post by chr1 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #27
smoyer wrote: post #16

I have a few interesting questions ... to be fair, I've done no science or math to make a conclusion but there would certainly be a sense of irony involved. 1. Could the green-house gases produced to launch a civilization to Mars be the final straw that breaks our eco-system's back? 2. What are the moral implications of terra-forming Mars and moving a small population there, knowing that the population remaining on E…

I want to use a Starship to put a solar sail factory on an NEO and send the sails to Earth-Moon L1 to block sunlight to buy us some time. If you think you can change human nature fast enough to curb climate change you should think again; introduce new energy sources that are cheaper than fossil fuels and you can make them.obsolete.

"buying some time" would be the most underwhelming use of such a technology. If you are putting large enough sunshade to change the climate, you can use it to actually control the weather, make sahara green, make siberia warm, melt greenland ice sheet in controlled way moving it to antarctic.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#45

Post by IanCal »

justanotherc wrote: post #38
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?

This argument only really works when there's less inequality. There's a focus on what these ultra wealthy people are spending their money on because they have world-changing amounts of it.

To put it another way, myself and Bezos are not equally free to spend Apollo mission money on solving problems.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#46

Post by ben_w »

anoncake wrote: post #29
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…

Can you give some examples please? I'd be particularly interested in ways colonizing Mars would help us solve the serious problems we already have like bigotry, inequality, the climate catastrophe...

Mars is significantly less hospitable than either the summit of Mt Everest or Antarctica; by developing the necessary tech to colonise Mars, you could re-populate the Earth after any environmental catastrophe short of the planet being physically dismantled.

One more immediate benefit is that the ability to refuel on Mars is identical to the ability to take CO2 out of the air and turn it into (un)natural gas.

Doesn’t do much for bigotry or inequality though.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#47

Post by alasdair_ »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #40
anoncake wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the long term, reducing infant mortality consistently leads to a reduction in the number of children per mother.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#48

Post by DennisP »

Udik wrote: post #13
bobcostas55 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddy, we're gonna dysonsphere every sun in the galaxy. Mars isn't arrogant, it's just that we have to learn to crawl before we start running.

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.

With fusion rockets, we could get to at least one percent light speed, and maybe ten percent. At one percent, assuming exponential growth, we could colonize the entire galaxy in a million years or so, barely a blink in geological time.

We could also colonize objects in the Oort Cloud, just gradually hopping outward from rock to rock, with fusion to power our little colonies, ultimately reaching interstellar distances. It'd be a little slower, but it'd happen without any special effort.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#49

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

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…

“A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.”

Add it to the long list of things Blade Runner got so right about the future.

I stopped reading this article because in all the rocket talk, nowhere did it acknowledge just how completely inhospitable Mars will be once you finally get it there. Every single aspect of the planet is not conducive to life. I don’t doubt that one day extremely rich people will (very far in the future, far past Elon Musk’s lifespan) live there and the toil of humans here will fund the exotic ways they deal with the massive radiation there etc. Just so they can not be around the poor serfs back on the planet custom made for life.

Re: Don’t stage off Starship

#50

Post by yakz »

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…

Why do you think it is even possible to effectively redirect and utilize those resources for the projects that you don't consider to be childish flights of fancy? It sounds like you're making an argument to stop tangible progress in favor of just trying something different because the progress being made isn't the right kind for you.
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