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

Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#931

Post by hx87 »

lisper wrote: post #496
mikeash wrote: post #148

Some of the comments here make me think of crabs in a pot pulling down the ones who try to climb out. Nobody's making you participate in this venture. If you don't like it, then you're free to go do whatever it is you do like. You might think Musk could better direct his efforts and resources elsewhere, but most other billionaires don't do anything all that interesting, they just invest their money in mundane stuff,…

> Some of the comments here make me think of crabs in a pot pulling down the ones who try to climb out. It's fine with me if some of my fellow crabs climb out, but it is very important not to lose sight of the fact (and to his credit, Musk gets this right) that unless all of us climb out (and we won't) then conditions in the pot are still going to matter to those -- almost certainly the vast majority -- who are left…

Pulling other crabs back into the pot is a pretty poor use of resources that could otherwise be used to improve conditions within it.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#932

Post by freehunter »

johnfjacobi wrote: post #747
freehunter wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter? I mean honestly... until we discover other life out there, nothing we do matters one little bit as long as we stay alive. We owe it to the future of our species to diversify as much as possible. Even if we go green and save the planet, our planet will end anyway. Accidents, asteroids, etc. Something will get the planet, it will . But even if we go farm out every other planet and make it barren…

> the only thing that makes sense is to keep living like we are the only life in the universe uh...we aren't.

Prove it, with actual hard evidence. Show me real, actual, living life that exists right now. Until then, it's hypothetical and it would be insane to put our species at risk of extinction if there is the possibility that we're the only life in the universe.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#933

Post by AYBABTME »

Pinckney wrote: post #888
mikeash wrote: post #875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No ground in reality"? Sure, the plan is extremely ambitious. But it relies on no fundamentally new technology and comes from someone with a proven track record in the field. They're talking at almost seven years before the first Mars launch with this system. I'll remind you that seven years before Apollo 11, this was the state of the art for American spaceflight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_LV-3B Further, M…

The technology to put people on Mars is not fundamentally new. The technology to make such a colony self sustaining is. We've never built any habitat which is entirely self sufficient even just in food, water, and air. Even the ISS needs resupply to generate breathable air. Even simple problems like "how do we replace failed bolts" will require resupply from earth for a long time. I'm also dubious of the economics of…

A very rational argument for colonizing Mars is, we're 1 solar flare, 1 gamma ray burst away from total extinction. Having presence on a second planetary body is the best way we have to insure ourself against planet-sized cataclysmic events.

Also, why would someone do this? Same reason people crossed the Atlantic, to take part in something greater than themselves. That's why I want to do it. Don't care it's cold and dry. It's obvious to me that it's the most meaningful thing I could do with my life. To each their own, but I'm pretty sure you can see how I come to this idea; it's not far fetched.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#934

Post by sctb »

savagej wrote: post #433
ravenstine wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think I'm trolling? I like the idea of space travel as much as the next person; I just remain unconvinced that colonizing Mars or even deep space really solves any existential problems for humanity beyond... providing more space. There's nothing radical about not believing that space travel is an answer to anything in and of itself. Apparently there's something deeply wrong for not agreeing with Elon M…

No one cares what you think about space travel or world priorities. That's why you are a troll.

Please stop posting like this. We ask that you comment civilly and substantively or not at all.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#936

Post by jotato »

Pinckney wrote: post #696
jotato wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In didnt say it would be easy, but neither is sending 100 people to mars. I'm not engineer, but wouldn't a pipe be easier to build than an elevator?

The problem with space elevators is that the cable (or the pipe, as you propose) needs to be able to hold itself together. Imagine taking a 4000 km long elevator cable and holding it up by one end: it would snap under its own weight instantly. That's about what your cable material needs to be able to take. The weight of the car is trivial in comparison.

Does it have to support its entire weight? At some point, won't the pipe have enough centrifugal force that would be supporting it?

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#937

Post by sctb »

astazangasta wrote: post #15

In this case, it's pretty clearly not just a rocket. Both Bezos and Musk admit that this is their fantasy from when they were boys. We're never going to live on mars, this is entirely about mythological projection. The phallus is central to the purpose of this endeavor.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12591850 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#938

Post by verelo »

spdustin wrote: post #147
verelo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I know what you meant in the parent, "numeric timezone" isn't a thing. When it's in a numeric format the correct term is "offset". It cannot be referred to as a timezone as it's timezone will remain constant, but offset may change depending on the time of year (and the impact daylight savings has on the correct offset). For what it's worth, i too hate when people say things like "EST","CST" etc. Not only are th…

It is a thing. UTC-5:00, or Z-5, or the specific times 1830Z / 18:30UTC, for some examples. Also, for the rest of the thread, central time zone is currently observing daylight saving time, so the correct abbreviation is CDT. Sorry to jump in with such pedantry. Datetime math is hard! :)

Good point! I didn't consider numeric offsets from UTC / Zulu time, but they certainly are valid. Thanks for adding that comment.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#939

Post by mikebelanger »

AYBABTME wrote: post #933
Pinckney wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology to put people on Mars is not fundamentally new. The technology to make such a colony self sustaining is. We've never built any habitat which is entirely self sufficient even just in food, water, and air. Even the ISS needs resupply to generate breathable air. Even simple problems like "how do we replace failed bolts" will require resupply from earth for a long time. I'm also dubious of the economics of…

A very rational argument for colonizing Mars is, we're 1 solar flare, 1 gamma ray burst away from total extinction. Having presence on a second planetary body is the best way we have to insure ourself against planet-sized cataclysmic events. Also, why would someone do this? Same reason people crossed the Atlantic, to take part in something greater than themselves. That's why I want to do it. Don't care it's cold and…

Add one kickass meteor impact to your list of things that could bring us to extinction.

Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]

#940

Post by stevep98 »

AYBABTME wrote: post #933
Pinckney wrote: post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology to put people on Mars is not fundamentally new. The technology to make such a colony self sustaining is. We've never built any habitat which is entirely self sufficient even just in food, water, and air. Even the ISS needs resupply to generate breathable air. Even simple problems like "how do we replace failed bolts" will require resupply from earth for a long time. I'm also dubious of the economics of…

A very rational argument for colonizing Mars is, we're 1 solar flare, 1 gamma ray burst away from total extinction. Having presence on a second planetary body is the best way we have to insure ourself against planet-sized cataclysmic events. Also, why would someone do this? Same reason people crossed the Atlantic, to take part in something greater than themselves. That's why I want to do it. Don't care it's cold and…

These natural events are rare enough that, to me, they don't create a sense of urgency that we need to get off the planet in the next decade.

This is the big question to me... when is the right time to go? If we wait 50 years, wouldn't the technological progress make such an endeavor cheaper, safer?

And the counterpoint is, well... it's been 50 years since apollo and still we don't have the ability to get to mars, so if there's nothing driving the technology then it doesn't just magically happen, and there's nothing to say that it will magically happen in another fifty years either.

To me, it's not the natural extinction events that are driving this, but the thinking that there is a short window of perhaps 200 years between technological enlightenment (particularly in nuclear and biological engineering) where the risk of self-annihilition is considerably increased, and the only way to decrease it is to add the redundancy.

To be sure, we will not achieve redundancy during the first decades or even perhaps centuries of this colonization. I think that terraforming needs to happen first

Post reply on HN