Sure. But I will mock all the people who think that this is about to suddenly about to end all resource constraints on Earth, or who think that James Cameron is some kind of God amongst men.
Your nay-saying displeases me.
You are right that it won't end resource constraints on Earth, and it certainly won't do so suddenly.
But if no one takes the first step, then things never get done. We can't just wait until it is 'easy' because it won't be easy until we have the tech, which we won't have until someone decides to actually try....
Having someone who is super rich actually pony up that money for something inspiring, and trying to kickstart a new phase in human existence (for any reason) instead of just spending it on more houses and drugs and shit is something worth getting excited about.
I don't think anyone will claim Cameron is some sort of god among men.
But let's face it--this is as "internet cool" as things get. And we are on the internet.
And if this does go anywhere--which I'm kind of convinced it won't, but I'm a pessimist--and does end up being that first step to move resource consumption beyond Earth (when I put it like that, it sounds kind of sad), Cameron and any other really rich dude who poured their own money into it, in an age of capitalistic "you want it, go fucking do it yourself" mindset, will be owed some credit.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
The press conference started badly, but it's improved.
Right now they are hammering home the industrial importance of rare materials (like platinum) with comparison to aluminium and how its sudden availability change the world.
He also wants to use asteroid ice to fuel space-craft. That takes energy. Lots of energy. I hope he gets back to that.
They say they'll launch a prospector within 24 months
Mojo_Jojo on
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Setting up fueling depots off the mined asteroids in space to open up waypoints for deep space exploration?
ALLL MY DICKS!
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Sure. Convincing 90% of the world population to commit suicide and the remaining 10% to turn to low-impact agriculture and stone-age technology seems like a cinch. 'cause any technology dependent upon the a chemical process acting on a raw resources, which is all of them that aren't stone tools, is going to eventually run out of raw materials.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Yeah, standard of living is one of those things where once you have it, you aren't giving it up, and while the population is expected to stabilize in like 50 years, 10 billion people is a lot, and most of them are parsecs away from a US/Euro standard of living.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
Profitability doesn't strike me as the reason for this, but that's ok... If it never turns a profit it's still amazing.
There is an asteroid out there with the equivalent of trillions of dollars of platinum that passes close enough to us to be doable.
Of course, this skirts the real problem of platinum becoming worthless if there were millions of tons of it.
But it opens the possibility of using platinum pretty much everywhere it's needed. Cheaper, better batteries? Slap some more platinum in!
Right.
Like I said later, I am not worried about the cost of the metal bottoming out per se... more that I want the people funding this project to be rewarded HANDSOMELY. I want risks that advance our society/knowledge/technology (as opposed to risks that fuck over the poor) to be the kind that attract our wealthiest investors.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
We'll only stagnate until (you pick: an asteroid wipes out all life on the planet, a new virus evolves that kills all primates but lives in happy symbiosis with all other mammals, aliens that didn't stagnate arrive to add our planet to their von Neumann fleet, an algal bloom or super-clorophyl plant species of some sort completely destroys our food supply while living quite happily as the new dominant species on Earth, etc.). Then we all die. That's why it's space or death; we don't have to actively kill ourselves to die here.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
Stagnation is also the choice which will - with 100% certainty - lead to the eventual extinction of mankind.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
Stagnation is also the choice which will - with 100% certainty - lead to the eventual extinction of mankind.
I thought it was relatively obvious to everyone that extinction is our endgame.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
Stagnation is also the choice which will - with 100% certainty - lead to the eventual extinction of mankind.
I thought it was relatively obvious to everyone that extinction is our endgame.
There are certainly different time scales for it, though. We can't outlast the heat death of the universe, probably, but there's no reason we couldn't (in some form) outlast our sun.
PSN,Steam,Live | CptHamiltonian
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
A ha! The three types of craft are now on their website.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
We'll only stagnate until (you pick: an asteroid wipes out all life on the planet, a new virus evolves that kills all primates but lives in happy symbiosis with all other mammals, aliens that didn't stagnate arrive to add our planet to their von Neumann fleet, an algal bloom or super-clorophyl plant species of some sort completely destroys our food supply while living quite happily as the new dominant species on Earth, etc.). Then we all die. That's why it's space or death; we don't have to actively kill ourselves to die here.
So, basically your logic is:
1) Having all humans live on Earth will, eventually (within a billion years at most) lead to humans going extinct
2) It it is impossible for humans to go extinct, because that would be really bad, and nothing really bad ever happens
3) Therefore some super smart genius like James Cameron and his friends will invent a warp drive and a terraforming device and take us to live on another planet
I feel like you're overlooking an obvious possibility- if humans aren't smart enough to avoid killing ourselves with carbon dioxide poisoning, we're probably not smart enough to invent a warp drive.
Well we're certainly not going to develop something like a warp drive if we never try. I don't know about you, but I have literally dreamed of space, space exploration and other worlds for a couple decades now. Striving for space may be an irrational decision, but I still think we have to try.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Is this a joke? Or a viral ad for a film? Or some shit like that?
I don't think so. I had a look and it seems to be legit. Here's a link to a guy who seems to agree. And another.
You can easily dig up thoughts on how top mine asteroids. Like here. Generally, you want to process it all in space, then drop some kind of metallic foam down to earth (if you inject liquid metal with nitrogen you can fairly easily make floating masses, so they'd just sit on the sea until you went to pick them up).
So I had a short conversation with another guy here in the lab about this, and his stance was that it's a complete waste of money and we should spend that money on helping out the developing world more instead. To which my only real reply was, "But man, SPACE! Space mining! It's awesome!"
Because it is awesome, and I like living in a world where people are still willing to try spectacular things that have a high chance of failure.
Earth is about to begin suffering critical shortages of rare metals, as prices rise uncontrollably and demand also rises wars will ensue as countries seek to secure dominance over their supplies. Most of the people losing out the most in this rush for resources will be the people of poor countries who do not have the political clout or economic power to secure their rights to their own resources. You can already see this in the rush of Chinese companies to buy mining rights across Africa from governments whose lack of accountability means that they didn't really have the right to sell those resources in perpetuity to Chinese (and Western) companies. These companies ravage the local ecosystem, bring in their own skilled workers who will leave when they do, and create dependent economies and then when the resources run out just move on out leaving nothing but environmental collapse in their wake.
Mining on earth is very polluting, and operating on a highly limited supply. One of the best decisions we could make environmentally would be to move mining into space and either use them in space, or use very accurate orbital positioning to drop the resources on earth. (Parachute them in 100 tonne blocks into Nevada or something).
Scarcity, inneficiency and corruption create inequality. By addressing scarcity of resource supply we can move towards solving the problem of poverty.
Also, when someone brings back a 100,000 tonne asteroid made out of 95% gold we can finally have the satisfaction of seeing Ron Pauls head explode.
The part I italicized made me think of ecological disaster in the making but the part bolded made me wonder if it could work.
As near as I can tell, the more valuable place for space mined raw materials is space itself, since getting stuff out of our gravity well at this time is so crazily expensive to accomplish, let alone maintain. Hell, can we have a moon base already? How about Mars? Don't really mind stuff getting dropped on things we don't rely upon to live, unless that would change the tides or the moon's orbit or something.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
We'll only stagnate until (you pick: an asteroid wipes out all life on the planet, a new virus evolves that kills all primates but lives in happy symbiosis with all other mammals, aliens that didn't stagnate arrive to add our planet to their von Neumann fleet, an algal bloom or super-clorophyl plant species of some sort completely destroys our food supply while living quite happily as the new dominant species on Earth, etc.). Then we all die. That's why it's space or death; we don't have to actively kill ourselves to die here.
So, basically your logic is:
1) Having all humans live on Earth will, eventually (within a billion years at most) lead to humans going extinct
2) It it is impossible for humans to go extinct, because that would be really bad, and nothing really bad ever happens
3) Therefore some super smart genius like James Cameron and his friends will invent a warp drive and a terraforming device and take us to live on another planet
I feel like you're overlooking an obvious possibility- if humans aren't smart enough to avoid killing ourselves with carbon dioxide poisoning, we're probably not smart enough to invent a warp drive.
Well, no. I never said that going to space would save us. We'll die eventually, even in a best-case scenario. But going to space vastly increases our odds of survival, and pushes out the best-case-scenario time limit on our species.
I don't know where you got that I, or the person you replied to originally, thought that humanity couldn't go extinct. That's kind of why it was phrased as "space or death". Even in space we'll almost certainly die eventually, but if we stay here to odds rise from 99.(lots of 9's)% to 100% that we're extinct.
The first miners will discover a species of alien that gestates inside the chests of other species, then instead of bursting forth in a shower of blood, exits with the next bowel movement to begin providing its host with rainbows and kittens.
Maybe if I inject space manufacturing dust (For Science!) I'll get biotics.
Seriously though, I think the future of the human race is outside of our atmosphere and this is a thing that needs to happen. Maybe we need a Kickstarter rocket program.
No need... we're already far down the path of privatizing rocketry.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
I don't get it. This kind of thinking is so strange to me. How can you be so sure what the future will be like? You're extrapolating waaaaaay into the future and speculating about technology that doesn't exist outside of science fiction.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
Or we could, you know, take better care of the environment and adapt to a way of life that doesn't depending on exponentially increasing our comsumption of resources. That's probably easier than interstellar space flight and colonization.
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
We'll only stagnate until (you pick: an asteroid wipes out all life on the planet, a new virus evolves that kills all primates but lives in happy symbiosis with all other mammals, aliens that didn't stagnate arrive to add our planet to their von Neumann fleet, an algal bloom or super-clorophyl plant species of some sort completely destroys our food supply while living quite happily as the new dominant species on Earth, etc.). Then we all die. That's why it's space or death; we don't have to actively kill ourselves to die here.
So, basically your logic is:
1) Having all humans live on Earth will, eventually (within a billion years at most) lead to humans going extinct
2) It it is impossible for humans to go extinct, because that would be really bad, and nothing really bad ever happens
3) Therefore some super smart genius like James Cameron and his friends will invent a warp drive and a terraforming device and take us to live on another planet
I feel like you're overlooking an obvious possibility- if humans aren't smart enough to avoid killing ourselves with carbon dioxide poisoning, we're probably not smart enough to invent a warp drive.
While I do think at some point (although im thinking thousands not hundreds of years) humans will begin colonizing other planets in serious numbers, like millions and billions, I think it will be intrasolar (mars, the moon, artificial orbital habitats) for anything approaching the forseeable future
But I do believe we will need to begin exploiting extraterrestrial resources long before that, asteroid mining is not impossible, the answers to the technical challenges are just out of view, and there is so much to be gained.
Asteroid mining makes economic expansion in space significantly more viable, as many heavy materials need not be brought up from earth. I do agree Pi-r8 that people are too quick to jump on the "expand or die" train. The earth could support many times its current population if we grew food in towering gardens, no soil needed, more advanced water reclamation and preservation technology, energy didn't rely on fossil fuels, and we obtained rarer and diminishing elements from asteroids.
Basically when someone looks at the moon and says "That'd be a great place for a colony! humanity is destroying the earth and we need more habitable space!", well that's kind of nuts in and off itself, the earth is significantly more habitable than the moon and would be even if we blew up all our nuclear weapons and dumped plutonium in all the lakes.
It would be easier to take the most desolate and arid regions of the earth livable for an additional billion people than it would be to put 10,000 people on the moon
Profitability doesn't strike me as the reason for this, but that's ok... If it never turns a profit it's still amazing.
There is an asteroid out there with the equivalent of trillions of dollars of platinum that passes close enough to us to be doable.
Of course, this skirts the real problem of platinum becoming worthless if there were millions of tons of it.
But it opens the possibility of using platinum pretty much everywhere it's needed. Cheaper, better batteries? Slap some more platinum in!
Right.
Like I said later, I am not worried about the cost of the metal bottoming out per se... more that I want the people funding this project to be rewarded HANDSOMELY. I want risks that advance our society/knowledge/technology (as opposed to risks that fuck over the poor) to be the kind that attract our wealthiest investors.
Oh I think if someone manages to mine an asteroid and get more precious and rare metals than even exist in the crust of the earth they will be handsomely rewarded. Anyone who cornered the market on gold, platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, and such all at once would probably be a step away from declaring themselves emperor of mankind.
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Because being a miner on Earth wasn't dangerous enough.
Your nay-saying displeases me.
You are right that it won't end resource constraints on Earth, and it certainly won't do so suddenly.
But if no one takes the first step, then things never get done. We can't just wait until it is 'easy' because it won't be easy until we have the tech, which we won't have until someone decides to actually try....
Having someone who is super rich actually pony up that money for something inspiring, and trying to kickstart a new phase in human existence (for any reason) instead of just spending it on more houses and drugs and shit is something worth getting excited about.
But let's face it--this is as "internet cool" as things get. And we are on the internet.
And if this does go anywhere--which I'm kind of convinced it won't, but I'm a pessimist--and does end up being that first step to move resource consumption beyond Earth (when I put it like that, it sounds kind of sad), Cameron and any other really rich dude who poured their own money into it, in an age of capitalistic "you want it, go fucking do it yourself" mindset, will be owed some credit.
So cynical!
Maybe all this does is bring attention back to space exploration, but even that is a positive to me.
I would love to see man go to Mars or an asteroid or even back to the moon in my lifetime.
Space is the future. Wether it is 10, 20, or 500 years from now, it's where we are going if we don't destroy ourselves first.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
So far they've largely spoken about setting up a Museum and two of the founders having written a book.
I think space travel is cool too, and I'd love to see another manned mission in my lifetime. But I think the idea that humans will someday colonize the galaxy is roughly as speculative as the idea that we'll someday put aside all differences and live in perfect peace and harmony. The best case you can make for it is that it hasn't yet been proven totally impossible, so maybe someday far in the future it *might* happen. But it's definitely not going to happen in 20 years.
We have to go to space.
We are outgrowing this tiny blue ball.
It's Space or Extinction, and if we don't start soon we'll be so caught up trying not to starve to death that we won't have a chance to get off this rock.
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Right now they are hammering home the industrial importance of rare materials (like platinum) with comparison to aluminium and how its sudden availability change the world.
He also wants to use asteroid ice to fuel space-craft. That takes energy. Lots of energy. I hope he gets back to that.
They say they'll launch a prospector within 24 months
Dude, it's not just a matter of 'being green.' Unless you plan on having robots that go around culling the population, or forcing sterilization, the planet simply cannot support the growing number of people on it.
Eventually, we HAVE to go to space, or stagnate.
ALLL MY DICKS!
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Sure. Convincing 90% of the world population to commit suicide and the remaining 10% to turn to low-impact agriculture and stone-age technology seems like a cinch. 'cause any technology dependent upon the a chemical process acting on a raw resources, which is all of them that aren't stone tools, is going to eventually run out of raw materials.
OK, even if I go along with the ridiculous idea that the only way to stabilize the population is robot genocide...
If the only options are "colonize the galaxy" or "stagnate" well, stagnate is about a million times more likely.
Right.
Like I said later, I am not worried about the cost of the metal bottoming out per se... more that I want the people funding this project to be rewarded HANDSOMELY. I want risks that advance our society/knowledge/technology (as opposed to risks that fuck over the poor) to be the kind that attract our wealthiest investors.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
We'll only stagnate until (you pick: an asteroid wipes out all life on the planet, a new virus evolves that kills all primates but lives in happy symbiosis with all other mammals, aliens that didn't stagnate arrive to add our planet to their von Neumann fleet, an algal bloom or super-clorophyl plant species of some sort completely destroys our food supply while living quite happily as the new dominant species on Earth, etc.). Then we all die. That's why it's space or death; we don't have to actively kill ourselves to die here.
Stagnation is also the choice which will - with 100% certainty - lead to the eventual extinction of mankind.
I thought it was relatively obvious to everyone that extinction is our endgame.
In my most moist dreams
To experience
Is for them to start mining an asteroid
But suddenly
There's already mining equipment on it
There are certainly different time scales for it, though. We can't outlast the heat death of the universe, probably, but there's no reason we couldn't (in some form) outlast our sun.
This is really going to happen.
Fuck yeah.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
So, basically your logic is:
1) Having all humans live on Earth will, eventually (within a billion years at most) lead to humans going extinct
2) It it is impossible for humans to go extinct, because that would be really bad, and nothing really bad ever happens
3) Therefore some super smart genius like James Cameron and his friends will invent a warp drive and a terraforming device and take us to live on another planet
I feel like you're overlooking an obvious possibility- if humans aren't smart enough to avoid killing ourselves with carbon dioxide poisoning, we're probably not smart enough to invent a warp drive.
OK, Doc Brown. Sign me up.
Become a robot.
They aren't sending people for a looong time.
NASA will be sending men to asteroids in 2025, but there will (possibly) be full-on mining operations happening by then.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
The part I italicized made me think of ecological disaster in the making but the part bolded made me wonder if it could work.
As near as I can tell, the more valuable place for space mined raw materials is space itself, since getting stuff out of our gravity well at this time is so crazily expensive to accomplish, let alone maintain. Hell, can we have a moon base already? How about Mars? Don't really mind stuff getting dropped on things we don't rely upon to live, unless that would change the tides or the moon's orbit or something.
Bad Astronomy has a decent intro, he'll be posting more details after this press conference thing.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/04/24/breaking-private-company-does-indeed-plan-to-mine-asteroids-and-i-think-they-can-do-it/
Well, no. I never said that going to space would save us. We'll die eventually, even in a best-case scenario. But going to space vastly increases our odds of survival, and pushes out the best-case-scenario time limit on our species.
I don't know where you got that I, or the person you replied to originally, thought that humanity couldn't go extinct. That's kind of why it was phrased as "space or death". Even in space we'll almost certainly die eventually, but if we stay here to odds rise from 99.(lots of 9's)% to 100% that we're extinct.
No need... we're already far down the path of privatizing rocketry.
http://www.spacex.com/
Careers
While I do think at some point (although im thinking thousands not hundreds of years) humans will begin colonizing other planets in serious numbers, like millions and billions, I think it will be intrasolar (mars, the moon, artificial orbital habitats) for anything approaching the forseeable future
But I do believe we will need to begin exploiting extraterrestrial resources long before that, asteroid mining is not impossible, the answers to the technical challenges are just out of view, and there is so much to be gained.
Asteroid mining makes economic expansion in space significantly more viable, as many heavy materials need not be brought up from earth. I do agree Pi-r8 that people are too quick to jump on the "expand or die" train. The earth could support many times its current population if we grew food in towering gardens, no soil needed, more advanced water reclamation and preservation technology, energy didn't rely on fossil fuels, and we obtained rarer and diminishing elements from asteroids.
Basically when someone looks at the moon and says "That'd be a great place for a colony! humanity is destroying the earth and we need more habitable space!", well that's kind of nuts in and off itself, the earth is significantly more habitable than the moon and would be even if we blew up all our nuclear weapons and dumped plutonium in all the lakes.
It would be easier to take the most desolate and arid regions of the earth livable for an additional billion people than it would be to put 10,000 people on the moon
Oh I think if someone manages to mine an asteroid and get more precious and rare metals than even exist in the crust of the earth they will be handsomely rewarded. Anyone who cornered the market on gold, platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, and such all at once would probably be a step away from declaring themselves emperor of mankind.