The thing I keep thinking about is: If my understanding of tech history is correct, we usually hit rapid bursts of advancement just when we're predicting slow, plodding progress. If we can start establishing waypoints with refueling stations and such, I feel like even if we don't find "lush Edens" (and we won't) nearby, we'll get this shit down to a habit pretty quickly and will begin rapid expansion deeper into space.
It wouldn't surprise me, in 50 years, to look back and think, "Shit, we had no idea back in 2012 how far we'd be by now."
If you want to build a Space Elevator instead, it would require something 3 times stronger than a Carbon Nanotube.
Wikipedia says you are wrong.
. Recent concepts for a space elevator are notable for their plans to use carbon nanotube or boron nitride nanotube based materials as the tensile element in the tether design, since the measured strength of carbon nanotubes appears great enough to make this possible.[2]
It's not entirely straight-forward. Nanotubes may be strong enough, but it depends on the shear stress on the thousands-of-kilometers-long cable. You have to make it thick enough to withstand that, but the thicker you make it, the higher its tensile strength has to be because it has to support more mass. I think wikipedia says that for a 1mm square cable you need something like 100 MN/km/kg strength, which is a bit over twice what you get with a multi-wall nanotube. But you may not need a cable that's 1mm square. And nobody has ever actually made a wire several thousand kilometers long and hung it up in the air to see what happens. We can predict the gravitational effects along its length pretty well, but the lateral forces due to changes in air pressure and wind and so forth are a little less solid.
Then there's the issue of building something that can haul itself up a wire that's 1mm across and, essentially, perfectly smooth.
But it's not definitely possible or impossible with nanotubes at this point.
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.
But you, and a lot of other people, seem to think it's inevitable that we'll go to space, and that it's only a question of when, so us negative-nancies are just delaying things by getting in your way. That's ridiculous. There's no prophecy from God saying that we're guaranteed to live in outer space someday. We've already proved that it's impossible to travel faster than light, and it's quite likely that we'll discover other fundamental physics laws that make it impossible for us to live on other planets. Maybe it could happen in the far distant future, with tech we can't even imagine now, but that's just a fantasy. I want people to let go of their fantasies and think rationally about how to solve the current problems, that threaten us with extinction this century.
I don't really understand where you're getting the bold part. I have advanced degrees in physics; I can't think of a single reason to believe that it's true. Probability alone dictates that there are almost certainly planets with gravitational and atmospheric makeups nigh-identical to ours in our galaxy. Getting to them might be an issue, but there's no reason to believe that we're going to discover a law of physics that prevents us living there. I don't even know what such a law would look like. What, are you expecting that there's some kind of Space Radiation that induces the photoelectric effect on human skin with a work function low enough to turn us all into very bright, very short-lived lightbulbs?
I don't have time to get into this right now, but I was thinking more along the lines of small details that simply make the engineering impossible. Like, if you want to set up a mars base, it would require moving so much equipment that we might not have enough rocket fuel on earth to launch it all into space. If you want to build a Space Elevator instead, it would require something 3 times stronger than a Carbon Nanotube. If you want to launch with fusion power instead, you first have to solve a problem that physicists have been working on for like 60 years now are still nowhere close to solving. Some people have faith that technology can eventually overcome any obstacle... I do not.
The engineering difficulties are daunting. But they are engineering problems, not fundamental laws of physics that are working against people.
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.
One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.
Well, to be fair, we haven't colonized the galaxy either.
Still I am massively excited for this, mostly because it doesn't actually seem impossible. Just expensive.
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.
One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.
Tons of civilizations have stagnated. No reason humanity as a whole can't do it.
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.
One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.
Tons of civilizations have stagnated. No reason humanity as a whole can't do it.
Not on a large enough timescale they haven't. In the long run you change or you die.
The thing I keep thinking about is: If my understanding of tech history is correct, we usually hit rapid bursts of advancement just when we're predicting slow, plodding progress. If we can start establishing waypoints with refueling stations and such, I feel like even if we don't find "lush Edens" (and we won't) nearby, we'll get this shit down to a habit pretty quickly and will begin rapid expansion deeper into space.
It wouldn't surprise me, in 50 years, to look back and think, "Shit, we had no idea back in 2012 how far we'd be by now."
The history of technical development has been roughly exponential, but it really depends on how you define your metrics for 'technical development'. Most of the historical anecdotes about scientists thinking they had it all figured out and it'd just be details from there on out are BS.
The thing I keep thinking about is: If my understanding of tech history is correct, we usually hit rapid bursts of advancement just when we're predicting slow, plodding progress. If we can start establishing waypoints with refueling stations and such, I feel like even if we don't find "lush Edens" (and we won't) nearby, we'll get this shit down to a habit pretty quickly and will begin rapid expansion deeper into space.
It wouldn't surprise me, in 50 years, to look back and think, "Shit, we had no idea back in 2012 how far we'd be by now."
Imagine you were back in 1903 and we were just now getting off the ground in a meaningful way. Imagine the possibilities! Is one of those landing on the freaking moon?
I love living in an age where so much is changing so fast. When I went to bed last night the thought that there would be a company seriously talking about mining asteroids was still at least 5-10+ years away, this morning it has happened.
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.
One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.
Tons of civilizations have stagnated. No reason humanity as a whole can't do it.
Not on a large enough timescale they haven't. In the long run you change or you die.
On a large enough timescale, humanity is guaranteed to be screwed. Nothing wrong with humanity stagnating and dieing. It has to happen eventually.
I might be speaking for myself, but I would say stagnation is against our nature. It could happen but we will tend to resist it. We are just too curious to be satisfied with simply managing here on Earth. Eventually we have to ask, what is the point in being if we don't keep pushing the boundaries?
For more practical consideration, eventually there will be a supervolcano or asteroid impact. There will be. It is only a matter of time. At that point, if we are not independent of the biosphere of Earth, we run the risk of civilization collapsing. If that were to happen, we might not get it back.
I might be speaking for myself, but I would say stagnation is against our nature. It could happen but we will tend to resist it. We are just too curious to be satisfied with simply managing here on Earth. Eventually we have to ask, what is the point in being if we don't keep pushing the boundaries?
For more practical consideration, eventually there will be a supervolcano or asteroid impact. There will be. It is only a matter of time. At that point, if we are not independent of the biosphere of Earth, we run the risk of civilization collapsing. If that were to happen, we might not get it back.
We wouldn't care, we'd still be free. You can't take the sky from we.
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.
One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.
That's not true. Though the periods of stagnation and decline that immediately come to mind are caused by massive population decline (eg: western europe in the 4th-9th centuries, the eastern mediterranean + mesopotamia in the 12th - 7th centuries BCE, the Americas in the 16th century etc...).
That's not true. Though the periods of stagnation and decline that immediately come to mind are caused by massive population decline (eg: western europe in the 4th-9th centuries, the eastern mediterranean + mesopotamia in the 12th - 7th centuries BCE, the Americas in the 16th century etc...).
The point was that those are discrete populations, not the whole species at once.
That aside, I'm too giddy right now to let all you naysayers bring me down!
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.
One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.
things getting much much worse also isn't stagnation, though
Oh come on, are you guys really falling for this? This isnt the start of some glorious new space age. This is just a bunch of billionaires pooling their money to see what kind of cool spaceship they can build to show off.
I'd be strangely comfortable with this.
Edit: and this is seriously cool. I support the endeavor, doubly so if it's being funded by obscenely wealthy people who recognize that it's not necessarily about the money, but about advancing science. I'm sure there'll be oversight to minimize waste, but who knows what kind of advances we'll spark with this kind of endeavor. That's the best part!
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. It's encouraging that a company is going to be actively working towards mining asteroids, because the rewards are so great, but getting into space is, well, hard. And prohibitively expensive. We have billionaires throwing money at space-related ventures already, with mixed results. Just ask Jeff Bezos. If Planetary Resources gets a telescope into LEO in two years I will be very impressed.
What we really need is a sustainable business model for private companies to make money in space, then the floodgates can really open.
I just want space tourism to become affordable in my lifetime. I expect mostly unmanned resource gathering and scientific missions farther into the solar system to be most of what I might see in my lifetime. Those would be pretty decent accomplishments and do a lot for expanding our knowledge of the universe.
I just want space tourism to become affordable in my lifetime. I expect mostly unmanned resource gathering and scientific missions farther into the solar system to be most of what I might see in my lifetime. Those would be pretty decent accomplishments and do a lot for expanding our knowledge of the universe.
Ahhhhh, I see. Yeah, I agree that we're not putting people on Alpha Centauri (or probably even Mars) in our lifetime. More space stations and/or a small Lunar base might not be out of the question, though.
Nothing wrong with humanity stagnating and dieing.
Exactly what would have to occur for something to be wrong then? Not to be harsh, but that's some pretty strong BS. Its like saying "yeah well everyone dies so there's nothing wrong with dropping this one year old out a window."
This is really cool, and I'm actually pretty surprised that this is happening through private rather than public investment (because of the whole profit issue).
For more practical consideration, eventually there will be a supervolcano or asteroid impact. There will be. It is only a matter of time. At that point, if we are not independent of the biosphere of Earth, we run the risk of civilization collapsing. If that were to happen, we might not get it back.
Or on an even longer scale, even if we manage to be lucky and avoid all of that, the earth will eventually be roasted or swallowed entirely when our sun goes red giant. If we're not out of here by then, we're gone.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
It is also worth noting that the techs and processes that this company will be investing in are exactly those that would be needed to prevent an asteroid impact. Even if the asteroid mining doesn't work out, these people are contributing directly to dealing with a very real threat to human civilization.
This is really cool, and I'm actually pretty surprised that this is happening through private rather than public investment (because of the whole profit issue).
For more practical consideration, eventually there will be a supervolcano or asteroid impact. There will be. It is only a matter of time. At that point, if we are not independent of the biosphere of Earth, we run the risk of civilization collapsing. If that were to happen, we might not get it back.
Or on an even longer scale, even if we manage to be lucky and avoid all of that, the earth will eventually be roasted or swallowed entirely when our sun goes red giant. If we're not out of here by then, we're gone.
Comparing something that won't happen for billions of years to something that WILL happen within a couple hundred seems disingenuous.
Nothing wrong with humanity stagnating and dieing.
Exactly what would have to occur for something to be wrong then? Not to be harsh, but that's some pretty strong BS. Its like saying "yeah well everyone dies so there's nothing wrong with dropping this one year old out a window."
Nothing wrong with dieing if it really isn't feasible to prevent the death. All of the planets and moons in the solar system suck as far as potential habitability go. The chances of finding a habitable or easily made habitable planet within feasible distances even assuming near light speed would make finding one pretty amazing.
This is an excellent explanation of what this company is actually going to be doing. Which is very different from what most of the posts in this thread are talking about.
Nothing wrong with humanity stagnating and dieing.
Exactly what would have to occur for something to be wrong then? Not to be harsh, but that's some pretty strong BS. Its like saying "yeah well everyone dies so there's nothing wrong with dropping this one year old out a window."
Nothing wrong with dieing if it really isn't feasible to prevent the death. All of the planets and moons in the solar system suck as far as potential habitability go. The chances of finding a habitable or easily made habitable planet within feasible distances even assuming near light speed would make finding one pretty amazing.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Everyone dies someday, but we still make medical scientific progression and auto safety requirements. Hell, in the last century the average lifespan went up nearly 20 years because of scientific advancement.
Better to try and fail than never try at all.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Nothing wrong with humanity stagnating and dieing.
Exactly what would have to occur for something to be wrong then? Not to be harsh, but that's some pretty strong BS. Its like saying "yeah well everyone dies so there's nothing wrong with dropping this one year old out a window."
Nothing wrong with dieing if it really isn't feasible to prevent the death. All of the planets and moons in the solar system suck as far as potential habitability go. The chances of finding a habitable or easily made habitable planet within feasible distances even assuming near light speed would make finding one pretty amazing.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Everyone dies someday, but we still make medical scientific progression and auto safety requirements. Hell, in the last century the average lifespan went up nearly 20 years because of scientific advancement.
Better to try and fail than never try at all.
Futile treatment is needless.
Assuming you find a planet teeming with life, you would have to create a generation ship and somehow make sure they all don't painfully die of diseases when they get there. I'm not really sure how you could solve that second issue.
This is an excellent explanation of what this company is actually going to be doing. Which is very different from what most of the posts in this thread are talking about.
I like how they seem to be realistic in trying to keep all the steps useful. At least they admit it doesn't necessarily make hard financial sense.
Mars and Venus are habitable with future engineering. And who knows how many space stations we could build with robots and resources mined from asteroids.
Earth-like planets outside of our solar system are still quite a way off. I think we should just worry about just getting off of Earth to start with, and that is definitely doable.
This is an excellent explanation of what this company is actually going to be doing. Which is very different from what most of the posts in this thread are talking about.
That artilce makes me feel much better about this idea.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
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.
One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.
Tons of civilizations have stagnated. No reason humanity as a whole can't do it.
Not on a large enough timescale they haven't. In the long run you change or you die.
On a large enough timescale, humanity is guaranteed to be screwed. Nothing wrong with humanity stagnating and dieing. It has to happen eventually.
I'm sure you'll forgive the rest of us for disagreeing.
As I have mentioned previously, habitable planets aren't necessary. If sufficiently cheap space launch technology comes about that can move so many people and so much start-up hardware out of Earth orbit that you can consider colonization, going about building a station or moon/mars colony would be at that point extremely feasible. Even the gravity problem is solvable on low-mass moons/planets, even if it's a bit brain-bending. It's all about getting out of the gravity well.
As I have mentioned previously, habitable planets aren't necessary. If sufficiently cheap space launch technology comes about that can move so many people and so much start-up hardware out of Earth orbit that you can consider colonization, going about building a station or moon/mars colony would be at that point extremely feasible. Even the gravity problem is solvable on low-mass moons/planets, even if it's a bit brain-bending. It's all about getting out of the gravity well.
That and figuring out a good way to protect us from radiation.
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It wouldn't surprise me, in 50 years, to look back and think, "Shit, we had no idea back in 2012 how far we'd be by now."
It's not entirely straight-forward. Nanotubes may be strong enough, but it depends on the shear stress on the thousands-of-kilometers-long cable. You have to make it thick enough to withstand that, but the thicker you make it, the higher its tensile strength has to be because it has to support more mass. I think wikipedia says that for a 1mm square cable you need something like 100 MN/km/kg strength, which is a bit over twice what you get with a multi-wall nanotube. But you may not need a cable that's 1mm square. And nobody has ever actually made a wire several thousand kilometers long and hung it up in the air to see what happens. We can predict the gravitational effects along its length pretty well, but the lateral forces due to changes in air pressure and wind and so forth are a little less solid.
Then there's the issue of building something that can haul itself up a wire that's 1mm across and, essentially, perfectly smooth.
But it's not definitely possible or impossible with nanotubes at this point.
The engineering difficulties are daunting. But they are engineering problems, not fundamental laws of physics that are working against people.
There is a difference between those two things.
Well, to be fair, we haven't colonized the galaxy either.
Still I am massively excited for this, mostly because it doesn't actually seem impossible. Just expensive.
Not on a large enough timescale they haven't. In the long run you change or you die.
The history of technical development has been roughly exponential, but it really depends on how you define your metrics for 'technical development'. Most of the historical anecdotes about scientists thinking they had it all figured out and it'd just be details from there on out are BS.
Humanity plays the Game of Thrones.
Imagine you were back in 1903 and we were just now getting off the ground in a meaningful way. Imagine the possibilities! Is one of those landing on the freaking moon?
I love living in an age where so much is changing so fast. When I went to bed last night the thought that there would be a company seriously talking about mining asteroids was still at least 5-10+ years away, this morning it has happened.
On a large enough timescale, humanity is guaranteed to be screwed. Nothing wrong with humanity stagnating and dieing. It has to happen eventually.
For more practical consideration, eventually there will be a supervolcano or asteroid impact. There will be. It is only a matter of time. At that point, if we are not independent of the biosphere of Earth, we run the risk of civilization collapsing. If that were to happen, we might not get it back.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
We wouldn't care, we'd still be free. You can't take the sky from we.
That's not true. Though the periods of stagnation and decline that immediately come to mind are caused by massive population decline (eg: western europe in the 4th-9th centuries, the eastern mediterranean + mesopotamia in the 12th - 7th centuries BCE, the Americas in the 16th century etc...).
The point was that those are discrete populations, not the whole species at once.
That aside, I'm too giddy right now to let all you naysayers bring me down!
I'd be strangely comfortable with this.
Edit: and this is seriously cool. I support the endeavor, doubly so if it's being funded by obscenely wealthy people who recognize that it's not necessarily about the money, but about advancing science. I'm sure there'll be oversight to minimize waste, but who knows what kind of advances we'll spark with this kind of endeavor. That's the best part!
I'll have to be happy sitting and watching everything unfold. This is pretty amazing all around.
In between her birth and death, she saw:
The development of Antibiotics. Nearly eliminating diseases that have plagued mankind for centuries.
The Birth of the computer and the beginning of the internet. (ARPANET in 1968).
The Green revolution that made it possible to feed a world.
Aircraft going from biplanes to jumbo jets.(Boeing 747 Febuary 9, 1969).
The development of the nuclear bomb and its harnessing into nuclear power.
AND Rocketry advanced enough to land a man on the moon and return him.
Want to know what is most amazing? All of the above happened/started before she turned 50!
Impossible my ass.
What we really need is a sustainable business model for private companies to make money in space, then the floodgates can really open.
Ahhhhh, I see. Yeah, I agree that we're not putting people on Alpha Centauri (or probably even Mars) in our lifetime. More space stations and/or a small Lunar base might not be out of the question, though.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Exactly what would have to occur for something to be wrong then? Not to be harsh, but that's some pretty strong BS. Its like saying "yeah well everyone dies so there's nothing wrong with dropping this one year old out a window."
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Or on an even longer scale, even if we manage to be lucky and avoid all of that, the earth will eventually be roasted or swallowed entirely when our sun goes red giant. If we're not out of here by then, we're gone.
Comparing something that won't happen for billions of years to something that WILL happen within a couple hundred seems disingenuous.
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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/04/24/breaking-private-company-does-indeed-plan-to-mine-asteroids-and-i-think-they-can-do-it/#more-47859
This is an excellent explanation of what this company is actually going to be doing. Which is very different from what most of the posts in this thread are talking about.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Everyone dies someday, but we still make medical scientific progression and auto safety requirements. Hell, in the last century the average lifespan went up nearly 20 years because of scientific advancement.
Better to try and fail than never try at all.
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Futile treatment is needless.
Assuming you find a planet teeming with life, you would have to create a generation ship and somehow make sure they all don't painfully die of diseases when they get there. I'm not really sure how you could solve that second issue.
I like how they seem to be realistic in trying to keep all the steps useful. At least they admit it doesn't necessarily make hard financial sense.
Earth-like planets outside of our solar system are still quite a way off. I think we should just worry about just getting off of Earth to start with, and that is definitely doable.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
That artilce makes me feel much better about this idea.
I'm sure you'll forgive the rest of us for disagreeing.
That and figuring out a good way to protect us from radiation.