Additionally, this isn't exactly Star Trek levels of technology we're talking about. The Near Earth Asteroids, the asteroid belt between Mars & Jupiter, plus the Kuiper belt consist of mindbogglingly large amounts of material. If we should develop the technology to do so (both to mine them and to get people up there), it would be possible to comfortably support many hundreds of times the population of the Earth via space stations with habitable environments. It would, however, take a good long while to get to where you could support even a small town-sized population.
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.
Is it rational to sail west into uncharted waters in the hopes that MAYBE there is a sea route to India? Fuck no it isn't.
Is it rational to pack up your family and travel into a foreign land filled with none of the niceities of civilization and a lot of dysentary? Not in the least.
Is it rational to send some guys named Neil and Buzz to the moon? Nope!
Sometimes you just gotta say screw rational and DREAM a little.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
We have proven that we cannot directly go from point A to point B faster than light.
There are a multitude of other possible ways to subvert that rule. Things we have not even thought of yet.
But again, none of that is relevant for the current conversation, which is that we can be mining in-solar system asteroids for precious resources and fuel in 8 years. And some of the brightest minds and most successful people in the world from Google and Microsoft execs to Ross Perot Jr. to James Cameron to former Join Chiefs to MIT Physicists think this is a realistic goal worth investing their time and money into.
So yeah, you are being a negative nancy when this much real, powerful brain and wealth-share is getting behind the idea.
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.
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.
Its fine that you're not a fan of space travel, but you're out of your depth with statements like that.
All this is is a start. An idea to a start, even. It could go wrong in a thousand ways, or most likely before anything even gets launched. But its a very good idea, especially the part about mining fuel for other spacecraft. Thats actually a decent way to make money.
But the creators of this endevour themselves say it will be decades before they could even think of turning a profit from this. At first it will be exploration, surveying, and building infrastructure. From there.... well, we'll have to see.
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?
It's inevitable that we'll go to space or we'll die. Assuming that we'll go extinct isn't very useful for any sort of discussion of the future, any more than assuming you'll die is useful for talking about your day. "I'm out of milk, so I'm going to the store this afternoon...unless I die first."
I don't really understand the mindset that people should stop thinking about space exploration/colonization, or about any other scientific pursuit, because we have other problems. It's not like the aerospace engineers and astrophysicists focused on space research are going to contribute meaningfully if they switch gears and start thinking about feeding the hungry in Africa. We have enough people, and potentially enough resources (if we can stop spending them all on bullshit and trying to kill one another) to fund both research into fixing our current problems and whatever else we might want to do as a species. We don't have to pick one or the other.
Basically, "For the past 50 years, science fiction has been writing about a small start-up company changing the world in one fell stroke like you're proposing to do. How does that inform your presentation today?"
So, for those who couldn't listen in, they anticipate that this venture will pretty much be purely robotic; no reason to send people into space to mine asteroids when robots can do it much more cheaply and safely. Boo.
That being said, the EFFECTS of this project, if successful, should make the colonization of space much easier. Just being able to have access to water that you didn't have to drag out of Earth's gravity well is awesome.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
So, for those who couldn't listen in, they anticipate that this venture will pretty much be purely robotic; no reason to send people into space to mine asteroids when robots can do it much more cheaply and safely. Boo.
That being said, the EFFECTS of this project, if successful, should make the colonization of space much easier. Just being able to have access to water that you didn't have to drag out of Earth's gravity well is awesome.
right. They are also going to be pairing up with NASA, who plans to have manned asteroid missions by 2025. The info they collect for their unmanned mining operations will be invaluable to the manned stuff the government plans to do. Even going so far as to assist in picking the right asteroid for their walks.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
So how expensive will the stuff have to be to be profitable considering the huge costs?
they spoke a bit about platinum, and how the current price per ounce to bring it in from space is less than the market price right now. Thing is, a lot of this stuff doesn't HAVE to come back to earth in mass quantities. They can introduce the rare and precious materials to earth, while stockpiling the iron, nickel, gold and water in space for future construction.
Yeah, I went there.
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Just the plan to send a swarm of robots to take a close look at asteroids is well above the scope of anything we've attempted in space before. Sure, we can send one robot to Mars, but what will we need to change in order to send 1000 to different asteroids? How could, say, the communication and AI needed to coordinate that be applied here on Earth?
That's what I'm excited about in this, because we don't know what will spin out of it.
So, for those who couldn't listen in, they anticipate that this venture will pretty much be purely robotic; no reason to send people into space to mine asteroids when robots can do it much more cheaply and safely. Boo.
That being said, the EFFECTS of this project, if successful, should make the colonization of space much easier. Just being able to have access to water that you didn't have to drag out of Earth's gravity well is awesome.
There really isn't any place that makes sense to colonize outside of mining for rare minerals.
cause if not, why not just send these robots to mars?
It sounded like yes. They were talking about asteroids that end up being really close 'energy' wise to the 'earth moon system'.
EDIT: It's possible they are physically further away, but Mars has a gravity well that would require things like landing and re-exiting that are wasteful energy-wise.
Guitar Hero Of Time on
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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, 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.
cause if not, why not just send these robots to mars?
Yeah, they're talking about mining Near-Earth asteroids. "Near-Earth" is defined as having a solar orbit between like .9 and 1.3 AU. They may be fairly distant, in absolute terms, from Earth (up to pi AU, plus or minus a bit), but early mining candidates are likely to be right in our local (in relative terms, anyway; still outside cislunar space) neighborhood. Mars is out at 1.7 AU or thereabouts, so at its closest approach it's almost as far from us as we are from the sun.
Edit: Also, at least from Planetary Resources Inc's point of view, sending their robots to Mars isn't a very good plan. While Mars likely has way more raw materials than any given asteroid, processing them out of the lighter, more abundant elements is going to be just as difficult as on Earth. Then, once they've been mined, the metals will be stuck on the surface of Mars; you'd have to boost out of the Martian gravity well before sending your mined materials back toward Earth (or using them in orbit for space-based manufacturing). Asteroids, by contrast, are essentially solid resource. Metallic asteroids like the one mentioned up-thread are basically giant lumps of metal.
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.
Ironically, your example is exactly the problem this company was created to solve.
If all the material is mined from asteroids, it is already in space, so not only do we not need the fuel to escape earth, but the craft can then get all the equipment and fuel it wants AFTER it is already in space.
So you should be happier about this announcement than any of us.
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.
Believe it or not, it is actually possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
If you want to build a Space Elevator instead, it would require something 3 times stronger than a Carbon Nanotube.
Not a scientist or anything, but does graphene count?
No. Graphene is a peculiar arrangement of carbon atoms in a one-atom-thick lattice. If you take the sheet and roll it into a tube, that's a carbon nano-tube. If you stack up a bunch of the sheets you get graphite.
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The probable lack of any nearby habitable planets limits feasible shit even if you assume really awesome new technology.
NO NO NO NO NO.
Okay, we probably won't have lush tropical Edens beyond the stars in the next 50-100 years (or even 300-400 years).
But we can have massive assembly-line supply chains, deep space fuel depots, scientific manned bases (ala MacMurdo, but SPACE), and a major extension of some of the rare earth supplies here on earth.
And all of those are not only feasible, but likely now, because the billionaire's club and big science are joining hands. This is a huge day and we don't need to try and diminish it because we don't have Star Trek yet.
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Let's play Mario Kart or something...
The probable lack of any nearby habitable planets limits feasible shit even if you assume really awesome new technology.
NO NO NO NO NO.
Okay, we probably won't have lush tropical Edens beyond the stars in the next 50-100 years (or even 300-400 years).
But we can have massive assembly-line supply chains, deep space fuel depots, scientific manned bases (ala MacMurdo, but SPACE), and a major extension of some of the rare earth supplies here on earth.
And all of those are not only feasible, but likely now, because the billionaire's club and big science are joining hands. This is a huge day and we don't need to try and diminish it because we don't have Star Trek yet.
Right. That stuff can be made feasible. However, dreams like establishing colonies of more than a few people keeping things in working order or there for scientific reasons won't really be feasible assuming we don't suddenly discover a perfect planet right next to our solar system. Most people want that kind of thing and probably find the idea of mining asteroids pretty mundane. That is the kind of thing I meant and not the much more practical ideas of using resources within the solar system. I was replying to claims that we can feasibly expand past the Earth in order to colonize other worlds.
I don't see how anything but good comes from this.
-Potentially bringing extraterrestial materials to Earth and/or providing a base for additional exploration in space
-Putting lots of people to work
-Necessity is the mother of invention...saying we'll do it sometimes makes us able to do it. We went to the moon fairly quickly once we decided to do it
-Potentially saving the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMSO5mHqFLM&feature=related
Right. That stuff can be made feasible. However, dreams like establishing colonies of more than a few people keeping things in working order or there for scientific reasons won't really be feasible assuming we don't suddenly discover a perfect planet right next to our solar system. Most people want that kind of thing and probably find the idea of mining asteroids pretty mundane.
plus when all you have is a cat and Chris Barrie, you're going to go crazy
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]
Resources, fuel and water ready for use just floating in space. It's easy to see how this is a stepping-stone to habitable space stations and research bases further out into the solar system.
Plus, as a scientist, the prospect of critical rare metals sent back to Earth to drive green energy and other high-tech applications is quite exciting.
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.
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Is it rational to pack up your family and travel into a foreign land filled with none of the niceities of civilization and a lot of dysentary? Not in the least.
Is it rational to send some guys named Neil and Buzz to the moon? Nope!
Sometimes you just gotta say screw rational and DREAM a little.
There are a multitude of other possible ways to subvert that rule. Things we have not even thought of yet.
But again, none of that is relevant for the current conversation, which is that we can be mining in-solar system asteroids for precious resources and fuel in 8 years. And some of the brightest minds and most successful people in the world from Google and Microsoft execs to Ross Perot Jr. to James Cameron to former Join Chiefs to MIT Physicists think this is a realistic goal worth investing their time and money into.
So yeah, you are being a negative nancy when this much real, powerful brain and wealth-share is getting behind the idea.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Its fine that you're not a fan of space travel, but you're out of your depth with statements like that.
All this is is a start. An idea to a start, even. It could go wrong in a thousand ways, or most likely before anything even gets launched. But its a very good idea, especially the part about mining fuel for other spacecraft. Thats actually a decent way to make money.
But the creators of this endevour themselves say it will be decades before they could even think of turning a profit from this. At first it will be exploration, surveying, and building infrastructure. From there.... well, we'll have to see.
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?
It's inevitable that we'll go to space or we'll die. Assuming that we'll go extinct isn't very useful for any sort of discussion of the future, any more than assuming you'll die is useful for talking about your day. "I'm out of milk, so I'm going to the store this afternoon...unless I die first."
I don't really understand the mindset that people should stop thinking about space exploration/colonization, or about any other scientific pursuit, because we have other problems. It's not like the aerospace engineers and astrophysicists focused on space research are going to contribute meaningfully if they switch gears and start thinking about feeding the hungry in Africa. We have enough people, and potentially enough resources (if we can stop spending them all on bullshit and trying to kill one another) to fund both research into fixing our current problems and whatever else we might want to do as a species. We don't have to pick one or the other.
That being said, the EFFECTS of this project, if successful, should make the colonization of space much easier. Just being able to have access to water that you didn't have to drag out of Earth's gravity well is awesome.
right. They are also going to be pairing up with NASA, who plans to have manned asteroid missions by 2025. The info they collect for their unmanned mining operations will be invaluable to the manned stuff the government plans to do. Even going so far as to assist in picking the right asteroid for their walks.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
they spoke a bit about platinum, and how the current price per ounce to bring it in from space is less than the market price right now. Thing is, a lot of this stuff doesn't HAVE to come back to earth in mass quantities. They can introduce the rare and precious materials to earth, while stockpiling the iron, nickel, gold and water in space for future construction.
Yeah, I went there.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
That's what I'm excited about in this, because we don't know what will spin out of it.
cause if not, why not just send these robots to mars?
It sounded like yes. They were talking about asteroids that end up being really close 'energy' wise to the 'earth moon system'.
EDIT: It's possible they are physically further away, but Mars has a gravity well that would require things like landing and re-exiting that are wasteful energy-wise.
Over 4000 require less energy expenditure to reach than Mars, according to the presentation.
1200 less than the moon, due to the greatly reduced gravity well for leaving when done, though I don't know the physics behind this very well.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I believe the first batch they are looking at are closer than Mars, yes.
Sending shit back is going to be much cheaper on an asteroid. Asteroid mining also means you don't have to worry about weather damage.
Yeah, they're talking about mining Near-Earth asteroids. "Near-Earth" is defined as having a solar orbit between like .9 and 1.3 AU. They may be fairly distant, in absolute terms, from Earth (up to pi AU, plus or minus a bit), but early mining candidates are likely to be right in our local (in relative terms, anyway; still outside cislunar space) neighborhood. Mars is out at 1.7 AU or thereabouts, so at its closest approach it's almost as far from us as we are from the sun.
Edit: Also, at least from Planetary Resources Inc's point of view, sending their robots to Mars isn't a very good plan. While Mars likely has way more raw materials than any given asteroid, processing them out of the lighter, more abundant elements is going to be just as difficult as on Earth. Then, once they've been mined, the metals will be stuck on the surface of Mars; you'd have to boost out of the Martian gravity well before sending your mined materials back toward Earth (or using them in orbit for space-based manufacturing). Asteroids, by contrast, are essentially solid resource. Metallic asteroids like the one mentioned up-thread are basically giant lumps of metal.
Ironically, your example is exactly the problem this company was created to solve.
If all the material is mined from asteroids, it is already in space, so not only do we not need the fuel to escape earth, but the craft can then get all the equipment and fuel it wants AFTER it is already in space.
So you should be happier about this announcement than any of us.
Not a scientist or anything, but does graphene count?
Believe it or not, it is actually possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
No. Graphene is a peculiar arrangement of carbon atoms in a one-atom-thick lattice. If you take the sheet and roll it into a tube, that's a carbon nano-tube. If you stack up a bunch of the sheets you get graphite.
NO NO NO NO NO.
Okay, we probably won't have lush tropical Edens beyond the stars in the next 50-100 years (or even 300-400 years).
But we can have massive assembly-line supply chains, deep space fuel depots, scientific manned bases (ala MacMurdo, but SPACE), and a major extension of some of the rare earth supplies here on earth.
And all of those are not only feasible, but likely now, because the billionaire's club and big science are joining hands. This is a huge day and we don't need to try and diminish it because we don't have Star Trek yet.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Right. That stuff can be made feasible. However, dreams like establishing colonies of more than a few people keeping things in working order or there for scientific reasons won't really be feasible assuming we don't suddenly discover a perfect planet right next to our solar system. Most people want that kind of thing and probably find the idea of mining asteroids pretty mundane. That is the kind of thing I meant and not the much more practical ideas of using resources within the solar system. I was replying to claims that we can feasibly expand past the Earth in order to colonize other worlds.
-Potentially bringing extraterrestial materials to Earth and/or providing a base for additional exploration in space
-Putting lots of people to work
-Necessity is the mother of invention...saying we'll do it sometimes makes us able to do it. We went to the moon fairly quickly once we decided to do it
-Potentially saving the world
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
plus when all you have is a cat and Chris Barrie, you're going to go crazy
Wikipedia says you are wrong.
Resources, fuel and water ready for use just floating in space. It's easy to see how this is a stepping-stone to habitable space stations and research bases further out into the solar system.
Plus, as a scientist, the prospect of critical rare metals sent back to Earth to drive green energy and other high-tech applications is quite exciting.
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One thing that humanity has never, ever done was stagnate.