our planet could easily be wiped by a number of things. if we dont plan for a planetary catastrophe out of our control, our species is doomed.
a planetary catastrophe out of our control
You're still describing climate change. Science fiction ideas are fun to think about but our own inability to live harmoniously with nature is going to kill us off before any of those problems become relevant.
youre still not thinking astronomically. you need to think bigger. i like to at least pretend out technology advances.
I was kind of surprised that comet that's been visible at night was only discovered like a year ago. Crazy to think that would be the warning time of anything coming to hit us
There are black holes that travel at the speed of light. If one were to pass through our astronomical neighborhood we would never see it coming and it would end our existence so instantaneously that it would be like our species and planet never existed.
I didn't realize they were mobile, that is terrifying.
As long as it's instant then it's not that bad I guess
And you have your head stuck so far up your ass you think climate change is the only threat to the habitability of the Earth when one solar flare gone wrong or object striking the Earth or black hole travelling at the speed of light passing sufficiently close could erase humanity from existence and we would never see it coming. None of these things are fiction and all of them are completely within the realm of possibility. Modern astronomy has documented examples of all of these things happening. In fact the leading theory right now is that the Earth and moon existing as they do is the result of the collision of two objects typically referred to as Gaia and Theia. Theia broke off pieces of Gaia and those eventually came together to form the moon while the rest became the Earth.
As of right now the only thing preventing our species from going extinct due to any of a very large number of astronomical events is luck. But you have no guarantees that that luck will last forever and humanity needs a backup plan.
Uh, nope, you're putting words in my mouth. It's not realistic to worry about mitigating that kind of stuff when we can't even prevent ourselves from cooking ourselves, and several of the things you listed don't even have plausible technical solutions right now. Nice try, though.
Humanity can easily survive a KT extinction event. Sure, 99.999% of us will die, but tens of thousands will still survive.
If I use your math of 99.999% dying, only ~80,000 people will survive, not millions…
Thanks, updated comment
If Mars became one "arm" of the human race Earth would still be the heart. Your heart fails and all your limbs are fucked.
huh? why do people have this innate ability to underestimate what we might be capable of? why do you think its impossible for us to become masters of our own genome?
not getting off this rock means our species is doomed regardless of how 'perfect' we keep earth.
why do people have this innate ability to underestimate what we might be capable of?
Because we can see what we're currently capable of in terms of climate change, and the outlook is pretty bleak
why do you think its impossible for us to become masters of our own genome?
Because even in the best case scenario, this is dangerously close to eugenics
not getting off this rock means our species is doomed regardless of how ‘perfect’ we keep earth.
If we can't keep earth livable, an entire self-regulating planet that's been livable for hundreds of millions or billions of years, what are our chances of keeping anywhere else livable?
there is not a single thing that could wipe out a deep sea habitat that wouldnt also wipe any space colonies. but i dont see anybody arguing for that, despite being far more achievable and practical. also, there is no feasible way for space colonies to be self sufficient anywhere in the near future, so wiping out earth also wipes out space colonies relying on it for supplies. this argument aboOt survivability is absurd.
a rogue planet hitting this one would. i would expect a space faring race to want to move not only to the outskirts of the solar system, but possible attempt venturing to a new one. perhaps multiples.
but go ahead, keep thinking small for some reason. technology never advances dontcha know.
our planet could easily be wiped by a number of things.
Most likely by us, while we waste our limited resources on useless things like spaceships
if we dont plan for a planetary catastrophe out of our control, our species is doomed.
Oh no, how will the universe ever recover from this tragedy?
Oh no, how will the universe ever recover from this tragedy?
yep, this is what people resort to when they dont have a real point. 'so what?!' pfft
Terraforming other planets would be astronomically more challenging than fixing our own planet and we don't seem to be able to get our shit together to do that. Even if we are capable of terraforming other planets, it would take many centuries at minimum. O'Neal cylinders are far more likely to work once we start industrializing the moon.
If the colonization strategy is the Moon then Mars, I expect humanity would have the technology needed to colonize Mars easily while terraforming occurs.
The problem with an O'Neil Cylinder is bringing up enough processed material to build one.
The problem with an O’Neil Cylinder is bringing up enough processed material to build one.
One possible solution is a moon base. The moon is full of titanium and iron.
And then you could launch the stuff out of a weaker gravity well with no air resistance.
I don't see the application of an O’Neil Cylinder within the Earth and Mars gravity wells given how expensive they would be to build next to better places to grow crops.
If one does get built, I would expect it in orbit around Jupiter or Saturn to support activity there.
If we can't manage to keep Earth's ecosystem thriving to support us, we certainly won't be able to create a new self-sustaining ecosystem elsewhere. And without that, there's no chance of any non-Earth settlement being able to sustain a healthy human society and culture long-term.
Without some serious (currently impossible) terraforming, Mars colonies are limited to deep caves or heavily shielded buildings, no outside to relax, nowhere else to go. Have a look at the list of crimes in Antarctica, a similar situation where people are stuck together, that's not a good environment for mental health, and it will be worse farther away. A Mars colony (edit: or space station) owned by a private company will be a corporate prison, the inhabitants are 100% dependent on that company - who would voluntarily put their lives into the hands of the whims of some narcissistic hoarder with no empathy or regard for workers?
If we can’t manage to keep Earth’s ecosystem thriving to support us, we certainly won’t be able to create a new self-sustaining ecosystem elsewhere. And without that, there’s no chance of any non-Earth settlement being able to sustain a healthy human society and culture long-term.
I'm unconvinced that pulling back from space programs will make Earth's ecosystem thrive.
A Mars colony (edit: or space station) owned by a private company will be a corporate prison, the inhabitants are 100% dependent on that company - who would voluntarily put their lives into the hands of the whims of some narcissistic hoarder with no empathy or regard for workers?
Agreed. That would be a super-weird concept, like a country owned by a private corporation.
I'm unconvinced that pulling back from space programs will make Earth's ecosystem thrive.
My point was more or less the opposite: Anyone interested in space exploration should also be interested in keeping Earth well livable, because that is needed for its success.
I definitely agree with you, however, I think needing to become self sustaining on earth is a goal that would be well served by trying to design a self sufficient system for mars.
Earth is big enough that it's really easy to forget we're all in the same fish bowl. Entire cities can flush their shit down the river and as far as they are concerned, nothing bad ever happens to them. The scale of earth makes us blind to the problems our actions and methods cause. The ecosystems also do quite a bit to protect us from our own actions
You can't ignore externalities in a space colony. Everything must be accounted for. That is what makes it so difficult to design for. Any small amount of waste will still accumulate over time and eventually becomes a problem.
The tighter scope and strict requirements of a space colony would make it easier to actually objectively measure how sustainable it is. You would know exactly how much external inputs you are delivering each year. We can then take the lessons and technologies that are absolutely required in a space settlement and use them to inform how to better be sustainable on earth. For example, solar cells used to only really be used on satellites, not because they were great on satellites, but because they were pretty much the only option that could stay operational for years. Now PV power generation is helping countries all over the world become a little more sustainable. The harsh requirements of space make us better at problem solving.
I totally agree that earth is our only option for species survival though. Anyone selling Mars as a "backup" for humanity is either delusional or a con man. I think developing the capability to keep a settlement on Mars is a worthwhile endeavor, but there is no way for humanity to thrive there. Any large scale catastrophe on earth will still be more survivable in select pockets on earth than anywhere on Mars.
Bonkers question. Can't even figure out living on Earth sustainably and you want to talk about doing it without gravity, an atmosphere or an ionosphere?
Not a bonkers question, it's actually totally predictable if you have an accurate read for both the White urge to despoil the frontier, and the depths of techbro narcissism. They just want to be the first to bust their load somewhere new, no matter what it takes, no matter whose resources they have to spend, no matter what they leave behind. Colonizer-assed cracker techbros always leave shit behind.
This is what the space-age (hwhite) colonizer's future looks like: every planet now has ring arrangements of dead satellites, empty fuel pods, blown-apart thrusters, and other assorted human-make space junk. Rings of garbage for all nine, dead vessels (crewed by now, long-dead, pressganged "conscripts" [because "conscript" causes less riots than "undesirable"]) hanging in high planetary orbits like macabre baby mobiles, and a still-smoldering coal where Earth used to be.
I have no fucking respect for it.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and Seppos' ability to bring up race in any convrsation.
As long as there are white people, we have to keep having this talk. At some point they'll realize that white is a caste and hopefully give it up.
If you're an aussie you're no fucking better settler lmfaooooooooooooooooooooo
Westerners try to accept that the rest of the world exists challenge: impossible
Don't you have a democracy you should be overthrowing?
Don't you have natives of your own to be ceding your land back to, then going the fuck back to Britain afterwards? Settlers are settlers, no matter what white country they illegitimately live in. America, Britain, Australia, France, Spain, Belgium, the Nordics, all of you are exactly the same.
The typical reaction of a cultist: denying that people that disagree exist, by dehumanizing them.
I can't reasonably be expected to formulate a response to word salad.
No you're just a settler brain dipshit that gets uncomfortable getting called out, the fact you are an Aussie calling someone else westerner is fucking rich lmao.
the fact you are an Aussie
weird use of the word 'fact'
Don't you have some Muslims you should be bombing instead?
I fuckin burned my draft card and was getting tear gassed protesting against the Iraq war over twenty years ago. Fuck off with that shit.
Fix our own planet first
Launch Billionaires into deep space without supplies
Yes.
Seriously, we should be doing both as long term space habitats can serve as a way to reduce the cost of moving cargo around.
Men will do anything other than go to therapy.
D) Move manufacturing and other dirty processes off planet and live here.
Okay Bezos.
Tyrell Corporation.
Why is this getting upvoted so much, its just NIMBY, but for the universe. We should decrease environmental damage rather than exporting it or sweeping it under the rug.
I don't think capital can sustain projects of this magnitude. Space is too harsh of an environment for delulu. We can hardly grapple with the idea that our actions on earth have consequences because of our condition. I like space stuff and I even like to create designs of starships, but I don't think we're in a position to reach for the stars just yet. Even if I'm wrong, we can't allow space fascism get started either. There is probably life out there and if space capitalism finds them, they'll try to pull another indigenous genocide and invent new forms of xenophobia to justify it.
None of our problems are technological. We have massive people problems. Building a new billions of dollar machine or trillions of dollar space station isn't going to disrupt the imperial core. The Gray Techno Fash won't suddenly become humanists because space.
Space life can be fun to think about, but techno futurism is a liberal fetish and tends to result in liberal fantasies if you don't decolonize your mind.
A 1km diameter, 30km cylinder would provide enough area to feed ~140k people. 95km^2 of space.
That is assuming no imported food etc, based on 7000m^2 per person which is almost 2 acres each.
140k people is a small city.
140k people is about the amount of people living in a 1km radius around you, if you live in some inner city area.
You could have most people in a relatively small area with the rest for farming.
There would be little need for the equivalent of roads, almost all travel would be walk or bike. The longest distance between two points is less than 34km. If the main settlement is in a ring around the middle of the cylinder, it is less than 17km to any point.
We should be exploring both options, exploration can often lead to unexpected discoveries and technological advancement.
Is this sub-populated mostly by Facebook people? Some of the answers really feel like it.
All these answers are so killjoy and boring. Like yeah we should strive to make our own planet better, but why not also do this? Building habitats on other worlds doesn't prevent us from caring for this one.
Plus maybe trying to make a liveable environment in space can give us new insights in preserving the one at home. Like how solar panels have come from space exploration.
Why would people want to focus more on things we can actually do right now and would improve our lives instead of completely unfeasible pipe dreams? I don't understand.
Isn't there space for both? Why not try multiple avenues?
Why have this negative view on everything? Wouldn't you say the airplane and the car have tremendously improved humanity, even with all its downsides? Or the cellphone?
I bet at the time of their inventions you would be opposing it because "billionaires are bad and this industry is going to explore the working class". Guess what? Yes billionaires are bad and explore people and you (all of us) should be fighting against that, not against scientific and engineering inovation.
Isn't there space for both?
No. Flatly. You do not get to eject any more human garbage into the cosmos from which we came-- you already have WHOLE FUCKING ARRAYS of busted up satellites and pieces of rockets and a bunch of other more shit floating in high orbit that you have no plans to go retrieve, mind you; fuck would you propose making even more for? Other than the narcissistic techbro flex, I mean?
Every industry exploits the working class under capitalism.
Are we colonizing planets or building habitats in space right now or any time in the perceivable future, though? No, so beyond a fun thought experiment or sci-fi material, it's not an idea worth giving any serious thought towards.
Right because innovation materializes itself when we want ... We just flicked our fingers and airplane, cellphone and others just appeared.
Who are you to tell what we should or should not pursue?
Are we pursuing colonizing planets or building space habitats in any serious way?
All these answers are so killjoy and boring.
Yes, fantasizing about billionaires fixing everything by making good on their bullshit marketing pitches is very exciting to credulous people.
Building habitats on other worlds doesn't prevent us from caring for this one.
If you believe that there's some magic means to have zero emissions launches into space that are in any way self-sustained without further launches to keep throwing resources after spent resources from an increasingly polluted, depleted, and warming Earth, sure, you can huff that hopium deep and hard and ignore the worsening material reality all around you.
Plus maybe trying to make a liveable environment in space can give us new insights in preserving the one at home.
You've bought deeply into billionaire bullshit and their bogus promises, especially as privatized space travel in the west becomes increasingly vanity tourism and marketing stunts. The accomplishments that such companies' underpaid and overworked workers achieve are not for the common good, nor can they be because they are publicly subsidized private companies seeking to maximize profits and expand their own venture capital appeal, and nothing more.
Space exploration isn't unique to capitalist systems.
You seem to be letting your hatred for Musk confuse you about space exploration. NASA and other governmental agencies do very important work when it comes to space exploration
We all know what NASA research is really for.
My grandpa helped design and test the tech for ballistic missiles while working as a private contractor for a now defunct aerospace corporation under contract with NASA.
If he was still alive I would say he gets the wall too.
He has Musk Derangement Syndrome 🤣🤣🤣
Too much time reading clickbait
"DAE le Musk Derangement Syndrome?"
Techbros are burning the world down in swathes to fuel their theftboxes at best, and artificial lovers at worst, Neuralink just fucked some guy's brains up, Cybertrucks keep failing left and goddamn right, but sure, let's just chalk all this up to "Musk Derangement Syndrome" jesus fucking christ I hate you techbro settlers. Please die young of something preventable.
Can you string together 2 sentences without culture war tropes?
Culture war is when a person points out the chauvinism inherent in cracker fantasies about colonizing the stars because there is nowhere left to colonize here without just admitting to themselves they just want to subjugate everyone and everything on earth and above.
@frauddogg@hexbear.net is 100% correct in every single comment they have made in this thread.
I can't really even add anything to this other than say they right fuck off.
"As below, so above" might as well be the settler-colonizer's ethos. "As I subjugate everything below me, I must reach for what's above." At what point is Polly satisfied?
Never, apparently. Humanity will go extinct thanks to this malign tumor on our collective neck.
Also funny how libs mistake actual structural material analysis as "culture war tropes" because their framework for viewing the world is constrained by their MSNBC vs Fox News idea of good and bad and anything that challenges it must be from the wrong side of said culture war. Which funnily enough is also culture war bullshit.
"Surely I can't be racist I'm one of the good white people!"
because their framework for viewing the world is constrained by their MSNBC vs Fox News idea of good and bad
Kinda outs their whole "war is a football game to you" allegation as pure projection, doesn't it? There is fundamentally zero difference between the 'cUlTuRe WaR', the electoral race, and the "professional" handegg games that will go on in two days for these settler liberals.
Yeah they will smugly condescend to us with their "not a team sport" shit all the while demanding we vote for their particular team because harm reduction or whatever. Meanwhile every president and 99% of congress people of either party in my 40 years has done the same genocidal shit.
Techbros are burning the world down in swathes to fuel their theftboxes at best, and artificial lovers at worst, Neuralink just fucked some guy’s brains up, Cybertrucks keep failing left and goddamn right, but sure, let’s just chalk all this up to “Musk Derangement Syndrome” jesus fucking christ I hate you techbro settlers. Please die young of something preventable.
lol this sounds like you have smoke coming out your ears writing it
Meh I dislike Musk as well but I don't let that cloud my judgement of his companies or science/engineering in general.
I don't let that cloud my judgement of his companies
That says a lot about you, then. The guy's a fascist but you don't care because muh bazingamobiles and space crap!
Polly's Tenet: "I can excuse anything from anyone if it means my treats arrive on time". My parrot is literally more disciplined than these settler shitstains.
He isn't even the guy behind any discovery his manifold bought-up companies make. He's just the nepobaby failspawn of blood emerald mining company money in South Africa; and as far as I'm concerned, that makes anything that comes out of his companies while he helms them fruit of the poison tree.
We do not support, uplift, or patronize colonizers, slavers, resource-extracting thieves, or any combination of the three in this house.
Fuck you, the planet is literally on fire and you bazinga-assed techbros want to talk about escape plans. FIX WHAT YOU FUCKED UP FIRST.
the planet is literally on fire
Nah.
You can ignore catastrophic global warming and actual fucking wildfires of unprecedented frequency and scale if you think being a Reddit-tier pedant will protect you.
I'm guessing B will happen first, just because we have so much more control of the environment, but we're still so far away from either one... Maybe I'll get to see the early stages sometime in my life.
The Lunar Gateway will be complete in your lifetime and and the Artemis program is underway. Who knows what will happen after that.
How about we focus our efforts on unshittifying Earth first, eh?
Space colonies. That way they can be dropped to earth to start colony independence wars.
Europa tea party!!!!!!!
Neither. We can't even unfuck Earth, where in that did we earn the privilege to pollute the cosmos?
Who do we need permission from? The rocks?
You're so fixated on whether you can that you will never stop to question if you should. What, are you going to frack asteroids until they become space junk? Utterly violate another planet to its core for all its worth the way you've done the Earth, just to bail out like the deadbeat developer humanity has proven itself as? Disgusting, parasitic, over-consumptive, self-centered, practically narcissistic-assed question out of you.
the levels of 白左 on some hexbears, really.... 100% moralising 0% thinking
Ok 'colonizer'; you can go up first. Hope you die in the vacuum after your vessel malfunctions.
What's your definition of 'pollute'? I don't really get how the verb 'pollute' can apply to non-biological planets; to me the word means something like 'putting matter in places where is disrupts ecosystems'. I think the book about Gaia has a definition like this too.
Yeah no; I don't do 'quibbling definitions with sophists'. If you don't know what 'pollute' means, you're not fit to discourse with me. 🖕🖕
Classic troll move of refusing to engage when someone points out you're making no sense.
I think this is the Gaia quote they're talking about –
The very concept of pollution is anthropocentric and it may even be irrelevant in the Gaian context. Many so-called pollutants are naturally present and it becomes exceedingly difficult to know at what level the appellation 'pollutant' may be justified. Carbon monoxide, for example, which is poisonous to us and to most large mammals, is a product of incomplete combustion, a toxic agent from exhaust gases of cars, coke or coal-burning stoves, and cigarettes; a pollutant put into otherwise clean fresh air by man, you might think. However, if the air is analysed we find that carbon monoxide gas is to be found everywhere. It comes from the oxidation of methane gas in the atmosphere itself and as much as 1,000 million tons of it are so produced each year. It is thus an indirect but natural vegetable product and is also found in the swim-bladders of many sea creatures. The syphonophores, for example, are loaded with this gas in concentrations which would speedily kill us off if present in our own atmosphere at similar levels.
Almost every pollutant, whether it be in the form of sulphur dioxide, dimethyl mercury, the halocarbons, mutagenic and carcinogenic substances, or radioactive material, has to some extent, large or small, a natural background. It may even be produced so abundantly in nature as to be poisonous or lethal from the start. To live in caves of uranium-bearing rock would be unhealthy for any living creature, but such caves are rare enough to present no real threat to the survival of a species. It seems that as a species we can already with stand the normal range of exposure to the numerous hazards of our environment. If for any reason one or more of these hazards should increase, both individual and species adaptation will set in.
What is your definition of pollution tho? How can there be pollution on a lifeless rocky planet?
Again, I don't do "quibbling definitions with sophists", and honestly this just reads as techno-woo made to justify leaving dead rovers and broken satellites in our wake. "Oh, it was already there in trace amounts so we can just leave our toys scattered around the playroom." If I had that kind of laissez-faire attitude towards say, Yellowstone, I'd be put out of the park and banned for life. The fuck happened to 'leave no trace'?
Who or what is harmed by a piece of lifeless metal on a piece of lifeless rock?
You said you're against sophistry, then you said Mars=Yellowstone
Neither. We can’t even unfuck Earth, where in that did we earn the privilege to pollute the cosmos?
What kind of weird Abrahamic mental model is going on here? We need to morally prove ourselves to Jehovah and he will decree we have "earned" the "privilege" to go to some rocks? Makes no sense.
Why?
Nice planet we've got here, we could focus on preventing it becoming inhabitable due to climate change instead.
No matter what you do the Earth won't stay habitable forever. So we either learn to expand out into space as a species or face extinction eventually. Not to mention putting all our eggs in one basket is a terrible idea. Any cosmological event could wipe out the Earth at any time. The question is are you okay with our entire species going with it?
There needs to be a backup, ideally multiple.
I'm not convinced that suspending space programs would create solutions to climate change.
All of the above. But start with cleaning up this planet. Build better / more sustainable and more diverse communities and energy production. Build arcologies in the arctic, deserts, oceans. Those are good “practice” for building the same off planet.
I'm not sure that fitting Earthlike habitats in giant spaceships would make sense without limitless exponential growth. Wouldn't it be more feasible to put something on the surface of a planet?
No matter how advanced our technology gets, we are not going to get around the basic constraints on energy.
Hopium huffers will smugly chant "asteroid mining!" as the answer to your questions, in much the same way that "monorail!" was chanted during that one Simpsons episode.
Porque no los dos?
A quote attributed to a few people, Heinlein and Pournelle for two, "If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." Both space and planets have shared and their separate problems to solve. In my head I prefer the image of most populations moving into habitats in space, customized to their preferences, with smaller settlements on various bodies for their own purposes. In my realistic view I don't see us getting that far before we get bogged down with all the problems we've created on this planet. The window to a permanent space civilization might have already shut. A sad thing, as a 70s kid I grew up convinced we were full speed into some version of what scifi had sold to me.
Ringworld.
We. Like, you and me? Whatever you wanna do I guess.
Genetically modify ourselves so that we can live both in zero gravity (and maybe survive short exposure to vacuum) and on other planets.
After reading A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith I think a O'Neill Cylinder spinning spaceship for artificial gravity type is more achievable than planarity colonisation.
But the main point of the book, and I am fairly convinced of the more I think about it, is that it is a lot of effort and risk for not a lot of gain and we are entirely unprepared for space colonisation.
Neither. There's plenty of room and resources here on Earth. I think it's fine to do space exploration and even have research bases on moons and other planets, but I just don't see the imperative for colonization.
Both.
Actually, both.
How to survive in space: Develop ways to survive in space only first. Once you manage that all the other problems are trivial compared and you don't have a single point of failure (aka our planet) anymore. Isn't that obvious?
Until we are able to travel way faster than what we can do now, I think it’s more feasible to build in space. Lots of implications for long term effects on human bodies though. Most ideal is a wormhole to an identical planet to earth so humans won’t need to adapt.
The odds of an exactly identical planet existing naturally are very slim. The only way to get that is some kind of terraforming. Or we evolve to adapt to our new environments. Which could mean that humans could split out into multiple successor species.
I don’t think space habitats any significant distance from Earth will be possible. Mitigating the increased radiation will be tough enough just trying to get to Mars, much less trying to stay in space out that far. At least on Mars we can hang out in old lava tubes or something.
i think you underestimate human ingenuity and the time frames involved.
Yes and first century peasants couldn't imagine the idea of reading comments and responding to them on a magic lit up rectangle that knows when you touch it and where and exchanges the information involved invisibly through the air even passing through solid objects.
If that's what you think, then you severely underestimate human technological innovation.
Both! All three!
yes.
if we want to become a true space faring species resilient to all that the universe can throw at us we will need both
We should stay fucking put until we figure out how to end greed and racism once and for all
We aren't going to stop being prejudiced against each other until we meet other species to turn our prejudices outward.
Any ideas?
If we are capable of doing one, then we can do both.
C) Undersea habitat domes!
Colonizing Antarctica would be more reasonable than that.
THE YEAR IS UNIVERSAL CENTURY 0079
What’s the purpose—research? Tax evasion? Shits and giggles?
Survival
Huge sci-fi lover here. But at the same time, colonization of space for humans is possibly impossible without avatars. The human body evolved here, and it's a vessel that works here the best. To colonize other worlds, it's more economically viable to send machines, create biologically synthesized new species (taking dna from local species there), and then transfer consciousness to them. Similar with Avatar, but without having to have the spaceships arrive in the planet full of humans. Humans remain on earth, and they project their consciousness somewhere else, in an instant due to entanglement.
C) keep the planet we have habitable
our planet could easily be wiped by a number of things. if we dont plan for a planetary catastrophe out of our control, our species is doomed.
You're still describing climate change. Science fiction ideas are fun to think about but our own inability to live harmoniously with nature is going to kill us off before any of those problems become relevant.
youre still not thinking astronomically. you need to think bigger. i like to at least pretend out technology advances.
I was kind of surprised that comet that's been visible at night was only discovered like a year ago. Crazy to think that would be the warning time of anything coming to hit us
There are black holes that travel at the speed of light. If one were to pass through our astronomical neighborhood we would never see it coming and it would end our existence so instantaneously that it would be like our species and planet never existed.
I didn't realize they were mobile, that is terrifying.
As long as it's instant then it's not that bad I guess
And you have your head stuck so far up your ass you think climate change is the only threat to the habitability of the Earth when one solar flare gone wrong or object striking the Earth or black hole travelling at the speed of light passing sufficiently close could erase humanity from existence and we would never see it coming. None of these things are fiction and all of them are completely within the realm of possibility. Modern astronomy has documented examples of all of these things happening. In fact the leading theory right now is that the Earth and moon existing as they do is the result of the collision of two objects typically referred to as Gaia and Theia. Theia broke off pieces of Gaia and those eventually came together to form the moon while the rest became the Earth.
As of right now the only thing preventing our species from going extinct due to any of a very large number of astronomical events is luck. But you have no guarantees that that luck will last forever and humanity needs a backup plan.
Uh, nope, you're putting words in my mouth. It's not realistic to worry about mitigating that kind of stuff when we can't even prevent ourselves from cooking ourselves, and several of the things you listed don't even have plausible technical solutions right now. Nice try, though.
Humanity can easily survive a KT extinction event. Sure, 99.999% of us will die, but tens of thousands will still survive.
If I use your math of 99.999% dying, only ~80,000 people will survive, not millions…
Thanks, updated comment
If Mars became one "arm" of the human race Earth would still be the heart. Your heart fails and all your limbs are fucked.
huh? why do people have this innate ability to underestimate what we might be capable of? why do you think its impossible for us to become masters of our own genome?
not getting off this rock means our species is doomed regardless of how 'perfect' we keep earth.
Because we can see what we're currently capable of in terms of climate change, and the outlook is pretty bleak
Because even in the best case scenario, this is dangerously close to eugenics
If we can't keep earth livable, an entire self-regulating planet that's been livable for hundreds of millions or billions of years, what are our chances of keeping anywhere else livable?
there is not a single thing that could wipe out a deep sea habitat that wouldnt also wipe any space colonies. but i dont see anybody arguing for that, despite being far more achievable and practical. also, there is no feasible way for space colonies to be self sufficient anywhere in the near future, so wiping out earth also wipes out space colonies relying on it for supplies. this argument aboOt survivability is absurd.
a rogue planet hitting this one would. i would expect a space faring race to want to move not only to the outskirts of the solar system, but possible attempt venturing to a new one. perhaps multiples.
but go ahead, keep thinking small for some reason. technology never advances dontcha know.
Most likely by us, while we waste our limited resources on useless things like spaceships
Oh no, how will the universe ever recover from this tragedy?
yep, this is what people resort to when they dont have a real point. 'so what?!' pfft
Terraforming other planets would be astronomically more challenging than fixing our own planet and we don't seem to be able to get our shit together to do that. Even if we are capable of terraforming other planets, it would take many centuries at minimum. O'Neal cylinders are far more likely to work once we start industrializing the moon.
If the colonization strategy is the Moon then Mars, I expect humanity would have the technology needed to colonize Mars easily while terraforming occurs.
The problem with an O'Neil Cylinder is bringing up enough processed material to build one.
One possible solution is a moon base. The moon is full of titanium and iron.
And then you could launch the stuff out of a weaker gravity well with no air resistance.
I don't see the application of an O’Neil Cylinder within the Earth and Mars gravity wells given how expensive they would be to build next to better places to grow crops.
If one does get built, I would expect it in orbit around Jupiter or Saturn to support activity there.
If we can't manage to keep Earth's ecosystem thriving to support us, we certainly won't be able to create a new self-sustaining ecosystem elsewhere. And without that, there's no chance of any non-Earth settlement being able to sustain a healthy human society and culture long-term.
Without some serious (currently impossible) terraforming, Mars colonies are limited to deep caves or heavily shielded buildings, no outside to relax, nowhere else to go. Have a look at the list of crimes in Antarctica, a similar situation where people are stuck together, that's not a good environment for mental health, and it will be worse farther away. A Mars colony (edit: or space station) owned by a private company will be a corporate prison, the inhabitants are 100% dependent on that company - who would voluntarily put their lives into the hands of the whims of some narcissistic hoarder with no empathy or regard for workers?
I'm unconvinced that pulling back from space programs will make Earth's ecosystem thrive.
Agreed. That would be a super-weird concept, like a country owned by a private corporation.
My point was more or less the opposite: Anyone interested in space exploration should also be interested in keeping Earth well livable, because that is needed for its success.
I definitely agree with you, however, I think needing to become self sustaining on earth is a goal that would be well served by trying to design a self sufficient system for mars.
Earth is big enough that it's really easy to forget we're all in the same fish bowl. Entire cities can flush their shit down the river and as far as they are concerned, nothing bad ever happens to them. The scale of earth makes us blind to the problems our actions and methods cause. The ecosystems also do quite a bit to protect us from our own actions
You can't ignore externalities in a space colony. Everything must be accounted for. That is what makes it so difficult to design for. Any small amount of waste will still accumulate over time and eventually becomes a problem.
The tighter scope and strict requirements of a space colony would make it easier to actually objectively measure how sustainable it is. You would know exactly how much external inputs you are delivering each year. We can then take the lessons and technologies that are absolutely required in a space settlement and use them to inform how to better be sustainable on earth. For example, solar cells used to only really be used on satellites, not because they were great on satellites, but because they were pretty much the only option that could stay operational for years. Now PV power generation is helping countries all over the world become a little more sustainable. The harsh requirements of space make us better at problem solving.
I totally agree that earth is our only option for species survival though. Anyone selling Mars as a "backup" for humanity is either delusional or a con man. I think developing the capability to keep a settlement on Mars is a worthwhile endeavor, but there is no way for humanity to thrive there. Any large scale catastrophe on earth will still be more survivable in select pockets on earth than anywhere on Mars.
Bonkers question. Can't even figure out living on Earth sustainably and you want to talk about doing it without gravity, an atmosphere or an ionosphere?
Not a bonkers question, it's actually totally predictable if you have an accurate read for both the White urge to despoil the frontier, and the depths of techbro narcissism. They just want to be the first to bust their load somewhere new, no matter what it takes, no matter whose resources they have to spend, no matter what they leave behind. Colonizer-assed cracker techbros always leave shit behind.
This is what the space-age (hwhite) colonizer's future looks like: every planet now has ring arrangements of dead satellites, empty fuel pods, blown-apart thrusters, and other assorted human-make space junk. Rings of garbage for all nine, dead vessels (crewed by now, long-dead, pressganged "conscripts" [because "conscript" causes less riots than "undesirable"]) hanging in high planetary orbits like macabre baby mobiles, and a still-smoldering coal where Earth used to be.
I have no fucking respect for it.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and Seppos' ability to bring up race in any convrsation.
As long as there are white people, we have to keep having this talk. At some point they'll realize that white is a caste and hopefully give it up.
If you're an aussie you're no fucking better settler lmfaooooooooooooooooooooo
Westerners try to accept that the rest of the world exists challenge: impossible
Don't you have a democracy you should be overthrowing?
Don't you have natives of your own to be ceding your land back to, then going the fuck back to Britain afterwards? Settlers are settlers, no matter what white country they illegitimately live in. America, Britain, Australia, France, Spain, Belgium, the Nordics, all of you are exactly the same.
https://readsettlers.org
What. Are. You. On. About.
This is an Markov Chain bot or something.
The typical reaction of a cultist: denying that people that disagree exist, by dehumanizing them.
I can't reasonably be expected to formulate a response to word salad.
No you're just a settler brain dipshit that gets uncomfortable getting called out, the fact you are an Aussie calling someone else westerner is fucking rich lmao.
weird use of the word 'fact'
Don't you have some Muslims you should be bombing instead?
I fuckin burned my draft card and was getting tear gassed protesting against the Iraq war over twenty years ago. Fuck off with that shit.
Fix our own planet first
Launch Billionaires into deep space without supplies
Yes.
Seriously, we should be doing both as long term space habitats can serve as a way to reduce the cost of moving cargo around.
Men will do anything other than go to therapy.
D) Move manufacturing and other dirty processes off planet and live here.
Okay Bezos.
Tyrell Corporation.
Why is this getting upvoted so much, its just NIMBY, but for the universe. We should decrease environmental damage rather than exporting it or sweeping it under the rug.
I don't think capital can sustain projects of this magnitude. Space is too harsh of an environment for delulu. We can hardly grapple with the idea that our actions on earth have consequences because of our condition. I like space stuff and I even like to create designs of starships, but I don't think we're in a position to reach for the stars just yet. Even if I'm wrong, we can't allow space fascism get started either. There is probably life out there and if space capitalism finds them, they'll try to pull another indigenous genocide and invent new forms of xenophobia to justify it.
None of our problems are technological. We have massive people problems. Building a new billions of dollar machine or trillions of dollar space station isn't going to disrupt the imperial core. The Gray Techno Fash won't suddenly become humanists because space.
Space life can be fun to think about, but techno futurism is a liberal fetish and tends to result in liberal fantasies if you don't decolonize your mind.
https://readsettlers.org tbh
If we can do B, A doesn't provide many benefits.
A 1km diameter, 30km cylinder would provide enough area to feed ~140k people. 95km^2 of space.
That is assuming no imported food etc, based on 7000m^2 per person which is almost 2 acres each.
140k people is a small city.
140k people is about the amount of people living in a 1km radius around you, if you live in some inner city area.
You could have most people in a relatively small area with the rest for farming.
There would be little need for the equivalent of roads, almost all travel would be walk or bike. The longest distance between two points is less than 34km. If the main settlement is in a ring around the middle of the cylinder, it is less than 17km to any point.
We should be exploring both options, exploration can often lead to unexpected discoveries and technological advancement.
Is this sub-populated mostly by Facebook people? Some of the answers really feel like it.
All these answers are so killjoy and boring. Like yeah we should strive to make our own planet better, but why not also do this? Building habitats on other worlds doesn't prevent us from caring for this one.
Plus maybe trying to make a liveable environment in space can give us new insights in preserving the one at home. Like how solar panels have come from space exploration.
Why would people want to focus more on things we can actually do right now and would improve our lives instead of completely unfeasible pipe dreams? I don't understand.
Isn't there space for both? Why not try multiple avenues? Why have this negative view on everything? Wouldn't you say the airplane and the car have tremendously improved humanity, even with all its downsides? Or the cellphone?
I bet at the time of their inventions you would be opposing it because "billionaires are bad and this industry is going to explore the working class". Guess what? Yes billionaires are bad and explore people and you (all of us) should be fighting against that, not against scientific and engineering inovation.
No. Flatly. You do not get to eject any more human garbage into the cosmos from which we came-- you already have WHOLE FUCKING ARRAYS of busted up satellites and pieces of rockets and a bunch of other more shit floating in high orbit that you have no plans to go retrieve, mind you; fuck would you propose making even more for? Other than the narcissistic techbro flex, I mean?
Every industry exploits the working class under capitalism.
Are we colonizing planets or building habitats in space right now or any time in the perceivable future, though? No, so beyond a fun thought experiment or sci-fi material, it's not an idea worth giving any serious thought towards.
Right because innovation materializes itself when we want ... We just flicked our fingers and airplane, cellphone and others just appeared.
Who are you to tell what we should or should not pursue?
Are we pursuing colonizing planets or building space habitats in any serious way?
Yes, fantasizing about billionaires fixing everything by making good on their bullshit marketing pitches is very exciting to credulous people.
If you believe that there's some magic means to have zero emissions launches into space that are in any way self-sustained without further launches to keep throwing resources after spent resources from an increasingly polluted, depleted, and warming Earth, sure, you can huff that hopium deep and hard and ignore the worsening material reality all around you.
You've bought deeply into billionaire bullshit and their bogus promises, especially as privatized space travel in the west becomes increasingly vanity tourism and marketing stunts. The accomplishments that such companies' underpaid and overworked workers achieve are not for the common good, nor can they be because they are publicly subsidized private companies seeking to maximize profits and expand their own venture capital appeal, and nothing more.
Space exploration isn't unique to capitalist systems.
You seem to be letting your hatred for Musk confuse you about space exploration. NASA and other governmental agencies do very important work when it comes to space exploration
We all know what NASA research is really for.
My grandpa helped design and test the tech for ballistic missiles while working as a private contractor for a now defunct aerospace corporation under contract with NASA.
If he was still alive I would say he gets the wall too.
He has Musk Derangement Syndrome 🤣🤣🤣
Too much time reading clickbait
Techbros are burning the world down in swathes to fuel their theftboxes at best, and artificial lovers at worst, Neuralink just fucked some guy's brains up, Cybertrucks keep failing left and goddamn right, but sure, let's just chalk all this up to "Musk Derangement Syndrome" jesus fucking christ I hate you techbro settlers. Please die young of something preventable.
Can you string together 2 sentences without culture war tropes?
Culture war is when a person points out the chauvinism inherent in cracker fantasies about colonizing the stars because there is nowhere left to colonize here without just admitting to themselves they just want to subjugate everyone and everything on earth and above.
@frauddogg@hexbear.net is 100% correct in every single comment they have made in this thread.
I can't really even add anything to this other than say they right fuck off.
"As below, so above" might as well be the settler-colonizer's ethos. "As I subjugate everything below me, I must reach for what's above." At what point is Polly satisfied?
Never, apparently. Humanity will go extinct thanks to this malign tumor on our collective neck.
Also funny how libs mistake actual structural material analysis as "culture war tropes" because their framework for viewing the world is constrained by their MSNBC vs Fox News idea of good and bad and anything that challenges it must be from the wrong side of said culture war. Which funnily enough is also culture war bullshit.
"Surely I can't be racist I'm one of the good white people!"
Kinda outs their whole "war is a football game to you" allegation as pure projection, doesn't it? There is fundamentally zero difference between the 'cUlTuRe WaR', the electoral race, and the "professional" handegg games that will go on in two days for these settler liberals.
Yeah they will smugly condescend to us with their "not a team sport" shit all the while demanding we vote for their particular team because harm reduction or whatever. Meanwhile every president and 99% of congress people of either party in my 40 years has done the same genocidal shit.
Can you string two together without coating your tongue in c-suite low quarter polish?
Die in a vessel fire, colonizer. Infinite Apollo 1s on every settler trying to expand their necrotic reach to the stars.
Ironically enough in their fantasy about reaching mars with privatized space planes that is an extremely likely scenario lol
I keep thinking about what's been happening to Boeings lately and smiling. "C'mon, bazinga, go see the stars." [stick-poke meme]
That submarine stunt was one of the funniest things that has ever happened.
Honestly if we wanted to do something neat that is almost exactly like settling an alien landscape we should invest in more deep sea research.
We don't even know shit about Giant Squid which are like the coolest most alien thing on earth.
lol this sounds like you have smoke coming out your ears writing it
Meh I dislike Musk as well but I don't let that cloud my judgement of his companies or science/engineering in general.
That says a lot about you, then. The guy's a fascist but you don't care because
muh bazingamobiles and space crap!
Polly's Tenet: "I can excuse anything from anyone if it means my treats arrive on time". My parrot is literally more disciplined than these settler shitstains.
He isn't even the guy behind any discovery his manifold bought-up companies make. He's just the nepobaby failspawn of blood emerald mining company money in South Africa; and as far as I'm concerned, that makes anything that comes out of his companies while he helms them fruit of the poison tree.
We do not support, uplift, or patronize colonizers, slavers, resource-extracting thieves, or any combination of the three in this house.
You seem to be conjuring an imaginary psych degree so you can concern troll. Fuck off.
Drej Queen, Earth yearns for the Cleansing Light of extermination
Fuck you, the planet is literally on fire and you bazinga-assed techbros want to talk about escape plans. FIX WHAT YOU FUCKED UP FIRST.
Nah.
You can ignore catastrophic global warming and actual fucking wildfires of unprecedented frequency and scale if you think being a Reddit-tier pedant will protect you.
Why not both?
I'm guessing B will happen first, just because we have so much more control of the environment, but we're still so far away from either one... Maybe I'll get to see the early stages sometime in my life.
The Lunar Gateway will be complete in your lifetime and and the Artemis program is underway. Who knows what will happen after that.
How about we focus our efforts on unshittifying Earth first, eh?
Space colonies. That way they can be dropped to earth to start colony independence wars.
Europa tea party!!!!!!!
Neither. We can't even unfuck Earth, where in that did we earn the privilege to pollute the cosmos?
Who do we need permission from? The rocks?
You're so fixated on whether you can that you will never stop to question if you should. What, are you going to frack asteroids until they become space junk? Utterly violate another planet to its core for all its worth the way you've done the Earth, just to bail out like the deadbeat developer humanity has proven itself as? Disgusting, parasitic, over-consumptive, self-centered, practically narcissistic-assed question out of you.
the levels of 白左 on some hexbears, really.... 100% moralising 0% thinking
Ok 'colonizer'; you can go up first. Hope you die in the vacuum after your vessel malfunctions.
What's your definition of 'pollute'? I don't really get how the verb 'pollute' can apply to non-biological planets; to me the word means something like 'putting matter in places where is disrupts ecosystems'. I think the book about Gaia has a definition like this too.
Yeah no; I don't do 'quibbling definitions with sophists'. If you don't know what 'pollute' means, you're not fit to discourse with me. 🖕🖕
Classic troll move of refusing to engage when someone points out you're making no sense.
I think this is the Gaia quote they're talking about –
What is your definition of pollution tho? How can there be pollution on a lifeless rocky planet?
Again, I don't do "quibbling definitions with sophists", and honestly this just reads as techno-woo made to justify leaving dead rovers and broken satellites in our wake. "Oh, it was already there in trace amounts so we can just leave our toys scattered around the playroom." If I had that kind of laissez-faire attitude towards say, Yellowstone, I'd be put out of the park and banned for life. The fuck happened to 'leave no trace'?
Who or what is harmed by a piece of lifeless metal on a piece of lifeless rock?
You said you're against sophistry, then you said Mars=Yellowstone
What kind of weird Abrahamic mental model is going on here? We need to morally prove ourselves to Jehovah and he will decree we have "earned" the "privilege" to go to some rocks? Makes no sense.
Why? Nice planet we've got here, we could focus on preventing it becoming inhabitable due to climate change instead.
No matter what you do the Earth won't stay habitable forever. So we either learn to expand out into space as a species or face extinction eventually. Not to mention putting all our eggs in one basket is a terrible idea. Any cosmological event could wipe out the Earth at any time. The question is are you okay with our entire species going with it?
There needs to be a backup, ideally multiple.
I'm not convinced that suspending space programs would create solutions to climate change.
All of the above. But start with cleaning up this planet. Build better / more sustainable and more diverse communities and energy production. Build arcologies in the arctic, deserts, oceans. Those are good “practice” for building the same off planet.
I'm not sure that fitting Earthlike habitats in giant spaceships would make sense without limitless exponential growth. Wouldn't it be more feasible to put something on the surface of a planet?
No matter how advanced our technology gets, we are not going to get around the basic constraints on energy.
Hopium huffers will smugly chant "asteroid mining!" as the answer to your questions, in much the same way that "monorail!" was chanted during that one Simpsons episode.
Porque no los dos?
A quote attributed to a few people, Heinlein and Pournelle for two, "If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." Both space and planets have shared and their separate problems to solve. In my head I prefer the image of most populations moving into habitats in space, customized to their preferences, with smaller settlements on various bodies for their own purposes. In my realistic view I don't see us getting that far before we get bogged down with all the problems we've created on this planet. The window to a permanent space civilization might have already shut. A sad thing, as a 70s kid I grew up convinced we were full speed into some version of what scifi had sold to me.
Ringworld.
We. Like, you and me? Whatever you wanna do I guess.
Genetically modify ourselves so that we can live both in zero gravity (and maybe survive short exposure to vacuum) and on other planets.
https://spacegenetics.hms.harvard.edu/
After reading A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith I think a O'Neill Cylinder spinning spaceship for artificial gravity type is more achievable than planarity colonisation.
But the main point of the book, and I am fairly convinced of the more I think about it, is that it is a lot of effort and risk for not a lot of gain and we are entirely unprepared for space colonisation.
Neither. There's plenty of room and resources here on Earth. I think it's fine to do space exploration and even have research bases on moons and other planets, but I just don't see the imperative for colonization.
Both.
Actually, both.
How to survive in space: Develop ways to survive in space only first. Once you manage that all the other problems are trivial compared and you don't have a single point of failure (aka our planet) anymore. Isn't that obvious?
Until we are able to travel way faster than what we can do now, I think it’s more feasible to build in space. Lots of implications for long term effects on human bodies though. Most ideal is a wormhole to an identical planet to earth so humans won’t need to adapt.
The odds of an exactly identical planet existing naturally are very slim. The only way to get that is some kind of terraforming. Or we evolve to adapt to our new environments. Which could mean that humans could split out into multiple successor species.
I don’t think space habitats any significant distance from Earth will be possible. Mitigating the increased radiation will be tough enough just trying to get to Mars, much less trying to stay in space out that far. At least on Mars we can hang out in old lava tubes or something.
i think you underestimate human ingenuity and the time frames involved.
Yes and first century peasants couldn't imagine the idea of reading comments and responding to them on a magic lit up rectangle that knows when you touch it and where and exchanges the information involved invisibly through the air even passing through solid objects.
If that's what you think, then you severely underestimate human technological innovation.
Both! All three!
yes.
if we want to become a true space faring species resilient to all that the universe can throw at us we will need both
We should stay fucking put until we figure out how to end greed and racism once and for all
We aren't going to stop being prejudiced against each other until we meet other species to turn our prejudices outward.
Any ideas?
If we are capable of doing one, then we can do both.
C) Undersea habitat domes!
Colonizing Antarctica would be more reasonable than that.
THE YEAR IS UNIVERSAL CENTURY 0079
What’s the purpose—research? Tax evasion? Shits and giggles?
Survival
Huge sci-fi lover here. But at the same time, colonization of space for humans is possibly impossible without avatars. The human body evolved here, and it's a vessel that works here the best. To colonize other worlds, it's more economically viable to send machines, create biologically synthesized new species (taking dna from local species there), and then transfer consciousness to them. Similar with Avatar, but without having to have the spaceships arrive in the planet full of humans. Humans remain on earth, and they project their consciousness somewhere else, in an instant due to entanglement.
That's not how entanglement works