The endless thread on Space Colonization

[CavLancer]

Whatever we do we should remember to feel guilty about stuff. For instance we would be destroying the pristine, untouched by human hands, environment of Mars. As an example Martian global warming has already started and all we're doing is thinking about going.

 

[Tee Kay]

If it's -20C you turn the heater up.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I still think we should colonise the seas before we colonise the stars.

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.' 'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.' 'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I still think we should colonise the seas before we colonise the stars.

The seas are horribly polluted. We need to clean them up, ask the whales and dolphins to forgive us, and just leave them in peace. We owe them that much.

We were made for this planet and no other planet will be able to support life like this one does. All this is pure Science Fiction and ill never be a reality.

Pessimist. Isn't it funny that you, a religious person, has no faith in the human ability to learn and figure these things out, and I, an atheist, do have such faith?

Hypothetical method of 'seeding' the stars - instead of sending a complicated starship that needs to keep a human crew alive and well for decades, you send a simpler, AI/robotic ship that contains frozen human embryos. Upon arrival, the machines build a basic colony, defreeze the embryos and grow babies in artificial wombs. Upon "birth", the AI raises and educates the kids until they are capable of taking care of themselves and go on populating their new planet.

That's a recipe for social disaster.

 

[salty mud]

The seas are horribly polluted. We need to clean them up, ask the whales and dolphins to forgive us, and just leave them in peace. We owe them that much.

The oceans are so vast that any pollution in them is rapidly dispersed into such low level, barely noticeable amounts. Pollution is mainly a problem in coastal areas with low flow rates.

 

[El_Machinae]

To answer the OP poll, I think we should have humans colonise various solar system planets. If we leave Sol, though, it should be as posthumans. I don't see any reason to send meatbags.

Hypothetical method of 'seeding' the stars - instead of

Hmmmn, not seeing any upside to this. I mean, if this hypertech is available, then sending a pure robot crew instead seems superior.

Project Orion anyone? Atomic bombs can be a good think. At least it's better to try to give them some use instead of having them covered in dust.

We're currently using those bombs to power nuclear powerplants. I think that's a superior method. I'm not against the idea of nuclear propulsion. I'm currently wondering if thorium reactors could be used for spaceflight.

 

[Kyriakos]

Now that the Russians kicked the lazy Americans out of the International (aka Russian ) Space Center, we may see some work there

 

[Winner]

Project Orion anyone? Atomic bombs can be a good think. At least it's better to try to give them some use instead of having them covered in dust.

It's not... that easy. To make this work really, not in the 1950s-era fantasy world, we'd need to rework our nukes into standardized nuclear shape-charge pellets to truly effectively use them. But even so, the ship would still be veeeeery slooooow. We're talking centuries to the nearest stars here.

That's a recipe for social disaster.

Not worse than any of the craziness committed by humans on their children here on Earth.

Hmmmn, not seeing any upside to this. I mean, if this hypertech is available, then sending a pure robot crew instead seems superior.

Standardized answer for the robotcrowd: why should the robots have all the fun

Now that the Russians kicked the lazy Americans out of the International (aka Russian ) Space Center, we may see some work there

What?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Yes, this kind of trap will probably be killed by three-body losses when you scale up the density of the antimatter. Time-wise the limit is how good you can get your vacuum. This could actually work better with antimatter than with regular matter once have a macroscopic amount, because the antimatter would act as an extra vacuum pump.



Yes, storing antiprotons is not going to work beyond a few particles. I just wanted to point out that the term ionized antihydrogen is not going to be useful for anything, because if you go to the trouble of making antihydrogen (which is much harder than going for antiprotons), it would be quite stupid to ionize it again.

The most promising approach might be storing antimatter as a plasma as tried in magnetic confinement fusion research. That way you could make use of strong magnetic forces without the problems that come with a net charge of the system. Whether a trap for antimatter can be weight effective is unclear and you are right to be skeptical about that. But there is no fundamental physical reason why this cannot work and the problems are mostly technical.

Efficient production of antimatter is the much bigger problem in my opinion. The physical mechanism we use to produce antimatter is extremely inefficient so if we want to produce a macroscopic amount of antimatter we would need to find another mechanism. And we have no idea whether there is such a mechanism (well, theoretically I could propose one, but that can probably never be realized).

Some moths ago i read about a new laser device the size of a PC capable of creating positrons when shot at heavy atoms. So not need for huge particle accelerators anymore, at least for positrons. Dont know if it could become useful for propulsion though. Maybe indirectly.

 

[El_Machinae]

Standardized answer for the robotcrowd: why should the robots have all the fun

They shouldn't. I have nothing against self-financed extra Solar colonization. I'm not sure about the upside to Sol for sending out crews on our dime, though.

 

[Winner]

They shouldn't. I have nothing against self-financed extra Solar colonization. I'm not sure about the upside to Sol for sending out crews on our dime, though.

Preservation of the species and all that. Plus, it is a challenge.

 

[Kyriakos]

What?

There was a yahoo front-page article yesterday, titled likewise, that Russia has banned Americans from the International Space Station, and Americans1776 will retailiate and so on. I did not click on it cause the title alone sounded hyper-lame, but i am sure you can easily check if there is anything to it

 

[El_Machinae]

Preservation of the species and all that. Plus, it is a challenge.

Ehn, I don't feel that 'preservation of the species' is an obligation. I mean, it sounds nice, but it doesn't deserve dollars. Preserving people does deserve dollars, but that's a different set of metrics.

Like I said, I have no resentment towards self-financed, but I think we'd be better off sending posthumans.

 

[Winner]

There was a yahoo front-page article yesterday, titled likewise, that Russia has banned Americans from the International Space Station, and Americans1776 will retailiate and so on. I did not click on it cause the title alone sounded hyper-lame, but i am sure you can easily check if there is anything to it

Well, it does sound hyper-lame, chiefly because it is nonsense The Russians are literally milking NASA and the Europeans for providing seats on Soyuz ferry flights; they need the cash to fund their own space programme.

If they refused to ferry Americans and Europeans to the ISS, they'd lose a very, very lucrative business and lose the station anyway, because they have no resources to maintain it on their own (as if the others would let them; they'd shut it down from the ground and that would be the end of it).

Ehn, I don't feel that 'preservation of the species' is an obligation. I mean, it sounds nice, but it doesn't deserve dollars. Preserving people does deserve dollars, but that's a different set of metrics.

Like I said, I have no resentment towards self-financed, but I think we'd be better off sending posthumans.

Posthumans... right. We don't know what that even is.

Preservation of the species is, on the other hand, an evolutionary imperative. I'd say that ethically speaking, humanity owes a huge debt to the biosphere for the damage we've caused. The only redemption is to act as agents of spread of terran genes to as many places as possible, ensuring that the evolution of life on Earth doesn't abruptly end with a tragic accident.

 

[El_Machinae]

Preservation of the species is, on the other hand, an evolutionary imperative. I'd say that ethically speaking, humanity owes a huge debt to the biosphere for the damage we've caused. The only redemption is to act as agents of spread of terran genes to as many places as possible, ensuring that the evolution of life on Earth doesn't abruptly end with a tragic accident.

Huh, well, not only do I disagree, I can barely comprehend where such a mindset comes from.

I don't think we have an imperative to preserve the species, merely to ensure that future people have a good quality of life. It doesn't matter how many colonies we send, we'd still have an onus to prevent this 'tragic accident' from even occurring in the first place.

Now, maybe an economic argument can be made that extra-Solar colonization efforts would improve our capacity to mitigate these accidents, but I don't really see it.

 

[Winner]

Huh, well, not only do I disagree, I can barely comprehend where such a mindset comes from.

I don't think we have an imperative to preserve the species, merely to ensure that future people have a good quality of life. It doesn't matter how many colonies we send, we'd still have an onus to prevent this 'tragic accident' from even occurring in the first place.

Now, maybe an economic argument can be made that extra-Solar colonization efforts would improve our capacity to mitigate these accidents, but I don't really see it.

I don't even understand what is difficult to understand here; I consider it pretty much common sense that if humanity goes extinct, then it won't matter one bit whether the last few generations alive had a good quality of life - not to us, anyway. Inhabiting only one Solar System (or indeed only one planet, speaking of the present day) inherently increases the possibility of extinction. Although the chances are very low, one stray gamma ray burst aimed at here and we're done, along with pretty much all higher-order life on this planet.

 

[warpus]

Humanity is going to go extinct at one point or another, that is virtually inevitable. Even if we last a long time(tm), we are likely going to evolve into a completely different species at some point before our demise.

Having said that, we might as well colonize other planets. Near term survival is important.. plus I'm sure we'll learn a thing or two along the way.

 

[LamaGT]

Huh, well, not only do I disagree, I can barely comprehend where such a mindset comes from.

I don't think we have an imperative to preserve the species, merely to ensure that future people have a good quality of life. It doesn't matter how many colonies we send, we'd still have an onus to prevent this 'tragic accident' from even occurring in the first place.

Now, maybe an economic argument can be made that extra-Solar colonization efforts would improve our capacity to mitigate these accidents, but I don't really see it.

Actually yeah, the first and foremost worry of any living thing on Earth is to preserve the species. If it wasn't, we simply wouldn't be here.
Honestly I don't understand your point here. Even if hypothetically it is necessary to spend the world's GDP to prevent the extinction of every species on Earth, I would definitely do it. I don't think a dead planet will need those dollars.

But in any case we're talking in very hyperbolic terms here. NASA's budget today is half a percent of the total federal budget. NASA's research has created and improved countless day to day technologies, including medical equipment. All of this while aiming at most for a "puny" moon landing. Colonization would be a completely different deal. It doesn't matter who does it on whose dollars, it will profit humanity hugely anyway.

 

[El_Machinae]

Even if hypothetically it is necessary to spend the world's GDP to prevent the extinction of every species on Earth, I would definitely do it. I don't think a dead planet will need those dollars.

Yeah, this I agree with. But the idea of sending out colonists because of this threat just doesn't resonate. I can even see sending out lifeboats, but that's only because specific individuals will want to/should live.

I don't see that sending out colonists will in anyway change the above calculus. No matter how many colonies we send out, we'd still wanna spend all of Earth's GDP dealing with some local disaster. In fact, if there's a risk of some local disaster, then efforts spent sending out colonists could easily reduce our ability to deal (depending on the level of investment).

I don't really care about 'species'. I care about individuals.
You'll find I'm a techno-optimist, and I'm certainly pro-space. I just don't really sympathise with the argument that extrasolar colonization is all that necessary, morally.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

We and any species are naturally programmed to worry about our offspring, not about the species conservation, not directly at least. That comes as an indirect consequence. So i doubt most people would care that much about the far future of humanity or the survival of some stranger they wont ever meet.