PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
I was thinking of a Venusification of Earth within the next few milleniums, with utter uninhabitability beginning around the year 3000, maybe even sooner.
The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXV
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PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Stephen Hawking DID say, IIRC, that humanity is doomed, and possibly extinct by Y3K unless we get our asses into gear and plant roots in space. 
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/11/stephen-hawking-save-humankind_n_3059434.html
It seems you're correct - he did say that.
(Or, rather, his speech synthesizer did.)
It seems you're correct - he did say that.
(Or, rather, his speech synthesizer did.)
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Blaming his speech synthesizer? Technopobe. 
Stephen Hawking DID say, IIRC, that humanity is doomed, and possibly extinct by Y3K unless we get our asses into gear and plant roots in space.
Well, sure it's doomed. But we've no way of knowing when and by what cause.
It might take 1-2billion years for the sun to make Earth uninhabitable. But the human race is virtually certain to be extinct by then by some other cause.
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Hehe, no worries; I was just being an ass.
Farm Boy
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I dunno, there seems to be pretty good evidence that technology makes our demise more likely rather than less. As technology enables the empowerment of individuals to a far greater degree than possible with lesser levels of it. One guy, or a small group of guys with weaponized disease are far more capable of destruction than ever before. Each boomer sub crew theoretically has the power to erase 20 million or so people in ~30 minutes. Statistically speaking, isn't it just a matter of time before somebody crazyballs enough to use something like these things gets their hands on one of them?
Borachio
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I don't know. Someone was talking the other day about how many mutations, and on which alleles (or something - I wasn't really paying attention) you'd need on the sars coronavirus to wipe out almost the entire human population. And how likely it was. I stopped listening.
Will some catastrophe befall humanity sooner or later? Yes, I think so. And sooner rather than later. But whether it will be a virus, global warming, a caldera or a meterorite remains to be seen.
And "soon" could mean anything from 10 years to 2000.
We just don't know when or what or whether it will happen. Uncertainty is a fact of life.
Will some catastrophe befall humanity sooner or later? Yes, I think so. And sooner rather than later. But whether it will be a virus, global warming, a caldera or a meterorite remains to be seen.
And "soon" could mean anything from 10 years to 2000.
We just don't know when or what or whether it will happen. Uncertainty is a fact of life.
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Considering colonists on Mars will probably, see red, quite literally, for the rest of their lives, and might end up having hotter tempers than us Earthlings, considering the subliminal psychological impact of the color red and reddish tones. All the more reason to terraform the darned thing. Native microbes be damned dammit!
(Unless they somehow manage to automagically aid the terraforming process. Then they get kudos.)
(Unless they somehow manage to automagically aid the terraforming process. Then they get kudos.)
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
Which brings me a new question. Why in the world are space agencies so obsessed with grayscale images, when they could just easily and cheaply add just color cameras to their probes when they need images for the public?
It looks red when you see it in the sky, though.
Mise
isle of lucy
So it is actually red then?
hobbsyoyo
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No it is not. It is actually red, extremely red, redrum redrum. It's basically rust and you can see very similar colored soil in Africa and Australia where the dirt hasn't been tilled by glaciers and is old as...dirt. Same type of thing on Mars - alot of the water in the planet is locked into,the Iron in the regolith.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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Well you can't easily and cheaply do anything in space I am afraid.
I actually asked a similar question to guys on my satellite team as one of our cameras is grayscale. It is just damned expensive to get a space rated camera of any kind. They have to withstand vacuum, radiation, extreme swings between hot and cold etc, etc. All of this drives up the cost quite a bit and if you don't *need* color photos and you can get a grayscale camera cheaper, then you do.
However, on typical science missions, the grayscale cameras are only for menial tasks - such as inspecting the underside of a rover for damage or something. The principle scientific camers are almost always full color and I don't know of any agency that doesn't use full-color nowadays.
Oh a couple of other things - sometimes they will use grayscale cameras when bandwith is tight or if they need highest absolute resolution. In those cases i believe the grayscales have an advantage.
Oh and of course you also have to keep in mind when a photo was taken. In the 60's, 70's and even 80's, grayscales were often all the could be used as the technological problems I have mentioned were all more pressing then, naturally. The Russians were also terrible at everything electronic so often a grayscale camera is all they had.
Compare their photos of the first ever spacewalk with our photos of the first American spacewalk and you'll see what I mean. My current avatar is a picture from that first US spacewalk and it's quite a pleasing color picture for 1966 technology. The Russian photos, on the other hand, are hardly recognizable as photos in some of the shots.
Spoiler USA Number ONE :
Spoiler Russia number sadface :
Oh and one more last minute spacespam bit - on Apollo 11, when Neil stepped down the ladder and we see it in really crappy grayscale - there was a color camera that was supposed to be used to take that shot but it broke and they used another backup camera that was only supposed to help with landing or something.
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