So Elon Musk says he would like to live on Mars.

Do you think it's possible within his/your/our lifetime?

Would you want to be one of the first to colonize the Red Planet, even with all the dangers?

Elon Musk doesn't strike me as the hardy pioneer type (or the sort of person to play well with other people for years sharing the same tent), but good luck to him.

It might be possible in the first half of this century, but not as a self-sufficient concern; I think such an endeavour will require regular supply from Earth.

I think the sheer logistics is the issue. A small trip is one thing, but to actually live on Mars for an extended period of time would be daunting. I think it's possible if we find a new renewable energy source by the end of the century, but even then I think a proper colony is very far away, just because of the sheer cost.

It won't be possible under capitalism until it's profitable.

Technologically, sure. We can go now.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Do you think it's possible within his/your/our lifetime?

Possible? Yes. We've had the technology to do it for decades. The only obstacle to doing it is someone with sufficient resources deciding to commit.

Probable? No. There's just no point to it. For the same payload capacity of a manned mission you can send a whole swarm of robots capable of doing vastly more scientific work, and outside of exploration Mars has nothing to offer. No useful resources, no unique features, just an obscenely expensive flag-planting expedition. And because it makes no sense to throw such vast piles of money at the project the people with the money to do it aren't going to have any interest, and it will probably never happen. And TBH, if the only way we're getting to Mars is Trump getting into a dick-measuring contest with Putin and starting a new space race, well, I'd rather keep that nationalistic dumpster fire limited to one planet.

Would you want to be one of the first to colonize the Red Planet, even with all the dangers?

Depends on what you mean by "first". Member of a 10-person scientific mission where everyone involved will have their names in history? Hell yes. First of a million-person colony where you get all of the suck but none of the fame? No thanks.

I wish Elon Musk would go and live on Mars right now.

And stay there.

Curious as to why you feel there are no resources on Mars that could be valuable?

There could be iron, other metals...salt...who knows! There hasn't really been any kind of deep analysis of the Martian planetary makeup, has there?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I wish Elon Musk would go and live on Mars right now.

And stay there.

To be fair, all the major players in the 'Colonize Mars' game have admitted going there is a one way trip. So we can always hope he goes for it.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Curious as to why you feel there are no resources on Mars that could be valuable?

There could be iron, other metals...salt...who knows! There hasn't really been any kind of deep analysis of the Martian planetary makeup, has there?

That's what the new lander is starting to do.

Congrats to the NASA team for getting it down intact!

Big ups to the UK science team who designed and built the sensors.

I would love to go to Mars. Life on Earth is boring. Life on Mars would also be boring, but at least it would be different.

But I am pretty sure Elon Musk will never go to Mars. Who knows, we might actually see a manned Mars mission, but a colony is still pretty far beyond our means since constant resupply missions as with the ISS are too expensive. A Mars colony would need to be largely self-sufficient from the start.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Curious as to why you feel there are no resources on Mars that could be valuable?

Because planetary gravity wells are a near-impossible obstacle. It's highly questionable whether there could be any resource that could be sufficiently valuable per unit of mass to justify extracting it from another planet, and if there is it certainly isn't going to be bulk materials like iron or salt.

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Curious as to why you feel there are no resources on Mars that could be valuable?

Because planetary gravity wells are a near-impossible obstacle. It's highly questionable whether there could be any resource that could be sufficiently valuable per unit of mass to justify extracting it from another planet, and if there is it certainly isn't going to be bulk materials like iron or salt.

The moon is a much more viable choice for a colony right now. Extracting and shipping stuff mined there would be much easier to send back due to the lower gravity making it easier to leave. Plus you're still relatively close to Earth.

We'd be better off colonizing the Moon first. Mars can wait.

The slight problem being gravity. We don't know exactly how it would impact people long term, but Mars should be survivable while colonists on Luna would essentially be dealing with the same problems ISS occupants do at the moment. Some people have suggested canted rotating habitats, but then you run into issues with radiation exposure because those can't feasibly be built underground. If we decide to extract resources from the moon, the humans will be in orbital habitats controlling drone workers on the surface, we won't be colonising it.

There's also the issue of short term vs long term thinking. The moon is easier, but there's a hard limit on how far it can be developed, and we can't do anything there habitation wise that can't be done just as well and more easily in constructed orbitals. OTOH while there's not a huge amount of short term or even medium term gain in beginning to colonise Mars, it is at least theoretically possible to make Mars habitable in the long term with technology that either already exists or has been proven to be functionally viable(if not commercially or practically). Whether humanity is capable of taking a long enough view to put such a huge investment into a project that it's possible even this generation's grandchildren might not see the end of I don't know.

All that said, if we decide to allow corporations to go off and stripmine the solar system(and we bloody well shouldn't), the rational place to go isn't Mars, or the moon, it's the asteroid belt. You don't need to dig as hard to get at the good stuff, you don't have to deal with getting the resulting material up out of a gravity well, and there are a few objects large enough to support modest habitats once they've been tunnelled out and spun for pseudogravity. Right now the main challenge is mostly in identifying which objects would actually be valuable enough to go for.

Regardless of how we do it though, we do need to get off the Earth and establish self-sustaining colonies elsewhere ASAP, right now there are just too many things that could wipe us out in a single blow, not least our own stupidity.

I agree. If you want to do mining in space, the asteroids are the place to go. If you can get to Mars you can get to the asteroids. Attach ion motors to a suitable rock and accelerate it slowly back to Earth orbit.

That said, there's actually plenty of easily get-at-able raw materials on Earth, so maybe we don't need to do mining in space, unless we want to manufature specialist materials in space and can't get the raw materials up from Earth easily enough.

Reading this thread, I'm left to wonder, whatever happened to good old "because we can"? It's driven so many leaps in advancement and knowledge, short-term economic losses should be irrelevant.
Personally, I think we've given (or they've slowly accumulated) the beancounters too much power. I'd suggest sending most of *them* to Mars. Do or die, you useless c*nts.
Economy's a means to an end, not an end of itself.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree. If you want to do mining in space, the asteroids are the place to go. If you can get to Mars you can get to the asteroids. Attach ion motors to a suitable rock and accelerate it slowly back to Earth orbit.

That said, there's actually plenty of easily get-at-able raw materials on Earth, so maybe we don't need to do mining in space, unless we want to manufature specialist materials in space and can't get the raw materials up from Earth easily enough.

I think that's the only way it would be feasible. Even if you get raw materials back to Earth's orbit, you've still got to bring it down to the ground. Unless you find an asteroid made of tritium or something it's just not going to be economically viable.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Reading this thread, I'm left to wonder, whatever happened to good old "because we can"? It's driven so many leaps in advancement and knowledge, short-term economic losses should be irrelevant.

When was it ever about "because we can?". The space race was a product of the cold war. The Soviets put Sputnik in orbit and scared the piss out of the the US government. Everything that followed was funding military/intelligence capability cloaked under the aegis of scientific research. This situation remains to this day, with token amounts being spent on actual science.

The recent mars probe is an example. Took 10 years of planning and a billion dollars. What's the US military budget for one year these days? 700 billion. 11-12 billion for military space projects. The shuttle program put many classified satellites into orbit and happily got some good science done in addition.

Note that the total costs of the Large Hadron Collider is over $14 billion to date, so the world is willing to throw some money at pure science, but space was never about aspirational goals.

There is a project in the works to set up a colony on mars. Forget the name of it but they are going through applicants and have the basic design laid out. But these people have to plan to be there the rest of their lives; while it's possible they could get a shuttle home at some point in the future there is no guarantee. That said... You get to be the first humans living on another planet, which is a titantic achievement for the species and one that can never be overwritten. And the planet you are leaving isn't THAT great anyways.

I wonder if they would still get to vote?

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Curious as to why you feel there are no resources on Mars that could be valuable?

Because planetary gravity wells are a near-impossible obstacle. It's highly questionable whether there could be any resource that could be sufficiently valuable per unit of mass to justify extracting it from another planet, and if there is it certainly isn't going to be bulk materials like iron or salt.

The moon is a much more viable choice for a colony right now. Extracting and shipping stuff mined there would be much easier to send back due to the lower gravity making it easier to leave. Plus you're still relatively close to Earth.

We'd be better off colonizing the Moon first. Mars can wait.

I actually kinda agree with this. Mars is unique in that it is relatively Earth-like. Ideally we want to wait with colonising it until we have terraformed it to be even more like Earth so that it can sustain plant and Human life without special habitats (such habitats are more effective to build in space rather than on a planet anyways). Terraforming Mars is already mostly possible with current technology. We are just looking for a way to make it feasible.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Reading this thread, I'm left to wonder, whatever happened to good old "because we can"? It's driven so many leaps in advancement and knowledge, short-term economic losses should be irrelevant.
Personally, I think we've given (or they've slowly accumulated) the beancounters too much power. I'd suggest sending most of *them* to Mars. Do or die, you useless c*nts.
Economy's a means to an end, not an end of itself.

What happened is that we realized that nationalistic flag-planting exercises like putting humans on the moon were spectacular wastes of money and accomplished nothing but proving that we had a bigger dick than those evil communists. If you want advancement and knowledge fund a massive swarm of robot probes to Mars. The only reason to send humans is RAR THE US IS BETTER THAN CHINA WERE GOING TO MAKE MARS GREAT AGAIN.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
There is a project in the works to set up a colony on mars. Forget the name of it but they are going through applicants and have the basic design laid out. But these people have to plan to be there the rest of their lives; while it's possible they could get a shuttle home at some point in the future there is no guarantee. That said... You get to be the first humans living on another planet, which is a titantic achievement for the species and one that can never be overwritten. And the planet you are leaving isn't THAT great anyways.

I wonder if they would still get to vote?

If by "project in the works" you mean "someone made a website as a marketing stunt" then yeah, it's a thing. There is no real project behind any of it.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Reading this thread, I'm left to wonder, whatever happened to good old "because we can"? It's driven so many leaps in advancement and knowledge, short-term economic losses should be irrelevant.

A) No, it hasn't. 'Because we can make money on it' or 'it will help defeat our enemies' drove exploration and advancement.
'Because we can' is a the cry of rich, useless man with nothing better to offer. Enter Elon Musk.

B) They wouldn't be short-term economic losses. They'd involve long term economic collapses and, if you're involving colonists, a lot of death.
Even on a tiny scale, a research station for people on mars would just involve dumping money and resources over and over and over again.
There are useful things to do in space (see asteroids, certain types of research, manufacturing, etc), but there is very little to be gained dropping actual people down another gravity well, and trying to maintain a marginal existence in a hostile environment where any single act of stupidity, accident or malice can wipe the whole board.

To be fair, there was some reason for manned missions in the 1970s, when computer technology was far more primitive. But now? Hell no. If you want to do science you send robots. Humans are just dead weight and nationalistic masturbation.

but if he goes we'll need some other tech-sort think he's Tony Stark

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree. If you want to do mining in space, the asteroids are the place to go. If you can get to Mars you can get to the asteroids. Attach ion motors to a suitable rock and accelerate it slowly back to Earth orbit.

That said, there's actually plenty of easily get-at-able raw materials on Earth, so maybe we don't need to do mining in space, unless we want to manufature specialist materials in space and can't get the raw materials up from Earth easily enough.

I think that's definitely the progression, asteroid mining first- but you don't go to the belt for Earth imports. We have tiny spaceships because we have to loft them out of a gravity well- but with a reliable supply of raw materials, not just rare ones, you can use those resources for relatively cheap orbital factories, larger ships, and basically begin driving down the cost of space exploration. Leave the resources in space, and use them there. SpaceX costs 27,000 per pound lifted into space- and it's the cheapest option! So sit up there with a basic iron harvester, or figure out how to turn it into steel. Now sell that steel for 20,000 dollars a pound to whatever space agency wants it.

You can even skip the asteroids, and set up a satellite scavenging service, capturing space debris and stripping it for parts, probably while being subsidized by somebody for making the orbitals safer. The trick is making something that can stay up there, and produce a good or service to be used in space.

 Peregrine wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Reading this thread, I'm left to wonder, whatever happened to good old "because we can"? It's driven so many leaps in advancement and knowledge, short-term economic losses should be irrelevant.
Personally, I think we've given (or they've slowly accumulated) the beancounters too much power. I'd suggest sending most of *them* to Mars. Do or die, you useless c*nts.
Economy's a means to an end, not an end of itself.

What happened is that we realized that nationalistic flag-planting exercises like putting humans on the moon were spectacular wastes of money and accomplished nothing but proving that we had a bigger dick than those evil communists. If you want advancement and knowledge fund a massive swarm of robot probes to Mars. The only reason to send humans is RAR THE US IS BETTER THAN CHINA WERE GOING TO MAKE MARS GREAT AGAIN.

I've got to ask, where is this idea the moon race was a waste of money coming from? IIRC for every dollar of public money the US spent on the Apollo programme the economy grew by 14 dollars, which sounds like a pretty damned effective bit of stimulus spending to me, and certainly more productive than another round of enabling property speculation bubbles or pouring all that cash into the gaping maw of the military. Not to mention all of the technological advances that were made.

And again, the point of putting people on Mars is not vacant nationalism, it's insurance against an ELE wiping out the whole species. Nice though, I think this might be the first time I've seen people advocating scientific adventure and exploration equated with bellowing Trumpists

 Gitzbitah wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree. If you want to do mining in space, the asteroids are the place to go. If you can get to Mars you can get to the asteroids. Attach ion motors to a suitable rock and accelerate it slowly back to Earth orbit.

That said, there's actually plenty of easily get-at-able raw materials on Earth, so maybe we don't need to do mining in space, unless we want to manufature specialist materials in space and can't get the raw materials up from Earth easily enough.

I think that's definitely the progression, asteroid mining first- but you don't go to the belt for Earth imports. We have tiny spaceships because we have to loft them out of a gravity well- but with a reliable supply of raw materials, not just rare ones, you can use those resources for relatively cheap orbital factories, larger ships, and basically begin driving down the cost of space exploration. Leave the resources in space, and use them there. SpaceX costs 27,000 per pound lifted into space- and it's the cheapest option! So sit up there with a basic iron harvester, or figure out how to turn it into steel. Now sell that steel for 20,000 dollars a pound to whatever space agency wants it.

You can even skip the asteroids, and set up a satellite scavenging service, capturing space debris and stripping it for parts, probably while being subsidized by somebody for making the orbitals safer. The trick is making something that can stay up there, and produce a good or service to be used in space.

Yeah i cant imagine its worth sending down anything from space outside of maybe like the heavy metals or precious metals that are harder to get here for various reasons. some generic info graphic shows something like 20% composition of various platinum metal groups which is cash money.

another big one for space cowboys to make it rich would be comets for that delicious thirst quenching water recourse. though bringing large quantities of materials around in space is probably going to have interesting effects on neighboring bodies.

 Yodhrin wrote:
[
And again, the point of putting people on Mars is not vacant nationalism, it's insurance against an ELE wiping out the whole species.

Or we could spend that money on asteroid tracking, redirection and keeping Earth's ecology from going to hell in a handbasket.

There is NOWHERE less hostile to human habitation than Earth. If we get a dino-killing asteroid hitting Earth, guess where humanity has the best chance of survival? Still on Earth - we could very easily build large geo-thermally powered super-bunkers that could survive almost anything short of Earth literally being split in two. And getting Earth back to live-able levels will be relatively quick and easy compared to, say, terraforming Mars.

So the argument that we need to colonize Mars for survival is less compelling than the one to build Earth ELE defenses and hidey-holes, neither of which we're actually doing.

Look, I get it, colonizing Mars would be cool as feth. Let's get a space economy going so we can afford it first, okay? Once we've got orbital factories and solar satellite stations and asteroid mining we can start thinking about it.

The principle regarding colonising Mars isn't just around insurance that we aren't all wiped out by an asteroid/nuclear war/disease on Earth, its the logical next step for our species.

Mankind has looked to the stars literally since we have existed. We have studied them and always had a fascination with them. Don't you think there's a reason for that? Don't you feel the driver for mankind to exist on as many planets in as many galaxies as possible?

Mars in particular has been selected by Musk/SpaceX because it does have some useful raw materials that would allow spacecraft to refuel and return to Earth. This is the primary driver. If we can get craft to and from the planet we stand a much better chance of making the colonisation process an investment opportunity - something it unfortunately has to be given current socioeconomic factors. The intent is to commercialise the offer of colonising Mars so that there is incentive to go there by big business and investors.

From a species perspective, as far as I'm concerned it absolutely needs to happen for a number of reasons, the most obvious being Earth only has so much space and we are rapidly filling it. The next obvious, at least on this group should be how are we going to create the Emperor's Imperium if we don't colonise other planets? Those Orks/Tyranids/Eldar/Necrons are going to come wreck us!

In all seriousness I've looked into this a fair bit as its something that really interests me. To answer the OPs questions - yes I think we will get a station on Mars of some description before I die. I think it will be a pretty grim existence up there for quite some time though so I wouldn't be signing up to go, even if the tickets were free (they won't be). The key to unlocking Mars (or any inhospitable biome really) seems to be sustainable food, energy, oxygen and water production. Something all major space powers are investing a lot of time and money into developing as I write this. They seem to be getting there too, they have already developed solar powered, easy build greenhouses that can grow a variety of vegetation, weigh very little (relatively speaking) and can filter water to make it drinkable. We already have a space craft that can be reused. As long as the infrastructure is put in place I see no reason we won't colonise the red planet in time.

Not sure why there's so much hate on Musk either. He's one of the few revolutionaries of our time.

 Peregrine wrote:
To be fair, there was some reason for manned missions in the 1970s, when computer technology was far more primitive. But now? Hell no. If you want to do science you send robots. Humans are just dead weight and nationalistic masturbation.

I understand you have a... predilection towards robots bordering on pathological, but if we can't keep them operating correctly long term HERE, what makes you think they'll be able to operate independently out THERE? Especially since there'll be no maintenance assets available. Didn't we have a probe recently that became a multimillion dollar sinkhole because of positioning? I seem to remember there being a story about it...



REGARDLESS, if there is any intellectual value or knowledge to be gained from sending humans out there, then we should do it. Lord knows we have enough to spare, and they are far cheaper to manufacture more of than robots.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Don't you feel the driver for mankind to exist on as many planets in as many galaxies as possible?

Nope. I understand how reality works, and how that "dream" is pure fiction.

The intent is to commercialise the offer of colonising Mars so that there is incentive to go there by big business and investors.

The point is that there can't be incentive. There is nothing that can be done or obtained on Mars that can even conceivably be profitable. Any hypothetical Mars colony would be an obscene money sink, most likely state-funded as a nationalism project, and the absolute best case scenario for it is that after an extended period of being a money sink it finally becomes mostly self-sufficient and can safely be abandoned and forgotten.

the most obvious being Earth only has so much space and we are rapidly filling it.

We aren't even close, and reducing/eliminating population growth is much easier than colonizing Mars. And there is no plausible scenario where we can get a non-trivial number of people off Earth, even the most wildly optimistic predictions for space elevators and such can only handle a negligible percentage of our population. Any expansion on Mars is going to be in addition to whatever space we're filling up here, not instead of it.

Not sure why there's so much hate on Musk either. He's one of the few revolutionaries of our time.

Because he's a narcissist, massive hypocrite, and an unstable walking PR debacle. I'll grant that SpaceX has been a clear success (though Musk's primary role there is business, not technical), but Tesla is mixed results with major scaling issues and a lot of his other ideas are utter ing lunacy. And even his biggest success is far from "revolutionary", SpaceX is much more of an incremental improvement than a revolution. TBH the closest thing to a revolution he's done is Tesla forcing the bigger manufacturers to take electric vehicles seriously instead of continuing to bury the technology.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
I understand you have a... predilection towards robots bordering on pathological, but if we can't keep them operating correctly long term HERE, what makes you think they'll be able to operate independently out THERE? Especially since there'll be no maintenance assets available. Didn't we have a probe recently that became a multimillion dollar sinkhole because of positioning? I seem to remember there being a story about it...

I know they won't be able to operate independently without problems, but that doesn't matter. Launch capacity is expensive, and human cargo requires an obscene amount of it. You need food, water, life support equipment, redundancy and over-engineering in everything, fuel for a return trip, etc. Then add even more payload capacity if you're insisting on hauling maintenance assets with those humans. Then add even more fuel to haul all that stuff, more fuel to haul the additional fuel, more fuel tank mass to hold it, more fuel to cover the extra tank mass, more tanks to hold that fuel, more fuel for those tanks, and on into the death spiral of rocket design.

Or you could send a whole swarm of robots, and who cares if 95% of them fail to get the job done when the surviving 5% will still be able to do more science than the tiny human expedition.


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 Yodhrin wrote:
I've got to ask, where is this idea the moon race was a waste of money coming from? IIRC for every dollar of public money the US spent on the Apollo programme the economy grew by 14 dollars, which sounds like a pretty damned effective bit of stimulus spending to me, and certainly more productive than another round of enabling property speculation bubbles or pouring all that cash into the gaping maw of the military. Not to mention all of the technological advances that were made.

Yes, the space program produced economic results, but did it really produce better results than investing the money elsewhere? We're not forced into a binary choice between space and the military, that money could go into targeted R&D programs aimed at getting the technology we want. And that's going to be a lot more effective than doing some unrelated thing and hoping that you get results as an accidental side effect.

And again, the point of putting people on Mars is not vacant nationalism, it's insurance against an ELE wiping out the whole species. Nice though, I think this might be the first time I've seen people advocating scientific adventure and exploration equated with bellowing Trumpists

Honestly, who cares if we manage to get a few people to survive that extinction event? The vast majority of people are still going to be dead, so we're spending vast amounts of money on an insurance policy for the vague concept of humanity as a species. And honestly, I don't really see that abstract concept as having much value if we aren't saving the people that make up the species.

I am more worried about my potential grandchildren making it to the end of the 21st century against climate change, environmental degradation and the decline of the post-WW2 international rules based order, than I am about a possible dinosaur killer asteroid.

Besides, there are other cosmic extinction events we have no chance of preventing, such as gamma ray bursters.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am more worried about my potential grandchildren making it to the end of the 21st century against climate change, environmental degradation and the decline of the post-WW2 international rules based order, than I am about a possible dinosaur killer asteroid.

Besides, there are other cosmic extinction events we have no chance of preventing, such as gamma ray bursters.

But those can be avoided by leaving the solar system. Which we can't do until we both find somewhere plausible to go, and have extensive experience constructing ships and colonies. The latter of which we can't get if we sit on Earth twiddling our thumbs while drones potter around the solar system(besides which, drone exploration has limits - even Mars is pushing it due to the coms delay, and regardless of how "illogical" it is most people find human exploration inspiring and aspirational which helps drive interest in and funding for science, while "we landed some rovers" will only stir the passions of existing space-nerds - while there is no binary choice between space and the military in theory, in practice people are not bloody robots and if you want them to support spending tax money on scientific endeavour they have to see and feel the "endeavour" part, and space exploration does that better than anything else).

Contrary to what Peregrine evidently believes, colonising Mars is not just sending half a dozen folk up there to sit in a bubble, it's a proof of concept for the idea we can establish ourselves permanently and sustainably on another world, and importantly one that is not at present particularly hospitable to us(ie, the kind of world we're far more likely to find Out There than perfect wee goldilocks worlds like Earth). Further, colonising Mars will likely require us to innovate solutions that firmly apply to your more immediate concerns - it's becoming more and more likely that the only plausible way to address climate change and environmental collapse will be geo-, atmo-, and bio-engineering(yes yes, I'm sure Peregrine will just say "but we could just not pollute stuff", but back in Reality Land...), all sectors of research that would receive a huge influx of interest and funding for the planning stages of a terraforming effort for Mars.

Which is why manned space exploration is more valuable, in my view, than "targeted research", because you can only target something if you know what it is already, whereas manned space exploration often requires people to solve problems we don't have on Earth yet but may in the future(by which time developing the knowledge would come too late to be of much use), or to solve problems in new ways that might not otherwise have occurred for years or decades or ever at all. All of the same arguments that apply to pure-theory physics research(without which we never would have developed such piffling ideas as microelectronics...) apply to manned space exploration.

7 billion people can't leave the solar system by the end of the century.

It's not about getting 7 billion people out. It's about spreading the species, and in the process, learn about creating and maintaining a planetary ecosphere without risking the entire species while we figure out what doesn't work beyond what's already ostensibly not working on Earth.
Knowledge that is, or will be, sorely needed as unbridled population growth screws up our currently only planet and the current economic/political climate almost completely fails to address either the cause or its consequences.

Someone had a line in their sig once, it read "The galaxy is littered with the single-planet graveyards of species that made the economically sensible decision not to explore space."

Bran Dawri wrote:
It's not about getting 7 billion people out. It's about spreading the species, and in the process, learn about creating and maintaining a planetary ecosphere without risking the entire species while we figure out what doesn't work beyond what's already ostensibly not working on Earth.
Knowledge that is, or will be, sorely needed as unbridled population growth screws up our currently only planet and the current economic/political climate almost completely fails to address either the cause or its consequences.

We're not going to invent hyperdrive, find dozens of new inhabitable planets, inhabit them, ruin them, finally realise what we already know about ruining the Earth with pollution and so on, and then inhabit some more planets and not ruin them, by the end of the century.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
It's not about getting 7 billion people out. It's about spreading the species, and in the process, learn about creating and maintaining a planetary ecosphere without risking the entire species while we figure out what doesn't work beyond what's already ostensibly not working on Earth.
Knowledge that is, or will be, sorely needed as unbridled population growth screws up our currently only planet and the current economic/political climate almost completely fails to address either the cause or its consequences.

We're not going to invent hyperdrive, find dozens of new inhabitable planets, inhabit them, ruin them, finally realise what we already know about ruining the Earth with pollution and so on, and then inhabit some more planets and not ruin them, by the end of the century.

Not with that attitude.

 Yodhrin wrote:
All that said, if we decide to allow corporations to go off and stripmine the solar system(and we bloody well shouldn't)...

Out of curiousity... why not? Would you rather they stripmine the earth, with all the ecological damage that entails? I would think it to be better to stripmine lifeless bodies rather than wreck the one body with a functioning ecosystem we can survive in...

 Vulcan wrote:
Out of curiousity... why not? Would you rather they stripmine the earth, with all the ecological damage that entails? I would think it to be better to stripmine lifeless bodies rather than wreck the one body with a functioning ecosystem we can survive in...

I think the point is to not allow companies in general to unilaterally decide what to stripmine because if left unchecked they'll go beyond what is sustainable in the name of profit, no matter the consequences or externalities.

Even so that "lifeless body" (the moon), has an impact on life on earth, no matter what Bill O’Reilly says.

If I remember correctly there are already some plans for private space mining that are looking for suitable asteroid. Usually bigger visitors that appear occasionally. The idea is to extrapolate their next visit near earth, shoot mining equipment into space to meet them, mine some stuff, and when they get near earth jump off and get back to earth with the loot.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
It's not about getting 7 billion people out. It's about spreading the species, and in the process, learn about creating and maintaining a planetary ecosphere without risking the entire species while we figure out what doesn't work beyond what's already ostensibly not working on Earth.
Knowledge that is, or will be, sorely needed as unbridled population growth screws up our currently only planet and the current economic/political climate almost completely fails to address either the cause or its consequences.

We're not going to invent hyperdrive, find dozens of new inhabitable planets, inhabit them, ruin them, finally realise what we already know about ruining the Earth with pollution and so on, and then inhabit some more planets and not ruin them, by the end of the century.

No, but you're well on the way to inventing the hyperbole drive it seems

Inhabiting Mars in the near future is not about solving all of our problems and achieving world peace and ensuring free orgasms five times a day all by the end of the decade, it's a necessary first step in a process designed to ensure the survival of humanity in the very long term which could, as a side benefit, provide us with useful knowledge and technology that can contribute to solving present day issues.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
All that said, if we decide to allow corporations to go off and stripmine the solar system(and we bloody well shouldn't)...

Out of curiousity... why not? Would you rather they stripmine the earth, with all the ecological damage that entails? I would think it to be better to stripmine lifeless bodies rather than wreck the one body with a functioning ecosystem we can survive in...

Oh I've not problem with extracting resources from the solar system, especially the asteroid belt. I just think that the exploration and, where appropriate, exploitation of space should benefit humanity, not a handful of already ludicrously wealthy billionaires and their cronies. If we run space mining like countries used to run oil(ie, public companies as well as private, private pay tax out of every damned orifice and maybe get a few extra poked in them for good measure, and we regulate the gak out of it) then hi ho hi ho, but if it's just going to be Shell and the Kochs etc going out and carrying right on as they are now why even bother.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am more worried about my potential grandchildren making it to the end of the 21st century against climate change, environmental degradation and the decline of the post-WW2 international rules based order, than I am about a possible dinosaur killer asteroid.

Besides, there are other cosmic extinction events we have no chance of preventing, such as gamma ray bursters.

But those can be avoided by leaving the solar system

This is so insanely betond our abilities it is scarcely worth considering as a distant possibility over the course of millennia.

nfe wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am more worried about my potential grandchildren making it to the end of the 21st century against climate change, environmental degradation and the decline of the post-WW2 international rules based order, than I am about a possible dinosaur killer asteroid.

Besides, there are other cosmic extinction events we have no chance of preventing, such as gamma ray bursters.

But those can be avoided by leaving the solar system

This is so insanely betond our abilities it is scarcely worth considering as a distant possibility over the course of millennia.

Which is I'm sure exactly what people said about concepts such as flight a few hundred years ago. Or going into space at all.

There will always be naysayers, there will always be optimists and there will always be people getting stuff done.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am more worried about my potential grandchildren making it to the end of the 21st century against climate change, environmental degradation and the decline of the post-WW2 international rules based order, than I am about a possible dinosaur killer asteroid.

Besides, there are other cosmic extinction events we have no chance of preventing, such as gamma ray bursters.

But those can be avoided by leaving the solar system

This is so insanely betond our abilities it is scarcely worth considering as a distant possibility over the course of millennia.

Which is I'm sure exactly what people said about concepts such as flight a few hundred years ago. Or going into space at all.

No. They didn't really. People long thought flight was an achievable goal with sufficient technology. They had seen things fly, after all. It is not the same as inventing relativistic travel and mastering generation ships. We're talking about upturning physics for the former, not the fairly minor improvements in engineering that allowed us to stay off the ground and then go higher.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Which is I'm sure exactly what people said about concepts such as flight a few hundred years ago. Or going into space at all.

There will always be naysayers, there will always be optimists and there will always be people getting stuff done.

Only ignorant people said that about flight. Anyone with any sense saw that birds could fly, and human flight was just an engineering problem to solve. Any skepticism from informed experts was limited to the difficulty of finding an engine with a good enough power to weight ratio before 1900. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley getting all of this figured out ~100 years before the first powered flight.

Contrast this with leaving the solar system and colonizing other planets, where the difficulties are well known to be effectively impossible and a direct result of basic laws of physics, no example of successful interstellar travel exists to prove that it can be done, and no plausible theory for how it could work is even under consideration. Short of a complete revolution in physics that overturns everything we know there is no clever solution that makes the time or energy requirements less of an obstacle. It is always going to be obscenely expensive and difficult to send anything outside the solar system, and there's no realistic scenario where we find a purpose for the trip that justifies the cost.

Wouldn't surprise me if we NEED to experience a near-extinction level event before we sort our collective gak out and do something to avoid a repeat.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
It's not about getting 7 billion people out. It's about spreading the species, and in the process, learn about creating and maintaining a planetary ecosphere without risking the entire species while we figure out what doesn't work beyond what's already ostensibly not working on Earth.
Knowledge that is, or will be, sorely needed as unbridled population growth screws up our currently only planet and the current economic/political climate almost completely fails to address either the cause or its consequences.

We're not going to invent hyperdrive, find dozens of new inhabitable planets, inhabit them, ruin them, finally realise what we already know about ruining the Earth with pollution and so on, and then inhabit some more planets and not ruin them, by the end of the century.

No, but you're well on the way to inventing the hyperbole drive it seems

...

It's the only propulsion system with the speed to chase the infinite improbability drive which some of the other members have equipped.

Why exactly are you so against the idea of sending people to other planets Peregrine? I get that it is expensive and robots would be much more cost effective but why bother sending anything into space if we aren't going to eventually leave Earth? Admittedly it does seem a lot more logical to send a bunch of robots over to the moon and start 3D printing stuff there before we think of going to Mars even if that isn't quite as glamorous but I suspect that will probably happen first as a test run anyway.

I am perfectly happy to let Musk burn through his own money trying to get to Mars if only for the new technology like reusable rockets, advanced space suits, and all manner of little things that we wouldn't have it is weren't for space exploration. He might be a very strange individual who doesn't know when to shut up but it is undeniable that he has a good vision for the world.

Stephen Hawking said we should spread humanity out as soon as possible to avoid an ELE and I am inclined to trust him as he was one smart cookie. I can think of no negative side effects of colonizing other planets in the grand scheme of things. There will be mishaps along the way for sure but when some idiot world leader launches all the nukes or we fail to spot a meteor racing towards us, it will be nice to know that humanity still has a backup plan.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
All that said, if we decide to allow corporations to go off and stripmine the solar system(and we bloody well shouldn't)...

Out of curiousity... why not? Would you rather they stripmine the earth, with all the ecological damage that entails? I would think it to be better to stripmine lifeless bodies rather than wreck the one body with a functioning ecosystem we can survive in...

So, okay. corporations are stripmining the planet we live on and are going to kill us all. That's what we're going with here. Why would we give them more to stripmine instead of stopping them from killing us all?






People can imagine the most fanciful leaps of technology to put people on Mars but can't imagine implementing already known systems to solve our current problems. Space discussion is just so myopic.

 Commander Cain wrote:

Stephen Hawking said we should spread humanity out as soon as possible to avoid an ELE and I am inclined to trust him as he was one smart cookie. I can think of no negative side effects of colonizing other planets in the grand scheme of things. There will be mishaps along the way for sure but when some idiot world leader launches all the nukes or we fail to spot a meteor racing towards us, it will be nice to know that humanity still has a backup plan.

"humanity" "the species" etc etc

Okay. Who is that? What organisations do they use, what beliefs do they have, what fundamental view of what a society is do they have? What is it that you think would be perpetuated?

 Peregrine wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Which is I'm sure exactly what people said about concepts such as flight a few hundred years ago. Or going into space at all.

There will always be naysayers, there will always be optimists and there will always be people getting stuff done.

Only ignorant people said that about flight. Anyone with any sense saw that birds could fly, and human flight was just an engineering problem to solve. Any skepticism from informed experts was limited to the difficulty of finding an engine with a good enough power to weight ratio before 1900. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley getting all of this figured out ~100 years before the first powered flight.

Contrast this with leaving the solar system and colonizing other planets, where the difficulties are well known to be effectively impossible and a direct result of basic laws of physics, no example of successful interstellar travel exists to prove that it can be done, and no plausible theory for how it could work is even under consideration. Short of a complete revolution in physics that overturns everything we know there is no clever solution that makes the time or energy requirements less of an obstacle. It is always going to be obscenely expensive and difficult to send anything outside the solar system, and there's no realistic scenario where we find a purpose for the trip that justifies the cost.

Interstellar travel is technically possible. It is just that it would take many Human lifetimes to get anywhere remotely interesting since traveling near or at the speed of light is technically impossible and traveling beyond the speed of light is physically impossible. So we'd be traveling at a speed far below the speed of light which means that entire generations of people would live and die aboard the spacecraft before it gets to a destination.
The challenges that need to be solved before interstellar travel is possible are still pretty big though. We'd need to be able to navigate extremely precisely over inconceivably large distances over great lengths of time. We'd need to be able to grow food in space. We'd need to be able to build a vessel that is large enough to for thousands if not tens of thousands of people to live on their entire life. We'd need to be able to overcome the negative effects of a lack of gravity on the human body etc.
So while it is technically possible, it is not something that is going to happen in the next few hundred years even if the current speed of technological progress holds out.

Also, Da Vinci had figured out you could build a machine capable of flight before the end of the Middle Ages. He just lacked anything that could give him enough power to pull it off (he did build a working hang glider though). Meanwhile, the Chinese had been building helicopter toys since at least 400 BC and knew that in theory they could be scaled up enough to carry a man, provided a force existed that was powerful enough to spin it and generate lift. They also achieved 'flight' by strapping people to giant kites. Flight had never been a mystery. People knew how it worked, they just had no way to make it work. Leaving the solar system is on an entirely different level (for example, unlike with flight we have no examples such as birds that we can study).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Commander Cain wrote:

Stephen Hawking said we should spread humanity out as soon as possible to avoid an ELE and I am inclined to trust him as he was one smart cookie. I can think of no negative side effects of colonizing other planets in the grand scheme of things. There will be mishaps along the way for sure but when some idiot world leader launches all the nukes or we fail to spot a meteor racing towards us, it will be nice to know that humanity still has a backup plan.

"humanity" "the species" etc etc

Okay. Who is that? What organisations do they use, what beliefs do they have, what fundamental view of what a society is do they have? What is it that you think would be perpetuated?

Hey! Don't try to trick people by asking rhetorical questions!

 Commander Cain wrote:
Why exactly are you so against the idea of sending people to other planets Peregrine? I get that it is expensive and robots would be much more cost effective but why bother sending anything into space if we aren't going to eventually leave Earth?

I think the point is that the HARD part is getting out of the gravity well. Once you've done that, why go down ANOTHER gravity well? Space is full of resources that can be used to build settlements in space. There's no advantage to settling a planet like Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere with no Ozone layer and no magnetic field to protect people on the surface.

If you're stuck underground or in a dome, you might as well be in a space station. Much of the desired science can be done via robots for a fraction of the cost of sending people - arguably we only sent people to the moon because the technology for robots just wasn't there yet.

A few dozen O'Neill cylinders (heck, just one good sized one) would protect humanity from ELE just fine. You can build them in Earth orbit and even move them (slowly) elsewhere in the Solar System if you need to.

There's a decent argument to settle the Moon for raw materials - it's close, has a small gravity well so throwing raw materials out will be easy (and we could build an orbital lunar elevator with current materials).

 John Prins wrote:

 Commander Cain wrote:
Why exactly are you so against the idea of sending people to other planets Peregrine? I get that it is expensive and robots would be much more cost effective but why bother sending anything into space if we aren't going to eventually leave Earth?

I think the point is that the HARD part is getting out of the gravity well. Once you've done that, why go down ANOTHER gravity well? Space is full of resources that can be used to build settlements in space. There's no advantage to settling a planet like Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere with no Ozone layer and no magnetic field to protect people on the surface.

If you're stuck underground or in a dome, you might as well be in a space station. Much of the desired science can be done via robots for a fraction of the cost of sending people - arguably we only sent people to the moon because the technology for robots just wasn't there yet.

A few dozen O'Neill cylinders (heck, just one good sized one) would protect humanity from ELE just fine. You can build them in Earth orbit and even move them (slowly) elsewhere in the Solar System if you need to.

There's a decent argument to settle the Moon for raw materials - it's close, has a small gravity well so throwing raw materials out will be easy (and we could build an orbital lunar elevator with current materials).

If we are at the point where we can feasibly build a fully functioning settlement in space then we are also at the point where we can reinforce Mars' magnetic field and atmosphere to the point that it becomes a pleasant place for humans to live.
Settlements in space are not a good idea. No one wants to live his life locked up in a space station with no gravity (not to mention the pretty bad ways in which such a life would affect the Human body). Living in space is only viable for the short term. I could see miners spending a year or so in a mining colony in the Asteroid belt, but after that they are going to want to return to Earth.
People don't want to live locked up in a small base or habitat. They want gravity, lots of space and fresh air and everything or else they are never going to be leaving Earth. The only way to get more habitable space outside of Earth is to settle other planets. And Mars is the only planet that we could turn into a place with breathable air, gravity and everything. It really is the only option for permanent habitation outside of Earth.

I mean sure, a point may come when we are able to build something like a giant O'Neill cylinder. But by the point where we can build what is basically an artificial planet like that, terraforming Mars will be a trivial endeavor in comparison. Not to mention that it will still be preferable since it provides immensely more space for an immensely lower cost and is also far less vulnerable.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
All that said, if we decide to allow corporations to go off and stripmine the solar system(and we bloody well shouldn't)...

Out of curiousity... why not? Would you rather they stripmine the earth, with all the ecological damage that entails? I would think it to be better to stripmine lifeless bodies rather than wreck the one body with a functioning ecosystem we can survive in...

So, okay. corporations are stripmining the planet we live on and are going to kill us all. That's what we're going with here. Why would we give them more to stripmine instead of stopping them from killing us all?






People can imagine the most fanciful leaps of technology to put people on Mars but can't imagine implementing already known systems to solve our current problems. Space discussion is just so myopic.

 Commander Cain wrote:

Stephen Hawking said we should spread humanity out as soon as possible to avoid an ELE and I am inclined to trust him as he was one smart cookie. I can think of no negative side effects of colonizing other planets in the grand scheme of things. There will be mishaps along the way for sure but when some idiot world leader launches all the nukes or we fail to spot a meteor racing towards us, it will be nice to know that humanity still has a backup plan.

"humanity" "the species" etc etc

Okay. Who is that? What organisations do they use, what beliefs do they have, what fundamental view of what a society is do they have? What is it that you think would be perpetuated?

I'm not saying this colony would be perfect, heck, left alone long enough I am sure Martian colonists would end up very different from humans in so many ways. They would probably end up with all new beliefs and systems of government (which isn't necessarily a bad thing ) simply due to the fact that they would be so far away. They would even by physically different to us if we go the genetic modification route but they would still be essentially human. Would you prefer a world ending event that simply wiped all major life on the planet with no one to remember the last 12000 years of progress and history we have made?

I just think it is a good idea to have a few backup plans. O'Neill cylinders after a bit of googling sound like a good idea as well and a moon base is definitely more viable at present but Mars still has the strongest potential for terraforming in the future.

The issue with a space station is that there is no room for expansion, population would reach a certain point and natural resources severely limited. It's not a direct comparison but if the people on the ISS were the last humans, they wouldn't last long at all. Without regular supplies or someone on the ground to help them get back they would be helpless. A super sci-fi vessel that could suck up space debris and maintain a fleet of shuttles could work but I think we are quite a way away from building the Enterprise!

Edit: Iron Captain also makes a good point, space at the moment is not the most friendly nor pleasant place to live...

 Commander Cain wrote:



The issue with a space station is that there is no room for expansion, population would reach a certain point and natural resources severely limited. .

Would they not simply build more space stations, or add chunks to it?

If it isn't one of the big cylinders, then you just launch up a module or two. The theory is you create a station that is self sufficient for food, water and air, then import any other raw materials from lunar bases or mined asteroids.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

If we are at the point where we can feasibly build a fully functioning settlement in space then we are also at the point where we can reinforce Mars' magnetic field and atmosphere to the point that it becomes a pleasant place for humans to live.

Well, not exactly. Giving Mars a magnetic shield is simple, but not easy. Basically you need a copper coil that can surround the planet, placed in orbit in front of the planet, to generate a magnetic field. It's a huge engineering project you'd probably need a space colony to build in the first place.

Wheel type space colonies are within our engineering capacity now and expandable (add more wheels). For anything space related, orbital manufacturing and off-world harvesting is going to be necessary. That should be the goal - once we have that, then the only limit is our engineering capacity.

 Gitzbitah wrote:

 Commander Cain wrote:



The issue with a space station is that there is no room for expansion, population would reach a certain point and natural resources severely limited. .

Would they not simply build more space stations, or add chunks to it?

If it isn't one of the big cylinders, then you just launch up a module or two. The theory is you create a station that is self sufficient for food, water and air, then import any other raw materials from lunar bases or mined asteroids.

Oh for sure I just meant that it would be no good if we no longer had a planet or moon base that could keep it supplied. The only reason we would need to build a habitable station of that size capable of housing a good amount of people is if we thought the planet was in some form of immediate danger and in that situation a different planet/moon would have better potential for rebuilding civilization.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I agree. If you want to do mining in space, the asteroids are the place to go. If you can get to Mars you can get to the asteroids. Attach ion motors to a suitable rock and accelerate it slowly back to Earth orbit.

That said, there's actually plenty of easily get-at-able raw materials on Earth, so maybe we don't need to do mining in space, unless we want to manufature specialist materials in space and can't get the raw materials up from Earth easily enough.

With people's inevitable tendency to screw up I'd rather not have any substantial rocks being accelerated anywhere near earth just in case we end up triggering our own extinction event

 Commander Cain wrote:
Would you prefer a world ending event that simply wiped all major life on the planet with no one to remember the last 12000 years of progress and history we have made?

Then compile records of some kind and put them out there, somewhere. I don't believe that there is sufficient organisation on our current planet to actually launch serious space exploitation that wouldn't be some kind of get-rich-quick corporate scheme or some gadrillionaire's stupid vanity project.

 Commander Cain wrote:


Oh for sure I just meant that it would be no good if we no longer had a planet or moon base that could keep it supplied. The only reason we would need to build a habitable station of that size capable of housing a good amount of people is if we thought the planet was in some form of immediate danger and in that situation a different planet/moon would have better potential for rebuilding civilization.

Arguably a space station can be made to be self-sufficient, in that it can collect its own resources (by sending ships to asteroids) and build new stations and ships itself. You'd need those technologies to set up a self-sustaining Mars base anyways, and any permanent Mars settlement would probably need a permanent station in orbit for starters.

If you can get your spaceship up to near the speed of light, say at least 90%, then time dilation significantly reduces the subjective length of your voyage.

For example, travelling to Proxima Centauri at 90% of light speed would take about two and a half years subjective. This would still be a very long continuous voyage.

The problem of course is that you need to accelerate and decelerate, so you aren't travelling at 0.9c a lot of the time. The time dilation effect is more helpful over longer distances, though, because your acceleration and deceleration phases will be a smaller proportion of the total voyage.

All that being said, if you are travelling at 0.9c, collisions with interstellar particles and dust are going to be a serious problem.

Getting to 0.9c is science fiction, not reality.

 Peregrine wrote:
Getting to 0.9c is science fiction, not reality.

Not really. It is beyond our ability now. But it is physically possible.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Getting to 0.9c is science fiction, not reality.

Not really. It is beyond our ability now. But it is physically possible.

The energy requirements are pretty staggering. IIRC people who have done the math think 0.1C could be done with fusion power plants. Remember you've got to bring your own reaction mass for decades or centuries of the journey. The energy and reaction mass requirements won't change without other factors, like using giant lasers to push ships up to speed.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Getting to 0.9c is science fiction, not reality.

Not really. It is beyond our ability now. But it is physically possible.

It is physically possible, but it is still science fiction. The energy and reaction mass requirements to get moving that fast are way beyond any foreseeable ability to build.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Getting to 0.9c is science fiction, not reality.

Not really. It is beyond our ability now. But it is physically possible.

It is physically possible, but it is still science fiction. The energy and reaction mass requirements to get moving that fast are way beyond any foreseeable ability to build.

At one point, that argument applied to flight too.

NASA has figured out a theoretical method of bending space like Star Trek Warp Drives do, and the energy requirements are well within what Fusion power plants could provide. If they ever figure out a practical way to bend space our current engine tech could give us FTL/Near-FTL.

It does fall under the realm of "cheating" the laws of physics of course.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
All that said, if we decide to allow corporations to go off and stripmine the solar system(and we bloody well shouldn't)...

Out of curiousity... why not? Would you rather they stripmine the earth, with all the ecological damage that entails? I would think it to be better to stripmine lifeless bodies rather than wreck the one body with a functioning ecosystem we can survive in...

So, okay. corporations are stripmining the planet we live on and are going to kill us all. That's what we're going with here. Why would we give them more to stripmine instead of stopping them from killing us all?






People can imagine the most fanciful leaps of technology to put people on Mars but can't imagine implementing already known systems to solve our current problems. Space discussion is just so myopic.

Because a lot of the problems on earth stem directly from resource shortage, and no amount of fanciful leaps in technology (short of Star Trek replicators) will ever solve that. But go out in space and there's a LOT more resources to play with.

And you call me myopic...

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Getting to 0.9c is science fiction, not reality.

Not really. It is beyond our ability now. But it is physically possible.

It is physically possible, but it is still science fiction. The energy and reaction mass requirements to get moving that fast are way beyond any foreseeable ability to build.

At one point, that argument applied to flight too.

No. It did not. Or rather, we have no evidence that anyone ever thought this. On the other hand, as tackled on the previous page, we know for a fact that humans have known things could fly for as long as there have been humans..

Science fiction is not always synonymous with 'impossible'. It's often 'requires as yet non-existent technology'. Sure maybe in the neolithic folks saw birds and thought human flight utterly farcical, but we didn't achieve it for several thousand years after that, and 'millennia in the future' seems pretty close to 'science fixtion' to me.

 Grey Templar wrote:
At one point, that argument applied to flight too.

No, it really didn't. Sure, there was a point where people looked at flight and said "this requires too much power, it will never happen" but that's primarily out of a lack of understanding of aerodynamics and power and such preventing them from knowing how much power is required. It was just blind guessing and looking at birds. With accelerating to 0.9c we aren't blind guessing, we're looking at the energy and reaction mass requirements and knowing exactly how difficult the problem is and how far we are from getting anywhere near that fast. There is no "oh, now we get it" moment to be had. You simply require orders of magnitude more energy and reaction mass than we are capable of providing. So yes, it's theoretically possible that someday we'll develop an engine efficient enough to do it, but right now it's firmly in the realm of speculation and science fiction.

NASA has figured out a theoretical method of bending space like Star Trek Warp Drives do, and the energy requirements are well within what Fusion power plants could provide. If they ever figure out a practical way to bend space our current engine tech could give us FTL/Near-FTL.

It does fall under the realm of "cheating" the laws of physics of course.

When the premise of the idea is "we figure out a practical way to bend space" you have definitely moved into science fiction.

nfe wrote:

No. It did not. Or rather, we have no evidence that anyone ever thought this. On the other hand, as tackled on the previous page, we know for a fact that humans have known things could fly for as long as there have been humans.

We know things can travel through space. We have evidence that at least some people thought this as there are countless literary works exclaiming such.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
At one point, that argument applied to flight too.

No, it really didn't. Sure, there was a point where people looked at flight and said "this requires too much power, it will never happen" but that's primarily out of a lack of understanding of aerodynamics and power and such preventing them from knowing how much power is required.

Kinda what you're doing here then?

The information you have about this is limited at best.

There are a umber of people in this discussion stating what is ultimately their opinion as fact. That's fine but it doesn't change it from being you opinion.

At one point the human race did not have the understanding or the capabilities to make human flight possible. At one point the human race did not have the means or capabilities to allow people from across the world to discuss little models at their leisure. There would have been Peregrines or nfes back then stating that these things would never happen.

The facts are that its very, very unlikely that anyone here has any real authority on this discussion so it comes down to a matter of belief. I'm choosing to believe that it is possible for the human race to one day colonise the stars. If Mr Hawking believed it possible, a man much more intelligent than everyone here I'd wager, I think there is some merit to this belief.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Kinda what you're doing here then?

No. Again, there is a difference between "we don't know how flying works, is it even possible" and "we know exactly how acceleration to 0.9c works, how much energy and reaction mass is required, and how immensely far beyond our foreseeable ability those problems are".

The information you have about this is limited at best.

There are a umber of people in this discussion stating what is ultimately their opinion as fact. That's fine but it doesn't change it from being you opinion.

No, I am stating facts. Not opinions. This is not a subject you get to have opinions about, the power and reaction mass requirements are not things that are up for debate. The fact that you think otherwise is just demonstrating your very limited knowledge of the subject.

The facts are that its very, very unlikely that anyone here has any real authority on this discussion so it comes down to a matter of belief.

You're much like the cheated-on spouse declaring that their partner is 100% faithful: believing a feel-good lie because you don't like the uncomfortable truth, and making up whatever rationalizations are required to keep believing.

 Peregrine wrote:

No, I am stating facts. Not opinions. This is not a subject you get to have opinions about, the power and reaction mass requirements are not things that are up for debate. The fact that you think otherwise is just demonstrating your very limited knowledge of the subject.

"You have definitely moved into science fiction." This is an opinion.

"Way beyond any forceeable way to build" This is an opinion. Unless you know what the future holds?

"Getting to 0.9c is science fiction, not reality." This is again an opinion.

You realise there could be a scientific breakthrough today that renders your pessimism around this completely wrong? You are not educated enough in this topic to speak with any credibility (hence it's your opinion). Or if you believe you are - prove it.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
"You have definitely moved into science fiction." This is an opinion.

No, it is fact. A spacecraft capable of accelerating to 0.9c is immensely beyond our ability to build, and anything involving one is pure speculation at best. IOW, the very definition of science fiction.

"Way beyond any forceeable way to build" This is an opinion. Unless you know what the future holds?

There's a reason the word "foreseeable" is in that sentence. Based on all current knowledge and reasonable extrapolation of current technology a spacecraft capable of accelerating to 0.9c is far, far in the future at best and we have no idea how to get there.

You realise there could be a scientific breakthrough today that renders your pessimism around this completely wrong?

And I could win every lottery for the next year. I'm not betting on either of these happening, and there's no point in discussing wild speculation without a single scrap of evidence to support it.

You are not educated enough in this topic to speak with any credibility (hence it's your opinion). Or if you believe you are - prove it.

You first.

 Peregrine wrote:

There's a reason the word "foreseeable" is in that sentence. Based on all current knowledge and reasonable extrapolation of current technology a spacecraft capable of accelerating to 0.9c is far, far in the future at best and we have no idea how to get there.

You know this do you? You know the total of ‘all current knowledge” relating to the question of achieving sub light speed or FTL spacecraft? You don’t?! Because you’re a random guy on a forum about toy soldiers and not a super computer/genius level intellect working for NASA.

This is why I said this and is why it holds true;

You are not educated enough in this topic to speak with any credibility (hence it's your opinion). Or if you believe you are - prove it.

I don’t need to prove my credibility, I have stated that this is my opinion based on reading around the topic from sources created by intellects much greater than mine. That’s the difference between us - I’m not shouting my beliefs as if they are facts.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
You know this do you? You know the total of ‘all current knowledge” relating to the question of achieving sub light speed or FTL spacecraft? You don’t?! Because you’re a random guy on a forum about toy soldiers and not a super computer/genius level intellect working for NASA.

I know enough about current knowledge to know that the energy and reaction mass requirements for accelerating to 0.9c are orders of magnitude beyond anything we can do, and orders of magnitude beyond even theoretical foreseeable-future projects which have been proposed. I know that the highly ambitious "maybe within our lifetimes, if we had a massive budget and everything worked right to turn this tentative theory into a working prototype" sort of ideas are still well short of 0.9c and not even attempting to set that as a goal. And I also know that ridiculous stereotypes of "genius level intellect" are much less of a realistic portrayal of science than well-run teams of competent engineers, and that it doesn't take "genius level intellect" to be a competent engineer.

I’m not shouting my beliefs as if they are facts.

Yes you are. Your opinion is "you can't know", and you're stating it as fact complete with confidently declaring that I have no significant knowledge of the subject. Now either follow your own principle that not being a "super computer/genius level intellect working for NASA" means you don't know enough to make any statements and stop commenting, or post your credentials justifying that your opinion has value under your own standards.

Eh, such a leap as interstellar travel can't really be predicted, nor should it be counted on. Work with what we know of for 'in our lifetime' projections. It'll take 30 or 40 years for a new technology to be fully realized.

I love these threads because what we are capable of is so much more than we were. Ion drives exist, and are being made more powerful in preparation for moving humans to Mars. They're already working on satellites above us as we speak.

We've made solar sail drives as well, and have had success with them- though they have not yet been adopted for practical purposes.

These aren't going to get us out of the solar system, but they are allowing much greater range for our spacecraft, increasing the types of missions we can do. Asteroid mining and interplanetary travel are plenty exciting for my lifetime!

It's certainly possible to calculate the requirements for accelerating a spacecraft to 0.9c using ion drives, because we are already flying spacecraft with ion drives and have actual engineering data on energy and propellant consumption and efficiency.

I don't know if that calculation produces a workable result.

The suggestions I've seen for what's required for a self-sufficient colony on an uninhabitable planet or in a space station - assuming that it's technically possible to design the sort of machinery required to build and maintain such a structure indifeinitely - require a society that would make societies like the Imperium of Man, the Tau and Margaret Atwood's Gilead look socially progressive paragons of liberty by comparison. I don't think we've got the mindset for it as we are now.

Yeah lightspeed travel at this point is essentially science fiction simply due to the fact that we would need so many new technologies to make it viable. Even if we invent an engine capable of such speeds, we need a power source to keep it running and a material to resist space debris that would rip anything we have made so far to shreds.

By the time we could travel at those speeds, we would also have solved the world energy crisis, built a space elevator, and colonized a planet. I'm not saying it wouldn't be awesome, just that it is many hundreds of years away...

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
The suggestions I've seen for what's required for a self-sufficient colony on an uninhabitable planet or in a space station - assuming that it's technically possible to design the sort of machinery required to build and maintain such a structure indefinitely - require a society that would make societies like the Imperium of Man, the Tau and Margaret Atwood's Gilead look socially progressive paragons of liberty by comparison. I don't think we've got the mindset for it as we are now.

That's why we have madmen like Musk to do all the hard work for us! Colonies are going to grow not due to a united human race but due to companies wanting to make a profit and there are no shortage of them right now.

Yeah, but a free-marketer of a libertarian bent is … pretty much the opposite of what you want as the population of an isolated colony.

 Vulcan wrote:

Because a lot of the problems on earth stem directly from resource shortage, and no amount of fanciful leaps in technology (short of Star Trek replicators) will ever solve that. But go out in space and there's a LOT more resources to play with.

And you call me myopic...

Any resource shortage on this planet is mainly because we have a system of distribution that tips resources off a cliff and into a big smelly hole. We don't actually need to have multiple new models of car, refrigerator and phone every year and could easily do without. But no, it's easier to imagine magical Space Technology that will forever feed this madness than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

This has been pretty enjoyable.

Good to know that Humans never thought that flight was impossible for them. Hell, cavemen were probably in laying down the groundwork for the first engine.

"All we need is more power." - Actual Quote from Cave Painting

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This has been pretty enjoyable.

Good to know that Humans never thought that flight was impossible for them. Hell, cavemen were probably in laying down the groundwork for the first engine.

"All we need is more power." - Actual Quote from Cave Painting

Cavemen drew manuals for killing wooly mammoths with sharpened sticks! They were not a cautious people.

Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, the Jewish people, Indians, First Nations people all have flight myths, many dating back to thousands of years BC. I see no reason to assume cave men didn't dream of spreading their smelly, slope browed wings and flying.


https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_aviones_precolom02.htm

 John Prins wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

If we are at the point where we can feasibly build a fully functioning settlement in space then we are also at the point where we can reinforce Mars' magnetic field and atmosphere to the point that it becomes a pleasant place for humans to live.

Well, not exactly. Giving Mars a magnetic shield is simple, but not easy. Basically you need a copper coil that can surround the planet, placed in orbit in front of the planet, to generate a magnetic field. It's a huge engineering project you'd probably need a space colony to build in the first place.

Wheel type space colonies are within our engineering capacity now and expandable (add more wheels). For anything space related, orbital manufacturing and off-world harvesting is going to be necessary. That should be the goal - once we have that, then the only limit is our engineering capacity.

A powerful magnet placed at Mars' L1 point will do. This would create a magnetic shield around Mars to protect it. We already have magnets that are far more powerful than what would be needed to create such a shield. The only issue is of course getting that magnet into space. Again, it is possible to do with current technology already, but the costs are high and no space program really has the funds or the priorities to do it. So it is a lot less of an issue than getting an entire space colony into space. Even a small station like the ISS is already a huge undertaking. Let alone a semi-permanent colony or orbital manufacturing. That is pretty far beyond our technological capabilities. Shooting a junkyard magnet into space is not.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

Because a lot of the problems on earth stem directly from resource shortage, and no amount of fanciful leaps in technology (short of Star Trek replicators) will ever solve that. But go out in space and there's a LOT more resources to play with.

And you call me myopic...

Any resource shortage on this planet is mainly because we have a system of distribution that tips resources off a cliff and into a big smelly hole. We don't actually need to have multiple new models of car, refrigerator and phone every year and could easily do without. But no, it's easier to imagine magical Space Technology that will forever feed this madness than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

Don't you mean REdistribution? That's basically what your bend is about, correct?


Anybody ever own a Commodore 64? I did. You remember the max storage capacity on a floppy disk? THAT was 30 years ago. Not only has storage medium changed SEVERAL times in that timeframe, but we also are to the point that we can make ridiculous memory for next to nothing. How is it that nobody thinks that OTHER technologies can be progressed the same way?

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

Because a lot of the problems on earth stem directly from resource shortage, and no amount of fanciful leaps in technology (short of Star Trek replicators) will ever solve that. But go out in space and there's a LOT more resources to play with.

And you call me myopic...

Any resource shortage on this planet is mainly because we have a system of distribution that tips resources off a cliff and into a big smelly hole. We don't actually need to have multiple new models of car, refrigerator and phone every year and could easily do without. But no, it's easier to imagine magical Space Technology that will forever feed this madness than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

Actually I imagine the end of capitalism is far closer than many think. For example, RIGHT NOW pretty much every management position in the world can be dispensed with. All it would take is the software to gather and collate data from the working locations and report it to a central location (already available), and the communication technology for the central location to communicate back with the working locations (also already available). There goes a few million white-collar jobs...

Let's face it. Aside from creative processes and raw scientific research, there's precious little human work that we can't do right now with computers, robots, and modern communication. Maybe not economically just yet, but that's just a matter of time.

After replacing human labor for most everything becomes economically viable, there goes mass employment. Without mass employment, under capitalism there is no mass consumption, therefore no incentive for mass production. And capitalism goes out the window, replaced either by some form of socialism/communism, or economic feudalism.

At any rate... I have a certain respect for Elan Musk. At least he has a vision for his businesses beyond 'GIMME!'.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

A powerful magnet placed at Mars' L1 point will do. This would create a magnetic shield around Mars to protect it. We already have magnets that are far more powerful than what would be needed to create such a shield. The only issue is of course getting that magnet into space. Again, it is possible to do with current technology already, but the costs are high and no space program really has the funds or the priorities to do it. So it is a lot less of an issue than getting an entire space colony into space. Even a small station like the ISS is already a huge undertaking. Let alone a semi-permanent colony or orbital manufacturing. That is pretty far beyond our technological capabilities. Shooting a junkyard magnet into space is not.

Pretty much exactly what I'm describing (in my case, it's a solar powered electromagnet), and yes, Mars-Sun L1 point is where you'd put it. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/14352/place-a-satellite-at-sun-mars-l1-to-shield-mars-from-sun-radiation has the simplest explanation I've seen. Making a magnet powerful enough isn't the hard part, it's making it large enough.

Note this doesn't protect Mars from background galactic radiation like a proper magnetosphere would, but you'd need a much weaker field around Mars to handle just that.

 Gitzbitah wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This has been pretty enjoyable.

Good to know that Humans never thought that flight was impossible for them. Hell, cavemen were probably in laying down the groundwork for the first engine.

"All we need is more power." - Actual Quote from Cave Painting

Cavemen drew manuals for killing wooly mammoths with sharpened sticks! They were not a cautious people.

Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, the Jewish people, Indians, First Nations people all have flight myths, many dating back to thousands of years BC. I see no reason to assume cave men didn't dream of spreading their smelly, slope browed wings and flying.


https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_aviones_precolom02.htm

Dreaming of flying and making stories of flying are different than understanding complex engineering issues regarding how flying actually works.

Wait, hold on, how did we go from "Mars is a necessary first step on a journey that will eventually involve leaving the solar system" to "Leaving the solar system is pure fiction! That's ridiculous! You're ridiculous!"?

I'm fairly certain nobody's arguing we colonise Mars and then immediately start building the USS fething Enterprise, yeah.

And once again - if you don't do the basic, "blue sky" work now, you don't get the good stuff later. Theoretical physics first, microchips later. Mars & asteroid colonies first, interstellar travel(most likely generational IMO) and terraforming later. Even that line of thinking discounts all the benefits from discoveries that will inevitably accrue just as a result of the process - and none of this "we could just do targeted research" guff, since even ignoring the prior point that was made about sometimes needing big, emotive, "humanity is awesome yeah!" stuff to motivate the public to back science spending if you want money to spend on science at all, a lot of discoveries aren't intentional at all, let alone the result of someone setting out specifically from the beginning to discover them.

 Just Tony wrote:
How is it that nobody thinks that OTHER technologies can be progressed the same way?

Because we actually understand the mass and energy requirements even under the most generous possible assumptions? No amount of clever technology is going to change the fact that it takes an obscene amount of energy and reaction mass to accelerate to speeds useful for interstellar travel. No amount of clever technology is going to change the fact that moving minerals out of a planetary gravity well is going to be prohibitively expensive compared to getting them from asteroids or on the planet we already live on. The only thing technological progression is going to do is continue to make robots more and more effective, continuing to reduce any possible argument for wasting payload capacity on humans.

Also, I love the "BUT WHAT ABOUT AIRPLANES" arguments from people who obviously don't understand much about science or engineering and how the process works.


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 Yodhrin wrote:
a lot of discoveries aren't intentional at all, let alone the result of someone setting out specifically from the beginning to discover them.

That's a nonsense argument. If discovery isn't intentional or predictable* then ANY science/engineering project could possibly have them as a side effect. Building space colonies isn't any more likely to produce desired side effects than developing a space program to etch a giant dick into the moon. Or, more seriously, than having a targeted research program aimed at one of your known goals. The idea that we should spend vast amounts of money on something with negligible, if any, direct return in the desperate hope that we accidentally manage to do something useful with it is utter lunacy.

*If it is predictable then you can do targeted research, making your argument invalid.

"Robots making everything while we sit on our asses getting free money and Doritos while we play our PS14's, screw space travel!" - Peregrine.


That about the gist of it? When it comes down to it, we've already created SEVERAL different methods of lifting and hauling loads greater than what we thought we could lift. JUST as other forms of memory have been invented and perfected, other forms of propulsion will be invented and perfected. The problem with you is that you can't see past your desire to live off of other people's money long enough to see the benefit to the species as a whole. Not to mention the fact that, as was already pointed out once, colonization means the survival of NOT JUST OUR SPECIES but every transplantable species on the planet. Create a colony on Mars, and NOBODY will be hunting Bengal Tigers up there, for instance.

I've been doing some sums on ion propulsion.

NASA's Deep Space 1 probe, considered a very successful design from the late 1990s, spent 3,888 hours and 22 Kg of propellant to boost the 450Kg spacecraft up to 1.3 km per second.

This is a respectable velocity, but it's still only 1/230,000 of the speed of light.

The next generation of ion drives are twice as efficient, but even so, you can see the vast problem of interstellar travel.

Cool. Remember when cars ran on steam? Now, we have hydrogen cars that are more efficient, can generate more power, and the fuel weighs less so it has less to push increasing performance.


Take THAT... and plug in space propulsion.

It's not quite as easy as that.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's not quite as easy as that.

This. But keep demonstrating that you don't understand the science and engineering problems involved, and how even with laughably optimistic assumptions (100% perfect efficiency antimatter conversion) the energy requirements are immense and effectively impossible.

(And bonus points for trying to pretend that realism about science and engineering is somehow socialism and trying to live off your money.)

Bonus points for realizing that the drive to achieve something this monumental is anathema to your political viewpoints? I'll take it.



NOTHING is easy, except just lying there doing nothing. Sure, it's not as simple as "lift rock, find alternative fuel source for space travel", but that doesn't necessitate that we should consider what we view as impossible today as prohibitive to seeking out the technologies that will make it possible in the very near future.

There's no need to get personal about it. It's about engineering.

The secret to improving ion drive apparently is to increase the voltage across the anode and cathode grids. This produces higher velocity ions, allowing the engine to use less propellant for the same thrust. There will be an engineering challenge associated with the conversion circuit which ramps up the voltage, and of course the power supply.

Another engineering challenge is to build thrusters which have very long running times, to overcome the low acceleration per second.

The new NEXT thruster is over three times more powerful than the NSTAR unit on the DS1, and has been test run for 51,000 hours (nearly 6 years!)

Assuming a spacecraft with the same overall mass as DS1, the NEXT thruster could presumably accelerate it to about 51.12 Km per second. Probably more, actually, because there would need to be more propellant on board at the start of the burn, but there would be a smaller payload.

Near light speed travel is enough of a task, but faster than light travel is impossible according to the known laws of the universe. The closer you get to the speed of light the more energy you need to expend to continue accelerating until you hit the speed limit for matter at which point you need an infinite amount of energy. There's also the fact that any inhabitants of a vessel would experience its acceleration as G forces, meaning they'd be dead way before they passed even a fraction of the speed of light.

That being said, it would only take a few decades to travel quite a ways across the galaxy using current propulsion technologies, but then we're talking about generation ships on a one-way trip. Interstellar travel the way we know it from Science Fiction is just not going to happen, barring some godlike development in manipulating physical reality itself.

Assuming that we survive long enough before going extinct or entering a new dark age (both of which are eminently possible and likely) mining the asteroid belt and establishing a permanent presence on other planets in our solar system is not outside the realm of possibility, but we're still talking about the single greatest undertaking that mankind has ever applied himself to by an order of magnitude.

 Just Tony wrote:
Bonus points for realizing that the drive to achieve something this monumental is anathema to your political viewpoints? I'll take it.

Yep. My political viewpoint prioritizes respect for science and engineering, which makes it poorly suited to native dreaming about how we can do effectively impossible things if we just dream hard enough.

Ps: even the Soviets had a space program and held up scientific accomplishments as a point of national pride, so your ridiculous political argument doesn't work at all.

NOTHING is easy, except just lying there doing nothing. Sure, it's not as simple as "lift rock, find alternative fuel source for space travel", but that doesn't necessitate that we should consider what we view as impossible today as prohibitive to seeking out the technologies that will make it possible in the very near future.

WE CAN MAKE A SQUARE CIRCLE IF WE JUST DREAM HARD ENOUGH.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PPS: you know what political system makes interstellar travel impossible? Capitalism. There is no conceivable profit motive for it, so you're depending on collectivization of resources (and the resources required are immense) for the state's goals at the expense of private industry. Which sounds an awful lot like communism...

Yodhrin wrote:And once again - if you don't do the basic, "blue sky" work now, you don't get the good stuff later.

Fun fact. Many many times in the past, humanity just goes and does stuff and figures out the theoretical side later on. Take flight for example (since it's recurring in this thread). The Wright brothers didn't have a clue about any of the theoretical forces involved in aerodynamics. They were bicycle salesmen by trade. It didn't stop them building a functional aeroplane through empirical testing and experimentation. There are plenty of other similar such stories in the history of science and technology. Marconi and wireless is another well known example.

I'm not making a broader point relevant to the discussion here. I just find it funny how much of human technology tends to come from some bloke putting one and five together to make eight; and then the rest of the world spends the next twenty years trying to figure out how he damn well did it.

 Peregrine wrote:

PPS: you know what political system makes interstellar travel impossible? Capitalism. There is no conceivable profit motive for it,

Hang on there just a minute. Want to lay claim to an entire solar system? Sounds profitable to me!

...but seriously, the capitalist system could create the wealth necessary to fund such an effort. It's not like the top capitalists of our days haven't spent huge sums on vanity projects. Part of the point of getting rich is so you can do crazy extravagant stuff with that money. It really depends how wealthy those space investors really get, and how concentrated that wealth is. Corporations owned by thousands or millions of investors won't bother. Corporations owned by a handful of super rich people? Maybe?

A Communist State doesn't really have any more incentive for interstellar travel than capitalists do. There's simply no short-term benefit in interstellar travel for anyone. There's not even a long-term benefit for anyone who stays behind because they're never going to see all of those resources again. If the motivation is mere exploration and research an unmanned mission could do the same things more efficiently and cheaply.

The only reasons for interstellar travel are as insurance against the extinction of the race or simply saying "why the feth not?"

 Ketara wrote:

Yodhrin wrote:And once again - if you don't do the basic, "blue sky" work now, you don't get the good stuff later.

Fun fact. Many many times in the past, humanity just goes and does stuff and figures out the theoretical side later on. Take flight for example (since it's recurring in this thread). The Wright brothers didn't have a clue about any of the theoretical forces involved in aerodynamics. They were bicycle salesmen by trade. It didn't stop them building a functional aeroplane through empirical testing and experimentation. There are plenty of other similar such stories in the history of science and technology. Marconi and wireless is another well known example.

I'm not making a broader point relevant to the discussion here. I just find it funny how much of human technology tends to come from some bloke putting one and five together to make eight; and then the rest of the world spends the next twenty years trying to figure out how he damn well did it.

I also find it funny how a lot of the stuff we use today also comes from failures and mistakes as well.

we may not have had super glue if some scientist wasn't trying to make cockpit windows. (relevant to this hobby)

 Luciferian wrote:
A Communist State doesn't really have any more incentive for interstellar travel than capitalists do. There's simply no short-term benefit in interstellar travel for anyone. There's not even a long-term benefit for anyone who stays behind because they're never going to see all of those resources again. If the motivation is mere exploration and research an unmanned mission could do the same things more efficiently and cheaply.

The only reasons for interstellar travel are as insurance against the extinction of the race or simply saying "why the feth not?"

Welllllllll dunno about the communist state but technology involved in the star race does have massive short and long term value. right nows its economically pooo to send stuff into space. that includes those satellites for your phones, gps, tv and all sorts of military and scientific stuff. first country to make a viable space elevator would make all the money back in a relatively reasonable time just hauling. long term ship tech has all sorts of technological implications from local space station sustainability to on earth sustainability for recycling and waste management which are all REALLY big industries (edit: also probably various technology involving equipment production like 3d printing and medical tech and knowledge). i dont think anyone would reasonably think we could achieve complete interstellar travel or even colonize mars but the slow steps in getting to it is very much worth while from a scientific and potentially financial position.

at least imho.

Some advances come from trial and error, some come from accidents, or inspired ideas, and some come from careful experiment design and theoretical study.

 Desubot wrote:


Welllllllll dunno about the communist state but technology involved in the star race does have massive short and long term value. right nows its economically pooo to send stuff into space. that includes those satellites for your phones, gps, tv and all sorts of military and scientific stuff. first country to make a viable space elevator would make all the money back in a relatively reasonable time just hauling. long term ship tech has all sorts of technological implications from local space station sustainability to on earth sustainability for recycling and waste management which are all REALLY big industries (edit: also probably various technology involving equipment production like 3d printing and medical tech and knowledge). i dont think anyone would reasonably think we could achieve complete interstellar travel or even colonize mars but the slow steps in getting to it is very much worth while from a scientific and potentially financial position.

at least imho.

Fair enough, those are good points. I was merely thinking about the act of interstellar travel itself, but the technology required would certainly be valuable in many other fields and applications.

 Peregrine wrote:

PPS: you know what political system makes interstellar travel impossible? Capitalism. There is no conceivable profit motive for it, so you're depending on collectivization of resources (and the resources required are immense) for the state's goals at the expense of private industry. Which sounds an awful lot like communism...

This thread is about Mars specifically, not vast interstellar travel. That chat is somewhat off topic. Either way, I addressed this point in my very first post - Musk understands that the Mars offer needs to be commercialised and is attempting to do so. There absolutely is profit motive for a presence on Mars. I can think of a number of corporations that would support a colonisation effort for advertising and positive altruistic promotion alone. The idea is to create a thriving economy in its own right, mining of raw materials is only one part of the puzzle.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
There absolutely is profit motive for a presence on Mars.

{citation needed}

What exactly is that profit motive? Selling billion-dollar trips to bored rich people?

mining of raw materials is only one part of the puzzle.

Mining raw materials is not one part of the puzzle, it's zero pieces of the puzzle. There is no way to make it viable, period.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Luciferian wrote:
A Communist State doesn't really have any more incentive for interstellar travel than capitalists do.

No, it doesn't, but it at least starts from the premise of collectivization of industry and a state-controlled economy. In a capitalist state of NASA wants to build an interstellar (or even just interplanetary) spacecraft they have to convince the voters to fund it, convince private industry to accept contracts to do the job, etc. If a communist state wants to build that spacecraft they can simply declare that it is the new goal of the state and everything required can be directed to the project. There is no private industry to object and say "that's not an efficient use of my factory, I want more profit".

 An Actual Englishman wrote:


(...) I can think of a number of corporations that would support a colonisation effort for advertising and positive altruistic promotion alone(...)

Oh god, the "Mcdonalds" Mars colony here we go!

A functional space lift could be a good first start to space bound activities? Carbon nanotubes could theoretically handle the load but would find it difficult and dangerous currently. Looking at the history of materials development however, it isn't inconceivable that another substance could be along in the next few decades which would render the space lift a workable engineering feat. Given the amount of satellites and items we put into orbit already, there'd be a clear economic incentive to get one up and running; not to mention the military ramifications.

Once you've got a space lift, you can build a large space station on the other end. Once you've a large space station, you can build futher craft designed to move around up there unburdened by the insane needs for fuel and huge engines and re-entry. Much submarine style technology becomes transferrable to spaceship construction; be it drones or manned. At that point, the economic costs of mining asteroids for exceptionally rare materials goes down to bearable levels; especially given their finite nature and geopolitical concerns about over-reliance on certain third world nations effectively owned by China.

If you told me that that would be the state of affairs in fifty years time; I don't think you'd be making an unreasonable jump in assumptions. From there? Who knows. I doubt we'd see a colony before the above, but once we've got a means of porting materials to and from space without bothering with the gravity well challenge, the sky is very literally the limit.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

PPS: you know what political system makes interstellar travel impossible? Capitalism. There is no conceivable profit motive for it, so you're depending on collectivization of resources (and the resources required are immense) for the state's goals at the expense of private industry. Which sounds an awful lot like communism...

This thread is about Mars specifically, not vast interstellar travel. That chat is somewhat off topic. Either way, I addressed this point in my very first post - Musk understands that the Mars offer needs to be commercialised and is attempting to do so. There absolutely is profit motive for a presence on Mars. I can think of a number of corporations that would support a colonisation effort for advertising and positive altruistic promotion alone. The idea is to create a thriving economy in its own right, mining of raw materials is only one part of the puzzle.

I won't trust Musk on Mars to create a thriving economy until capitlaism has managed to create one on Earth. It's not looking good ATM unless you're in the top few per cent, in which case it's looking groovy.

dyndraig wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:


(...) I can think of a number of corporations that would support a colonisation effort for advertising and positive altruistic promotion alone(...)

Oh god, the "Mcdonalds" Mars colony here we go!

Lol indeed. Or 'Mars Mars colony'. Coca Cola™ Colony etc.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I won't trust Musk on Mars to create a thriving economy until capitlaism has managed to create one on Earth. It's not looking good ATM unless you're in the top few per cent, in which case it's looking groovy.

A thriving economy doesn't need to have wealth parity for all parties. I mean a thriving economy in the sense that businesses will see profit in and want to get involved with a Mars expedition. As the context of the discussion at hand (Mars/Interstellar travel will never happen because of capitalism).

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I mean a thriving economy in the sense that businesses will see profit in and want to get involved with a Mars expedition.

Depends on who is funding it. Businesses funding their own Mars expedition with a goal of making it profitable? Hell no, not going to happen. The government(s) deciding to go to Mars and businesses eagerly accepting that money to provide goods and services for it at the usual inflated government contract rate? Of course. But NASA handing out blank checks at taxpayer expense is hardly the same as Mars being profitable.


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 Ketara wrote:
Carbon nanotubes could theoretically handle the load

Key point: theoretically. We're a long, long way off from getting materials that can handle the load and can be created in sufficient quantities to build a space elevator. And then even if you can build one it's still an incredibly expensive and difficult project. 50 years is wildly optimistic, if it's even possible at all.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

dyndraig wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:


(...) I can think of a number of corporations that would support a colonisation effort for advertising and positive altruistic promotion alone(...)

Oh god, the "Mcdonalds" Mars colony here we go!

Lol indeed. Or 'Mars Mars colony'. Coca Cola™ Colony etc.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I won't trust Musk on Mars to create a thriving economy until capitlaism has managed to create one on Earth. It's not looking good ATM unless you're in the top few per cent, in which case it's looking groovy.

A thriving economy doesn't need to have wealth parity for all parties. I mean a thriving economy in the sense that businesses will see profit in and want to get involved with a Mars expedition. As the context of the discussion at hand (Mars/Interstellar travel will never happen because of capitalism).

I didn't say it needs wealth parity for all parties.

It does, however, need to "work" for a majority of the population in the sense of delivering improving living standards to the bottom rather than vast wealth to the top and static or lowering standards at the bottom. At the moment, the world's economy doesn't work in this sense.

If you've been following financial news for the past 40 years you will know that the world has lurched from business drama to economic crisis on a fairly regular cycle, and it's getting worse.

Dreadwinter wrote:This has been pretty enjoyable.

Good to know that Humans never thought that flight was impossible for them. Hell, cavemen were probably in laying down the groundwork for the first engine.

"All we need is more power." - Actual Quote from Cave Painting

Willfully missing what was being argued, but ho hum. That said, we do have some solid ideas about how people in the deep past viewed potential technological development. Adrienne Mayor, a classicist at Stanford, has just published Gods and Robots. Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. No idea if it's any good, but I thought it might be of interest to some.

Luciferian wrote:That being said, it would only take a few decades to travel quite a ways across the galaxy using current propulsion technologies

Woah woah woah. How far is 'quite a ways'? Let's be immensely generous and suggest by 'quite a ways across the galaxy' you only mean 1% of the diameter of the galaxy. That'd take more than a 1000 years moving at light speed. Using current propulsion technologies? Well, someone who's not in the humanities can do the maths. There'll be a lot of numbers.

 Peregrine wrote:
Key point: theoretically. We're a long, long way off from getting materials that can handle the load and can be created in sufficient quantities to build a space elevator. And then even if you can build one it's still an incredibly expensive and difficult project. 50 years is wildly optimistic, if it's even possible at all.

Yet again I find it funny that you think we can manage to get completely autonomous robots flinging around the solar system doing every task imaginable when we can barely get them to handle complex tasks on EARTH without being babysat, yet you think the industries responsible for solid materials can't advance enough to make a carbon fiber able to fill those needs.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Key point: theoretically. We're a long, long way off from getting materials that can handle the load and can be created in sufficient quantities to build a space elevator. And then even if you can build one it's still an incredibly expensive and difficult project. 50 years is wildly optimistic, if it's even possible at all.

Yet again I find it funny that you think we can manage to get completely autonomous robots flinging around the solar system doing every task imaginable when we can barely get them to handle complex tasks on EARTH without being babysat, yet you think the industries responsible for solid materials can't advance enough to make a carbon fiber able to fill those needs.

Isn't the primary problem with getting autonomous robots to function on earth precisely the fact they're on earth where they have to interact with other autonomous things and environmental stresses? You don't have to interact with much in space. It's really big and really empty. Even in relatively busy places like Earth's orbit.

We've got a number of semi-autonomous robots doing quite diffficult things like exploring Mars and the asteroids right now.

They have to be capable of lot of independent work because the control time is too long to allow real-time guidance.

Self-guiding cars are about to hit the big time on Earth.

 Ketara wrote:

Yodhrin wrote:And once again - if you don't do the basic, "blue sky" work now, you don't get the good stuff later.

Fun fact. Many many times in the past, humanity just goes and does stuff and figures out the theoretical side later on. Take flight for example (since it's recurring in this thread). The Wright brothers didn't have a clue about any of the theoretical forces involved in aerodynamics. They were bicycle salesmen by trade. It didn't stop them building a functional aeroplane through empirical testing and experimentation. There are plenty of other similar such stories in the history of science and technology. Marconi and wireless is another well known example.

I'm not making a broader point relevant to the discussion here. I just find it funny how much of human technology tends to come from some bloke putting one and five together to make eight; and then the rest of the world spends the next twenty years trying to figure out how he damn well did it.

Engineering is practical [stage] magic. Science is sitting down and working out the trick afterwards.

 Peregrine wrote:

Key point: theoretically.

Well, yeah. That's why I said it. If I wasn't aware of the problems involved (the fact it doesn't work if a single atom is displaced, and production difficulties), I'd have just said it was 'possible'.

We're a long, long way off from getting materials that can handle the load and can be created in sufficient quantities to build a space elevator.

This however, is also hypothetical. It's pure speculation. There could be a breakthrough in a lab tomorrow which comes up with a revolutionary new building material which isn't really that expensive or difficult to produce. People thought airships were impractical to build with existing materials; then somebody went and synthesized duralumin. Looking back at the last fifty years of developments in metallurgy and materials composition; we've advanced far further in the intervening time period than compared to jumping from carbon nanotubes to something maybe 10% stronger (we really don't need much more advancement to get workable materials for a space elevator).

And then even if you can build one it's still an incredibly expensive and difficult project. 50 years is wildly optimistic, if it's even possible at all

I'm not entirely sure how one could attempt to cost a fictitious not-existing construction material; let alone make sweeping statements about the construction times involved on the basis of that imagined cost.

If a material becomes available, it doesn't even necessarily have to be cheap. It just needs to be more cost effective to build the elevator than the price of a few hundred odd rocket launches which would otherwise be required for launching satellites and the like in the immediately subsequent years. If it can be cheaper than those rockets, it'll pay for itself. And if it can't, people will doubtless spend considerable amounts of time/years working down the cost price until it is; because the need to put things in space ain't going nowhere.


I don't think anything will happen on a 'space exploration' front until that space elevator is in place though, be it in twenty five or fifty, or a hundred years time. It's just not cost-effective, and there's nothing we need badly enough. Once there's an energy-efficient way of hauling stuff up to orbit and back, that barrier will vanish, but until then? We won't see more than the odd satellite launch and scientific mission.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I didn't say it needs wealth parity for all parties.

It does, however, need to "work" for a majority of the population in the sense of delivering improving living standards to the bottom rather than vast wealth to the top and static or lowering standards at the bottom. At the moment, the world's economy doesn't work in this sense.

If you've been following financial news for the past 40 years you will know that the world has lurched from business drama to economic crisis on a fairly regular cycle, and it's getting worse.

You implied wealth parity for all parties. Either way you’re still misinterpreting my point. I don’t think I can make it clearer than the last post so I’ll leave it.

Regarding your point and what it needs to “work” (I’m not sure why or how we’ve seemingly slipped into discussing the virtues and flaws of capitalist society in a thread around Mars, mind) - I think for many it would be a massive improvement in their living living standards. We live in a world where many people have no access to basic things like clean water, relative safety, shelter or employment etc. I would expect a Mars colony to offer some of these as a minimum.

The “problem” then becomes how we encourage financiers and other wealthy types to commit and the morality of creating what would be in effect a voluntary prison for the most vulnerable/least wealthy.

Even if it wouldn't be profitable to ship stuff back to Earth proper, building colonies on Mars, colony space stations, etc... will all need resources easily found in the Solar system. Which would make it profitable to mine them.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if it wouldn't be profitable to ship stuff back to Earth proper, building colonies on Mars, colony space stations, etc... will all need resources easily found in the Solar system. Which would make it profitable to mine them.

I dunno. would a colony situated so far away that shipping stuff back and forth wouldn't matter really need an economy to even care about profits?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if it wouldn't be profitable to ship stuff back to Earth proper, building colonies on Mars, colony space stations, etc... will all need resources easily found in the Solar system. Which would make it profitable to mine them.

That's a rather circular argument. We need to build space colonies so we can make it profitable to mine resources to build space colonies. Why build these colonies in the first place?


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 An Actual Englishman wrote:
The “problem” then becomes how we encourage financiers and other wealthy types to commit and the morality of creating what would be in effect a voluntary prison for the most vulnerable/least wealthy.

No, the problem becomes how you get a non-trivial percentage of people to this colony. Forget about financing, there's just no viable way to get millions of people there. And moving a few hundred people, to be wildly optimistic about launch capacity, is not going to make any meaningful difference in our economic situation. You might as well talk about how the poorest people benefit from occasionally winning the lottery.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:
This however, is also hypothetical. It's pure speculation. There could be a breakthrough in a lab tomorrow which comes up with a revolutionary new building material which isn't really that expensive or difficult to produce. People thought airships were impractical to build with existing materials; then somebody went and synthesized duralumin. Looking back at the last fifty years of developments in metallurgy and materials composition; we've advanced far further in the intervening time period than compared to jumping from carbon nanotubes to something maybe 10% stronger (we really don't need much more advancement to get workable materials for a space elevator).

My point about being far away isn't just about time, it's about production levels. Currently we can make microscopic amounts of materials that are almost good enough to be plausible options. We need to increase our production quantities by many orders of magnitude, and we currently have no path to doing that. Regardless of whether we bridge that gap over long years of steady progress or by a sudden breakthrough it's still a far-away goal.

I'm not entirely sure how one could attempt to cost a fictitious not-existing construction material; let alone make sweeping statements about the construction times involved on the basis of that imagined cost.

I can do that because of the sheer scale of the project. Remember, the portion of the space elevator from the surface to orbit is 20,000 miles long and then you have to add even more length above that to the counterweight. That's about equivalent to building a structure around the entire equator. Building it out of anything is going to be incredibly expensive and time-consuming.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if it wouldn't be profitable to ship stuff back to Earth proper, building colonies on Mars, colony space stations, etc... will all need resources easily found in the Solar system. Which would make it profitable to mine them.

That's a rather circular argument. We need to build space colonies so we can make it profitable to mine resources to build space colonies. Why build these colonies in the first place?

Because we want to make a self-sufficient space colony. Because X country wants to expand its borders beyond Earth before it gets left behind in the next space race. Because we want to explore our solar system. etc...

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because we want to make a self-sufficient space colony. Because X country wants to expand its borders beyond Earth before it gets left behind in the next space race. Because we want to explore our solar system. etc...

Make a self sufficient space colony? Why? What reason is there, besides "because we can"?

Expand our borders? Why? What additional things of value are contained within those newly-expanded borders, other than masturbatory nationalism? And how will a country keep its self-sufficient colony (which is conveniently located across an incredibly difficult travel obstacle) from simply declaring independence and no longer being part of that country's borders?

Explore our solar system? Send robots. A horde of robot missions is going to do way more exploration than the tiny handful of humans you could send with the same launch capacity.

 Peregrine wrote:

My point about being far away isn't just about time, it's about production levels. Currently we can make microscopic amounts of materials that are almost good enough to be plausible options. We need to increase our production quantities by many orders of magnitude, and we currently have no path to doing that.

Er...We need to increase our production levels of a material we've both acknowledged is inadequate for the purpose?

Why, I think, is the question? If it's not going to be the material used, production levels for carbon nanotubes are irrelevant. What would matter is our production levels for our non-existent construction material. Which is currently non-existent, and therefore zero. But given we're speculating decades into the future, that means nothing. Production levels for iPads were zero fifty years ago too, y'know?

I can do that because of the sheer scale of the project. Remember, the portion of the space elevator from the surface to orbit is 20,000 miles long and then you have to add even more length above that to the counterweight. That's about equivalent to building a structure around the entire equator. Building it out of anything is going to be incredibly expensive and time-consuming.

That highly depends on how you're doing it. There are several approaches to the concept of a space elevator, and not all of them work on the 'ground up' and most expensive option. In a lot of them, you're dropping cables from space and letting gravity do a large chunk of the work, followed by bulking it out gradually. It's not going to be quite like building the Burj Khalifa, with cranes swinging everywhere.

Certainly, I think it's quite safe to say that at this stage, speculating about what construction techniques building a never-before seen feat of engineering with unknown materials would require is not something any rational person would attempt with any form of certainty. It could be thirty years, fifty, or two hundred. Time will tell.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because we want to make a self-sufficient space colony. Because X country wants to expand its borders beyond Earth before it gets left behind in the next space race. Because we want to explore our solar system. etc...

Make a self sufficient space colony? Why? What reason is there, besides "because we can"?

Expand our borders? Why? What additional things of value are contained within those newly-expanded borders, other than masturbatory nationalism? And how will a country keep its self-sufficient colony (which is conveniently located across an incredibly difficult travel obstacle) from simply declaring independence and no longer being part of that country's borders?

Explore our solar system? Send robots. A horde of robot missions is going to do way more exploration than the tiny handful of humans you could send with the same launch capacity.

Everything you say applied to the colonies that got founded during the age of exploration. They still did it anyway. The English sent colony ship after colony ship to North America to find gold, which never materialized, but the stuff they did find made up for it. By your standards, all of the colonies founded in North America were a total waste of time.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because we want to make a self-sufficient space colony. Because X country wants to expand its borders beyond Earth before it gets left behind in the next space race. Because we want to explore our solar system. etc...

Make a self sufficient space colony? Why? What reason is there, besides "because we can"?

Expand our borders? Why? What additional things of value are contained within those newly-expanded borders, other than masturbatory nationalism? And how will a country keep its self-sufficient colony (which is conveniently located across an incredibly difficult travel obstacle) from simply declaring independence and no longer being part of that country's borders?

Explore our solar system? Send robots. A horde of robot missions is going to do way more exploration than the tiny handful of humans you could send with the same launch capacity.

Fairly important materials. mostly platinum group metals.
scientific research. a lot of them apparently being important to do in zero or micro gravity.
I mean we already have the ISS but getting that gak up there and maintaining and supplying resources and experiments is expensive. having a bigger and or better one that is fully self sufficient would be pretty nice, especially one that is designed with artificial gravity in one form or another (humans are not meant for low no Gs. seems a lot of space men come back with severely weakened bones). but to do any of that you would ether need to make it up there in space or make the elevator because doing it the old fashion way with rockets would be insanely expensive.

 Just Tony wrote:
Yet again I find it funny that you think we can manage to get completely autonomous robots flinging around the solar system doing every task imaginable when we can barely get them to handle complex tasks on EARTH without being babysat

Nonsense. Robots are already capable of tasks way beyond what humans can do, and they're only going to get better. And we're talking about high-end scientific robots designed for a specific purpose, not that "robot" tool your company bought on ebay and hasn't maintained in a decade because maintenance costs money and makes the annual budget look bad.

yet you think the industries responsible for solid materials can't advance enough to make a carbon fiber able to fill those needs.

I said no such thing. I said that we're a long way away from that goal, not that it can never happen. And it's 100% true. We are currently at the point of making microscopic amounts of something that is maybe almost good enough. We need to make enough to build a 20-30,000 mile cable completely defect-free in its critical region, pushing the absolute limits of the material. Yeah, it's possible that this will happen someday, but I wouldn't bet on it being in our lifetimes.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Everything you say applied to the colonies that got founded during the age of exploration. They still did it anyway.

No it didn't. I don't think you understand just how much of an obstacle a planetary gravity well is.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Everything you say applied to the colonies that got founded during the age of exploration. They still did it anyway.

No it didn't. I don't think you understand just how much of an obstacle a planetary gravity well is.

Prior to Columbus, as far as the Europeans were concerned, any ship that sailed West would run out of food long before they made it across the ocean. From their perspective that would be a much more difficult hurdle relative to us leaving a gravity well. Especially since at this point we can and do send stuff out of that gravity well on a regular basis.

You're basically the guy telling Columbus that he'll run out of food before he makes it back to the New world, after he has already proven it can be done. Yes, planetary gravity wells are a big obstacle. But its one we already know can be overcome and we have many ideas about overcoming it even more efficiently in the future.

 Ketara wrote:
Er...We need to increase our production levels of a material we've both acknowledged is inadequate for the purpose?

Not of that exact material, of whatever final development we get from it. The point is that "far away" applies both in likely timescale and in terms of how many new advances and improvements we need to make. A sudden breakthrough may make the time component closer, but it won't change the fact that we're currently many advancements away.

That highly depends on how you're doing it. There are several approaches to the concept of a space elevator, and not all of them work on the 'ground up' and most expensive option. In a lot of them, you're dropping cables from space and letting gravity do a large chunk of the work, followed by bulking it out gradually. It's not going to be quite like building the Burj Khalifa, with cranes swinging everywhere.

No, it isn't done from the ground up, of course not. But it's still a 20,000+ mile cable to build, far beyond the size of anything we've ever built. Even building a 20,000 mile structure out of steel and concrete would be obscenely expensive and difficult. There is no way around this, even ignoring any of the material development concerns it would be the single largest engineering project ever attempted. We don't know the exact costs, but they will certainly at least be on the scale of "dedicate our entire country's resources to this" and probably more.

Certainly, I think it's quite safe to say that at this stage, speculating about what construction techniques building a never-before seen feat of engineering with unknown materials would require is not something any rational person would attempt with any form of certainty. It could be thirty years, fifty, or two hundred. Time will tell.

It's not worth speculating about upper limits, but we can sure rule out some possible lower limits. For comparison, it took ~10-15 years to go from the initial concepts for the space shuttle to the first flight, and that's dealing with known technology. Same general time scale for SpaceX. And we know that building (or at least substantially improving on) rockets for the project is going to be required, so that's 10-15 years of time required just to start getting the pieces into orbit. We know that going from first breakthrough in a lab to full-scale manufacturing takes years, if not decades. Etc. So we know that 30 years is laughably optimistic, 50 years probably is too, and the minimum time scale we're talking about is maybe 50-100 years at best if we had the required breakthrough tomorrow. It could certainly be longer, but it won't be shorter.

Your assumption of what my company spends on robots aside, you forget my OTHER job in the military has me exposed to FAR more robots than you care to admit. If robots were that foolproof we'd already be seeing massive workforce replacement, according to several opinion pieces. We aren't. Why is that? If we can build robots that can guide vehicles better than humans, why isn't EVERY train on the planet robotic? JUST looking at something as simple as a train, it isn't widespread enough, NOR is it infallible enough to replace that coffee gulping hilljack inside it. Point is, we're about as close to FULLY autonomous robots as we are to perfecting materials strong enough to build a space elevator. NOW it's a matter of seeing which industry makes a critical advance sooner, AND whether lobbing robots out of our atmosphere constantly is any more cost effective than the elevator program. That's assuming, of course, that we don't make some sort of breakthrough in magnetic repulsion and create a locomotive system that can repel cargo out of the atmosphere before then.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Prior to Columbus, as far as the Europeans were concerned, any ship that sailed West would run out of food long before they made it across the ocean. From their perspective that would be a much more difficult hurdle relative to us leaving a gravity well. Especially since at this point we can and do send stuff out of that gravity well on a regular basis.

You're basically the guy telling Columbus that he'll run out of food before he makes it back to the New world, after he has already proven it can be done. Yes, planetary gravity wells are a big obstacle. But its one we already know can be overcome and we have many ideas about overcoming it even more efficiently in the future.

Uh, no, that's not a good comparison at all. Columbus was considered an utter moron who had to beg for someone to be willing to throw money at him on a long shot "get rich quick" scheme that nobody thought would work. And his critics were 100% correct, Columbus had made serious errors in his plan and would have died at sea exactly as predicted if he hadn't run into a completely unknown continent by sheer blind luck. There's a reason nobody else was dumb enough to try it until Columbus attempted mass suicide with anyone gullible enough to sign on. But once he demonstrated that it was possible further voyages quickly followed.

And yes, we've demonstrated that it is possible to overcome a planetary gravity well. We haven't demonstrated that it is cost-effective to do so. It doesn't matter if mining on Mars is technically possible if any minerals obtained will cost more than getting them from existing sources, and the planetary gravity well obstacle ensures that they will. That's why we will continue to push past that obstacle when it makes sense to do so, as in the case of scientific probes/communication satellites/etc, but won't bother with a business venture that is doomed to failure.


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 Just Tony wrote:
If robots were that foolproof we'd already be seeing massive workforce replacement

We already are. Modern factories require fewer workers than they would without robots, this is indisputable fact. And we have even more replacement likely happening in the future. For example, automated vehicles are getting close to being ready for widespread use, and once you can buy a robot to drive a truck what do you think that is going to mean for human drivers and their employment prospects?

If we can build robots that can guide vehicles better than humans, why isn't EVERY train on the planet robotic?

Because of concerns about safety judgement. We don't yet trust a robot to, say, identify the difference between a person walking across the tracks and a plastic bag blowing around. And we consider it morally unacceptable to have anything less than a 100% success rate, we don't accept dead people as the price of saving money on a human operator. But this doesn't apply to space exploration. We're perfectly fine with operating on the assumption that some of the robots will fail, treating them as expendable, and launching enough that we'll get the results we want from the backups. And for the same launch capacity as a human mission we can afford to send a whole bunch of backup robots.

Point is, we're about as close to FULLY autonomous robots as we are to perfecting materials strong enough to build a space elevator.

Nope. We're already launching robot probes that are good enough for what I'm talking about. We're nowhere near building a 20,000 mile cable out of a material that doesn't even exist yet.

 Peregrine wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
The “problem” then becomes how we encourage financiers and other wealthy types to commit and the morality of creating what would be in effect a voluntary prison for the most vulnerable/least wealthy.

No, the problem becomes how you get a non-trivial percentage of people to this colony. Forget about financing, there's just no viable way to get millions of people there. And moving a few hundred people, to be wildly optimistic about launch capacity, is not going to make any meaningful difference in our economic situation. You might as well talk about how the poorest people benefit from occasionally winning the lottery.

Why do you keep going off topic? Perhaps it’s because you keep quoting only a tiny fraction of my posts? I’m not discussing the idea of a Mars colony being some kind of solution to wealth inequality or the ‘economic situation’. I’m talking about whether a Mars colony is possible, like the title of the thread.

There are obviously much better, cheaper and more intelligent ways to close the wealth gap. If you want to discuss that at length I suggest you make a new thread about it specifically.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I’m talking about whether a Mars colony is possible, like the title of the thread.

And I'm pointing out why it isn't possible: because it has no reason to exist, and every proposed reason so far fails at justifying one.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because we want to make a self-sufficient space colony. Because X country wants to expand its borders beyond Earth before it gets left behind in the next space race. Because we want to explore our solar system. etc...

Make a self sufficient space colony? Why? What reason is there, besides "because we can"?

Expand our borders? Why? What additional things of value are contained within those newly-expanded borders, other than masturbatory nationalism? And how will a country keep its self-sufficient colony (which is conveniently located across an incredibly difficult travel obstacle) from simply declaring independence and no longer being part of that country's borders?

Explore our solar system? Send robots. A horde of robot missions is going to do way more exploration than the tiny handful of humans you could send with the same launch capacity.

Everything you say applied to the colonies that got founded during the age of exploration. They still did it anyway. The English sent colony ship after colony ship to North America to find gold, which never materialized, but the stuff they did find made up for it. By your standards, all of the colonies founded in North America were a total waste of time.

Sorry, but this is as baseless an analogy as all the 'it's exactly the same as flight' stuff we've seen over the past few pages.

The age of discovery was not characterised by Europeans having wild flails in the dark when they went to sea on the off chance sonething would turn up. Nor was it an age of exploration just for the sake of doing it. One or two charlatans who got themselves killed and bankrupted nations (i.e. William Paterson) or idiots who got astoundingly lucky (i.e. Columbus) aside, it was characterised by wealthy benefactors funding well-planned missions conducted by trusted and proven teams in order to seek out familiar goods (be they mineral, flora, or fauna) thatvthey had good reason to believe would be found and would then generate more money.

Oh here we go, assuming that everything we currently think we know about the universe is factual.

We do not have 100% certainty on anything. So assuming that what we know now about the universe is going to stay the same in 10 or 15 or 20 years is pretty laughable.

We don't think we can move at the speed of light. Not being able to has never been 100% confirmed and you will NEVER hear a scientist say it is impossible.

But here we are, telling each other it is impossible.....

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Oh here we go, assuming that everything we currently think we know about the universe is factual.

We do not have 100% certainty on anything. So assuming that what we know now about the universe is going to stay the same in 10 or 15 or 20 years is pretty laughable.

We don't think we can move at the speed of light. Not being able to has never been 100% confirmed and you will NEVER hear a scientist say it is impossible.

But here we are, telling each other it is impossible.....

This is a parody post, right?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Oh here we go, assuming that everything we currently think we know about the universe is factual.

We do not have 100% certainty on anything. So assuming that what we know now about the universe is going to stay the same in 10 or 15 or 20 years is pretty laughable.

We don't think we can move at the speed of light. Not being able to has never been 100% confirmed and you will NEVER hear a scientist say it is impossible.

But here we are, telling each other it is impossible.....

This is a parody post, right?

Are you implying we know the basic laws of the universe as fact?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because we want to make a self-sufficient space colony. Because X country wants to expand its borders beyond Earth before it gets left behind in the next space race. Because we want to explore our solar system. etc...

Make a self sufficient space colony? Why? What reason is there, besides "because we can"?

Expand our borders? Why? What additional things of value are contained within those newly-expanded borders, other than masturbatory nationalism? And how will a country keep its self-sufficient colony (which is conveniently located across an incredibly difficult travel obstacle) from simply declaring independence and no longer being part of that country's borders?

Explore our solar system? Send robots. A horde of robot missions is going to do way more exploration than the tiny handful of humans you could send with the same launch capacity.

How about "We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

If you're content to loaf around until the world falls apart around you (and eventually it will), that's your right. There are others who want to work for something MORE.


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 Peregrine wrote:
Even building a 20,000 mile structure out of steel and concrete would be obscenely expensive and difficult.

Ahem. There are over four million miles of paved road and bridges in America alone, made of (wait for it).... steel and concrete. Apparently it wasn't THAT obscenely expensive and difficult, as we've exceed your so-called limit 200 times over...

Now I'll grant you that's horizontal, not vertical, but the point remains. Once we CAN do it, we WILL do it. If for no other reason than to avoid sending up any more orbital trash in the form of expended boosters, shrouds, and the like.


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 Peregrine wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Oh here we go, assuming that everything we currently think we know about the universe is factual.

We do not have 100% certainty on anything. So assuming that what we know now about the universe is going to stay the same in 10 or 15 or 20 years is pretty laughable.

We don't think we can move at the speed of light. Not being able to has never been 100% confirmed and you will NEVER hear a scientist say it is impossible.

But here we are, telling each other it is impossible.....

This is a parody post, right?

No, it's dead serious. Any physicist worth his education says "Given the limits of what we know right now, FTL travel by humans is impossible."

But we have observed quantum tunneling, where we appear to have subatomic particles jumping from one location to another at a speed faster than lightspeed.

Once you have observed quantum tunneling, saying FTL is full-bore impossible just marks you as something other than a scientist.

 Vulcan wrote:
How about "We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

If you're content to loaf around until the world falls apart around you (and eventually it will), that's your right. There are others who want to work for something MORE.

Oh yes, that line that was a flimsy pretense of noble ambition over a blatant motive of "beat the Soviets"? For a space program that ended once we planted the flag and had nothing left to prove, dumping all of the scientific missions that had been proposed for the Apollo hardware?

Ahem. There are over four million miles of paved road and bridges in America alone, made of (wait for it).... steel and concrete. Apparently it wasn't THAT obscenely expensive and difficult, as we've exceed your so-called limit 200 times over..

And do you have any idea how much that road system cost? The interstate highway system alone cost $130 billion to build, not even counting the ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs. Contrast that with $25 billion for the entire Apollo program. And now consider the fact that, instead of a distributed system of roads that can be built in individual pieces and has a high tolerance for quality defects, this is a single object that has to be virtually flawless?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vulcan wrote:
No, it's dead serious. Any physicist worth his education says "Given the limits of what we know right now, FTL travel by humans is impossible."

But we have observed quantum tunneling, where we appear to have subatomic particles jumping from one location to another at a speed faster than lightspeed.

Once you have observed quantum tunneling, saying FTL is full-bore impossible just marks you as something other than a scientist.

It's also possible that you have just won 10 different lotteries and are about to give me all of your money and then commit suicide, having accomplished the only goal in life worth doing: giving everything you own to Peregrine. However, I'm not going to waste time considering that possibility and can safely treat it as "not going to happen".

All right, Perigrine, I'm going to share with you a piece of hard-won wisdom, because you certainly do make some good points.

The problem is, the aggressive and angry way you post them makes people NOT want to agree with you even when you're right. It's gotten me fired more than once, telling a boss his idiot idea wasn't going to work and why... not because I was wrong, but because I was right but PRESENTED it wrong and made him not want to admit he was wrong. Usually because hearing his idiot idea made ME mad so I responded aggressively and angrily.

It's human nature to become defensive when attacked, to defend your ground right or wrong. And your posts are often in a tone that feels very much like an attack.

(And yes, I'm sure I've done it right back to you. Didn't I tell you I have a problem with this sort of thing? Doesn't make it a good idea, nor does it make it a productive part of a discussion.)

 Vulcan wrote:
The problem is, the aggressive and angry way you post them makes people NOT want to agree with you even when you're right.

If you see that someone is right and want to disagree out of spite because they weren't nice enough to you then the problem is with you. Perhaps you should try to work on that?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
The problem is, the aggressive and angry way you post them makes people NOT want to agree with you even when you're right.

If you see that someone is right and want to disagree out of spite because they weren't nice enough to you then the problem is with you. Perhaps you should try to work on that?

No, you are wrong here. If you assume that physics as we know it is going to stay the same over the next century, you are absolutely wrong. We are not disagreeing with you out of spite, we are saying that you saying something is fact when that is absolutely not true. Saying that it is impossible to travel at the speed of light is wrong. We do not know that. But no matter how low the chances you can never write off the possibility. To do so really shows that you don't know what you are talking about. You can never "safely treat it as 'not going to happen.'"

The problem with discussing anything with Peregrine, I have quickly learnt, is that he will not accept anything that doesn’t validate his own opinion.

There have been countless great reasons raised here as to why we should expect Mars to one day be colonised and because it doesn’t suit his rhetoric he can’t accept any of those points. He also presents his opinions as facts and states things with an air of superiority - both of which are incredibly patronising and in my opinion; rude.

Either way it seems discussing anything with him is a matter of futility and akin to banging your head against a wall.

I completely agree that many of his statements here are wrong but I’m losing interest responding to him to be honest. Anyone with a vague interest in this topic knows that it’s not only possible we one day colonise Mars but also likely given that there is an interest. Humans don’t prescribe to the hyper logical, almost robotic thought process that Peregrine claims. Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can. Not to mention the multitude of benefits colonising Mars would offer, both in terms of scientific advancement and potential profit.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
The problem with discussing anything with Peregrine, I have quickly learnt, is that he will not accept anything that doesn’t validate his own opinion.

You mean I won't accept arguments made out of ignorance of science and engineering. Sorry, but I'm not going to give any credit to the idea that FTL travel is possible. It's purely wishful thinking without a single scrap of evidence to support it.

There have been countless great reasons raised here as to why we should expect Mars to one day be colonised and because it doesn’t suit his rhetoric he can’t accept any of those points.

Countless bad reasons, you mean. I've pointed out the flaws and why I reject those reasons, and why it all comes down to "Mars will be colonized because it's really cool and I think cool things should happen". The fact that people keep suggesting ridiculous ideas like mining Mars for profit is not my fault, I'm not obligated to validate those opinions just because people really like them.

Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can.

And this is what it comes down to: there is no profit motive for it, there is no scientific motive for it, there is only "we're going to do it just because it's cool". And, looking at human history and our record of making obscenely expensive investments in stuff just because it's cool (that is, the utter lack of said record), I wouldn't put much money on this colony happening any time soon. Or, if it does happen, of it being anything but another round of nationalistic flag-planting like the Apollo missions that is abandoned once we've proved that we're better than China.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can.

And this is what it comes down to: there is no profit motive for it, there is no scientific motive for it, there is only "we're going to do it just because it's cool". And, looking at human history and our record of making obscenely expensive investments in stuff just because it's cool (that is, the utter lack of said record), I wouldn't put much money on this colony happening any time soon. Or, if it does happen, of it being anything but another round of nationalistic flag-planting like the Apollo missions that is abandoned once we've proved that we're better than China.

This will be the last time I respond to you in this thread unless you change the way you approach discussion. Not because I dislike what you are saying but because it is completely pointless discussing something with you. It isn’t a discussion if you are unwilling to listen to anyone else’s opinion and just sit there going; ‘Nope, nope, nope, nope’ with your fingers in your ears.

In this you are wrong, I’ve helpfully written in bold the wrong part for you.

On ‘there is no profit motive for it’ you simply don’t know this. No one does. Economically speaking to just have an area with jobs creates wealth. Robots and drones don’t get paid so don’t create more wealth. People do. But that aside there might be a new material that is worth more than anything we have seen before, or there might be massive amounts of something that is relatively rare on earth. Either way both are feasible and both offer financial gain.

On ‘there is no scientific motive for it’ this entirely depends on your view of what constitutes ‘scientific motive’. I note that there have already been scientific advancements from the theoretical study of going to Mars let alone actually going there. Advancements in particular in the fields of food production, energy usage and creation, human psychology even (to name a few). There have been developments in the creation of self sustaining and self contained ecosystems. These things benefit us right now and here on earth. While there are scientific advancements made while studying something, I posit that the subject will continue to be studied.

You seem to be very negative and you are repeatedly bringing up discussions around politics that in my opinion don’t really belong here. Aren’t they banned in fact? There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion but try to understand that the better you present it the more likely you have people willing to engage with it and agree with you.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
It isn’t a discussion if you are unwilling to listen to anyone else’s opinion and just sit there going; ‘Nope, nope, nope, nope’ with your fingers in your ears.

I've listened and responded in detail. Your arguments are badly flawed and not supported by science and engineering. I'm sorry that you don't like "no" as an answer, but that's the only answer you're going to get. I'm not going to type out the same extended explanation over and over again, if you want the detailed explanation of why you're wrong go back to my original post of it and read it again.

On ‘there is no profit motive for it’ you simply don’t know this. No one does.

Yes I do, because I understand planetary gravity wells. There is nothing on Mars that can be created or obtained in a cost-effective manner because the cost of moving it off Mars is so high. There is nothing happening in the foreseeable future that will change this fact.

But that aside there might be a new material that is worth more than anything we have seen before, or there might be massive amounts of something that is relatively rare on earth. Either way both are feasible and both offer financial gain.

And I might win a dozen lotteries in 2019. Can we not waste time on such unrealistic scenarios? We've sent probes to Mars, we know what is there. And it does not contain anything of value. Nor is it likely that any new material will be discovered in nature, we've filled in too much of our knowledge of chemistry and materials science for that to be a reasonable expectation.

On ‘there is no scientific motive for it’ this entirely depends on your view of what constitutes ‘scientific motive’.

No, it depends on relative launch costs. Humans cost too much payload capacity relative to robot probes, and can't do as much science as their mass (counting life support mass) equivalent in robots. Robot probes will continue to be the obvious choice.

Advancements in particular in the fields of food production, energy usage and creation, human psychology even (to name a few). There have been developments in the creation of self sustaining and self contained ecosystems. These things benefit us right now and here on earth. While there are scientific advancements made while studying something, I posit that the subject will continue to be studied.

All of these advancements can be made without actually going to Mars. In fact, they can be done better because you can invest more money in direct study and development of self-contained ecosystems without having to spend any of it on expensive rockets.

You seem to be very negative and you are repeatedly bringing up discussions around politics that in my opinion don’t really belong here. Aren’t they banned in fact? There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion but try to understand that the better you present it the more likely you have people willing to engage with it and agree with you.

I am negative because people who don't understand science and engineering keep posting arguments on the level of "what if 1+1=3, wouldn't that be so cool I bet it's true you can't prove it isn't". And I don't want people to agree with me because I'm nice, I want them to agree with me because I'm right. Or to prove me wrong if they don't agree.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can.

Could we have some examples of these from the modern scientific era? Things that had no profit motive, no propaganda use, no specific and defineable public value etc. Pure 'let's have a go' reasons and absolutely nothing more. I'm genuinely stumped trying to think of anything. Funding councils have largely killed that as a viable motive, much to their shame.

Ok we’re done here. I’ve really tried Peregrine.

I note that you’ve completely ignored the fact that jobs create wealth and anyone going to Mars would have a job by default.

Either way you haven’t ‘listened and responded to’ my arguments in detail. You carefully omit things in your quotations for which you have no answer, choosing to only respond to a small section of my full response. As above with my statement around jobs. You’ve done this every post of mine that you’ve responded to in this thread.

I don’t believe you understand enough about wealth generation to comment on whether something would be profitable/commercial and I don’t believe you (or anyone else) knows exactly what’s on Mars because our current data is incredibly limited. So these things aren’t facts. They aren’t true. Therefore you shouldn’t state them as if they are.

We’re going round in circles here and you’re tiring me. You aren’t right. You have an opinion dressed as fact using your current knowledge. If you can’t admit this I have nothing more to say to you on the subject, except perhaps to note that minds that I’d wager are much more intelligent than your own have stated that they believe interstellar space travel is not only possible but also likely with our current knowledge and the speed that our knowledge is expanding. I’m going to choose to believe Stephen Hawking on this over Peregrine from Dakka Dakka, I hope you understand why? Or are you going to claim you know more than him?

 Peregrine wrote:

And this is what it comes down to: there is no profit motive for it, there is no scientific motive for it, there is only "we're going to do it just because it's cool".

This is one of the most ignorant things I have ever seen. The fact that you do not think there is any scientific motive to going to a planet and observing it on the ground is another indication you have no clue what you are talking about.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This is one of the most ignorant things I have ever seen. The fact that you do not think there is any scientific motive to going to a planet and observing it on the ground is another indication you have no clue what you are talking about.

That observation can be done by robots. And you can launch a lot of robots for the payload capacity used up by a human mission.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I note that you’ve completely ignored the fact that jobs create wealth and anyone going to Mars would have a job by default.

Jobs do not magically create wealth. That's just laughably wrong. And for jobs to exist you need to have something of value worth getting, a premise that is not true.

Either way you haven’t ‘listened and responded to’ my arguments in detail. You carefully omit things in your quotations for which you have no answer, choosing to only respond to a small section of my full response. As above with my statement around jobs. You’ve done this every post of mine that you’ve responded to in this thread.

I've addressed the important parts. I don't need to hit every single word of every post and let it degenerate into a giant unreadable ball of quotes.

I don’t believe you understand enough about wealth generation to comment on whether something would be profitable/commercial and I don’t believe you (or anyone else) knows exactly what’s on Mars because our current data is incredibly limited. So these things aren’t facts. They aren’t true. Therefore you shouldn’t state them as if they are.

I understand planetary gravity wells and the cost of getting out of them. This is something you don't seem to understand, but you keep proposing the equivalent of booking a first-class airline ticket across the country because you heard that a grocery store has bread there at $0.05/loaf cheaper and you can carry some back in your baggage.

I’m going to choose to believe Stephen Hawking on this over Peregrine from Dakka Dakka, I hope you understand why? Or are you going to claim you know more than him?

Oh hello appeal to authority fallacy.

nfe wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can.

Could we have some examples of these from the modern scientific era? Things that had no profit motive, no propaganda use, no specific and defineable public value etc. Pure 'let's have a go' reasons and absolutely nothing more. I'm genuinely stumped trying to think of anything. Funding councils have largely killed that as a viable motive, much to their shame.

If you are looking for some sort of motivation for mankind to attempt to colonise the stars I don’t think it gets much bigger than ‘complete and utter, guaranteed extinction if we dont’?

I’m sure there are examples of us doing things for the sake of it with only the most vague public value tied to it but I’m not at my computer right now so can’t find a funny one. I’ll do a search later.

Peregrine are you seriously claiming for a second you know more about this than the late Stephen Hawking?! Incredible. And stop strawmanning, it’s painfully obvious and the sign of a weak argument.

Under current economic conditions jobs create wealth, this is an evidencable fact.

 Peregrine wrote:

Nonsense. Robots are already capable of tasks way beyond what humans can do, and they're only going to get better. And we're talking about high-end scientific robots designed for a specific purpose, not that "robot" tool your company bought on ebay and hasn't maintained in a decade because maintenance costs money and makes the annual budget look bad.

I've yet to see these super robots you keep speaking of, can you give any examples?

however I do agree that colonizing mars is not a realistic prospect in the immediate future.

We should strive to get people on the surface though, on a return trip. baby steps.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
If you are looking for some sort of motivation for mankind to attempt to colonise the stars I don’t think it gets much bigger than ‘complete and utter, guaranteed extinction if we dont’?

Alternatively, who cares if we could theoretically go extinct in millions of years? Who cares if we could technically save some humans with the same genes even through the vast majority of people are killed?

Peregrine are you seriously claiming for a second you know more about this than the late Stephen Hawking?! Incredible.

Unlike you I know what an appeal to authority fallacy is.

Under current economic conditions jobs create wealth, this is an evidencable fact.

No, successful business ideas create wealth. Jobs alone do not. Telling someone "your job is to dig a hole and then fill it in, and repeat 8 hours a day forever" is not creating wealth.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
And stop strawmanning, it’s painfully obvious and the sign of a weak argument.

Peregrine has so many straws that California Law Enforcement has him on their wanted list.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I've yet to see these super robots you keep speaking of, can you give any examples?

The ones we're already sending to Mars.

And his reliance on questionable diversionary critical thinking tactics is painfully evident. An appeal to authority, like an appeal to nature, is not a fallacy 100% of the time, especially in debates of a scientific nature.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I've yet to see these super robots you keep speaking of, can you give any examples?

The ones we're already sending to Mars.

https://www.army-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/09/CUTLASS-large.jpg


thats just this, but in space.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I bet when that mars rover goes t*ts, they just turn it off and on again remotely.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
And his reliance on questionable diversionary critical thinking tactics is painfully evident. An appeal to authority, like an appeal to nature, is not a fallacy 100% of the time, especially in debates of a scientific nature.

It is a fallacy when your argument is nothing but "LOOK STEVEN HAWKING LOL", without any apparent understanding or explanation of his arguments. It's literally just "a famous scientist said you're wrong", a textbook fallacy.

I bet when that mars rover goes t*ts, they just turn it off and on again remotely.

Or just keep using one of the other 15 copies of it they sent for the same payload cost as a human mission. It's certainly better than what happens when something goes wrong on a human mission.

(Hint: the humans die.)

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
This is one of the most ignorant things I have ever seen. The fact that you do not think there is any scientific motive to going to a planet and observing it on the ground is another indication you have no clue what you are talking about.

That observation can be done by robots. And you can launch a lot of robots for the payload capacity used up by a human mission.

Hey yeah, lets keep shooting precious irreplaceable resources like low-background steel to other planets where we will apparently never go and be able to retrieve for no apparent reason because going there means nothing.

Brilliant.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

nfe wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can.

Could we have some examples of these from the modern scientific era? Things that had no profit motive, no propaganda use, no specific and defineable public value etc. Pure 'let's have a go' reasons and absolutely nothing more. I'm genuinely stumped trying to think of anything. Funding councils have largely killed that as a viable motive, much to their shame.

If you are looking for some sort of motivation for mankind to attempt to colonise the stars I don’t think it gets much bigger than ‘complete and utter, guaranteed extinction if we dont’?

Almost certainly not within the lifetimes of most species (very unlikely within the lifetime of any species we know of so far) and my position throughout has been that it is staggeringly unlikely that we will embark upon interstellar travel within thousands of years. So no worries on this front.

I’m sure there are examples of us doing things for the sake of it with only the most vague public value tied to it but I’m not at my computer right now so can’t find a funny one. I’ll do a search later.

I'm not, so please do. There will be lots of odd things discovered due to anomolies or curious things that happened as a side-effect of another project, or as a proof of concept to support another, but research carried out purely because somebody wants to say 'see, it works!' - that is going to be exceedingly rare.

Under current economic conditions jobs create wealth, this is an evidencable fact.

Actually demonstrably untrue - in certain instances - so it's reasonable to reject the blanket statement, I think. Many jobs actively lose money for the employee (see benefit/work cause and effect in actual England, man [teehee]) and many others cost more in pay than they generate in wealth (see many occupations created to massage enployment figures in China, for instance).

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Hey yeah, lets keep shooting precious irreplaceable resources like low-background steel to other planets where we will apparently never go and be able to retrieve for no apparent reason because going there means nothing.

Brilliant.

Why can't you retrieve it? If you can send humans there it's even easier to send a robot return mission or several.

 Peregrine wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
And his reliance on questionable diversionary critical thinking tactics is painfully evident. An appeal to authority, like an appeal to nature, is not a fallacy 100% of the time, especially in debates of a scientific nature.

It is a fallacy when your argument is nothing but "LOOK STEVEN HAWKING LOL", without any apparent understanding or explanation of his arguments. It's literally just "a famous scientist said you're wrong", a textbook fallacy.

I bet when that mars rover goes t*ts, they just turn it off and on again remotely.

Or just keep using one of the other 15 copies of it they sent for the same payload cost as a human mission. It's certainly better than what happens when something goes wrong on a human mission.

(Hint: the humans die.)

the inference is of stephen hawkings work, VS your statements on the subject, and as such is not an appeal to authority. Its getting to the stage where your appeal to critical thinking arguments are becoming logical fallacies in their own right.

Anyone can look up fallacies on wikipedia. I've actually studied critical thinking academically. But I guess thats appealing to my own authority right?

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
And stop strawmanning, it’s painfully obvious and the sign of a weak argument.

Peregrine has so many straws that California Law Enforcement has him on their wanted list.

Strong. Peregrine feels like a meme of how other 40k players see general Dakka Dakka posters.

I’m not sure whether his posts are actually brilliant satirical comedy or real.

I think I’m going to believe the former from now on. Less painful for all.

There were times in the autonomous vehicle thread where it seemed I was debating a worthy opponent, which is rare and something I relish. good points were certainly raised, however, The reliance on shooting down relevant points with weak logical fallacy statements, coupled with ad hominem attacks dissapointed me greatly.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
the inference is of stephen hawkings work, VS your statements on the subject, and as such is not an appeal to authority. Its getting to the stage where your appeal to critical thinking arguments are becoming logical fallacies in their own right.

Anyone can look up fallacies on wikipedia. I've actually studied critical thinking academically. But I guess thats appealing to my own authority right?

It is an appeal to authority because you are relying entirely on Hawking's name, not his arguments (which you haven't even bothered to quote).


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 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I’m not sure whether his posts are actually brilliant satirical comedy or real.

I could say the same about a lot of your posts. I read them and I find myself thinking "no, this can't be real, nobody can be that clueless about science and engineering". Unfortunately I then remember that yes, lots of people are in fact that clueless, and you just seem to be one of them.

nfe wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can.

Could we have some examples of these from the modern scientific era? Things that had no profit motive, no propaganda use, no specific and defineable public value etc. Pure 'let's have a go' reasons and absolutely nothing more. I'm genuinely stumped trying to think of anything. Funding councils have largely killed that as a viable motive, much to their shame.

Wouldn't the entire Large Hadron Collider project fall under that heading? The entire field of particle physics offers very little profit, and no practical application that I'm aware of.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Wouldn't the entire Large Hadron Collider project fall under that heading? The entire field of particle physics offers very little profit, and no practical application that I'm aware of.

Not really. The LHC is a carefully planned project with a clearly defined goal based on legitimate scientific research, even if the financial payoff is not immediately obvious. It's much more comparable to sending robot probes to Mars, where we have a scientific goal and accomplish it as directly and efficiently as possible. We didn't build the LHC because "LOL LETS MAKE A HUGE THING AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS".

nfe wrote:

Almost certainly not within the lifetimes of most species (very unlikely within the lifetime of any species we know of so far) and my position throughout has been that it is staggeringly unlikely that we will embark upon interstellar travel within thousands of years. So no worries on this front.

But still a guarantee and something we want to avoid as a species, so still relevant.

I'm not, so please do. There will be lots of odd things discovered due to anomolies or curious things that happened as a side-effect of another project, or as a proof of concept to support another, but research carried out purely because somebody wants to say 'see, it works!' - that is going to be exceedingly rare.

I already know what’s going to happen here, I’ll suggest something like; ‘scientists actively created a 2 headed (or no headed) mouse in a lab’ and you’ll try and justify it with wild leaps of logic that I’ll disagree with. Let’s not waste both of our times. Let’s also remember that establishing a colony on Mars is the rather large proof of concept for questions such as ‘can humans exist on another planet long term and self sufficiently?’ and ‘can we terraform a planet as hostile as Mars to suit our needs?’

Actually demonstrably untrue - in certain instances - so it's reasonable to reject the blanket statement, I think. Many jobs actively lose money for the employee (see benefit/work cause and effect in actual England, man [teehee]) and many others cost more in pay than they generate in wealth (see many occupations created to massage enployment figures in China, for instance).

You are ignoring things like ‘tax’ and ‘inflation’ that prove my statement or you misunderstand and believe I am referring to personal wealth. You are also discussing microeconomic principles for what is undoubtedly a macroeconomic statement. It is true and evidencable under current economic conditions.

Those jobs that people do instead of seeking benefits in England generates wealth for the country as a whole. Those jobs that people do in China that pay more than they generate in revenue still provide growth to the economy because that person then goes out and spends their not-so-well earned yen on goods and services. I’m not talking about the individual, business or personal and you seem to be confusing the distribution of wealth with the creation of wealth.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Wouldn't the entire Large Hadron Collider project fall under that heading? The entire field of particle physics offers very little profit, and no practical application that I'm aware of.

Not really. The LHC is a carefully planned project with a clearly defined goal based on legitimate scientific research, even if the financial payoff is not immediately obvious. It's much more comparable to sending robot probes to Mars, where we have a scientific goal and accomplish it as directly and efficiently as possible. We didn't build the LHC because "LOL LETS MAKE A HUGE THING AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS".

No one has claimed that scientists want to set up a colony on Mars because “LOL LETS SET UP A COLONY ON MARS”. The claim has always been that there is an economic/scientific benefit to doing so, most obvious of which is that it proves that we can establish life on another planet.

The only way to prove that we can do this is to do it. In just the same way that the LHC helps prove other scientific theory with regards particle physics. How can you be so oblivious to the fact that your defence of the LHC also proves the value of going to Mars?!

You’re fallacies are unravelling before us Peregrine.

 Gitzbitah wrote:

nfe wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can.

Could we have some examples of these from the modern scientific era? Things that had no profit motive, no propaganda use, no specific and defineable public value etc. Pure 'let's have a go' reasons and absolutely nothing more. I'm genuinely stumped trying to think of anything. Funding councils have largely killed that as a viable motive, much to their shame.

Wouldn't the entire Large Hadron Collider project fall under that heading? The entire field of particle physics offers very little profit, and no practical application that I'm aware of.

It's not a project (though building it was), it is a machine and series of laboratories built to facilitate many projects with specific reseach questions nost of not all of which will have had to demonstrate their value at length.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

nfe wrote:

Almost certainly not within the lifetimes of most species (very unlikely within the lifetime of any species we know of so far) and my position throughout has been that it is staggeringly unlikely that we will embark upon interstellar travel within thousands of years. So no worries on this front.

But still a guarantee and something we want to avoid as a species, so still relevant.

To the topic, not to this specific conversation. I haven't disagreed with the premise anywhere.

I'm not, so please do. There will be lots of odd things discovered due to anomolies or curious things that happened as a side-effect of another project, or as a proof of concept to support another, but research carried out purely because somebody wants to say 'see, it works!' - that is going to be exceedingly rare.

I already know what’s going to happen here, I’ll suggest something like; ‘scientists actively created a 2 headed (or no headed) mouse in a lab’ and you’ll try and justify it with wild leaps of logic that I’ll disagree with. Let’s not waste both of our times.

You could try and be more polite. The presumption of 'wild leaps of logic' is a rather condescening presumption about my rhetoric - I do recall similar pop psychology predictions and assumptions from you before on another topic and believe it to be a bit unhelpful. I think it's worth conversing in good faith, no? The question is a genuine one because I have quite a lot of experience with funding applications.

Let’s also remember that establishing a colony on Mars is the rather large proof of concept for questions such as ‘can humans exist on another planet long term and self sufficiently?’ and ‘can we terraform a planet as hostile as Mars to suit our needs?’

Please don't conflate my with Peregrine. I've said nothing about Mars. I think there are valid research goals in colonising another planet in our solar system.

Need to rush, but suffice to say I understand the distinction between household and national economics, but it is entirely possible for the economic input required to generate and sustain an occupation to outweigh its return for the economy. Mars colonists would be an example.

Fair enough. Other than the costs involved then, what would be the difference between founding a colony on Mars in order to study the possibility of humans living on other planets (giving it a clear, definable scientific goal that cannot be accomplished by robots), and the Higgs Boson project?

Neither one will have any appreciable impact on our lives. There isn't any practical result from the LHC, nor does it produce a profit.

It's one of those intermediate step projects that we need if we want to send humans out into space.

Most of the opposition to this analogy seems to boil down to LHC is science! Mars colonization is science fiction.... but I didn't see any benefits of the LHC listed, or the Higgs Boson project.

Mars One projects its budget at 6 billion to put 4 people on Mars.https://www.mars-one.com/faq/finance-and-feasibility/what-is-mars-ones-mission-budget

Finding the Higgs Boson cost 13.25 billion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-does-it-cost-to-find-a-higgs-boson/#25af50f03948

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Mars One projects its budget at 6 billion to put 4 people on Mars.https://www.mars-one.com/faq/finance-and-feasibility/what-is-mars-ones-mission-budget

Mars One is a blatant scam, not a real project. To put their "budget" into context, the Apollo program cost ~$25 billion in 1970s dollars. Claiming a much more difficult Mars mission on $6 billion in 2018 dollars is utter lunacy. Kind of like making a big PR show out of recruiting astronauts for a nonexistent Mars mission...

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
If you are looking for some sort of motivation for mankind to attempt to colonise the stars I don’t think it gets much bigger than ‘complete and utter, guaranteed extinction if we dont’?

You could say that's a motivation, but any extinction that is best averted by moving to another planet entirely is of a time frame that isn't going to be relevant for probably thousands of years. And, well... We're kind of already facing a likely threat to current civilisation in the form of global warming and there we've got the means to handle it, it's just that the political and economic system is mainly in the hands of precisely those least interested in doing anything. Once again we have to consider what "mankind" is even supposed to mean. Life isn't a space-based 4X game. If our current system somehow developed a way of getting to other planets it would either be to leave billions of the powerless to suffer and die on a boiling pile of trash or to send rightless workers out to strip the planet system and beyond of anything valuable for their masters to sell to further fuel the system. I mean c'mon, how many millions lack access to clean water and to electricity even with our technology? How many go hungry despite the overproduction of food? The miraculous powers of industrial agriculture and production have already been subverted to serve not those who need but those who own. A research base on Mars won't change that.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
If you are looking for some sort of motivation for mankind to attempt to colonise the stars I don’t think it gets much bigger than ‘complete and utter, guaranteed extinction if we dont’?

A research base on Mars won't change that.

Nope and I never said it would.

If you’d read my previous posts you’ll note that I brought up the fact that there are plenty of people without access to clean water, security, jobs etc.

Again, this thread is specifically about the possibility of a colony on Mars and Musk to a lesser extent. If you want to discuss the geo-political landscape and what needs to change to save mankind I recommend making another thread.

I lost all respect for musk after the whole trapped Thai boys submersible debacle. As a seemingly highly lauded public figure, his online activity was massively unprofessional. He deserved that libel lawsuit.

nfe wrote:
I've said nothing about Mars. I think there are valid research goals in colonising another planet in our solar system.

Well the topic is specifically regarding Mars so it might be worth mentioning it? If you think there are valid research goals in colonising the planet we are in agreement and I see no point discussing the ‘have we ever done something for the sake of it in the “modern age”(whatever that is)’. It’s completely irrelevant and a waste of time.

Need to rush, but suffice to say I understand the distinction between household and national economics, but it is entirely possible for the economic input required to generate and sustain an occupation to outweigh its return for the economy. Mars colonists would be an example.

You didn’t seem to understand the distinction from your previous post. You’re going to have to cite why you believe the occupation of ‘Mars colonist’ would outweigh its input into the economy. I disagree.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

nfe wrote:
I've said nothing about Mars. I think there are valid research goals in colonising another planet in our solar system.

Well the topic is specifically regarding Mars so it might be worth mentioning it?

I'll respond to those parts of a thread that I wish to, thanks. That said, I will acknowledge and respond to every part of a post directed at me.

If you think there are valid research goals in colonising the planet we are in agreement and I see no point discussing the ‘have we ever done something for the sake of it in the “modern age”(whatever that is)’. It’s completely irrelevant and a waste of time.

It's completely relevant because it has been cited repeatedly as a reason why science should (or would) pursue a Mars colony (and interstellar travel). Let's call it the last 50 years. I'll say again, it's a genuine question. I have a lot of experience in research funding and I'd be very interested in projects that were greenlit on a 'let's see if we can' - it'd be really useful, actually.

Need to rush, but suffice to say I understand the distinction between household and national economics, but it is entirely possible for the economic input required to generate and sustain an occupation to outweigh its return for the economy. Mars colonists would be an example.

You didn’t seem to understand the distinction from your previous post. You’re going to have to cite why you believe the occupation of ‘Mars colonist’ would outweigh its input into the economy. I disagree.

I actually think the onus is on someone suggesting that there is economic wealth to be created in getting someone to Mars, keeping them alive, and either getting them home or keeping them alive forever to suggest how that might be manifested.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
The problem is, the aggressive and angry way you post them makes people NOT want to agree with you even when you're right.

If you see that someone is right and want to disagree out of spite because they weren't nice enough to you then the problem is with you. Perhaps you should try to work on that?

The problem isn't you or me, the problem is human nature.

But hey, if you want to be an argumentative and irritating person no one wants to be around, it's your life. Not going to get much gaming action that way, though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
The problem with discussing anything with Peregrine, I have quickly learnt, is that he will not accept anything that doesn’t validate his own opinion.

There have been countless great reasons raised here as to why we should expect Mars to one day be colonised and because it doesn’t suit his rhetoric he can’t accept any of those points. He also presents his opinions as facts and states things with an air of superiority - both of which are incredibly patronising and in my opinion; rude.

Either way it seems discussing anything with him is a matter of futility and akin to banging your head against a wall.

I completely agree that many of his statements here are wrong but I’m losing interest responding to him to be honest. Anyone with a vague interest in this topic knows that it’s not only possible we one day colonise Mars but also likely given that there is an interest. Humans don’t prescribe to the hyper logical, almost robotic thought process that Peregrine claims. Sometimes we literally do things just to prove we can. Not to mention the multitude of benefits colonising Mars would offer, both in terms of scientific advancement and potential profit.

You know what? You have a great point. Why should we engage him if he's just going to be an annoying troll when we have the tools to remove him from our portion of the discussion?

Good bye, Perigrine. I'm done bouncing my head off your brick wall.

@Vulcan, the ignore button is a thing of beauty

Rosebuddy wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
If you are looking for some sort of motivation for mankind to attempt to colonise the stars I don’t think it gets much bigger than ‘complete and utter, guaranteed extinction if we dont’?

You could say that's a motivation, but any extinction that is best averted by moving to another planet entirely is of a time frame that isn't going to be relevant for probably thousands of years. And, well... We're kind of already facing a likely threat to current civilisation in the form of global warming and there we've got the means to handle it, it's just that the political and economic system is mainly in the hands of precisely those least interested in doing anything. Once again we have to consider what "mankind" is even supposed to mean. Life isn't a space-based 4X game. If our current system somehow developed a way of getting to other planets it would either be to leave billions of the powerless to suffer and die on a boiling pile of trash or to send rightless workers out to strip the planet system and beyond of anything valuable for their masters to sell to further fuel the system. I mean c'mon, how many millions lack access to clean water and to electricity even with our technology? How many go hungry despite the overproduction of food? The miraculous powers of industrial agriculture and production have already been subverted to serve not those who need but those who own. A research base on Mars won't change that.

I don't necessarily disagree with you here but the technology we would develop in building a colony on another planet would hopefully end up benefiting people here on Earth as well. New ways to produce drinkable water and harvesting food would go a long way in helping poor nations get by.

Sure it would be nice if we could fix the problems on our own planet before looking to the stars but unless there is a massive political upheaval just around the corner it seems unlikely as the world becomes more nationalist by the day...

As I said earlier, the problems on this world are largely due to resource scarcity and (short of developing infinite energy and replicators) cannot be solved strictly on this planet. Even tapping the resources in space won't solve all the problems here, but it might start easing some of them.

I'm updating this thread with a perspective from a former astronaut, via the BBC.

One of my favorite parts was where both Astronauts interviewed talked down the ability to accomplish the mission and the uselessness of said mission. Sentiments, by the way, that were leveled against THEIR mission to the Moon.



Get all the fossilized moonwalkers you want to say it's not feasible, but that doesn't change the fact that as tech advances, it becomes more plausible than possible, and will soon be probable.

It seems that what the astronaut is saying is not that it isn't feasible, but that it isn't wanted.

Feasibility is a moot point until the support of the people is behind the proposed mission.

 Vulcan wrote:
As I said earlier, the problems on this world are largely due to resource scarcity and (short of developing infinite energy and replicators) cannot be solved strictly on this planet. Even tapping the resources in space won't solve all the problems here, but it might start easing some of them.

That's pretty contrary to assertions made in the realms of sociology and economics. The problems generally aren't resources, but distribution and often a willingness to distribute. This tends to be true on an international level (moving goods, especially food, around the globe) and on the local level, where grocery stores just mysteriously aren't in inner city neighborhoods.

Infinite energy isn't necessary- we don't have anything close to infinite consumption. We just have large areas with inadequate (or completely lacking) power grids, and pockets of high demand with no limits on consumption, and few ways to move the excess somewhere else.

Voss wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
As I said earlier, the problems on this world are largely due to resource scarcity and (short of developing infinite energy and replicators) cannot be solved strictly on this planet. Even tapping the resources in space won't solve all the problems here, but it might start easing some of them.

That's pretty contrary to assertions made in the realms of sociology and economics. The problems generally aren't resources, but distribution and often a willingness to distribute. This tends to be true on an international level (moving goods, especially food, around the globe) and on the local level, where grocery stores just mysteriously aren't in inner city neighborhoods.

Infinite energy isn't necessary- we don't have anything close to infinite consumption. We just have large areas with inadequate (or completely lacking) power grids, and pockets of high demand with no limits on consumption, and few ways to move the excess somewhere else.

Infinite energy and replicators. You're right; infinite energy won't really solve anything on it's own. Matched up with the ability to turn vast amounts of energy into whatever matter you desire, now THAT would solve a lot of problems.

Assuming the most wealthy didn't just sit on them...

Yeah, I didn't bother to address the magic boxes part, as its an absurd fantasy completely irrelevant to the issue: the problem isn't the lack of rings of wishes, but the lack of will or ability to distribute food, water and power to where they're needed.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It seems that what the astronaut is saying is not that it isn't feasible, but that it isn't wanted.

Feasibility is a moot point until the support of the people is behind the proposed mission.

And have we conducted a Gallup poll to determine whether or not it's "wanted"? I'd imagine interest is higher than you think.


Regardless, I did seem to miss that point of it. Good on you for correcting me on that.

SpaceX Dragon capsule docked successfully with the International Space Station just after 11 o'clock this morning (UK time.)

It was in autonomous mode, meaning it guided itself in rather than be captured by a waldo arm like the regular supply capsules.

The next big test is whether the capsule can survive re-entry. This is schedule to happen on Friday.

Very cool.

Would You want to be the first person to come down in one of those?
Aren't they the ones that land on their jets?

Very cool, yeah.

Someone has to be the first. To suggest it, make it happen, and try it.

Every bit of progress is a good thing. Now lets work on better propulsion.

"Four parachutes should bring it into soft contact with water about 450km from Cape Canaveral, Florida."
Not a thruster landing then.

Touchdown at 13:45 GMT:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47477617

They got it down intact, then. The next thing is to analyse the flight and effects on the "passenger".