...What would you be focusing on?
Listening to the latest Elon Musk interview on Joe Rogan (I know, I know...) and his view is that without becoming a multi-planetary species and colonising other planets, humanity is just sitting around waiting to die out. It makes sense I suppose but where do we really go from Mars if we manage to get there?
I appreciate that a lot of stuff needs sorting out down here first (understatement) but just interested to hear other people's opinions on what Space X, NASA, etc should be focusing on when it comes to space exploration.
If we can't sort out the Earth, we will just end up doing the same to Mars, even if we can terraform it in some way.
We'll take all our issues with us. War, self before society etc.
Also, hopping to Mars in an absolute doddle compared to getting to even the closest other solar system.
Also, hopping to Mars in an absolute doddle compared to getting to even the closest other solar system
...and we can't even figure out how to get samples back yet...
Sending dogs and chimps in to space like the good old days. In all seriousness I’d be plowing money and resources in to cleaning up the shit tip that is our upper atmosphere. Remove all the detritus and knackered old satellites. Clean up your own backyard first and all that.
There's a lot of historical baggage here that make global issues hard to deal with. Hopefully a new planet will allow for a fresh start. It'll need very strict rules to start with anyway. All resources will be precious and any cock ups likely to be fatal. That's a good place to start from.
Mars is a good first step. Plenty of other moons and asteroids out there. Then we can look to other stars.
He's probably right. IMO real evidence humans can actually survive on another planet/moon long term and more to the point they can actually survive the journey to get there.
IIRC nearest earth-like planet is Proxima Centauri b some 4.2 light-years away.
So Mars takes roughly about 7-8 months to travel to which is some 54,600,000 km away and Proxima Centauri is 40,208,000,000,000 km away.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is traveling away from us at 17.3 km/s, so if Voyager was to travel to Proxima Centauri it would take over 73,000 years to arrive.
Unless some giant leaps happen in propulsion it's still a long way off and we're stuck here.
Spoon based avionics. Just like the glory days of Button Moon.
The earth is just a temporary lifeboat for us. the time that earth will be able to sustain life is probably limited. It's only about 700 million years since complex life started to appear and evolve on the Earth. Before that it was very simple life. But it took 3.5 or so billion years for the conditions on Earth to develop such that complex life could get a hold. It wont take much of a climatic shift to return us back to a situation where complex life on Earth is unsustainable again. We have limited time to develop the technology to be able to survive off planet either on space stations or other worlds.
But the first thing to do is to make the industry pay. Until it pays then we wont get the signifiant pace of technological advancement needed. Governments can't pump in the funds to do this, only the private sector can and in order for that to happen there has to be a viable and sustainable business model. Once there is the rate and pace of technological development will accelerate, then in no time, relatively speaking, our activity in space will increase significantly.
Always hear about getting man to mars, but rarely hear about the resource requirement from earth to support any type of colony that would support life, and allow the safe return of anyone.
I have a feeling that anything other than a vanity mission is pie in the sky, the resources required would cost this planet way too much, so speeding up our demise to try and spread out to stop any demise!
Its all progress and so i don't feel like a bigger plan/focus is needed beyond the current plan to get to Mars...Sputnik was only launched a bit over 60 years ago but then we haven't managed to make it back to even the moon in just under 50 years so I'm glad at least we have a billionaire(s) interested in space exploration.
We know we're dead if we stay on this planet even if we don't manage to kill ourselves and, although it's easy to knock humans, we've done rather well as a species.... personally think it's a shame if all that evolution and human suffering came to nothing. We might fail but i want us to try at least to get off this rock
There have been five major mass extinctions with humankind possibly causing the sixth? and some minor ones in between. The planet has recovered from each one so hopefully, it will recover from the sixth. Whether the human race will be around still is a different matter.
I personally reckon this will happen before humankind travel to live permanently on another planet.
Nothing will ever be done on this planet or any other that we colonise unless there's a profit in it.
Has Elon Musk been crowned Emperor of Mars yet?
Coming back to a comment I made on a previous thread within this forum some time ago. It was when Elon Musk sent a flippin' Tesla into space and I said what a prick. Well, if I were a CEO of a private space company then I'd be using these planets and be a little more productive and relocate our radioactive waste from the only habitable planet that we know of.
We're destroying ecosystems that support life. Our lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island
Get our nuclear waste on a shuttle and send it on a fast jet towards the Sun.
Mars is a bloody dust bowl. It's a vision of the future if we carry on the way we are on Earth.
When it was argued that radioactive waste couldn't be sent into space I mentioned that nuclear powered craft had already been sent into space. The reason nuclear powered craft were stopped was because of a possibility that if they exploded on take off then they'd send radioactive dust everywhere and contaminate everything below. Well guess what? It just so happens Perseverance is nuclear powered! OK, with new precautions but still if we can sanction a nuclear powered robot being sent up into the sky and then on to a dust bowl now, then let's look closer to home and deal with the shit that we're leaving on Earth. These chickens will come home to roost. Take Beaufort's Dyke as another example. Sure these clean ups are dangerous but we can't leave this crap just laying there.
when we reach the stars, it will be autonomous self replicating ai the children of perseverance.
73,000 years to arrive.
thats still only 0.00000528 the age of the universe 😀 (only couple days really)
Firs step is to send robots out to the Oort cloud to push comets and other icy bodies so they crash on mars to give mars a hydrosphere and atmosphere. Once we have got enough of them on mars and then seeded it with bacteria and waited a millenia for it all to stabilise then going to mars would be worth while
Now the robots are so good manned exploration is not really worth while
the other aspect is the energy costs of putting people there is so much higher than putting robots on mars that its prohibitive
the other aspect is the energy costs of putting people there is so much higher than putting robots on mars that its prohibitive
Usable nuclear fusion is not that far away. At that point, the energy costs stop being a problem.
Meanwhile, Elon is setting up his own personal Martian empire:
"...recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities."
https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/23/starlink_moon/
First thing I'd do would be focusing on making our current spaceship spaceworthy for another few thousand years at least by giving it a good clean up and fitting some insulation. Once the present spaceship is safe for all of its passengers, then I'd consider investing in attempting to get to another spaceship.
Rich blokes, tiny dicks shooting for the stars...
And I genuinely love space exploration. I just think we've a few issues to resolve down here, not least paying staff of said CEOs companies a working wage and giving them some rights.
Usable nuclear fusion is not that far away
Bollox it is.
I'd take all the money and resources that I was piddling up the wall, stop the fantasy of relocating to Magrathea (or dropping in with some mice and placing an order for Earth II), Squornshelous Zeta or Kakkrafoon and pile some of the saved cash, brain power and natural resources into doing more to not monumentally screw up this planet so quickly.
It wont take much of a climatic shift to return us back to a situation where complex life on Earth is unsustainable again.
this makes me think that we’d be better off working out how to survive here rather than on another planet. it would save us the effort of working out how to get to other planets for a start.
Mars is a bloody dust bowl. It’s a vision of the future if we carry on the way we are on Earth.
Surely Venus is a better model of what might happen to earth if we carry on the way we were? Post lockdown everyone seems to want to jump back on the Easyjet to wherever... it's thoroughly depressing. And yes, I'd like to go on a sunny holiday too!
Listening to the latest Elon Musk interview on Joe Rogan
Stop listening to this pair of roasters for a start.
I'm going to comment that actually you'd need a pretty immense climactic shift to get the earth anywhere near the PermoTrias conditions for example, or on a smaller scale, another iceage or interglacial.
However much as that's a good thing, while we might not be able to cause a true mass extinction, a lot of people are not going to enjoy surviving a minor climactic event and the very negative effects it'll have on your lifestyle.
* Bear in mind that when people talk about mass extinctions in the past they don't mean lots of cuddly animals becoming extinct, to be replaced by rats, beetles and concrete minimalls, they mean 90% of everything was killed/dead
Nothing will ever be done on this planet or any other that we colonise unless there’s a profit in it.
This, if Mars is colonised, it wont be affordable housing that gets built first!
This, if Mars is colonised, it wont be affordable housing that gets built first!
Depends if its rich in minerals etc. In which case some quickly constructed sheds for the labour perhaps clustered together in camps might be the way to go.
Firs step is to send robots out to the Oort cloud to push comets and other icy bodies so they crash on mars to give mars a hydrosphere and atmosphere. Once we have got enough of them on mars and then seeded it with bacteria and waited a millenia for it all to stabilise then going to mars would be worth while
If only it were that simple, without a molten core and magnetic field the solar wind will blast Mars' new atmosphere back into space again just like happened with its original one,the same radation will kill anything you try and seed the surface with.
We know we’re dead if we stay on this planet even if we don’t manage to kill ourselves
I think the human race will be dead before we have the technology to move house.
TBH Elon is ultimately right in the longer term, from a species survivability point of view keeping all our eggs in one Earth shaped basket is suboptimal.
Of course he is now in the business of selling a "payloads into orbit" service, and doubtless wants to expand that to pushing mass around the solar system (obviously for a price), his motive is as much (if not more) financial that it is altruism and exploration...
The problem is humanity is stalled on late stage capitalism. The planet's finite resources are controlled by a very small proportion of the population who mostly think in relatively narrow terms, i.e. "how do I make more money, in the next few years"...
Sadly Billionaire musings won't get us out of the cradle, a roadmap that considers the next ten decades, not ten years, and isn't constrained by petty political or financial wranglings...
To put it in context, as a species we've just lost the best part of a year of productivity and suffered at least 2.5m deaths due to a relatively straightforward (and foreseen) global pandemic. The scale of the impact is due, in no small part, to our proclivity for putting money and power ahead of public health... And we think we're ready to colonize Mars?
Musk is a bit of an arse trumpet but he's not wrong on the idea that humanity needs a back up.
Its axiomatic to say that we will either become a space-faring species or we will become extinct
Saying we should cure the Earths problems first is a false dichotomy we can do both if we have the political will. Stuff we do and invent to go to Mars could benefit people on Earth too.
The Apollo program cost the US about 3% of its GDP, but that money isn't lost, it creates jobs and provides opportunities for innovation in a load of related fields.
The planet’s finite resources are controlled by a very small proportion of the population who mostly think in relatively narrow terms, i.e. “how do I make more money, in the next few years”…
You know that Elon Musk is one of those people, right?
Its axiomatic to say that we will either become a space-faring species or we will become extinct
really? as Homo Habilis' existence on this planet makes us look like a bunch of amateurs, they managed to live perfectly happily for 10 times the length of time that we've managed.
we're destined for extinction whether we become space borne or not ultimately
really? as Homo Habilis’ existence on this planet makes us look like a bunch of amateurs, they managed to live perfectly happily for 10 times the length of time that we’ve managed.
Pfft! Homo Habilis? I mean how happy could they have really been? Archaeological evidence for pizza ovens and bean to cup coffee machines is non-existent. Pretty sure they never managed to argue with a stranger on the internet either.
we’re destined for extinction whether we become space borne or not ultimately
Probably. I mean our future demise is pretty likely regardless of what we do, but its certain if we just hang about on Earth.
Coelacanths have managed well over 300 million years, but they don't have a space program so when the Earth is taken out by something they'll be just as extinct as everything else still on Earth.
Some physics blind spots on this thread.
How're you gonna terraform Mars and stop the atmosphere created by all those bacteria from being blasted into space like the last one was?
IIRC nearest earth-like planet is Proxima Centauri b some 4.2 light-years away.
Earth-like in terms of mass and distance from star - but then, Venus is pretty Earth-like and I wouldn't want to live there.
Its axiomatic to say that we will either become a space-faring species or we will become extinct
IMO extremely unlikely that we will become extinct. There are highly likely to be Terrible Events of some kind or another that will make it very much not fun for most people but some of us will carry on.
Usable nuclear fusion is not that far away.
ITER or the JET aren't going to power a spaceship are they?
I think if I were Elon Musk I'd mostly be focussing on the immense strength of my weed tbh.
But yep, I mean, it's a basic simple fact, at the moment every human is totally dependent on earth and it wouldn't be that hard to break it. We're basically just fancy monkeys yet we've done a pretty good job of trashing it and we didn't even mean to.
But the flipside- and tbh I think it's basically the only good counterargument- is that living off earth is still very very hard, meanwhile we're not doing enough to look after the planet we already have. Terraform earth first...
These things don't have to be mutually exclusive of course b
IMO extremely unlikely that we will become extinct. There are highly likely to be Terrible Events of some kind or another that will make it very much not fun for most people but some of us will carry on.
Erm, hate to break it to you but the Sun has only got about 5 billion years left😁
IIRC nearest earth-like planet is Proxima Centauri b some 4.2 light-years away.
Earth-like in terms of mass and distance from star – but then, Venus is pretty Earth-like and I wouldn’t want to live there.
But we already know we can't survive on Venus, but it also doesn't read too promising for Proxima Centauri b.
How’re you gonna terraform Mars and stop the atmosphere created by all those bacteria from being blasted into space like the last one was?
You are not - but it would take a long time. ( in human terms if not in geological terms)
All I did was steal a fictional SF idea. Push comets to intersect with it - that provides water from which you can make an atmosphere ( and the comet may have gasses in it). Use bacteria to make the hydrosphere and atmosphere into the right stuff you need out of the ingredients you get from the comets
Its the only vaguely plausible terraformning idea I have seen
Molgrips - I think the end result of global warming will be the extinction of human kind
Those events will kill enough people that our civilization is unviable and create such unfavorable living conditions that humans will simply die off.
Once population levels fall below a certain amount the the technological society will die and also the poor growing conditions for food will result in a malnourished and vulnerable remnant population - disease and famine will see them off
IMO extremely unlikely that we will become extinct.
So far; all the available evidence points to that fact that pretty much everything eventually goes extinct. through either cataclysmic events, or environmental changes. Most within 10 million years of their first appearance.
So far; all the available evidence points to that fact that pretty much everything eventually goes extinct. through either cataclysmic events, or environmental changes. Most within 10 million years of their first appearance.
Unfortunately I agree.
Look up the Fermi paradox
We deserve to fade away - we were gifted the perfect planet to live on and we filled it discarded Costa cups and McLitter.
His posturing is to justify the resources his ideas need
The reality is we need to stop destroying the earth's ecosystem a lot faster than a couple of missions to mars. As that's virtually impossible we will then have countries trying climate engineering by shoving stuff into the atmosphere and then we are totally screwed
Until we give ecosystems a value we are on a one way trip, it's the timing that's up for dispute
We deserve to fade away – we were gifted the perfect planet to live on and we filled it discarded Costa cups and McLitter.
Nah...you think if intelligent life had evolved from dolphins or pigs they'd have done any better. Evolution is kind of a contradiction as you have to have a selfish almost self destructive attitude to become the dominate species, in the same way a virus could end up killing its host before it's moved on to a new host. Yes we're going through a bit of a storming phase having dragged ourselves out of the dark ages but hopefully we won't mess it up enough so at least some will survive to learn from our current screw ups
Bollox it is.
@tjagain there's several billions of any currency worth of Bollox being constructed in Cadarache in that case.
As for whoever compared a depleted plutonium battery with high level active waste, away tae **** ya walloper! You can safely handle depleted plutonium (albeit wearing gloves because its toxic but whatever), I'd like to see (or not) what happens to anyone picking up a spent fuel rod. Health physics is a whole specialist subject that people just have no bloody idea about. It's not the simple alpha/beta/gamma pigeonholes you learnt at school.
