Comment by Torkel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Torkel | Hacker News Reader

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I agree - SpaceX is incredible! They capture the imagination and hopes of our time. They stand for making our dreams come true.

I used to watch the live-blogs and then livestreams of Steve Jobs when he delivered his keynotes. It felt like seeing and hearing the future. Every new announcement was thrilling and exciting.

These days it's SpaceX's launches that gives me a similar feeling. A feeling of seeing and being part of something truly important.

If another company communicated in the exact same way it wouldn't be the same, because the story and the sense of importance just isn't there. I could imagine something similar being done in AI, robotics, prolongation of life, clean energy. But to be as great as SpaceX is, I think the mission needs to be something that resonates with us as being profoundly important.

Maybe someone wants to call me out and say that Apples products under Steve Jobs were not that important. But I'd say they were. iPhone, iPad - they changed our world. It's just now we've gotten used to it. I hope we'll one day get as used to people living on Mars! :)

In what sense is SpaceX profoundly important to you? It's profoundly exciting for sure... Mars will be the best reality tv show ever.

It's hard for me to see it as important though, except as marketing for science education. Is that what you're thinking of?

I guess I'm asking because sometimes people seem to act like SpaceX is of humanitarian importance and I just can't see that. Not compared to like 10 other immediate existential threats to humanity anyway.

If you can establish self-sustaining societies on multiple planets you eliminate humanity's greatest threat - the fact that Earth is a single point of failure.

The current big threats to humanity are climate change and nuclear war. They are threats we create for ourselves, by relentlessly expanding the economy and inventions of new technologies. Ironically our solution to it is to further expand our technology and economy into other planets.

Elon is addressing climate change via SolarCity and Tesla.

Indeed, new human colonies on other planets will not be immune to our existing problems.

> the fact that Earth is a single point of failure.

Ah but once Earth is no longer the single point of failure then the Sun becomes the single point of failure :)

I'm very excited about all things space and I hope SpaceX pulls it off

Never really bought that argument. So Hypothetically even if earth did get hit by another dinosaur killer or worse, wouldn't it still be easier to live here than on mars? at least the temperatures would be survivable and there is air and water here, much more so than Mars

Saying that the thread is about SpaceX and Mars and all I can say is "GO SPACEX!"

I think the idea is that Mars is just a stepping stone, and soon we'll be setting out for Alpha Centauri, Procyon, Tau Ceti, Vulcan, Betazed, Tattooine, and so on.

Hell, Zuckerburg, Yuri Milner, and Steven Hawking are already planning it:

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/yuri-miln...

More like a stepping stone to Saturn's moons and the asteroids. Once we get used - and capable - of living without a planet, there is little reason to bother with deep gravity wells.

> wouldn't it still be easier to live here than on mars?

Maybe. What if it's an artificial plague? What if any other number of catastrophic events cause the collapse of the civilization here?

Having multiple settlements elsewhere is insurance.

And, while Mars is one interesting place, there are other rocks we could easily settle and mine for resources. I don't think Mars should be the first we tackle (I'd go for the Moon first) but I'm perfectly fine with humans spreading all over the solar system.

If you can establish self-sustaining societies on the bottom of the ocean, you can be resilient to almost all of humanities great threats. It's technology that could also be used elsewhere in the solar system once it works well, opens up much more space for human habitation, and is also a much easier problem to solve.

Good point. But the argument against it is that its still on planet earth. Still within the single point of failure that the parent mentioned.

Compared to deep ocean, space is easy. The rocketry is tricky, but you don't need to build foot-thick steel walls and, if something goes wrong, you can go outside.

Unless you are talking about bottom as in 10 metres down. That won't protect you in case something goes seriously wrong.

We humans are bound to earth by our very own evolution, finely tuned for this environment. We are children of the earth and children we will remain.

Your question may be impossible to answer since I suspect that what is "profoundly important" varies enormously between individuals but I will try anyway.

Speaking for myself I believe there is something incredibly unique in the way humans devote incredible amounts of energy to aspects of life that aren't inherently necessary to survival but nonetheless add to the richness of our lives. Art and music are examples of things that while not required for life, certainly make life more interesting.

The human drive to explore the places beyond the horizon and to expand our knowledge are things I would certainly describe as of profound importance, even if they don't have immediate direct benefits, although often times they do.

In the end I think JFK put it best in his 1962 speech at Rice:

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win…

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