Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species
spacex.com
spacex.com
http://qz.com/536483/why-its-compeltely-ridiculous-to-think-...
"""...we live on a planet that is perfect for us, and we seem to be unable to prevent ourselves from making it less and less habitable. We’re like a bunch of teenagers destroying our parents’ mansion in one long, crazy party, figuring that our backup plan is to run into the forest and build our own house. We’ll worry about how to get food and a good sound system later. Proponents of Mars colonization talk about “terraforming” Mars to make it more like Earth, but in the meantime, we’re “marsforming” Earth by making our atmosphere poisonous and annihilating our natural resources. We are also well on our way to making Earth one big desert, just like Mars."""
Humans have been wrecking havoc various environments ever since Neolithic. Although there's no definitive proof, there are strong suggestions that they were at least contributing to the disappearance of the Mega-fauna, for instance.
Examples of small human settlements in small islands are very characteristic, IMHO. Everywhere it happened, endemic birds where usually eradicated very quickly.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recently_extinct_birds
The root problem of all is that we discount too much the future, so we don't value enough the long-term effects of anything (votes, policies, environment, etc.). This is something instinctive and natural to us as humans, and it takes us a lot of mental effort to be rational to the e.g. LessWrong et al. ideals, to the point that we can't be indefinitely rational, just for brief moments of attention. Our irrationalities govern us.
This is indeed a fault of the whole species.
Which is exactly the problem. Nobody is going to follow a leader preventing them from buying 7 different iPhones even though you probably only needed one.
Which is a simplification, but the middle class is completely dependent on economic growth. Both as consumers, but mainly as workers.
I think there is a lot of hope for change though, I mean, automation is going to make 60% of the current workforce obsolete over the next 20 years. With that comes a need for change.
I never thought about that before, but this is definitely a way to speed up anything - literally change the destination reference to look more like the the piece in work.
Elon Musk is the complete opposite.
I think the former really has no right to say anything about the latter.
I dunno, maybe we should work on our social decision making process as well, not just on technology. Progress is a function of both and we seem to be leaving the social one behind.
Maybe we should be working to transition to a kind of direct democracy, or a more evolved form with the help of technology. Leaving all the power in the hands of a few doesn't seem to do much good in the long run...
Or maybe we should count on Elon to do this as well, as he promised, once he becomes king of Mars...
The thing is that one may expect that intelligence would change things, but apparently it doesn't. It's just another tool on the predator's toolbelt. But somehow I just can't settle with this, it seams there should be a middle way..
That being said: Yes. Oh yes. Fuck yes. All my yesses.
Go Elon!
If we can't terraform Earth's deserts, do we really stand a chance with Mars?
I might be mistaken in my analysis. Still, the only way a colony might survive seems to be by sending tremendous amounts of resources to Mars yearly. They can never hope to be self-sustaining until either astronomically large amounts of time or astronomically large amounts of energy are spent.
That might be true, but if we could divert even a small part of the global arms industry to something as constructive as colonizing a new world then I suspect we might help things here as well as achieving something wonderful.
Edit: "Oh yes. Fuck yes. All my yesses"
Can I second this. I remember reading Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" and getting quite enthusiastic about actually being a Martian colonist :-)
Mars has less of a molten core, and a very weak magnetosphere. Therefore outdoor terraforming seems unlikely. We may have to walk around on Mars inside shielded colonies only, along with whatever other life we bring: plants, animals, everything.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Earth-have-an-active-core-whi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031891439...
Water seems to be a fairly decent shield, so it's tempting to imagine a human-made aquatic ecosystem. Fish would probably survive without any extra shielding besides water, so that's one natural resource we could start generating, assuming we could transport massive quantities of water to Mars. Unfortunately, the water would just evaporate or freeze, so we'd need shielding for that too.
On the other hand, sending life to Mars, due to that radiation, would make it evolve much faster, right? Perhaps we can start terraforming it and study the evolutions of plants and animals there to gain insight in how to overcome our frailties.
So maybe we end up with huge domes made of tanks with 20' of water in them.
Also, since Mars has CO2, I'm guessing once a dome is up, we simply pressurize it with the surrounding atmosphere? Once pressurized we could use O2 tanks and cannulas, or add plants?
I fear that there is going to be a huge political debate first -- a lot of folks are going to say that man isn't worthy/able/competent/etc to colonize another planet.
> Using human cultured cells, we demonstrate that a tardigrade-unique DNA-associating protein suppresses X-ray-induced DNA damage by ~40% and improves radiotolerance. These findings indicate the relevance of tardigrade-unique proteins to tolerability and tardigrades could be a bountiful source of new protection genes and mechanisms.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160920/ncomms12808/full/nc...
The bottleneck in evolution isn't mutations but selection events (~= number of organisms).
I agree though that mars colonies would be underground for a long, long time.
This article covers some problems with terraforming Mars: http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/trouble_with_terraf...
It's not that we couldn't, it's that we don't care to - partly because the reward isn't there, and partly because there are opposing interests. Humans absolutely have had (and are having) large-scale impact on the Earth's climate, and that's while mostly trying not to.
Building a house takes months, but in a day, it can be burnt. Fighting entropy 101.
To be fair, it can be done and it is slowly being done in some countries. It's still very difficult and expensive, though. That being said, indeed doing it on mars would be orders of magnitude more difficult.
The second best time is today.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill#Space_colo...
There's a nice PBS Space Time episode where they invented a word about it : "surfacism".
Obligatory XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/681/
So I'm confused to why not make space habitats our priority instead of other planets. Certainly inhabiting planets is something that will happen regardless, I'm just baffled to why it needs to happen before we build something like a Stanford Torus.
Either way, meteor showers will be life threatening, instead of pretty, like they are on Earth.
Plus, if there's a breathable atmosphere on the planet, your habitat isn't limited to the space you can enclose in a bubble.
This is one of those markets where you have rather high barriers to entry.
About 55 million kilometers/34 million miles high at least.
In space, you count barriers to entry in km/s.
Also, the price of platinum is currently driven by the knowledge that it's naturally scarce and the likelihood of a large amount of "new" platinum coming on the market is low. If this ever changes (we somehow figure out how to profitably bring back a tonne of platinum), then the price would likely crash, as the amount out there in space is essentially infinite.
Of course, this also has other uses [1].
And land sale? The Outer Space Treaty [1] prohibits governments from claiming ownership of planets, so where would the authority to sell land on Mars come from? Do we really want companies to own planets? Weyland-Yutani (Mars) Inc. anyone?
Edit: We're not even close to getting a grip on the social and legal problems of having access to habitable, off-earth environments. I suspect that the potential for conflict is huge.
And I don't have a problem with capitalism per se, but our legal and political systems don't seem to be doing a very good job of managing its excesses.
I don't think it is hopeless, but we'll need to reign in the outliers to stop global warming / Kessler syndrome.
The thing is that the order on which capitalism relies on to exist is not uphold outside the recognized international treaties. So, good luck on defending whatever ownership claims you have or you'll just have to submit to whoever can reach you and has more power than you. Also, it's kind of pointless for a government on Earth to claim ownership of outer space unless the means of maintaining permanent connections with said properties will significantly change. Think about what kind of connection you'll have with "yours" when it takes years to step from one part to another of the same country with nothing in between.
Or maybe it will be replaced by something else on the Earth, I don't think we can predict the future yet.
Does that mean you're against terraforming entirely, or would you prefer for the US/Russian/Chinese government to be the only powers allowed to do so?
In some far-future scenario where there are thousands of accessible planets suitable for terraforming then maybe it would be ok for corps and governments to do as they wish. But you're past the point where there is likely to be any overall political or legal system of control anyway.
I'd say it's a better future than the "no terraforming at all" future. And I suspect the "wait until UN-like bodies are competent and willing to organize terraforming" future is actually the "no terraforming at all" future.
But entire planets claimed by crushingly authoritarian political systems or uncontrolled profit-seeking corporations doesn't seem like a great way to safeguard humanity either.
What do you want terraforming for?
Also, Spacex is not a party to the treaty. The treaty binds the countries, not their citizens or companies. I don't know if there are internal US laws banning sale of land.
Finally, the ban in many state laws on selling cars directly to consumers didn't hold back Tesla. I doubt a treaty from 1967 would hold back SpaceX
The Outer Space Treaty will be repealed as soon as practical colonization and commercial resource extraction is viable and profitable.
I know, and I didn't say it was. Only nations can ratify treaties. However, the OST states that "States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities" [1].
> I doubt a treaty from 1967 would hold back SpaceX.
SpaceX is a US corporation and is subject to US law. If maintaining the OST is in the interests of the US then SpaceX would absolutely be held back.
I think of the OST as a sort of Nash equilibrium. Given the current situation (no terraforming on the horizon), it is arguably the best place for everyone to be. If the rules change in the future them some different set of controls would come into play.
[1] http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/intr...
Possession is 11 tenths of the law.
The Treaty of Tordesillas gave the modern USA to Spain. How'd that go?
Thats the problem that the OST tries to address. If more than one party claims possession of a territory (say Mars) then they can either settle things legally or with gunboats (err.. space battle cruisers). Given the absence of an off-Earth legal system to adjudicate, and with no compelling need to create one then or now, conflict would therefore be a likely outcome. So the OST just tries to defer the problem for a while. At some point, extraterrestrial territorial claims will need to be settled though.
Metals: choose an elemental metal you think is rare. Look up it's Wikipedia entry, and look at its availability. It will be expressed in terms of a percentage of the earth's crust, something like 0.01%. Multiply that by 2.6*10^22 kg and realize that we're not going to run out of it any time soon, nor is it rare. It may be expensive to mine, but compared to the cost of transporting on rockets? Cheap.
Land: you can buy prime farmland in Saskatchewan, Canada for USD500 per acre.
Honestly though - isn't Venus more likely to take well to terraforming
Unless there is a way to massively mine the rocks for the hydrogen and oxigen, there is no other way to terraform a planet like Mars or Venus. I am afraid that would put the terraforming efforts like hundreds of years ahead.
"More than five million cubic kilometres of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters (115 ft). Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface." [1]
If you want to terraform Venus to a (human livable) state you'd probably need to give it a solar shade to cool the planet to decent temperatures, shrub the 4.6 10^17 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and remove those 7.210^13 tonnes of sulfur dioxide.
edit Also, please note that Venus has a 117 earth day solar day, while the Martian solar day is only 24h 37m.
Sources: wikipedia, google, calculator
1/ Does humanity need to stop screwing up Earth? Yes. Does Elon going to Mars make that job any harder? No. Is claiming that people shouldn't try to make progress on issue X until issue Y is fully resolved total BS? Yes.
2/ Are planets the best place for human colonization off Earth? I have no idea. I find The High Frontier to be persuasive but I think we can all agree that landing a few people on Mars is easier than building an O'Neil Cylinder. Baby steps, people! Even if Mars ends up being a backwater, the infrastructure that Musk builds to allow its colonization will also allow us to start developing the rest of the solar system too.
Remember, Elon's going to build a giant reusable rocket that can lift hundreds of tons into orbit with each launch, and I doubt SpaceX is going to use 100% of that launch capacity. I'm sure that if Bezos, Bigelow, or some other billionaire wants to throw a 6,000 cubit meter inflatable space-hab at L5 as a starter-home for O'Neil colonies, Musk will be happy to sell him that launch.
3/ Will Elon terraform Mars within his lifetime? Probably not! Is that a reason to never start? No.
4/ Even if the colony doesn't work out, just think of the science! If Musk can put colonists on Mars he'll also be able to send teams of NASA, ESA, etc. astronauts for the Martian equivalent of McMurdo Station. And the same for Venus (in floating habitat at 50km altitude), the Moon, or even the larger asteroids or outer moons.
5/ If you have a rocket that big, and colonization makes the economics cheap, just think of the size of the telescopes you can put into orbit. Hubble, eat your heart out.
Look, I know that pie-in-the-sky science futurism is kind of our thing here at HN, but could we at least feign a little pragmatism every time Elon Musk pitches his plan to move us all to Mars?
Suppose SpaceX (or another operator) establishes a colony with people from various countries - what country (if any) is that colony subject to? Perhaps all the countries initially, but after a couple of generations?
The situation is similar to Antarctica, which is home to a large number of small scientific settlements, each following the rules of the country that it is bound to.
A treaty that some countries have signed acknowledges some country borders, but they are not enforced in practice, and those territories are home to settlements from other countries — you even have multi-nationality settlements.
It may be that the only way to save Earth is to give some of the 10+ billion another place to go.
Flippancy aside, just assuming there is no consequential life on any of those rocks just waiting for use to exploit is quite arrogant of us. I'm fully behind humans being multi-planetary to increase our bus factor and because it's just plain awesome. I also think some caution is needed to prevent us destroying signs of other life before we even know what we've done. But this is not some revelation, smarter people that me have already thought this stuff through. We just have to follow through on the protocols.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_Catastrophe
Such apparently is life on Earth. We are not special.