Why don't people understand the urgency of colonizing other planets? | Hacker News Reader

Why don't people understand the urgency of colonizing other planets?

io9.com

8 pointsjdludlow21 comments

Before we colonize anything outside of our own self-sustained gravity well, we kind of need to have a working model of a self-sustained /ecological system/.

Which we noticeably lack.

Let's not forget that, under the criteria of self-sustainment, Biosphere II was a failure, yes? And that subsequent research in ecological systems indicate that we are, collectively, more ignorant than wise as to the mechanics necessary to sustain a fully functional off-world environment.

Yes, we could be wiped out by a kilometer-radius asteroid at any moment. That doesn't mean we actually know what to do about it. Colonizing other planets necessitates /self-sustaining/ colonization - it's utterly pointless, after all, to have a Mars colony doomed to a slow and painful death if its ludicrously expensive supply line to Earth collapses.

If that doesn't convince you, though, /you/ can be the first one to try out a Biosphere-3 on Mars. Go ahead - I won't take your place in line. I promise.

You might be right, but none of that speaks against the urgency of doing it, or explains why people don't see it.

Practical chances of having something done affects the sense of "urgency to do it".

Even more urgent than colonization is the achievement of immortality, but I don't see people urging to achieve it for the same reason, i.e they think it's not practically achievable.

I will have to say, even having a highly dependent colony on another planet will push towards self-sufficiency for pure cost reasons alone.

Assuming some worst case scenario, how many people would need to be on another planet for the species to survive? Would 1 million be enough to support the necessary technical infrastructure independent of the Earth?

If it isn't independent of the Earth then what's the urgency? Would having the same number of people on/in Earth, inside an independent ecosystem ("Biosphere III", perhaps?) be sufficient safety net? That would be a lot cheaper.

The presumes that the author's stated goal of species survival is the only goal in advocating the colonization of other planets.

I believe there are gaps and omissions in the text.

"most recent 2 millennia living as farmers" -- that should be about 6 millennia.

"there is no evidence that modern humans have ever gone extinct on a continent or a large island." -- what, the Vikings on Greenland aren't modern enough while 1602 is?

"Detection of a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth would no doubt precipitate a frantic scramble to retrofit existing missiles to deliver a nuclear explosive to deflect it toward a less terrifying trajectory." -- except I thought there were more effective ways than nuking it to another orbit. Nuclear weapons have a lot of energy but not a lot of momentum. A mass driver, or a gravity tow, or a number of other techniques seem more appropriate from what I've read.

"which each killed more than 200,000 people provide powerful reminders of the vulnerability of our species to natural disasters." -- not at all. That's 0.003% of the species. If anything, it shows the vulnerability of an human but the resiliency of our species.

I can even argue that having more people, including those living in dangerous places, means more chances for survival. If we all uniformly lived away from Vesuvius, from tornado alley, from tsunami prone areas, and instead only lived in the safest, then we increase the chances that an unexpected event (asteroid, anyone?) at just the wrong spot can destroy everyone.

That's only hand-waving, which is what the author does all over the place.

When technology problems are sufficiently hard, not working on them is often the right strategy.

The normal progress of science and technology will make more powerful tools available in general, and eventually there will come a point where the solution to the problem is easy because of those new tools.

Better to work on things now that we can actually make progress on, and do research to discover new tools and techniques to expand the range of problems we can deal with.

This is interesting because it probably most accurately describes the current approach to AI. Developing a fully realized "hard AI" system is much too complex a goal to be completed in any reasonable timespan. Instead, most AI researchers are working on more manageable subproblems (machine learning, computer vision, semantic processing, etc) -- tools if you will. We can't be sure, but I personally like to think that these more approachable advances in building an AI toolset will help to work on the larger and more complex AI problems in the future.

There is an underlying assumption here that the human species MUST SURVIVE. While my general aim in life is to add to human flourishing, I do feel that people who are obsessed with keeping humanity alive are being a little dramatic.

If an asteroid does hit Earth and destroy most life, is that so bad in the grand scheme of things? If we can come to terms with our personal death, why can't we also come to terms with the death of our species?

Not saying we should all kill ourselves - but that the preservation of our species should take a back seat until we solve more pressing and truly urgent concerns like global poverty, infectious disease, cancer, human trafficking/slavery, etc

Where's the rush? Wait a few decades, let it be profitable and the Moon will be colonized. This timeframe is tiny in the grand scheme of things.

The human race has never been in a better position to ensure its survival and the chances are increasing. I would guess that even a dinosaur-killer (20km) asteroid, while devastating, would not end the human race itself. Thinking about events that happen every few millions of years is not very productive for human beings.

Even if you start spending $1tn. per year, it's doubtful that space exploration can be made profitable; in fact it could be the opposite (public money crowding out private investment).

With that in mind, get NASA to actually search for the multi-km size asteroids that could threaten the Earth.

In my opinion this is what is holding us back in the grand scheme of things: Only do things which are profitable.

Let's just step back for a second and consider the following questions: Do we have the raw materials to start space colonization? Do we have the human resources (manpower and knowledge) to start such a program?

I think the answer to both questions is yes. Unfortunatly materials and the manpower are too expensive in the current industrial world.

If there's no incentive to make it profitable, there would be no critical mass to move the technology and industry forward. There's only so much public money that can be spent and it's fairly obvious that it won't be spent efficiently.

The space shuttle: $500bn, ISS: $100bn., is humanity closer to colonizing space for that money?

Governments have an incentive to spend money, not to be frugal and industrious.

It seems to me what is most urgent is what is possible now ('the Adjacent Possible')

IMO that is:

Supporting the Seasteaders and Charter Cities; supporting the further development of nuclear technology (all potential forms of fusion and fission); supporting the development of new forms of propulsion technology (e.g. plasma drives).

As an aside, this is an example of what it would take to definitively wipe out humanity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiZU42sn6w

if we can't survive here, we can't survive anywhere. there is no urgency to colonize other planets.

As the article makes clear, the primary reason for extraterrestrial colonization is to increase the chances of human survival in case of a major catastrophe that would cause extinction on Earth - like an asteroid strike or nuclear war. The author acknowledges that other places in the solar system are not as suited to human life as Earth. It is clear that he sees space colonies as a backup plan for the species, as opposed to a way to escape this planet's problems.

A nuclear war won't end the human species, neither would a once-every-100M-year asteroid. Neither would a super-disease, super-volcano, super solar flare etc. Human beings live everywhere on Earth, in diverse environments; technology allows us to inhabit the oceans or the underground if need be. The worst environments on Earth are still more welcoming than the best of what outer space can provide.

The idea behind nuclear wars, asteroid strikes, or super volcanoes isn't that the events would directly kill every human being, but that their associated effects would. In all three cases, throwing large amounts of dust into the atmosphere would rapidly cool the Earth, making it more difficult for farmers to grow crops, and creating large-scale starvation.

I do not disagree with you that any location on Earth is more amenable to human habitation than outer space, but I do not think that there are facts to support your claims that an event that would drastic change the Earth's climate for the worse would not affect humanity.

After nuclear wars, asteroid strikes, AND super volcanoes, the environment on earth might just be comparable to the next best planet we can find in the next Xk years.

Mass starvation won't necessarily mean extinction.

Humans suck at reasoning about black swan events, thus the ROI can't compare to more obvious and immediate needs. So blame our brains.

The article specifically spends at least two paragraphs on this point.

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