> Why (on Earth) do you want to become a multi planetary species??
That's just an un-neccesarily foolish question. Why does a dog swim when you place him in a lake?
> Have you ever tried to live in Antarctica or in the Atacama desert (I have)? I support science, exploration, tech development but not foolishness. Do you surround your house with roads to explore distant locations?
Isn't that exactly what we've done as a society already?
On Twitter there seem to be a lot of people on who expect to live in other worlds soon, and not just to explore and study them. He's likely rhetorically responding to that idea. And I think it's worthwhile to confront those ideas critically. IMO as well, living off of Earth sounds hellish, given what we know now.
The person the Twitter poster is talking with is now suggesting that many people will abandon their physical bodies, and those that won't will live in cylindrical space colonies. He's speaking fantasies.
On Twitter there seem to be a lot of people who currently live on other worlds.
Assuming humanity exists long enough, it will expand throughout the solar system. At very least to the moon.
We can argue about how long that might take, but not about it ever happening.
That's a big assumption.
There's also the why question. What's on the moon that would make it worth all the difficulty to get there? I suppose we might have a semi-permanent research station on the moon or even Mars, but colonization? Unless we make some really unlikely discovery like unobtanium is only found on Europa and it's really super useful, we're not going to have space colonies.
The other potential industry will be moon tourism. It could become something like the new Mt Everest. Obviously only for the very rich at first.
Once it becomes a real possibility and not some crazy sci-fi project, governments may start competing, so as to not get “left behind”, even if it is not immediately profitable.
One way or another, unless we destroy ourselves, it will happen eventually. There’s a percentage of people who are just absurdly curious and adventurous, and want to go where no one has gone before, even if the cost is immense. Hell, for some, I’m sure even just desire to get away from their situation on Earth will be a big part of why they go for it. People like this will build the first settlements and bases on the moon and elsewhere in the solar system.
Edit: sorry for the constant edits. It’s a bad habit — I don’t always get my thoughts out on the first try.
And I'm not entirely sure how you turn water (H₂O) into Methane (CH₄). Granted I barely passed freshman chemistry 33 years ago so my chemistry knowledge isn't so good, but as near as I can recall, there is no process that will turn that input into that output.
And again, even if the moon is a source of water, there's not a significant need for any water mining operation at the poles to have a colony around it or even any human staffing. Putting people there on even a semi-permanent basis would likely eliminate any gains to be had from using the moon as a source of water.
Even the space tourism doesn't call for settling the moon. No one lives on top of Mount Everest either.
Also, the Lunar Gateway [2] is a key part of the plans by NASA/SLS. It's not about settling on the moon, it's about making it a stop off point to refuel or pickup supplies before going on to a further off destination like Mars. Instead of having to have all your fuel and payload when taking off from Earth, you can have a lot of your supplies and weight on the Moon. This means your trip off Earth can be cheaper. Getting out of Earths gravity and getting to escape velocity is the hard part. Getting off the moon is a lot easier.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Gateway
"OP" refers to the OP of the Twitter thread.
I'm just the submitter and do not share their view on being a multi-planetary species at all (I agree that it sucks to have streaks on your astro-photos, as I started taking them recently).
We have to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Edit: changed wording to restore split infinitive.
evidence: Brazil's rainforest. Indonesian palm oil. Chinese mines. African, well, everything.
For most of human history, nature has been trying to kill us (if that's too anthropomorphic, we can go with the longer-form "The processes of nature are ambivalent to the survival of our species and individuals in that species, and there is no guarantee that the natural world is one habitable by humanity. Our species' history is shot through with plagues, floods, famines, and predation, and much of our technology was created to minimize that.")
All these talks about “multi-planetary species” are bunk in the long term, anyway. We will probably have observation outposts scattered across the solar system, but that’ll be about it for quite a long time. The only realistically reachable planet in the foreseeable future is Mars. We could fix our issues with Earth for a fraction of what it would take to make it inhabitable.
We’ll send our billionaire pioneers to the moon alright. With a scientific base as a side effect. It still won’t improve anything that’s wrong with Homo Sapiens.
See, e.g., this link for comments by Musk: https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-ma...
Without actually venturing out there, we might never develop viable star travel.