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Comment by NiceWayToDoIT | Hacker News Reader

Never is very long time... If we do not destroy ourselves in next 50 years, it is quite certain without any doubt that we will move from Earth.

It does not matter is it 50 or 500 years, technological advances will undoubtedly lead to spread beyond the Earth. Historically, many things were "never" - until we do otherwise.

I agree with the author that we need to solve problems here first.

EDIT: For example, atmosphere is not a problem, we can have entire planet living in vast network of underground tunnels, powered by nuclear energy. We already know how to bore tunnels. In that ways, also, it would be significantly fewer problems with cosmic rays and solar storms. Anyway, point is, for each problem there will be some solution if we put our minds into it.

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Historically, many things were "never" - until we do otherwise.

The opposite is also true. Many things we thought would be possible are either economically or technologically out of our grasp:

- Nitrogen fixation in wheat.

- A computer simulation of the catalyst that fixes Nitrogen in plants.

- Fusion power stations.

- Room temperature super-conductors

Maybe its possible to point to research that is almost there in most of these areas -- just like the 1950s.

- Financially sustainable recycling of all plastics

> Fusion power stations

We've made slow but steady progress on this pretty much since we figured out that man made fusion is possible.

So we will be there in 30 years or so?

Fusion is mostly a certain amount of funding away. We're quite sure that ITER and DEMO will work if we put enough money in. If we had more funding we could simultaneously also pursue other approaches, like Stellarators, to increase success changes more.

With all those problems we are very near solution, and goes same as for Mars: - nitrogen fixation, I think we are doing it wrong, we are trying to pluck rose with a jack hammer, we simply do not have enough knowledge, plants in general have more genes than humans.

- Fusion is around the corner, (and this time it is not yet again 30 years) it is just shifting more money into research, I read that globally only 50 bn is invested in fusion, jApple on its own has value of 2250 bn.

...

I have heard that "fusion is around the corner" thing was apparently because of some early assumptions about the core physics of fusion that turned out to be spectacularly wrong. It turned out to be orders of magnitude harder.

So that was one clear scientific reason. But people got the impression that the teams working on it are somehow unreliable, unorganized or keep moving the goal posts and are a butt of jokes.

I think the messaging around it doesn't help. It's the same with batteries or renewable energy as well though.

Regarding nitrogen fixation I recommend watching "Kiss the Ground Film Trailer (2020)" documentary ...

Whatever we could do to earth it would still be more hospitable place than Mars.

I’m sure we can have bases on any body in the universe, but that’s far from “colonizing”. If we want to live in tunnels or hermetically sealed bases we can do it on earth with much less effort!

The only reason to do it on Mars is hedging bets against extinction events. And I find it extremely hard to think you’d find someone interested in going anywhere otherwise.

It would be a lot more convenient to re-colonize earth after an extinction event than to colonize anywhere else!

You can't extrapolate the future from the past. It's definitely possible that there are some very hard technological ceilings that we'll hit at some point of our development. The universe (probably) isn't designed to be easily conquerable by humans or any other species, so it's not given that we'll emigrate from our solar system or even Earth.

Colonization of other planets in our solar system is probably feasible, but I doubt such a colony could be self-sustaining as modern technology requires incredibly complex supply chains to manufacture. And as long as we don't have any replicator-style technology this won't change. Imagine e.g. how difficult it would be to manufacture a microchip on Mars (or a space suit, which requires complex materials and processes). I think a colony on Mars could not survive on its own for more than a few decades. Colonizing other systems seems even more outlandish and outright in the realm of science-fiction to me.

I think we just believe that colonization will be normal in the future because science fiction works regularly tell us this story, so we naturally normalize it.

Even if we continue to destroy this planet for another 100 or 200 years, it would still be less effort and cost less to fix Earth instead of going to Mars.

I don't think that's the reason why anyone wants to go to mars.

It would make more sense to colonize the bottom of the ocean than it would be to colonize Mars, even in disaster scenarios.

But "we" will be something else. Not humans, probably not even biological forms.

Difficult to judge from this point where will future lead us. Biological super humans, cyborgs, collective mind, AI meld mind ... but any "non-human" form can also lead to exponential advance that could entirely change our dreams and goals. We are what we are because of sums of all our needs, dreams, fears, emotions, thoughts and the microbiome (we are unseparately connected to) ... any change in it will completelly change what we do next.

Yes but if it's going to be "non-humans" or "post-humans" as the article calls it, then the article's title is accurate.

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