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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

> But you don't get interstellar travel out of biology. Too low-powered.

The thing is interstellar travel makes no sense except in science fiction books: there's literally nothing of interest to be worth trading in other planetary systems, and trade has always been the motive for maritime exploration, because it's what get you the massive funding such endeavor requires.

And btw even close space colonization doesn't make any sense either: we may end up with a vanity base on Mars before realizing that it costs a lot, for living conditions that are more harsh than at the top of mount Everest. Even if world population wasn't plateauing and headed to a decline, colonization of Siberia or even Antarctica would make much more sense.

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Colonization would, I think, not require economic justification. Using transportation and communication barriers to facilitate isolation or at least localization may be important to some people.

With vast discretionary spending, people would be able to sacrifice some pleasures for pleasures related to achieving a long-term impractical goal. Space travel does not have to be the most efficient means of enjoying life to be a human choice.

A colony in Antarctica would be much more practical than one on the Moon, but a Lunar colony is more romantic.

If material trade is not worthwhile, conquest may be somewhat discouraged. (Some people might wish to rule all of humanity or convert/exterminate all heretics, so no distance would be perfectly safe, but a perceived threat in Antarctica would be easier to eliminate than a perceived threat on the Moon or in the Large Magellanic Cloud.)

> Colonization would, I think, not require economic justification. Using transportation and communication barriers to facilitate isolation or at least localization may be important to some people. […]

> A colony in Antarctica would be much more practical than one on the Moon, but a Lunar colony is more romantic.

This really highlights the problem with the belief of “space colonization”: people have a romanticized fantasy of what it would be like: because it's so remote, and dangerous (and expensive), a lunar base would be the exact opposite of isolation: people would live packed in really tight space with little opportunity for isolation or intimacy except in the bathroom. It would be the modern version of being a sailor in a 17th century merchant ship, hopefully without the scurvy.

> but a perceived threat in Antarctica would be easier to eliminate than a perceived threat on the Moon or in the Large Magellanic Cloud.)

What makes you think that? If we have transportation mediums able to build a colony on the moon (that is, able to send tons of material out there) we have the means of transportation needed for carpet bombing it! But you wouldn't even need that, as a moon base would be as dependent from earth as an antarctic base is from mainland (you're not going to put a TSMC chip fab on the moon anytime soon…)

I think the security is actually pretty good on the other space bodies, provided the colony is self-sufficient and does not depend on supplies from Earth. Mars is better then Moon though.

The modern space rockets are slow and easily detectable, and I am sure that if one could get to the moon, and then wanted to build a system that shoots them down, they'd be able to. Especially given that moon-based interceptors will have much smaller gravity well to worry about.

Another argument is that very technically complex products, like space rockets, require a complex society. So if Earth falls into anarchy, there is a good chance the supply chains would be disturbed enough that no one could build multiple space rockets full of bombs even if they wanted to.

> I think the security is actually pretty good on the other space bodies,

You realize that any failure of a life-support device (air containment and renewal, water storage and renewal, heating) means you're dead before anyone can send help? It's like being stranded on an inflatable boat in the middle of the ocean: one tiny hole you can't fix and you're dead.

> provided the colony is self-sufficient and does not depend on supplies from Earth. Mars is better then Moon though.

Please tell me how your colony is going to manufacture the semiconductors it relies on in a self-sufficient way…

> So if Earth falls into anarchy,

That's the opposite argument from the one you made above (“Some people might wish to rule all of humanity or convert/exterminate all heretics” is the opposite of anarchy!) and in that case you're as safe on Antarctica from a military perspective.

> there is a good chance the supply chains would be disturbed

Which means death in medium terms, because as I said above as no space base can be self-sufficient (heck no country on earth can be self sufficient in the modern world already, how do you expect a small spacial colony to be better at self-sufficiency than China?!)

Mars colonization doesn't make much sense, but building O'Neill Cylinders when humanity runs out of space or energy on Earth might.

>interstellar travel makes no sense

For vacation or finding new spices to sell, no, but if you've exhausted all the matter in the solar system or humanity outlives useful solar output from the sun and fusion energy is still +20 years away, there isn't really a choice.

The time it takes for interstellar travel doesn't make sense on human time scales, but people still plant trees knowing they will not live to sit under their shade.

> people still plant trees knowing they will not live to sit under their shade

Stuff like this really gives me faith in humanity amidst the insanity I see in the news.

I've been watching a "volunteer" oak sapling grow for the last few years and I'm trying to work around it so I don't have to cut it down. I may very well be dead before it provides appreciable shade, but it's nice knowing that it's there.

On the other hand, when my now 14-year-old was three, he stuck a cast-off bit of a branch (I think it's a basswood?) into the ground outside the house and declared it as his tree and watered it faithfully for a few days before losing interest. That "branch" now towers over the house and shades a room that used to get pretty hot in the afternoon. If I had any idea that it would actually take root and grow, I'd have moved it farther away from the house.

I like trees. I've planted a few using the County's native sapling program and it's been nice watching them grow over the last 15 years.

> Mars colonization doesn't make much sense, but building O'Neill Cylinders when humanity runs out of space or energy on Earth might.

Space on earth isn't going to run out anytime soon (as I said colonizing Siberia and Antarctica is much more approachable, and there's the oceans too!) especially since the world population is plateauing!

> but if you've exhausted all the matter in the solar system or humanity outlives useful solar output from the sun and fusion energy is still +20 years away

That “if” really feels like “I'll need a second hat if I grow a second head in the night”.

> The time it takes for interstellar travel doesn't make sense on human time scales, but people still plant trees knowing they will not live to sit under their shade.

That's a good analogy, because individuals do, but for-profits mostly plant trees with short lifetime and quick return on investment. And you're not going to fund space travel with individuals' money…

I'm inclined to disagree, because 8 days ago I found https://ors.daeken.dev from this hn-comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42388557

It's about multiple orbital rings around earth, and what that would enable.

Just needs some more https://daniel-suarez.com/Delta-v_synopsis.html and 'Critical Mass' ( sequel https://daniel-suarez.com/index.html ) to get into early The Expanse stage :)

I read tons of space opera when I was a teenager and I loved it, but the truth is that none of this makes sense: it's all about entertainment and that's it. It's not a practical description of what could be than Pirate of the Caribbeans is a description of the lives of 17th century's pirates.

I still disagree :)

Have you read Delta-V or a summary of it at least?

The 'opera' part is just about common human/political stupidity, the space and technology parts don't seem to be.

Which ors.deaken.dev conveniently leaves out, at the moment, like empty geopolitics :)

Interstellar travel solves the "finite resources" problem. Granted, intrastellar travel can do that as well: Earth's moon first for its H3, then use that as a launchpad to go other places for resources that are limited or running out on Earth (iron, silicon, gold, etc.).

People vastly underestimate how big space is: by the time you do a round trip to your next-solar-system-resource-storage then the shortage it was supposed to address is no more (because society has adapted) and all the people who planned the expedition in the first place are long dead.

Space is big, inhospitable and mostly empty, its size doesn't work with the time frame the human species is working on.

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