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Comment by elashri | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this gives a reflection about our future. The nearest potentially habitable planet known is Proxima Centauri b, which orbits the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri about 4 light‑years from Earth (at least it is in a habitable zone of its star) [1]. So we don't have a choice actually except protecting and make sure our planet survives. That's regardless if it really would be able to support life as we know or not (probably not).

[1] https://science.nasa.gov/resource/proxima-b-3d-model/

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I think there are a few movies that made me realize how much the space is vast, empty and adverse to life.

I think it would be nice for people to take a look at them:

- Aniara (2018)

- High Life (2018)

and maybe in a less artistic view:

- Powers of Ten (1977) yt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

I showed my 6 year old son Powers of Ten a few nights ago and I think I accidentally gave him an existential crisis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY

Try that to give him a sense of awe. Watch it on a big screen, all the way to the end.

Seeing "Powers of Ten" on TV is an early childhood memory, it really made a lasting impression. Of course I did not remember its name, but now I finally could watch it again! Thank you!

In my opinion, if we really want a presence off of earth we'd be better off building larger and larger space habitats and bootstrapping a mining industry in space.

Agreed. Once it becomes commercially viable to start building things in space, it'll take off on its own. There will be constant pressure to build faster, safer, more capable craft. Whether that will lead to something like FTL isn't possible to know, but at the very least it's a step towards a space-faring civilization.

> if we really want a presence off of earth we'd be better off building larger and larger space habitats and bootstrapping a mining industry in space

This turns entirely on how human biology works in zero versus low gravity. (Same for spin versus natural, or linear, gravity.)

The experiments we need to be doing is building and launching space stations and planetary bases for mice.

I can't wait for all the studies making the news that end with "in mice in space"

Daniel Suarez [1] has written a book where he imagined how this could happen (Delta-v)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Suarez_(author)

P.S. Read a lot of his book, great author

I loved Daemon, and FreedomTM.

Yep, so long as there are clear, positive incentives or it could become a corrupt, expensive boondoggle depriving ordinary people on Earth. And Mars ain't it except underground.

Nit: "earth" is dirt, but "Earth" is always capitalized when referring to the celestial body we inhabit.

Space is cool, and I support the scientific work some of its pioneers discover. But the category of people who believe space travel is somehow the solution to problems on Earth give me headaches.

Whoever is currently alive won't live to see the absolute worse that earth is going to be in upcoming centuries, if the human civilization even survives until then

I try not to succumb to this attitude. Humans are remarkably able to build systems and technology to solve complex problems. The fact that we aren't making the needed changes now fast enough doesn't rule out that we might as it becomes more apparently necessary, or that some new plan will emerge which helps dramatically.

But we also cannot get complacent thinking that it's future generations problem. We need a breakthrough yesterday.

Even if we find another habitable planet, figure out how to get there, start a colony, what in the world makes us think we won't fuck up that planet like we've fucked up this one?

Note that a journey to a star a 100 light years away where you accelerate and decelerate with a constant 1 g for each half of the journey only takes 9 years of subjective time for the traveller (hence the twin paradox). To Proxima Centauri (4.24 ly) the gain isn’t as dramatic, it would take 3.5 years of subjective time.

Of course, we aren’t anywhere near having the technology for that, and there may not be any suitable planets in that vicinity, but it also doesn’t seem completely impossible.

Gliese 710 will pass 0.17 light years from us in a bit over 1M years. If we can colonize mars and build some infrastructure in the solar system by then, we should have an OK shot at getting something there to stay. It'll be 62 light days away.

I have an optimistic view that building underground facilities on Mars/Lunar might not be a far-stretched idea. But I have never done any research into the idea so not whether it works or not.

Basically, reducing costs and tech requirements by going underground (since it is underground we do not need to terraform the planet, and it is less likely to leak oxygen to external environment). Digging dirts and stones is a solvable problem. So optimistically I believe this is just an engineering/cost problem.

Mars is less habitable than the least habitable state we could let the earth in without being extinct. This is silly.

Almost understating the point if anything. Mars is less habitable than the bottom of the Marina trench. An environment that could kill every person on earth in a millisecond.

Yeah it is a silly thought. But one can hope. I wish I could work in the space, or anything related.

Yes, the distances are mind-boggling. There are a few somewhat realistic solutions for making such a trip in the forseeable future. If you send something of significant mass, it is certain to take a long time. So we're either talking generation ships(§), embryo space colonization (growing into adults en route or at destination) or hibernation. That or a breakthrough in fundamental physics.

(§) Something like O'Neill cylinders with fusion as energy source could work

This old video is a beautiful and astounding demonstration of just how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big the Universe is, and where in all this endless space our dear favourite little Pale Blue Dot (Earth) resides:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X-3Oq_82XNA

We all Earthlings are extremely lucky to be alive and thriving (or trying to) in such a beautiful bountiful rarest-of-rare ecosystem that somehow survived and thrived despite all the vagaries and vastness of spacetime.

I think the video I have linked above is Google's tribute to this Power Of Ten video (linked below, thanks to user dtgriscom for sharing the link in another comment), a classic video that demonstrates the scale of the Universe from the micro to the macro perspectives in a scaling increase by a factor of ten for each scene.

Power of 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

Another relevant video (thanks to user christev for sharing the link): A Brief History of Geologic Time: https://youtu.be/rWp5ZpJAIAE

Absolutely humbling to realise how infinitesimally small and irrelevant our existence is, in the grand scheme of theme. Nature and science are amazing.

Add this one to your pile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY

Or we learn how to make uninhabitable planets habitable. Would also help us “save” this one.

(Funny how we say “save the planet” when we really mean “save people/complex life”).

Given that there is very little interest in developing commons here on earth (especially new types of commons from whole cloth), the shape that "making uninhabitable planets habitable" would likely take is that of living in bubbles rather than some kind of broad-scale terraforming. This would intrinsically shape society towards top-down authoritarian control, rather than allowing for distributed individual liberty. In this light, Earth's bountiful distributed air, water, and wildlife should be viewed as a technological-society-bootstrapping resource similar to easily-accessible oil and coil stored energy deposits.

Some handwavy logic there, both on why bubbles instead of terraforming and also why authoritarian control given bubbles.

It's not "handwavy logic". It called reasoning based on heuristics developed from many observations (ie wisdom).

From what I've seen here now on Earth, large scale coordination of projects where the benefits end up mostly diffuse is effectively impossible, especially in the modern environment. Thus private ownership of scaled back projects, organized by corporate authoritarianism as we see for most businesses here now on earth.

Could we possibly have an Earth country/company developing open-space terraforming, investing with the idea they will develop owned colonies, but then a popular revolt throws off the authoritarian control and institutes distributed rights (ala the American Revolution) ? Sure, that's possible. But that also just seems unlikely to be given modern information systems facilitating large scale surveillance, sentiment control, and promoting singular authoritarian perspectives. Like we're currently in the process of rolling back those hard-won distributed rights here now on Earth ("slowly at first, then all at once").

your heuristics is "last 50 years of US history", and you've now applied that to "That's how the whole multi planetary blob of humanity will operate".

I think "handywavy logic" is now being generous.

What about widening your heuristics to consider all of human history and see how much more freedom, autonomy and large scale coordination we have in place compared to say... the dark ages, or earlier.

Proxima flares and bathes Proxima Centauri b in radiation when it does, so it seems unlikely to be particularly habitable. But it's still tantalising...

Well I guess real end of the world will come around when we crash with Andromeda.

When Andromeda and the Milky Way collide there will be no planets or solar systems that collide from either system. A fascinating fact in in own right, it's simply due to the scale of the galaxies and that they are mostly composed of empty space.

Unless we find the means to manipulate our own star or the orbit of Earth we most likely will not be around at that time. The sun's increased luminosity will boil us way earlier.

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