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> There is a major unexamined assumption that people have that life exists everywhere, and therefore we can't put a toe outside our planet without stomping on s
by max76 7y ago
> There is a major unexamined assumption that people have that life exists everywhere, and therefore we can't put a toe outside our planet without stomping on something, simply because that's our Earth-based experience. Once brought to the conscious level it's obvious that it's false, but it's hard to get it up to that level for some people.
I think it is likely (20% or greater) we will compete for resources against non-terrestrial lifeforms before humans leave the solar system, assuming we leave the solar system.
Earth doesn't contain the majority of all water in the solar system. Earth might not even contain all of the liquid water in the solar system. What are the chances that liquid water exists in Ceres' core, or under the icey surface of Europa or Ganymede or another moon? What are the chances that Martian ice, or Europa ice, or Saturn's ice have microbes frozen in them, possibly able to thaw given better environmental conditions? We might even find life in places without water, such as Titan's methane lakes. Titan has a methane cycle very similar to Earth's water cycle. Methane makes a great rocket fuel. Water makes great rocket fuel and is necessary to life support systems.
We have a history of taking what we want without regards to the consequences or whom it hurts. If we don't compete with other life when we leave Earth it's because other life isn't out there, not because of our strong morale core.
- garmaine 7y agoWhy go to the bottom of a gravity well to mine ice?
- max76 7y agoWe'll probably (50% or greater chance) want all the water we can get our hands on. Water makes great rocket fuel and is a critical component of life support systems. Water, having mass, tends to collect in gravity wells.
- DuskStar 7y agoRight, but those gravity wells might make that water rather irritating to get to relative to water contained in comets or other Oort Cloud objects.
- Faark 7y agoOort Cloud objects as in [0]? Getting to asteroids takes way to long already. Yeah, Oort cloud won't happen unless we have a magical breakthrough in propulsion as depicted in The Expanse. And at that point current intuition around gravity wells will probably not apply anymore as well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA17046_-_Voyager_1_Goes_Interstellar.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA17046_-_Voyager_1_Goes...
- max76 7y agoCeres is about 2.5AU from the sun, has more water than Earth and the mass of 0.00015 Earths. The ort cloud is 1,000-100,000 AU away. I am making the assumption that we will have a much stronger preference for water closer to Earth, and we aren't talking about large gravity wells.
- DuskStar 7y agoThere's a massive practical difference between Ceres size gravity wells that can be escaped with a half-decent cannon and ones that can't. And I've never heard of people suggesting there might be life on/in Ceres.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jerf 7y ago"I think it is likely (20% or greater) we will compete for resources against non-terrestrial lifeforms before humans leave the solar system, assuming we leave the solar system." If you want to believe that, fine, but be aware you're believing despite a complete lack of evidence. There's little more than a faint trace of a sign of any life in the rest of the solar system (a few stray whiffs of methane on Mars that aren't that hard to explain geologically), and absolutely no sign of any sort of life that would provide any sort of competition if we decided we wanted their resources.
- max76 7y agoI don't mean that it would be a fair competition. I meant competition in the same way we compete for fresh water with plants. If there isn't enough to go around we always drink first. My 20% is entirely based on what I think the odds are that single cell microbes exist, possibly in a dormant state, somewhere near a water or methane source in our solar system.