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Computers are an even better example. Their early usages were incredibly primitive, limited, and astronomically expensive. You had governments dropping very lar
by rjf72 7y ago
Computers are an even better example. Their early usages were incredibly primitive, limited, and astronomically expensive. You had governments dropping very large amounts of money on what were glorified calculators. If you would have even suggested that these 'computing machines' would lead to what we have today, it would have sounded like fantasy. The most remarkable thing is that the transition from effectively no computers to them revolutionizing our entire species happened in less than a single human lifetime.
And I see no reason to expect anything different with space. Developing the technology to sustainably colonize other planets will bring opportunities that we cannot even imagine today. And I think we can all see such things, but it's easy to get mind-locked in the drama of the present while forgetting about the longer path that we are already set well upon. It is interesting to consider that the saying "When a wise man points to the moon, the fool examines the finger." is, itself, many centuries old.
- sanxiyn 7y agoI have a lot of reasons to suspect "colonize other planets" or any such things won't happen in less than a lifetime. Unlike computing, physical challenge is daunting, and economic challenge is more so. As saying goes, if we would colonize Mars, why aren't we colonizing Antarctica, which is infinitely easier?
- meruru 7y agoThat's an interesting question. Why aren't we? I figure we basically already have technology-wise so there's not any research left to do and we have no reason to actually move there yet.
- londons_explore 7y agoWe (foolishly in my opinion) signed treaties which made Antarctica a research-only continent. Imagine if we had done the same to North America - the world might have never developed most of today's technology.
- meruru 7y agoInteresting. I hadn't thought of that. It would be pretty cool if Antarctica had been populated and urbanized.
- rjf72 7y agoAntarctica is a really interesting topic in its own right. One major reason there is minimal development there is because development is literally illegal. The Antarctic treaty system [1] prohibits any sort of non-scientific research, specifically ban things such as material exploitation, and also sets strict 0-impact laws. For instance it is, again literally, illegal to take a piss on Antarctica during a voyage. It needs to be bottled up and brought back to base where it can be extensively processed before being 'returned' to the sea. Disposable trash that cannot be recycled is packaged up and returned home for disposal processing. But there's something much more interesting about Antarctica. The intuition is like you said, colonizing it is a million times easier than e.g. Mars. But this is not so simple. Antarctica is a pretty brutal place. It's not that just exposure to the climate entails death but there are also often violent storms. And the perpetual darkness of the Antarctic winter is why the population plummets from thousands to about a thousand during winter. Mars, by contrast, has a low pressure atmosphere, unbreathable air, and high radiation levels. This means you can only go outside with substantial protection which is comparable, though of course more extreme, than Antarctica. On the other hand, it's otherwise a very tame place. The most violent storm on Mars would feel like a slight breeze. This is one of the very few things thing that the book/movie "The Martian" intentionally faked. It's extremely telling that a hard sci-fi book had to resort to fantasy to create a disaster scenario on Mars. Mars also shares a number of oddly convenient similarities with Earth. It shares a near identical day/night cycle, and even oddly enough has a near identical pattern of seasons due to near identical axial tilt. Because of this it doesn't sense to speak of 'Martian' temperatures since when/where are quite important. Summer near the equator gets right balmy at about 70F, though the lack of any meaningful greenhouse to trap in the heat does mean nights are still very cold. And of course Mars has absolutely abundant mineral resources. The red color itself is from iron oxides - rust. 0.3G will also offer unimaginable opportunities. For the most predictable launching vessels from Mars will be exponentially easier on Earth, and all the resources necessary to establish such industry exist in abundance on the planet. It will also undoubtedly spur on tourism, new sports, and so on. Some exciting potential! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System --- The above is already longer than I thought it'd be, but really it's also necessary to mention something about computing. Try to mentally take yourself back some decades ago. Computers are literally the size of buildings with extremely fragile hardware, have enormous costs associated with them, cost millions of dollars, and need to be operated by large teams of highly skilled professionals. And in exchange for all of this you get again what were glorified calculators - the ENIAC [2] for instance was the first general purpose computer, and it achieved a blistering 35 divisions per second. Imagine somebody said soon you'd have computers sold for tens of dollars, capable of fitting in a pocket, that operate on the billions of operations per second. They'd become so ubiquitous and cheap you'd see them in practically everything. It's easy to take what we've achieved for granted, but we live in a reality that was, not long ago, the domain of fantasy. [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC