6 ms·

At some point we're going to have rotating, shielded space stations that are much safer than living in 0g aluminum tubes. The real question is whether the effe

At some point we're going to have rotating, shielded space stations that are much safer than living in 0g aluminum tubes. The real question is whether the effects of subnormal gravity are safe. If not, Mars isn't likely to work out and we'll instead have to build rotating habitats.

daenz 7y ago
We need to figure out how to live together before we live together in space. Imagine how easy it would be to damage or destroy a relatively flimsy man-made habitat that everyone literally depends on to survive.
- ddorian43 7y ago
  Space kamikaze
- int_19h 7y ago
  Perhaps that kind of forcing function is exactly what is needed?
- edgyquant 7y ago
  That isn't going to happen tho. People will be living in space way before they figure out how to get along because getting along is something that humans will never do: maybe what ever species we evolve in to might but that is surely thousands of years in the future.
  - ars 7y ago
    The drive to compete is what causes progress, and not getting along is an inevitable side effect of that. Any species that gets along perfectly either has telepathy (or some sort of unfakeable hormonal equivalent), is some kind of hive/single individual, or is stagnant.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      For these purposes, all we need is to get rid of (or at the very least properly control) violent tendencies. We don’t need to make it so everyone’s singing religious rock songs around a fake camp fire to celebrate everyone getting a participation medal in cooperative soccer.
      - ars 7y ago
        But violence is the same as disagreement plus enforcing your opinion. You obviously can't get rid of disagreement. And enforcing your opinion is the bedrock of change. So I don't believe it's possible to get rid of the desire for violence without stagnation. You can certainly get rid of it in action, but the desire is still there, just suppressed.
        ben_w 7y ago
        My bosses have never needed violence to enforce their opinions, and I have never needed to resort to violence against them when working relationships have turned sour. And ridding the action is all that is necessary for us to not die from civil disorder in a space settlement.
        keiferski 7y ago
        This is only because the (threat of) violence has been outsourced to the state. Imagine that there is no state monopoly on violence [1] and your boss pays you directly in food, which you need to survive. Suddenly he refuses to pay you and you face starvation. Now you’re pretty likely to resort to violence. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
        ben_w 7y ago
        I’ve mostly avoided needing to involve the state, too. My personality is more of “compete by being better” and I regard violence (and regulatory capture) as cheating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anarchist — I agree that state monopoly on violence would be spontaneously recreated if it was removed. I’m also a lot more dubious about the political future than about the technological future. But, that’s beside the point: I’m saying that we could, plausibly, have social and political structures that suppress our violent tendencies and in so doing make it not ridiculously unsafe to live in a fragile space habitat. This is not without precedent, as we are less violent now than we were a mere few hundred years ago, and have managed this with little in the way of actual evolution.
- m4rtink 7y ago
  Well, that's not too different from modern urban.infrastructure & we don't see such issues too much, outside of major armed conflicts.
- dsq 7y ago
  Only by going to space will we develop the skills and economic resources to live better here on Earth.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  Without getting too spoilery, Ad Astra depicts some handheld weapons in space. The movie is slllowww but visually wonderful. That isn't all that far fetched, both the USSR and the United States looked at various options for space weapons. Traditional firearms like the TP-82 carried by the soviets and various options were looked at for new weapons by both sides like the 'Soviet laser pistol' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol There are some documents out there like "The Meanderings of a Weapon Oriented Mind When Applied in a Vacuum Such as the Moon" (just Google the title, click the link you trust) that show various other types that we know were looked at. The Soviets even put an autocannon on the Salyut 3, and even fired 20 rounds on orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz#Defense_measures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz#Defense_measures
nabla9 7y ago
That's really far into the future if ever. Technology is not the problem, space economics is.
- philwelch 7y ago
  You can get rotating artificial gravity even with bolos, though wheel-shaped stations would be better. If you store the station's water supply between the interior and exterior walls, you get a decent amount of shielding that way, and you need the water anyway so it's no extra mass. Alternatively, you could capture a near-earth asteroid and just tunnel your space station into it, using the material inside the asteroid for construction material. I suspect any program to capture a near-earth asteroid and construct a station with artificial gravity would be approximately the same cost as a Mars mission.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    If there were only any near term intention to capture asteroids. Everything is technologically possible and it's funny to say how it could be done. But if you look at budgets, timetables etc. it's not looking very likely. If we are going to Mars in next 30 years it's going to be some other path.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      With Space Force being the newest branch of the U.S. military, look...if the CIA wants to make up some shit about Martians having WMDs and therefore we need to invade the planet immediately...I'm willing to go along with it.
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        So I used to listen to Coast to Coast just as entertainment before it turned into a giant infomercial, I now listen to Mysterious Universe which is much better and much more entertaining and definitely worth a listen if you like crazy/paranormal things approached with lots of skepticism and humor, but a semi-regular guest on Coast to Coast claims that the CIA was on Mars ha! The guest claimed that as part of a CIA project in his teens, he was on mars via teleportation and saw a young Barack Obama there. It's pure unsanity and obviously not fake but it's a hell of a rabbit hole to go down purely for amusement. The sad part is, at least from my impression, the guest really believed that he had been part of these alleged (fantastical) events. Here are some articles about it: https://www.wired.com/2012/01/obama-mars/ https://www.wired.com/2012/01/obama-mars/ https://www.inverse.com/article/6741-remembering-that-time-teenage-barack-obama-went-to-mars https://www.inverse.com/article/6741-remembering-that-time-t... The amusing thing is though there are FOIA documents from the CIA that mention Mars as a remote viewing target, for example this one https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001900760001-9 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-0... So who knows, maybe the CIA has really had a legitimate interest in Mars at some point, they've taken interest in far stranger things (maybe they took too much of their own drugs from MKUltra).

daenz 7y ago

We need to figure out how to live together before we live together in space. Imagine how easy it would be to damage or destroy a relatively flimsy man-made habitat that everyone literally depends on to survive.

ddorian43 7y ago
Space kamikaze
int_19h 7y ago
Perhaps that kind of forcing function is exactly what is needed?
edgyquant 7y ago
That isn't going to happen tho. People will be living in space way before they figure out how to get along because getting along is something that humans will never do: maybe what ever species we evolve in to might but that is surely thousands of years in the future.
- ars 7y ago
  The drive to compete is what causes progress, and not getting along is an inevitable side effect of that. Any species that gets along perfectly either has telepathy (or some sort of unfakeable hormonal equivalent), is some kind of hive/single individual, or is stagnant.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    For these purposes, all we need is to get rid of (or at the very least properly control) violent tendencies. We don’t need to make it so everyone’s singing religious rock songs around a fake camp fire to celebrate everyone getting a participation medal in cooperative soccer.
    - ars 7y ago
      But violence is the same as disagreement plus enforcing your opinion. You obviously can't get rid of disagreement. And enforcing your opinion is the bedrock of change. So I don't believe it's possible to get rid of the desire for violence without stagnation. You can certainly get rid of it in action, but the desire is still there, just suppressed.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        My bosses have never needed violence to enforce their opinions, and I have never needed to resort to violence against them when working relationships have turned sour. And ridding the action is all that is necessary for us to not die from civil disorder in a space settlement.
        keiferski 7y ago
        This is only because the (threat of) violence has been outsourced to the state. Imagine that there is no state monopoly on violence [1] and your boss pays you directly in food, which you need to survive. Suddenly he refuses to pay you and you face starvation. Now you’re pretty likely to resort to violence. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
        ben_w 7y ago
        I’ve mostly avoided needing to involve the state, too. My personality is more of “compete by being better” and I regard violence (and regulatory capture) as cheating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anarchist — I agree that state monopoly on violence would be spontaneously recreated if it was removed. I’m also a lot more dubious about the political future than about the technological future. But, that’s beside the point: I’m saying that we could, plausibly, have social and political structures that suppress our violent tendencies and in so doing make it not ridiculously unsafe to live in a fragile space habitat. This is not without precedent, as we are less violent now than we were a mere few hundred years ago, and have managed this with little in the way of actual evolution.
m4rtink 7y ago
Well, that's not too different from modern urban.infrastructure & we don't see such issues too much, outside of major armed conflicts.
dsq 7y ago
Only by going to space will we develop the skills and economic resources to live better here on Earth.
ryanmercer 7y ago
Without getting too spoilery, Ad Astra depicts some handheld weapons in space. The movie is slllowww but visually wonderful. That isn't all that far fetched, both the USSR and the United States looked at various options for space weapons. Traditional firearms like the TP-82 carried by the soviets and various options were looked at for new weapons by both sides like the 'Soviet laser pistol' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol There are some documents out there like "The Meanderings of a Weapon Oriented Mind When Applied in a Vacuum Such as the Moon" (just Google the title, click the link you trust) that show various other types that we know were looked at. The Soviets even put an autocannon on the Salyut 3, and even fired 20 rounds on orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz#Defense_measures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz#Defense_measures

nabla9 7y ago

That's really far into the future if ever. Technology is not the problem, space economics is.

philwelch 7y ago
You can get rotating artificial gravity even with bolos, though wheel-shaped stations would be better. If you store the station's water supply between the interior and exterior walls, you get a decent amount of shielding that way, and you need the water anyway so it's no extra mass. Alternatively, you could capture a near-earth asteroid and just tunnel your space station into it, using the material inside the asteroid for construction material. I suspect any program to capture a near-earth asteroid and construct a station with artificial gravity would be approximately the same cost as a Mars mission.
- nabla9 7y ago
  If there were only any near term intention to capture asteroids. Everything is technologically possible and it's funny to say how it could be done. But if you look at budgets, timetables etc. it's not looking very likely. If we are going to Mars in next 30 years it's going to be some other path.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    With Space Force being the newest branch of the U.S. military, look...if the CIA wants to make up some shit about Martians having WMDs and therefore we need to invade the planet immediately...I'm willing to go along with it.
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      So I used to listen to Coast to Coast just as entertainment before it turned into a giant infomercial, I now listen to Mysterious Universe which is much better and much more entertaining and definitely worth a listen if you like crazy/paranormal things approached with lots of skepticism and humor, but a semi-regular guest on Coast to Coast claims that the CIA was on Mars ha! The guest claimed that as part of a CIA project in his teens, he was on mars via teleportation and saw a young Barack Obama there. It's pure unsanity and obviously not fake but it's a hell of a rabbit hole to go down purely for amusement. The sad part is, at least from my impression, the guest really believed that he had been part of these alleged (fantastical) events. Here are some articles about it: https://www.wired.com/2012/01/obama-mars/ https://www.wired.com/2012/01/obama-mars/ https://www.inverse.com/article/6741-remembering-that-time-teenage-barack-obama-went-to-mars https://www.inverse.com/article/6741-remembering-that-time-t... The amusing thing is though there are FOIA documents from the CIA that mention Mars as a remote viewing target, for example this one https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001900760001-9 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-0... So who knows, maybe the CIA has really had a legitimate interest in Mars at some point, they've taken interest in far stranger things (maybe they took too much of their own drugs from MKUltra).