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The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... > Why (on Earth) do you want to become a multi planetary species?? That's just an un-neccesarily foolish

The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... > Why (on Earth) do you want to become a multi planetary species?? That's just an un-neccesarily foolish question. Why does a dog swim when you place him in a lake? > Have you ever tried to live in Antarctica or in the Atacama desert (I have)? I support science, exploration, tech development but not foolishness. Do you surround your house with roads to explore distant locations? Isn't that exactly what we've done as a society already?

dx87 6y ago
We did that, realized it was a mistake, and have started placing emphasis on working around nature, instead of tearing it down because it's more convenient.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  in the west, yes. In the places where real nature still exists; no, everyone's still happy to tear it down for convenience. evidence: Brazil's rainforest. Indonesian palm oil. Chinese mines. African, well, everything.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    I sometimes think the West overestimates how convenient or cohabitable nature is, because they were born into a tamed version of it. For most of human history, nature has been trying to kill us (if that's too anthropomorphic, we can go with the longer-form "The processes of nature are ambivalent to the survival of our species and individuals in that species, and there is no guarantee that the natural world is one habitable by humanity. Our species' history is shot through with plagues, floods, famines, and predation, and much of our technology was created to minimize that.")
_Microft 6y ago
> The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... "OP" refers to the OP of the Twitter thread. I'm just the submitter and do not share their view on being a multi-planetary species at all (I agree that it sucks to have streaks on your astro-photos, as I started taking them recently). We have to boldly go where no man has gone before. Edit: changed wording to restore split infinitive.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  or even go boldly
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Thanks, fixed.
time4hn 6y ago
> That's just an un-neccesarily foolish question. On Twitter there seem to be a lot of people on who expect to live in other worlds soon, and not just to explore and study them. He's likely rhetorically responding to that idea. And I think it's worthwhile to confront those ideas critically. IMO as well, living off of Earth sounds hellish, given what we know now. The person the Twitter poster is talking with is now suggesting that many people will abandon their physical bodies, and those that won't will live in cylindrical space colonies. He's speaking fantasies.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- crowbahr 6y ago
  Twitter OP is also arguing that there will never be human settlements off this Earth, which is bullshit. Assuming humanity exists long enough, it will expand throughout the solar system. At very least to the moon. We can argue about how long that might take, but not about it ever happening.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    >Assuming humanity exists long enough That's a big assumption. There's also the why question. What's on the moon that would make it worth all the difficulty to get there? I suppose we might have a semi-permanent research station on the moon or even Mars, but colonization? Unless we make some really unlikely discovery like unobtanium is only found on Europa and it's really super useful, we're not going to have space colonies.
    - dwaltrip 6y ago
      The moon will be a good source of water for spacefaring endeavors of the future, due to the large quantities of ice it has at the poles. With 1/6 the gravity of earth and the appropriate infrastructure in place, it will likely be cheaper to get that water off of the surface of the moon than from the Earth. The most promising use here is actually for producing methane fuel from this water. An industrial base of sorts could develop around this. The other potential industry will be moon tourism. It could become something like the new Mt Everest. Obviously only for the very rich at first. Once it becomes a real possibility and not some crazy sci-fi project, governments may start competing, so as to not get “left behind”, even if it is not immediately profitable. One way or another, unless we destroy ourselves, it will happen eventually. There’s a percentage of people who are just absurdly curious and adventurous, and want to go where no one has gone before, even if the cost is immense. Hell, for some, I’m sure even just desire to get away from their situation on Earth will be a big part of why they go for it. People like this will build the first settlements and bases on the moon and elsewhere in the solar system. Edit: sorry for the constant edits. It’s a bad habit — I don’t always get my thoughts out on the first try.
INTPenis 6y ago
For a different type of analogy, look at how long we had to sail around in wooden ships before that evolved. Without actually venturing out there, we might never develop viable star travel.
stinos 6y ago
I found that a bit of an odd question, besides the point, but I might be missing something. Is any of the purposes or uses of Starlink actually related to something multi-planetary? From what I read on it they seem to be there solely for communication on earth itself? Or does the commenter consider Starlink as one of the things further enabling technology to go multi-planetary? Which I still don't really get, since other types of communication are already which go way deeper in space and send messages back and forth to earth.
- Ankaios 6y ago
  A major (the major?) motivation behind Starlink is to try to earn SpaceX vast amounts of money that Musk can invest in settling Mars. See, e.g., this link for comments by Musk: https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-mars-colonization.html https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-ma...
kergonath 6y ago
I wish we would discipline ourselves to avoid ruining that one planet before we get delusions of grandeur and the urge to wreck another one. All these talks about “multi-planetary species” are bunk in the long term, anyway. We will probably have observation outposts scattered across the solar system, but that’ll be about it for quite a long time. The only realistically reachable planet in the foreseeable future is Mars. We could fix our issues with Earth for a fraction of what it would take to make it inhabitable. We’ll send our billionaire pioneers to the moon alright. With a scientific base as a side effect. It still won’t improve anything that’s wrong with Homo Sapiens.

dx87 6y ago

We did that, realized it was a mistake, and have started placing emphasis on working around nature, instead of tearing it down because it's more convenient.

marcus_holmes 6y ago
in the west, yes. In the places where real nature still exists; no, everyone's still happy to tear it down for convenience. evidence: Brazil's rainforest. Indonesian palm oil. Chinese mines. African, well, everything.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  I sometimes think the West overestimates how convenient or cohabitable nature is, because they were born into a tamed version of it. For most of human history, nature has been trying to kill us (if that's too anthropomorphic, we can go with the longer-form "The processes of nature are ambivalent to the survival of our species and individuals in that species, and there is no guarantee that the natural world is one habitable by humanity. Our species' history is shot through with plagues, floods, famines, and predation, and much of our technology was created to minimize that.")

_Microft 6y ago

> The OP posted this in the ensuing Twitter argument... "OP" refers to the OP of the Twitter thread. I'm just the submitter and do not share their view on being a multi-planetary species at all (I agree that it sucks to have streaks on your astro-photos, as I started taking them recently). We have to boldly go where no man has gone before. Edit: changed wording to restore split infinitive.

marcus_holmes 6y ago
or even go boldly
- _Microft 6y ago
  Thanks, fixed.

time4hn 6y ago

> That's just an un-neccesarily foolish question. On Twitter there seem to be a lot of people on who expect to live in other worlds soon, and not just to explore and study them. He's likely rhetorically responding to that idea. And I think it's worthwhile to confront those ideas critically. IMO as well, living off of Earth sounds hellish, given what we know now. The person the Twitter poster is talking with is now suggesting that many people will abandon their physical bodies, and those that won't will live in cylindrical space colonies. He's speaking fantasies.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
crowbahr 6y ago
Twitter OP is also arguing that there will never be human settlements off this Earth, which is bullshit. Assuming humanity exists long enough, it will expand throughout the solar system. At very least to the moon. We can argue about how long that might take, but not about it ever happening.
- dhosek 6y ago
  >Assuming humanity exists long enough That's a big assumption. There's also the why question. What's on the moon that would make it worth all the difficulty to get there? I suppose we might have a semi-permanent research station on the moon or even Mars, but colonization? Unless we make some really unlikely discovery like unobtanium is only found on Europa and it's really super useful, we're not going to have space colonies.
  - dwaltrip 6y ago
    The moon will be a good source of water for spacefaring endeavors of the future, due to the large quantities of ice it has at the poles. With 1/6 the gravity of earth and the appropriate infrastructure in place, it will likely be cheaper to get that water off of the surface of the moon than from the Earth. The most promising use here is actually for producing methane fuel from this water. An industrial base of sorts could develop around this. The other potential industry will be moon tourism. It could become something like the new Mt Everest. Obviously only for the very rich at first. Once it becomes a real possibility and not some crazy sci-fi project, governments may start competing, so as to not get “left behind”, even if it is not immediately profitable. One way or another, unless we destroy ourselves, it will happen eventually. There’s a percentage of people who are just absurdly curious and adventurous, and want to go where no one has gone before, even if the cost is immense. Hell, for some, I’m sure even just desire to get away from their situation on Earth will be a big part of why they go for it. People like this will build the first settlements and bases on the moon and elsewhere in the solar system. Edit: sorry for the constant edits. It’s a bad habit — I don’t always get my thoughts out on the first try.

INTPenis 6y ago

For a different type of analogy, look at how long we had to sail around in wooden ships before that evolved. Without actually venturing out there, we might never develop viable star travel.

stinos 6y ago

I found that a bit of an odd question, besides the point, but I might be missing something. Is any of the purposes or uses of Starlink actually related to something multi-planetary? From what I read on it they seem to be there solely for communication on earth itself? Or does the commenter consider Starlink as one of the things further enabling technology to go multi-planetary? Which I still don't really get, since other types of communication are already which go way deeper in space and send messages back and forth to earth.

Ankaios 6y ago
A major (the major?) motivation behind Starlink is to try to earn SpaceX vast amounts of money that Musk can invest in settling Mars. See, e.g., this link for comments by Musk: https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-mars-colonization.html https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-ma...

kergonath 6y ago

I wish we would discipline ourselves to avoid ruining that one planet before we get delusions of grandeur and the urge to wreck another one. All these talks about “multi-planetary species” are bunk in the long term, anyway. We will probably have observation outposts scattered across the solar system, but that’ll be about it for quite a long time. The only realistically reachable planet in the foreseeable future is Mars. We could fix our issues with Earth for a fraction of what it would take to make it inhabitable. We’ll send our billionaire pioneers to the moon alright. With a scientific base as a side effect. It still won’t improve anything that’s wrong with Homo Sapiens.