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There 200+ moons in our solar system alone and an uncountable number outside it. Each second we delay space travel, millions of moons are consumed by black hol
by aeternum 6y ago
There 200+ moons in our solar system alone and an uncountable number outside it. Each second we delay space travel, millions of moons are consumed by black holes or obliterated by asteroid collisions.
If humanity became space-fairing earlier, perhaps we could save some of them. We're probably committing more alien genocide by delaying space travel than we ever would through contamination.
- mlyle 6y agoI never said to delay space travel. But that doesn't mean "seed the moon with Tardigrades" either.
- aeternum 6y agoEnsuring that our spacecraft are 100% sterile costs significant money and time. Maybe there are some things we can do that provide high ROI, but my inclination is that building bases and having humans basically live on the moon is going to require giving up its sterility.
- mlyle 6y agoSure... AGAIN, the horse is already somewhat out of the barn on the Moon in particular (human spaceflight already went there, I think), but this tardigrade thing, in retrospect, was extremely stupid.
- noizejoy 6y ago> delaying space travel In the context of space and time in the universe delaying things by a century or two is like delaying something in our life by a blink of an eye.
- mlyle 6y agoIn the context of humanity, delaying things by a century or two may be spending all the time we have.
- noizejoy 6y agoOn our planet, I’m very much in favour of hurrying to ensure our planet remains a lot more habitable than Mars. And I’m hard pressed to believe that keeping our planet habitable is more difficult than making Mars habitable, so escaping to Mars doesn’t seem to be a solution to the finality of things. And therefore our species leaving the planet really implies leaving our solar system. And I’m hard pressed to see that possibility defined by a couple of centuries. So we better make our planet work for a very long time.
- mlyle 6y agoMars being really habitable isn't too likely for a long time. But an industrial economy in space, with space power generation and providing additional resources and headroom for mankind on Earth, is attainable in 60-100 years. And mankind being fully self-sufficient out there off the planet may be possible in 200 years.