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Extra-planetary colonization is so far-fetched given our impending climate crisis. We will struggle to adapt to the oncoming environmental changes in a planet t
by iab 6y ago
Extra-planetary colonization is so far-fetched given our impending climate crisis. We will struggle to adapt to the oncoming environmental changes in a planet that we have completely adapted do. The thought that leaving this custom bubble for one that is actively hostile, and thriving there, is a grand delusion. I admire the explorative & scientific nature of space missions, but I am also pro-reality.
- vagrantJin 6y agoCan you imagine going back 500 years and telling the Kings of the world in their courts - with a straight face- that man in the future will send humans to the moon. And he will get there, take pictures, ride around a moon buggy, and come back safe and sound. Not only will you be drawn and quartered for blaspheming, some might just kill you out of pity. The poor mad thing. Today a 7 year old can say that with as much non-chalance as you please. And yet - Mars is impossible. A delusion. Surely you jest.
- iab 6y agoI think the issue is that we face truly existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, which has not been the predominant cause of strife for our history thus far (world wars, the thread of nuclear exchanges, etc.). So it is hard to say it is impossible, but it is even harder to say that it will be achievable.
- vagrantJin 6y ago> existential environmental crises in the near-to-mid term, Nah. This just comes off as alarmist. We might accelerate a naturally occuring process ever so slightly but it is by no means an exinction event. You underestimate the homo sapiens ability to adapt to their surroundings. Berbers live in deserts, eskimo in ice tundra - arguably the very extremes of human habitats. You can throw everything at them short of a super volcano really. When the polluters have to pay the piper - they'll get their just desserts. Unfortunately a world war for resources isnt out of the question. We're not even close to that yet. Not when Apple Inc is still the most valuable company in the world. What I hate is the destruction of millenia year old forests and the biology that inhabits it. That's just driven by mindless greed when fucking Doritos is more important than the home of the last wild jungle elephants or 2 millenia old trees just cut with impunity. Not to mention the people to whom those forests are holy land and home.
- iab 6y agoAdaption will happen, for sure. But you agree with my fears in this paragraph, in concluding that resource wars aren't out of the question. In this context, how could anyone envision that we will have the means, and will, to successfully colonize another planet on a timescale where the most continuous extra-terrestrial presence we have had is in low-earth-orbit? The timelines just don't marry up.
- vagrantJin 6y agoA lot of will is required for sure.
- Tiktaalik 6y agoGood thing you're a human and not a resident orca
- c22 6y agoI suspect the life-support technologies developed in the pursuit of Mars colonization will be extremely useful tools in the earthbound struggle for survival whether or not such colonies are actually successful.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoTwo examples already starting to become relevant, there will be more. - ISRU fuel production on Mars is closely related to carbon neutral green fuel production on Earth. In other words, turning carbon dioxide into fuel. - Agricultural production on Mars and vertical farming on Earth.
- iab 6y agoGreat point.