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They don't conflict with each other, if you accept a third conjecture, which is that all the other "typical" human-habitable planets are so far away from Earth,
by jaza 6y ago
They don't conflict with each other, if you accept a third conjecture, which is that all the other "typical" human-habitable planets are so far away from Earth, and that our resource limits + our intelligence limits + the laws of physics so tightly constrain our space travel abilities, such that we'll never get to any of those planets. Based on that, then for all intents and purposes, the point stands, we've got nowhere else to go.
- ThomPete 6y agoWe don't need a place to go, we just need to keep getting better at controlling nature and reconfigure it to our needs.
- XorNot 6y agoI think it's meant to be closer to "we're not special to the universe, which would not notice our passing at all".
- Robotbeat 6y agoThere are no “space travel and settlement is necessarily and always too hard to ever be sufficient for humans or their descendants to live beyond the Earth” physical laws. From what we can tell, no physics law prevents it. And our history of Spaceflight, both robotic and human, confirm that space, while a challenge, is not fundamentally unable to sustain humanity.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoSpace is much more suited for our robots, and it shows, with them doing most of the exploring. Humans can survive in space, but it is quite hostile, and astronauts come home wrecked after extended stays.
- Robotbeat 6y agoThis isn't really accurate. Astronauts travel longer in a couple days than a robot rover will in years. Human survival in microgravity and largely unshielded seems fine even up to a year at a time or more (and "wrecked" is pretty arguable...). On a planet with gravity and ability to provide cheap shielding, indefinite habitation is feasible.
- skybrian 6y agoOne reason Mars rovers travel so slowly is because they can. Being able to take all the time you need is an advantage, since it reduces power consumption and risk. It's a dead planet (as far as we know) so everything they're studying will still be there. If there were an important reason to move faster, they would have built something different.
- vimacs2 6y agoAnother far larger reason why they travels so slowly is because of power constraints. It takes a lot of rocket fuel to deliver a significant payload to any interplanetary destination and both batteries and RTG's are prohibitively heavy at the kinds of wattage required for a pace that goes beyond that of a snail. It is difficult to overstate what a limitation this has been for research there. Even without the benefit of a vehicle, a human walking at a natural pace would over a year be able to cover a larger region than all of the previous rovers sent combined across their entire lifetimes.
- skybrian 6y agoWell yes, but if they actually had the payload capacity to get a human and their supplies there, would batteries and RTG’s still be prohibitively heavy? With fewer constraints, they would have built something different.
- vimacs2 6y agoThat's a good point but humans would easily beat out the utility of any probe if we get to that capability. It's not just a question of mobility and manual dexterity. We do have very capable robotics. The even bigger factor here is light lag. Even if we don't bother landing humans on Mars, it would still be very useful to have some in orbit to be able to have a real time feed on the ground as opposed to anywhere between the 3 to 22 minutes (one way!) delay that it is from Earth. While our automation is getting better, it is nowhere close to matching that of a human scientist for at least several decades yet.