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> This is unbelievably pessimistic. It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. It's just that what the parent poster means by "how we survive as a species" and what

> This is unbelievably pessimistic. It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. It's just that what the parent poster means by "how we survive as a species" and what you mean are...different things. Going to the moon, going to mars, are necessary for the survival of our species...on a 100,000 year time horizon. At some point, something catastrophic may happen to earth. An asteroid impact, or a Gamma Ray Burst, or some other unexpected cataclysm. If a GRB happened to hit earth in 10,000 years, we only survive as a species if we're self-sufficient on other rocks by then. If your time-frame of "how we survive as a species" is the next 100 years, then colonizing the moon or mars isn't on the list of potential solutions. I know of very few people who advocate that the moon and mars are the solutions to our climate change issues. Climate change is a crisis that we have to confront within the next 100 years. It's extremely unlikely that any moon or mars base would be self-sufficient within that time frame. To survive as a species, the human race has to eventually be able to survive a fatal blow to earth and keep going. Hell, eventually we have to be able to deal with a fatal blow to this entire solar system.

aeturnum 5y ago
First, I favor space exploration and think we, as a society, should spend more money on it than we do now. Second, calling this 'realistic' is nonsense: >It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. [...] on a 100,000 year time horizon. It has been 65 years since Sputnik was launched, so you are projecting out 1,565x that duration into the future. I'm sure you picked a nice, big, round number, but I think it's really important to grapple with how immediate all of space travel has been against how long our horizon is as a species is. The first record we have of homo sapiens is from 300,000 years ago[1] - so 3x your time horizon. The founding of civilization could be pegged around 4,000 years ago with the founding of Babylon[2]. 100,000 years is about 25x the duration of the existence of civilization. So I agree that space exploration must come at some point, but I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to *ban* space exploration until climate change is under control. Fixing our impact on our own climate has fewer technical barriers and is a larger limiting factor to human survival than space. If the time horizon is really 100,000 or 10,000 years, then addressing climate change would be a blip on that timeline. [1] https://theconversation.com/when-did-we-become-fully-human-what-fossils-and-dna-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-modern-intelligence-143717 https://theconversation.com/when-did-we-become-fully-human-w... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon Edit: accidentally a word
- gameman144 5y ago
  > I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to ban space exploration until climate change is under control. Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way: * Ban climate change research until hunger is under control * Ban efforts to curb hunger until war is under control * Ban efforts to stop war until disease is under control
  - aeturnum 5y ago
    > If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way Hunger and war and disease all have the potential to make furthering space exploration impossible. For example, we just had a pandemic that impacted a lot of people? However, in general, all of those problems have existed for the entire span of human history. I am not concerned about any of them[1] damaging the earth's ability to be a base for launching humanity as an interstellar species. Climate change is different. It's especially different because of our inability to face it so far. If we had done the sensible thing and reacted to projections in the 70s by ramping down fossil fuel use, I'd consider is less severe. But we have not. [1] save nuclear way ofc
- ncallaway 5y ago
  > If the time horizon is really 100,000 or 10,000 years, then addressing climate change would be a blip on that timeline. I agree about the time-horizons. Dealing with climate change is an immediate and urgent priority, whereas the time-horizon for becoming multi-planetary and (eventually) multi-stellar are much longer. That being said, it's all probabilistic, so it's not like there's a bright line when we need to be multi-planetary. A planet-killer could hit earth tomorrow, and the human race would be extinct. So, if we delay becoming a (self-sufficient) multi-planetary species by 200 years we increase the window of risk by that much time. And there will always be current challenges that we face on earth that we could address before investing resources in becoming multi-planetary. And becoming multi-planetary itself will take a long time.
  - aeturnum 5y ago

aeturnum 5y ago

First, I favor space exploration and think we, as a society, should spend more money on it than we do now. Second, calling this 'realistic' is nonsense: >It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. [...] on a 100,000 year time horizon. It has been 65 years since Sputnik was launched, so you are projecting out 1,565x that duration into the future. I'm sure you picked a nice, big, round number, but I think it's really important to grapple with how immediate all of space travel has been against how long our horizon is as a species is. The first record we have of homo sapiens is from 300,000 years ago[1] - so 3x your time horizon. The founding of civilization could be pegged around 4,000 years ago with the founding of Babylon[2]. 100,000 years is about 25x the duration of the existence of civilization. So I agree that space exploration must come at some point, but I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to *ban* space exploration until climate change is under control. Fixing our impact on our own climate has fewer technical barriers and is a larger limiting factor to human survival than space. If the time horizon is really 100,000 or 10,000 years, then addressing climate change would be a blip on that timeline. [1] https://theconversation.com/when-did-we-become-fully-human-what-fossils-and-dna-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-modern-intelligence-143717 https://theconversation.com/when-did-we-become-fully-human-w... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon Edit: accidentally a word

gameman144 5y ago
> I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to ban space exploration until climate change is under control. Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way: * Ban climate change research until hunger is under control * Ban efforts to curb hunger until war is under control * Ban efforts to stop war until disease is under control
- aeturnum 5y ago
  > If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way Hunger and war and disease all have the potential to make furthering space exploration impossible. For example, we just had a pandemic that impacted a lot of people? However, in general, all of those problems have existed for the entire span of human history. I am not concerned about any of them[1] damaging the earth's ability to be a base for launching humanity as an interstellar species. Climate change is different. It's especially different because of our inability to face it so far. If we had done the sensible thing and reacted to projections in the 70s by ramping down fossil fuel use, I'd consider is less severe. But we have not. [1] save nuclear way ofc
ncallaway 5y ago
> If the time horizon is really 100,000 or 10,000 years, then addressing climate change would be a blip on that timeline. I agree about the time-horizons. Dealing with climate change is an immediate and urgent priority, whereas the time-horizon for becoming multi-planetary and (eventually) multi-stellar are much longer. That being said, it's all probabilistic, so it's not like there's a bright line when we need to be multi-planetary. A planet-killer could hit earth tomorrow, and the human race would be extinct. So, if we delay becoming a (self-sufficient) multi-planetary species by 200 years we increase the window of risk by that much time. And there will always be current challenges that we face on earth that we could address before investing resources in becoming multi-planetary. And becoming multi-planetary itself will take a long time.
- aeturnum 5y ago