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The goal of making man an "interplanetary species" comes from religion, specifically the religion of Transhumanism to which both Bezos and Musk subscribe. Ther
by mimixco 5y ago
The goal of making man an "interplanetary species" comes from religion, specifically the religion of Transhumanism to which both Bezos and Musk subscribe.
There is nothing in our history or present day evolution that would suggest people can or should live on other planets. Absolutely nothing. We are not even remotely close to such a "goal" when today people live barely below the threshold of space (LEO) and not in space at all.
Religious goals and magical thinking have driven human society for hundreds of thousands of years (see the fascinating and recent post here on HN about The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind). Jeff and Elon's fantasies about human habitation in space (or somehow improving life on this planet by leaving it) are more of the same.
- PaulHoule 5y agoI would go back to Gerard K O'Neill who didn't indulge in the full-fledged transhumanism of Timothy Leary, et al. (e.g. if you're grown-up you don't need personal immortality) I think Mars is for the birds, cutting up a carbonaceous or wet asteroid to construct a solar-sail factory that can deliver sunshades to earth-sun L1 is a more interesting project. Something halfway to Niven's ringworld seems like a possible endpoint. (see https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487) As I see it the problems are half chemical engineering, half "building a ship outside a bottle from the inside of the bottle" and half "what do you do with the gas before you take the asteroid apart?" You might wind up with a structure that can hold a few trillion people, but you start with maybe 40 hardcore Zeons and a few million eggs because I don't see how you build and operate the factory or the factory factory with a 20 minute time delay.