3 ms·

Do you live in the United States of America? Australia? Founded by those idiots who want to explore. Alternately: UK? Spain? Portugal? Netherlands? Got rich on

Do you live in the United States of America? Australia? Founded by those idiots who want to explore. Alternately: UK? Spain? Portugal? Netherlands? Got rich on above said idiots. Maybe you live in the western USA? Maybe you have Polynesian Ancestry? Or Scandinavian? Have you ever taken a trans-atlantic flight? Ordered anything from overseas? Made a long-distance phone call? Used GPS? You know what, let's have a few idiots who go exploring in every generation.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
Don't forget to explain - in detail - how to build a stable, self-sustaining off-world ecosystem with adequate food, air, water, and shelter out of rocks, energy, and expensive and very irregular imports. You might also want to think about how to keep critical machinery running on the end of a six month - best case - supply chain. "Take three of everything" might work practically, but will raise some eyebrows economically. Those are the hard problems. Compared to them, getting there is trivially easy.
- epups 3y ago
  Yeah, the comparison to colonization doesn't really makes much sense to me. Using 16th century tech, you could expect to have a profitable trip pretty much every time you managed to come back alive, and you did not have to deal with bringing your own life support systems. With our technology, colonizing Mars is a much, much harder task, which has no foreseeable economic benefits for decades if not centuries.
  - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
    Heh, I also named some 20th century exploration examples. (eg. Charles Lindbergh's first Trans-Atlantic flight was only in 1927) Current investment in space endeavors in eg. the USA is around 0.1% GDP. Even if you double it (or 10x it), that's not going to break the bank. If we take your optimistic estimate (profitable after a few decades) it might just be a risk that's worth it today, on a nation-scale. (Edit: unfortunately I couldn't find good GDP figures for the 1600's , but taking investments in eg british and dutch east india companies vs a guesstimated GDP, I also got to around 0.1% +/- 1 OOM, which seems like a reasonable estimate of exploration costs as % GDP , and thus modern investment levels seem to be reasonably in line with that. )
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  Air, Water and Shelter are solved and field-proven. (eg. nuclear submarines can theoretically stay out for years, only limited by food) Food is an interesting challenge, since we haven't done food production at scale beyond earth yet. Small scale experiments and applications seem promising though. Full self-sustaining is not a requirement provided there is a supply chain. (And vice versa) . Of course: As self-self sustaining as possible as soon as possible would definitely be something to aim for. The one company proposing to colonize mars in the near future would do so with a fleet of reusable spacecraft capable of 100-metric-tons to mars surface. "Take three of everything" becomes a bit less of a problem in that kind of situation. Within those constraints, the challenges are certainly still significant, but need not be insurmountable. Also said ship is -itself- not yet proven, so we'll have to wait and see.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago

Don't forget to explain - in detail - how to build a stable, self-sustaining off-world ecosystem with adequate food, air, water, and shelter out of rocks, energy, and expensive and very irregular imports. You might also want to think about how to keep critical machinery running on the end of a six month - best case - supply chain. "Take three of everything" might work practically, but will raise some eyebrows economically. Those are the hard problems. Compared to them, getting there is trivially easy.

epups 3y ago
Yeah, the comparison to colonization doesn't really makes much sense to me. Using 16th century tech, you could expect to have a profitable trip pretty much every time you managed to come back alive, and you did not have to deal with bringing your own life support systems. With our technology, colonizing Mars is a much, much harder task, which has no foreseeable economic benefits for decades if not centuries.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  Heh, I also named some 20th century exploration examples. (eg. Charles Lindbergh's first Trans-Atlantic flight was only in 1927) Current investment in space endeavors in eg. the USA is around 0.1% GDP. Even if you double it (or 10x it), that's not going to break the bank. If we take your optimistic estimate (profitable after a few decades) it might just be a risk that's worth it today, on a nation-scale. (Edit: unfortunately I couldn't find good GDP figures for the 1600's , but taking investments in eg british and dutch east india companies vs a guesstimated GDP, I also got to around 0.1% +/- 1 OOM, which seems like a reasonable estimate of exploration costs as % GDP , and thus modern investment levels seem to be reasonably in line with that. )
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Air, Water and Shelter are solved and field-proven. (eg. nuclear submarines can theoretically stay out for years, only limited by food) Food is an interesting challenge, since we haven't done food production at scale beyond earth yet. Small scale experiments and applications seem promising though. Full self-sustaining is not a requirement provided there is a supply chain. (And vice versa) . Of course: As self-self sustaining as possible as soon as possible would definitely be something to aim for. The one company proposing to colonize mars in the near future would do so with a fleet of reusable spacecraft capable of 100-metric-tons to mars surface. "Take three of everything" becomes a bit less of a problem in that kind of situation. Within those constraints, the challenges are certainly still significant, but need not be insurmountable. Also said ship is -itself- not yet proven, so we'll have to wait and see.