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Not to mention that the article attacks the currently known technology with reasonable extensions, and treats those as a Ark or cruise ship that somehow has to
by jvanderbot 3y ago
Not to mention that the article attacks the currently known technology with reasonable extensions, and treats those as a Ark or cruise ship that somehow has to get to another solar system. Rightfully skeptical there.
But there's so many other ways, ways that our descendents will think of that were beyond our imagination. Think tiny robots and gene bombs, or peppering interstellar visitors with inert payloads, etc. Once you abandon the meme of a brave ship full of sailors, it's fair to return to an optimistic future millennium where humans are sending life to the stars.
And that's completely without considering all the very real possibilities in our solar system, which are more challenges of degree, rather than kind. Perhaps human lifespan in orbit is 30 years at first. It wouldn't be the first time a population took root in a hostile area.
- throwuwu 3y agoThe answer is right there in front of everyone. I’m surprised hardly anyone sees it when it has shown up in popular fiction before. In order to colonize space in our solar system we have to master living in space and building space habitats. If you live on a habitat full time then what do you care if it’s travelling around a star or towards another star or not even trying to go to a star and just moving from one interstellar object to another? If the habitat is big enough to contain two hundred million people then it is effectively the size of the world that most humans lived in for a large chunk of recorded history. The idea may seem strange to us but our current lives are very strange compared to the lives of those who lived when there were only two hundred million people alive on the planet.