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I was initially against Robinson on this after reading Aurora[1] - man did it make me angry - but in the years since, the more I considered the hard limits, the

I was initially against Robinson on this after reading Aurora[1] - man did it make me angry - but in the years since, the more I considered the hard limits, the more I was convinced. We will visit the stars, but it's not an expansion that will be made by human animals. It'll be a combination of technologies and artificial agents, perhaps a smattering of engineered artificial hominids. You really do need mastery of biological engineering for even solar system colonization. [1] Which, as with so many sci fi novels, has this panoply of great ideas but boy, do I ever not care about the characters. Except Ship. Ship was great. I suspect that the earlier Mars Trilogy had some great characters because they were transcluded real-life people that Kim new in the day to day interviews he did for that series. It's a repeating pattern for him. Honestly, so many really evocative science fiction books fail utterly as storytelling, I shouldn't complain so much.

more_corn 3y ago
I loved Aurora for the quiet wisdom. It’s unethical to sign our descendants up for a difficult life away from the cradle of earth. Complex systems will fail in unexpected ways (sort of provably, and inevitably) There’s no place like home. Literally. We co-evolved with this place over billions of years. There’s nothing like it anywhere. It’s a beautiful, wonderful, rare gift that we should cherish because there ain’t anything like it anywhere else we can go.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Kids are always signed up to live in the society of their parents' and get no say in the matter. The Earth is an incredibly complex system on its own and humanities collective action to change the carbon content of the atmosphere is already causing failures in expected ways, and I don't envy the children born today the future they're looking down. Buckminster Fuller gave us the concept of "Spaceship Earth", and we are clearly unable to captain it; I have no idea why some of the commenters here believe we are capable of building and sailing another.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  Where would you be if your ancestors didn’t sign their lineage up for the trip?
  - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    Our ancestors didn't sail boats into an ocean of freezing poison[0]. All human development involves risk, yes. However, when you depend on future progress in order for survival, I'd argue that passes a risk threshold. Putting this somewhat more simply, if the Puritans remained stuck at 1600 technology, they could still (conceivably) survive in America indefinitely. If you went to live on Mars at today's technical levels, you personally probably would die on today's technology, but your children (or your pregnant wife!) would almost certainly be non-viable. You need "Future Technology Tree" to be a viable population. Now, the Polynesian exception. The Navigators were making some absolutely insane voyages[1], but the risk threshold was different for them, because they lived on tiny islands whose ecosystems they burned through at a terrifying pace. I'd argue we're not looking at "Easter Island Planet Earth" today . . although it's not off the menu. [0] For an airless land made of more poison. That's also radioactive. Mordor got nutin. [1] "Insane". . so far as we know. No surviving writing, plus an esoteric culture of priest-navigators that jealously guarded knowledge, means we're never quite sure just how much these cultures did know about where they were going. Given genetic evidence that some single generations made cross-pacific trips . . and then came back again . . it's really looking more and more likely that they knew where they were going more than we thought.
    - throwuwu 3y ago
      The way things are going on Earth even just the prospect of free land and the freedom to live and prosper how you want is going to be enough. It was plenty for the people who came before us to cross the freezing cold ocean on a months long voyage crammed into a tiny ship. It unfortunately took a lot of them dying in order to figure out how to survive in the new world so hopefully we’ll be faster learners and better prepared. I don’t believe we need futuristic technology, we know how to build pressure hulls, we have mining equipment, we have aeroponics and a mass of other necessary techniques. Yes we’ll need resupply as all colonies did in the past until they built up their own manufacturing base. It would not be fun or nice in the way that sitting at home in a soft chair playing video games and eating pizza is but it would win you a legacy and a life to be proud of by securing a place for your descendants and advancing humanity.

more_corn 3y ago

I loved Aurora for the quiet wisdom. It’s unethical to sign our descendants up for a difficult life away from the cradle of earth. Complex systems will fail in unexpected ways (sort of provably, and inevitably) There’s no place like home. Literally. We co-evolved with this place over billions of years. There’s nothing like it anywhere. It’s a beautiful, wonderful, rare gift that we should cherish because there ain’t anything like it anywhere else we can go.

hotpotamus 3y ago
Kids are always signed up to live in the society of their parents' and get no say in the matter. The Earth is an incredibly complex system on its own and humanities collective action to change the carbon content of the atmosphere is already causing failures in expected ways, and I don't envy the children born today the future they're looking down. Buckminster Fuller gave us the concept of "Spaceship Earth", and we are clearly unable to captain it; I have no idea why some of the commenters here believe we are capable of building and sailing another.
throwuwu 3y ago
Where would you be if your ancestors didn’t sign their lineage up for the trip?
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  Our ancestors didn't sail boats into an ocean of freezing poison[0]. All human development involves risk, yes. However, when you depend on future progress in order for survival, I'd argue that passes a risk threshold. Putting this somewhat more simply, if the Puritans remained stuck at 1600 technology, they could still (conceivably) survive in America indefinitely. If you went to live on Mars at today's technical levels, you personally probably would die on today's technology, but your children (or your pregnant wife!) would almost certainly be non-viable. You need "Future Technology Tree" to be a viable population. Now, the Polynesian exception. The Navigators were making some absolutely insane voyages[1], but the risk threshold was different for them, because they lived on tiny islands whose ecosystems they burned through at a terrifying pace. I'd argue we're not looking at "Easter Island Planet Earth" today . . although it's not off the menu. [0] For an airless land made of more poison. That's also radioactive. Mordor got nutin. [1] "Insane". . so far as we know. No surviving writing, plus an esoteric culture of priest-navigators that jealously guarded knowledge, means we're never quite sure just how much these cultures did know about where they were going. Given genetic evidence that some single generations made cross-pacific trips . . and then came back again . . it's really looking more and more likely that they knew where they were going more than we thought.
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    The way things are going on Earth even just the prospect of free land and the freedom to live and prosper how you want is going to be enough. It was plenty for the people who came before us to cross the freezing cold ocean on a months long voyage crammed into a tiny ship. It unfortunately took a lot of them dying in order to figure out how to survive in the new world so hopefully we’ll be faster learners and better prepared. I don’t believe we need futuristic technology, we know how to build pressure hulls, we have mining equipment, we have aeroponics and a mass of other necessary techniques. Yes we’ll need resupply as all colonies did in the past until they built up their own manufacturing base. It would not be fun or nice in the way that sitting at home in a soft chair playing video games and eating pizza is but it would win you a legacy and a life to be proud of by securing a place for your descendants and advancing humanity.