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Good read! In the greater scheme of things, spaceflight isn't that different from early ocean explorers, right? Build a vessel that suits the environment it'l

Good read! In the greater scheme of things, spaceflight isn't that different from early ocean explorers, right? Build a vessel that suits the environment it'll travel in, stock it with equipment & supplies, head off into the unknown. Hope that supplies last long enough to set foot on the other side, and/or 'live off the land'. Viewed like that, asteroids are kinda like islands, where some fresh fruit, timber etc may be found. Adventurers may like it & hang there while the ship sails on.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Except early ocean explorers didn’t have to worry about being obliterated by a tiny speck of dust going too fast. e.g. If a random speck of dust hitting their raft could have done the same, there likely would have been a very different paradigm…
- hollasch 3y ago
  Or constant winds that can penetrate meters of some materials and cause cellular damage and death. And no native food, water, or atmosphere.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Ah, space-scurvy.
    - blkhawk 3y ago
      space-scurvy is the same as regular scurvy. I can easily imagine it happening if your hydroponics go bad.
- _yb2s 3y ago
  Dead is dead- invisible underwater rocks in uncharted waters, hurricanes, new foreign diseases, etc. will kill you just as well as space dust!
- mr_toad 3y ago
  They had enough of their own worries. “There is but a plank between a sailor and eternity.”
- bamboozled 3y ago
  Rogue waves were common and were very deadly
  - southernplaces7 3y ago
    *Are. Rogue waves continue to be very deadly even to very large ships, and extremely unpredictable despite much better weather monitoring and communications.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Space is mostly vacuum, the sea is mostly water and wind, with some dangerous shoals/rocks thrown in for good measure. Sailing from Britain to Australia on a wooden ship took approximately the same time as flying from the Earth to Mars. I bet that the sailors met a lot more dangerous weather conditions on the way to Australia than the spacecraft on their way to Mars. "Hull losses" due to cosmic dust are basically zero, the only recorded instances are on low Earth orbit due to space debris. "Hull losses" due to storms or navigational mistakes were absolutely normal during the Age of Exploration, and long after.
  - advael 3y ago
    It's weird that you seem to believe these analogies you're making with zero examples of the latter. Of course when you're imagining the whole thing and willing to fudge the details in favor of the conclusion you want, it's really easy to make the argument that it's feasible and worthwhile
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      This is a very personal attack-like reply (weird, imagining, fudging etc.), and I believe it has no place on Hacker News. Anyway, no vessel that ever left the low Earth orbit was ever lost to cosmic dust. How am I expected to provide examples of something that never happened? As for losses of old wooden ships en route to Australia, there were plenty. Being a sailor was the most dangerous profession in the Age of Sail, and the very reason why sailors got tattos was a chance to be recognized as a drowned corpse.
      - advael 3y ago
        I'm not personally attacking you, I'm saying your argument makes no sense, because you're trying to draw equivalences between recorded accounts of history and things that have never happened Like how long it takes to fly humans to mars. It hasn't happened yet, we can only estimate and try to project it, so the case that it might take as long as it took to sail across some particular ocean for some particular group of people with the technology they had at the time is not only kind of irrelevant, but also not a claim that can be supported. This is what's typically referred to as "fudging the numbers" The things you said and the point you are trying to be make by saying them is pretty ridiculous. You may choose to take that personally, but perfectly reasonable people say a lot of crazy shit. It may well be that the fact that internet fora make this a matter of somewhat durable record makes people view their arguments in this context as more tightly coupled with them as a person, but that's still ultimately for you to decide for yourself
- somenameforme 3y ago
  You're dramatically underestimating how dangerous sea travel was. Millions of people lost their lives at sea, up to and including during the Age of Sail where we had been doing it for millennia. For instance Vasco de Gamma was the first person to discover a route from Europe to India. And that's relatively easy since you can get there by simply following the coast from Africa onward to India. He set out with 170 men and 4 ships. 55 men and 2 ships returned. And that was not particularly remarkable - scurvy, inclement weather, rogue waves, supplies going bad, and countless other issues meant death at sea was a regular part of traveling at sea. Magellan is another one. We all learn in school that he was the first man to cross the globe. What we don't necessarily learn is that he didn't survive the voyage. He set out with 5 ships and 270 men - 18 men, not including Magellan, and 1 ship returned. Exploration and ultimately colonization has never been something for those unwilling to risk it all, and it may very likely never be. The entire point of such things is that you're setting out to do and discover what has not been done, and what has not been discovered. In this context it's essentially impossible to have any assurance of safety.
  - JackFr 3y ago
    Well actually it’s more likely that Enrique of Malacca was the first person to circumnavigate the globe. (He had been enslaved by Magellan 10 years earlier on a voyage which had reached Malacca going east, and then returned on the later more famous voyage of Magellan which had gone west.)
  - telesilla 3y ago
    To be fair, many of them were killed while engaged in colonialist island warfare rather than the voyage itself so even setting foot on an island to replenish had its dangers, same for Cook. I'd say space travel has many more dangers in the voyage than warrior aliens.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      Magellan notwithstanding, relatively few of his crew were lost to natives. Most of it came from starvation and scurvy. The latter of which, alone, took millions of lives. Both were greatly compounded because of how unpredictable the seas can be. For instance when crossing the Indian Ocean the first time, Vasco da Gamma initially took about 3 weeks. On his way back he ran into foul weather, and the exact same journey ended up taking more than 4 months. He ended up losing about half his crew just during that crossing. We're almost certainly much more technically prepared for space flight than the early explorers were for these great sea voyages. And we're certainly vastly more economically prepared. The only difference is the risk tolerance and funding. Those sailors and captains setting out always understood there was a very real chance that they would never return, and that was simply accepted. And funding was never easy back in the day, but the costs were also much greater relatively speaking. The fantasy this article speaks of about multi-century ships setting out into the stars is something we could achieve for a tiny fraction of what we spend on random wars, yet we don't.
RajT88 3y ago
Your comment reminds me of "Rocket Ship Galileo" by Robert Heinlein. Which is to say, crazy reductive.
whythre 3y ago
Only in a hand-wavy roughly analogous kind of way. The devil is in the details. We are just not evolved for an environment like space: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body#:~:text=Additional%20symptoms%20include%20fluid%20redistribution,sleep%20disturbance%2C%20and%20excess%20flatulence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the.... Even with air and food and shielded from the vast majority of radiation, space is just not great for human comfort or mid to long term survival.
- nkoren 3y ago
  I mean, we're not biologically adapted for the open ocean or winters above the arctic circle either. If all you're living in is your skin, then a Siberian winter will kill you in under 15 minutes. It takes a crazy amount of technology -- in terms of habitat-building and wearables -- to be able to survive in that environment. Yet humans were doing it 47,000 years ago. So these kind of biological arguments really don't hold. We're not constrained by our biology. That ship has sailed, literal aeons ago. We're constrained by our technology, and in technological terms, relative to our evolutionary cradle, Inuit garb is about 80% of the way towards being a space suit. Doesn't mean that space is "easy". Just that "easy" isn't what we do.
  - whythre 3y ago
    It’s apples and oranges. Many, many human cultures live close to the water but none live on or in it exclusively, we are no longer an aquatic species. I think the arctic comparison might be more apt, but even so, it is such a staggering difference of degree. The amount of technology required to learn how to hunt arctic wildlife, preserve food, and turn animal skins into clothing and shelter is not trivial. But it is nothing compared to having to replicate our entire habitat in space. Food, water and air are the minimum in terms of long term survival; there are so many other heath considerations in the micro-gravitational radioactive vacuum of space. Edit: also Inuit garb being 80% space suit is just… what(?!?). How do you quantify that? The main features they share is that insulates from extreme cold temperatures and can protect against glare, but our space suits also insulate from high temperatures and provide life support and are air tight and radiation resistant and… this assertion is just nonsense.
littlestymaar 3y ago
Space kinds of looks like sea ( danger being always present and you're alone to face it) but it's also very different for the following reason: > Viewed like that, asteroids are kinda like islands, where some fresh fruit, timber etc may be found. Adventurers may like it & hang there while the ship sails on. They are very much unlike islands: on an island humans get back to there land-dweller lifestyle, they can get food, fresh, water materials and they are safe from the danger of the sea. An asteroid offers none of that, you cannot just get spare parts on the asteroid, nor food and it's as dangerous as before (void, radiations). In fact, except for dedicated machines designed to mine them, it's very unlikely anyone ever lands on an asteroid because it gives you practically no benefit over floating in space and is very costly in terms of propulsion (both to land and to leave, because you need to get to the speed of the asteroid and then leave it).

MichaelZuo 3y ago

Except early ocean explorers didn’t have to worry about being obliterated by a tiny speck of dust going too fast. e.g. If a random speck of dust hitting their raft could have done the same, there likely would have been a very different paradigm…

hollasch 3y ago
Or constant winds that can penetrate meters of some materials and cause cellular damage and death. And no native food, water, or atmosphere.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Ah, space-scurvy.
  - blkhawk 3y ago
    space-scurvy is the same as regular scurvy. I can easily imagine it happening if your hydroponics go bad.
_yb2s 3y ago
Dead is dead- invisible underwater rocks in uncharted waters, hurricanes, new foreign diseases, etc. will kill you just as well as space dust!
mr_toad 3y ago
They had enough of their own worries. “There is but a plank between a sailor and eternity.”
bamboozled 3y ago
Rogue waves were common and were very deadly
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  *Are. Rogue waves continue to be very deadly even to very large ships, and extremely unpredictable despite much better weather monitoring and communications.
inglor_cz 3y ago
Space is mostly vacuum, the sea is mostly water and wind, with some dangerous shoals/rocks thrown in for good measure. Sailing from Britain to Australia on a wooden ship took approximately the same time as flying from the Earth to Mars. I bet that the sailors met a lot more dangerous weather conditions on the way to Australia than the spacecraft on their way to Mars. "Hull losses" due to cosmic dust are basically zero, the only recorded instances are on low Earth orbit due to space debris. "Hull losses" due to storms or navigational mistakes were absolutely normal during the Age of Exploration, and long after.
- advael 3y ago
  It's weird that you seem to believe these analogies you're making with zero examples of the latter. Of course when you're imagining the whole thing and willing to fudge the details in favor of the conclusion you want, it's really easy to make the argument that it's feasible and worthwhile
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    This is a very personal attack-like reply (weird, imagining, fudging etc.), and I believe it has no place on Hacker News. Anyway, no vessel that ever left the low Earth orbit was ever lost to cosmic dust. How am I expected to provide examples of something that never happened? As for losses of old wooden ships en route to Australia, there were plenty. Being a sailor was the most dangerous profession in the Age of Sail, and the very reason why sailors got tattos was a chance to be recognized as a drowned corpse.
    - advael 3y ago
      I'm not personally attacking you, I'm saying your argument makes no sense, because you're trying to draw equivalences between recorded accounts of history and things that have never happened Like how long it takes to fly humans to mars. It hasn't happened yet, we can only estimate and try to project it, so the case that it might take as long as it took to sail across some particular ocean for some particular group of people with the technology they had at the time is not only kind of irrelevant, but also not a claim that can be supported. This is what's typically referred to as "fudging the numbers" The things you said and the point you are trying to be make by saying them is pretty ridiculous. You may choose to take that personally, but perfectly reasonable people say a lot of crazy shit. It may well be that the fact that internet fora make this a matter of somewhat durable record makes people view their arguments in this context as more tightly coupled with them as a person, but that's still ultimately for you to decide for yourself
somenameforme 3y ago
You're dramatically underestimating how dangerous sea travel was. Millions of people lost their lives at sea, up to and including during the Age of Sail where we had been doing it for millennia. For instance Vasco de Gamma was the first person to discover a route from Europe to India. And that's relatively easy since you can get there by simply following the coast from Africa onward to India. He set out with 170 men and 4 ships. 55 men and 2 ships returned. And that was not particularly remarkable - scurvy, inclement weather, rogue waves, supplies going bad, and countless other issues meant death at sea was a regular part of traveling at sea. Magellan is another one. We all learn in school that he was the first man to cross the globe. What we don't necessarily learn is that he didn't survive the voyage. He set out with 5 ships and 270 men - 18 men, not including Magellan, and 1 ship returned. Exploration and ultimately colonization has never been something for those unwilling to risk it all, and it may very likely never be. The entire point of such things is that you're setting out to do and discover what has not been done, and what has not been discovered. In this context it's essentially impossible to have any assurance of safety.
- JackFr 3y ago
  Well actually it’s more likely that Enrique of Malacca was the first person to circumnavigate the globe. (He had been enslaved by Magellan 10 years earlier on a voyage which had reached Malacca going east, and then returned on the later more famous voyage of Magellan which had gone west.)
- telesilla 3y ago
  To be fair, many of them were killed while engaged in colonialist island warfare rather than the voyage itself so even setting foot on an island to replenish had its dangers, same for Cook. I'd say space travel has many more dangers in the voyage than warrior aliens.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Magellan notwithstanding, relatively few of his crew were lost to natives. Most of it came from starvation and scurvy. The latter of which, alone, took millions of lives. Both were greatly compounded because of how unpredictable the seas can be. For instance when crossing the Indian Ocean the first time, Vasco da Gamma initially took about 3 weeks. On his way back he ran into foul weather, and the exact same journey ended up taking more than 4 months. He ended up losing about half his crew just during that crossing. We're almost certainly much more technically prepared for space flight than the early explorers were for these great sea voyages. And we're certainly vastly more economically prepared. The only difference is the risk tolerance and funding. Those sailors and captains setting out always understood there was a very real chance that they would never return, and that was simply accepted. And funding was never easy back in the day, but the costs were also much greater relatively speaking. The fantasy this article speaks of about multi-century ships setting out into the stars is something we could achieve for a tiny fraction of what we spend on random wars, yet we don't.

RajT88 3y ago

Your comment reminds me of "Rocket Ship Galileo" by Robert Heinlein. Which is to say, crazy reductive.

whythre 3y ago

Only in a hand-wavy roughly analogous kind of way. The devil is in the details. We are just not evolved for an environment like space: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body#:~:text=Additional%20symptoms%20include%20fluid%20redistribution,sleep%20disturbance%2C%20and%20excess%20flatulence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the.... Even with air and food and shielded from the vast majority of radiation, space is just not great for human comfort or mid to long term survival.

nkoren 3y ago
I mean, we're not biologically adapted for the open ocean or winters above the arctic circle either. If all you're living in is your skin, then a Siberian winter will kill you in under 15 minutes. It takes a crazy amount of technology -- in terms of habitat-building and wearables -- to be able to survive in that environment. Yet humans were doing it 47,000 years ago. So these kind of biological arguments really don't hold. We're not constrained by our biology. That ship has sailed, literal aeons ago. We're constrained by our technology, and in technological terms, relative to our evolutionary cradle, Inuit garb is about 80% of the way towards being a space suit. Doesn't mean that space is "easy". Just that "easy" isn't what we do.
- whythre 3y ago
  It’s apples and oranges. Many, many human cultures live close to the water but none live on or in it exclusively, we are no longer an aquatic species. I think the arctic comparison might be more apt, but even so, it is such a staggering difference of degree. The amount of technology required to learn how to hunt arctic wildlife, preserve food, and turn animal skins into clothing and shelter is not trivial. But it is nothing compared to having to replicate our entire habitat in space. Food, water and air are the minimum in terms of long term survival; there are so many other heath considerations in the micro-gravitational radioactive vacuum of space. Edit: also Inuit garb being 80% space suit is just… what(?!?). How do you quantify that? The main features they share is that insulates from extreme cold temperatures and can protect against glare, but our space suits also insulate from high temperatures and provide life support and are air tight and radiation resistant and… this assertion is just nonsense.

littlestymaar 3y ago

Space kinds of looks like sea ( danger being always present and you're alone to face it) but it's also very different for the following reason: > Viewed like that, asteroids are kinda like islands, where some fresh fruit, timber etc may be found. Adventurers may like it & hang there while the ship sails on. They are very much unlike islands: on an island humans get back to there land-dweller lifestyle, they can get food, fresh, water materials and they are safe from the danger of the sea. An asteroid offers none of that, you cannot just get spare parts on the asteroid, nor food and it's as dangerous as before (void, radiations). In fact, except for dedicated machines designed to mine them, it's very unlikely anyone ever lands on an asteroid because it gives you practically no benefit over floating in space and is very costly in terms of propulsion (both to land and to leave, because you need to get to the speed of the asteroid and then leave it).