3 ms·

You can have abundant life that is functionally isolated by physics, or said differently, by the degree of technological and societal advancement required to tr

by svnt 2y ago

You can have abundant life that is functionally isolated by physics, or said differently, by the degree of technological and societal advancement required to traverse the space between. Great distances and inherent speed limits seem like a decent way to accomplish that.

pfdietz 2y ago
I think it's clear that interstellar travel, while not trivial, should be possible for a civilization just a bit more advanced than our own. The energy or material resources required for interstellar colonization are very small compared to the resources available. It doesn't even require relativistic speeds, although reaching (say) 0.01 c doesn't require outrageous engineering, just a large spacecraft and lots of hydrogen bombs. Now, perhaps it's universally true that civilizations don't advance much beyond where we currently are, or don't persist for sufficiently long for interstellar colonization to be successful. These would also be very depressing outcomes if they are imposed on us by the GF.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Interstellar colonization is more difficult than it's commonly imagined. To build a colony ship you need the same resources you'd need to build a large habitat. There would be economic pressure to build habitats that'd compete with the building of colony ships. When a colony ship arrives to a new planet, it'll need to bootstrap a full industrial chain before it can build its own colony ships to expand to other systems. It's reasonable to assume there would be little incentive for that before the colony starts to require off-planet resources on their own system, and, therefore, has a compelling reason to build a space economy. For us, this would easily be in the thousands of years even if no terraforming is needed, and let's not even consider we'd need a consistent multi-century planning to get there. Precursor missions with automated in-situ resource collection and storage would allow colonists to arrive to a fully built and stocked colony, which would save some time. Existing biospheres might present issues of toxicity and biological risks: you really don't want to grow up on a (Dune's) Rossak (even if it grants you superpowers). So, let's say Earth manages to establish 10 successful extra-solar colonies over 5 thousand years. It'll be at least a good couple thousand years until those successful colonies can each establish 10 others and raise the number to 100 worlds. If we manage to diligently expand at that exponential ration, we'll soon bump into other intelligent space-faring species that also share this commitment to reproduce.
  - svnt 2y ago
    And what motivates the continued expansion? Exhaustion of resources, if that is it, means that decay immediately eats into your reproduction and it isn’t a proliferation, but at best a continuous parasitic migration.
- svnt 2y ago
  I don’t think that is clear at all. I think it reflects a massive gap in understanding of how difficult it is to do anything with humans for more than a generation.

by svnt 2y ago

pfdietz 2y ago

I think it's clear that interstellar travel, while not trivial, should be possible for a civilization just a bit more advanced than our own. The energy or material resources required for interstellar colonization are very small compared to the resources available. It doesn't even require relativistic speeds, although reaching (say) 0.01 c doesn't require outrageous engineering, just a large spacecraft and lots of hydrogen bombs. Now, perhaps it's universally true that civilizations don't advance much beyond where we currently are, or don't persist for sufficiently long for interstellar colonization to be successful. These would also be very depressing outcomes if they are imposed on us by the GF.

rbanffy 2y ago
Interstellar colonization is more difficult than it's commonly imagined. To build a colony ship you need the same resources you'd need to build a large habitat. There would be economic pressure to build habitats that'd compete with the building of colony ships. When a colony ship arrives to a new planet, it'll need to bootstrap a full industrial chain before it can build its own colony ships to expand to other systems. It's reasonable to assume there would be little incentive for that before the colony starts to require off-planet resources on their own system, and, therefore, has a compelling reason to build a space economy. For us, this would easily be in the thousands of years even if no terraforming is needed, and let's not even consider we'd need a consistent multi-century planning to get there. Precursor missions with automated in-situ resource collection and storage would allow colonists to arrive to a fully built and stocked colony, which would save some time. Existing biospheres might present issues of toxicity and biological risks: you really don't want to grow up on a (Dune's) Rossak (even if it grants you superpowers). So, let's say Earth manages to establish 10 successful extra-solar colonies over 5 thousand years. It'll be at least a good couple thousand years until those successful colonies can each establish 10 others and raise the number to 100 worlds. If we manage to diligently expand at that exponential ration, we'll soon bump into other intelligent space-faring species that also share this commitment to reproduce.
- svnt 2y ago
  And what motivates the continued expansion? Exhaustion of resources, if that is it, means that decay immediately eats into your reproduction and it isn’t a proliferation, but at best a continuous parasitic migration.
svnt 2y ago
I don’t think that is clear at all. I think it reflects a massive gap in understanding of how difficult it is to do anything with humans for more than a generation.