5 ms·

If that's the case then what is the point? If you think robots should do everything then you might as well retire the human race. Why even bother to live. Why

If that's the case then what is the point? If you think robots should do everything then you might as well retire the human race. Why even bother to live. Why explore the stars when you can get a robot to do it for you?

0_____0 2y ago
If the goal is "put man on Mars" then that's what you gotta do. It's harder to make the argument that you need to do that in the service of science, or even offworld colonies, given the unsuitability and impracticality of those both.
- lmm 2y ago
  What plausible path is there to offworld colonies without sending humans?
  - whiplash451 2y ago
    If the end game is offworld colonies, then we should craft the whole adventure as a series of one-way trips, not two-way trips. That's a serious paradigm shift compared to what this (excellent) article describes.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      For me first logical step is to ignore the getting there part. And prove that we can actually build colony here. In suitable location say for example Sahara or Antarctica. After those technological challenges are solved next step is to see how to get it to orbit or make same in orbit. And then we can start thinking how to get all the stuff over there.
      - whiplash451 2y ago
        I agree. That was the sense of my comment too.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Colonies on Mars are what drove the founding of SpaceX. Elon was looking up NASA's plans about sending humans to Mars and found that they simply didn't exist. He wanted to send a greenhouse to Mars while streaming its growth to get people inspired and thinking big again. NASA wasn't interested, Russia wanted too much $$$, so SpaceX was born. A colony doesn't mean you live there forever - it simply means a permanent human establishment. Some people will want to go back to Earth, some will want to stay on Mars indefinitely. This is a big part of their obsession with lowering costs to space. When the launch costs are not such a huge economic factor, you have much greater leverage with doing things like building, resupplying, or even engaging in interplanetary commerce.
      - whiplash451 2y ago
        My understanding is that what drove the founding of SpaceX was a promise for more efficient use of agencies' money in space programs. Going to Mars may have been part of the story, but I doubt that it was a strong component of the decision making in the end.
        somenameforme 2y ago
        His main motivation was about making humanity a multiplanetary species, largely as a means of ensuring humanity's continuation. It sounds hyperbolic, but Earth has gone through multiple mass extinction events and we're rather overdue for another. And while those mass extinction events were all natural, there's also endless ways you can imagine us all managing to kill ourselves off. And, critically, all of these hyperbolic scenarios will seem extremely improbable up to the very day that one does inevitably happen. So the best time to start would be 50 years ago. But the second best time would be right now. So the most logical place to start for this sort of 'humanity guarantee' would be Mars, which shares an oddly large amount in common with Earth. There's a verbose (and rather entertaining read) with lots of first party commentary here. [1] [1] - https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-introduction.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-introduction.html
        burch45 2y ago
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    Hah! I wrote my comment sort of quickly and I knew someone would pick that out!
  - tzs 2y ago
    There's not really a plausible path to colonies on other planets (or on moons of Jupiter or Saturn) that needs to send humans there soon. Establishing such a colony and getting it working well enough to actually last would be a long term project, and it would be decades before it got to sending people. Before that there would be a lot of work off Earth, including manned work, but it would be in space or on the Moon. They key is Lagrange points. Each pair of bodies (Sun/Earth, Earth/Moon, Sun/Jupiter, etc) have 5 points where the gravitational forces from the two bodies balance out in a way that makes it possible for something to orbit that point, even though there is no massive body at that point. Two of the Lagrange points are stable, meaning that if something in orbit around them is disturbed it still stays around that point. The other three are unstable. Disturbing something there will cause it to get farther and farther away. You can use this to move things from Lagrange points of one pair (Sun/Earth for example) to Lagrange points of another pair (Sun/Jupiter say) very cheaply. Get it to the starting point, and then nudge it into an unstable orbit that will have it getting farther and farther away. We can calculate these unstable orbits well enough to pick one that at some point is nearly tangent to an orbit of the destination Lagrange point that moves toward that point rather than away. A little nudge them can move our ship into that latter orbit. The catch is that this is slow. It might take decades or more to make the trip. The way you would use this in a colonization program is to build a series of unmanned cargo ships. Say a new cargo ship is completed every year. It would be stuffed full of supplies the colony will need, send to an appropriate Sun/Earth Lagrange point, and nudged onto its journey. Let's say these ships take 30 years to reach the destination. After we've been doing this for nearly 30 years then we'd send a ship with the colonists. That ship uses a fast but expensive orbit. It would only need to carry the colonists, the supplies they need during the trip, and fuel and supplies for an emergency return trip in case when they get there they find some reason that they cannot stay. Note that it doesn't need to carry any material to actually build the colony, or food and water for the colony. All that is in the cargo ships that are now arriving yearly. (If we are sure that the cargo ships are making it the human transport ship could even omit food, water, and fuel for an emergency return. Those can be on the first cargo ship). You'd want to build the cargo ships on the Moon, or build them in space using resources from the Moon, because getting from the Moon to Lagrange points takes a lot less energy than getting from the Moon to Lagrange points. The most plausible path then is to greatly expand industrialization of the Moon and the space near Earth. Probably then expand that to include space bases at some of the Lagrange points. Then it is time to start working on colonization. Unfortunately we'd probably not do Mars this way. If I recall correctly the low energy Lagrange transfer orbits to Mars are particularly slow--over a thousand years if I remember correctly.

0_____0 2y ago

If the goal is "put man on Mars" then that's what you gotta do. It's harder to make the argument that you need to do that in the service of science, or even offworld colonies, given the unsuitability and impracticality of those both.

lmm 2y ago
What plausible path is there to offworld colonies without sending humans?
- whiplash451 2y ago
  If the end game is offworld colonies, then we should craft the whole adventure as a series of one-way trips, not two-way trips. That's a serious paradigm shift compared to what this (excellent) article describes.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    For me first logical step is to ignore the getting there part. And prove that we can actually build colony here. In suitable location say for example Sahara or Antarctica. After those technological challenges are solved next step is to see how to get it to orbit or make same in orbit. And then we can start thinking how to get all the stuff over there.
    - whiplash451 2y ago
      I agree. That was the sense of my comment too.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Colonies on Mars are what drove the founding of SpaceX. Elon was looking up NASA's plans about sending humans to Mars and found that they simply didn't exist. He wanted to send a greenhouse to Mars while streaming its growth to get people inspired and thinking big again. NASA wasn't interested, Russia wanted too much $$$, so SpaceX was born. A colony doesn't mean you live there forever - it simply means a permanent human establishment. Some people will want to go back to Earth, some will want to stay on Mars indefinitely. This is a big part of their obsession with lowering costs to space. When the launch costs are not such a huge economic factor, you have much greater leverage with doing things like building, resupplying, or even engaging in interplanetary commerce.
    - whiplash451 2y ago
      My understanding is that what drove the founding of SpaceX was a promise for more efficient use of agencies' money in space programs. Going to Mars may have been part of the story, but I doubt that it was a strong component of the decision making in the end.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        His main motivation was about making humanity a multiplanetary species, largely as a means of ensuring humanity's continuation. It sounds hyperbolic, but Earth has gone through multiple mass extinction events and we're rather overdue for another. And while those mass extinction events were all natural, there's also endless ways you can imagine us all managing to kill ourselves off. And, critically, all of these hyperbolic scenarios will seem extremely improbable up to the very day that one does inevitably happen. So the best time to start would be 50 years ago. But the second best time would be right now. So the most logical place to start for this sort of 'humanity guarantee' would be Mars, which shares an oddly large amount in common with Earth. There's a verbose (and rather entertaining read) with lots of first party commentary here. [1] [1] - https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-introduction.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-introduction.html
        burch45 2y ago
- 0_____0 2y ago
  Hah! I wrote my comment sort of quickly and I knew someone would pick that out!
- tzs 2y ago
  There's not really a plausible path to colonies on other planets (or on moons of Jupiter or Saturn) that needs to send humans there soon. Establishing such a colony and getting it working well enough to actually last would be a long term project, and it would be decades before it got to sending people. Before that there would be a lot of work off Earth, including manned work, but it would be in space or on the Moon. They key is Lagrange points. Each pair of bodies (Sun/Earth, Earth/Moon, Sun/Jupiter, etc) have 5 points where the gravitational forces from the two bodies balance out in a way that makes it possible for something to orbit that point, even though there is no massive body at that point. Two of the Lagrange points are stable, meaning that if something in orbit around them is disturbed it still stays around that point. The other three are unstable. Disturbing something there will cause it to get farther and farther away. You can use this to move things from Lagrange points of one pair (Sun/Earth for example) to Lagrange points of another pair (Sun/Jupiter say) very cheaply. Get it to the starting point, and then nudge it into an unstable orbit that will have it getting farther and farther away. We can calculate these unstable orbits well enough to pick one that at some point is nearly tangent to an orbit of the destination Lagrange point that moves toward that point rather than away. A little nudge them can move our ship into that latter orbit. The catch is that this is slow. It might take decades or more to make the trip. The way you would use this in a colonization program is to build a series of unmanned cargo ships. Say a new cargo ship is completed every year. It would be stuffed full of supplies the colony will need, send to an appropriate Sun/Earth Lagrange point, and nudged onto its journey. Let's say these ships take 30 years to reach the destination. After we've been doing this for nearly 30 years then we'd send a ship with the colonists. That ship uses a fast but expensive orbit. It would only need to carry the colonists, the supplies they need during the trip, and fuel and supplies for an emergency return trip in case when they get there they find some reason that they cannot stay. Note that it doesn't need to carry any material to actually build the colony, or food and water for the colony. All that is in the cargo ships that are now arriving yearly. (If we are sure that the cargo ships are making it the human transport ship could even omit food, water, and fuel for an emergency return. Those can be on the first cargo ship). You'd want to build the cargo ships on the Moon, or build them in space using resources from the Moon, because getting from the Moon to Lagrange points takes a lot less energy than getting from the Moon to Lagrange points. The most plausible path then is to greatly expand industrialization of the Moon and the space near Earth. Probably then expand that to include space bases at some of the Lagrange points. Then it is time to start working on colonization. Unfortunately we'd probably not do Mars this way. If I recall correctly the low energy Lagrange transfer orbits to Mars are particularly slow--over a thousand years if I remember correctly.