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We're one good new religion away from colonizing the solar system. Cathedrals were built over 100s of years. Imaging just living in a massive one and your whol

We're one good new religion away from colonizing the solar system. Cathedrals were built over 100s of years. Imaging just living in a massive one and your whole holy purpose is to survive and thrive and spread. It's entirely reasonable we'd have the will to make it happen, and pretty reasonable we'd be able to build it with planet scale effort, but sadly quite difficult to imagine it surviving even dust impacts for 400 years.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> quite difficult to imagine it surviving even dust impacts for 400 years Whipple shields [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  > up to 18km/s Vs > 0.1c Off by quite a bit
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Where are you getting either of these figures?
    - jvanderbot 1y ago
      The up to 18km/s is from the linked shield. Up to 0.1c is from the interstellar spaceship competition "cruise" speeds (also used 0.01c) as presented in their deck. They're a few orders of magnitude difference. Also, there's plenty of resources around on interstellar travel that shows interstellar dust/debris is going to be a huge problem. For example Atomic Rockets, which has a bunch of good reference materials (albeit poorly organized), or the Astronomy Cafe https://sten.astronomycafe.net/at-what-speed-does-the-interstellar-medium-become-lethal-to-high-speed-flight/ https://sten.astronomycafe.net/at-what-speed-does-the-inters...
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  Whipple shields are consumed by impacts.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Whipple shields are consumed by impacts Everything is consumed on such a voyage. If we can send a generation ship at 0.01c, we can send replacement parts quicker and probes ahead to verify our estimates even faster.
    - jvanderbot 1y ago
      Are you just casually handwaving away sending a dockable resupply ship at 0.01c to somewhere in interstellar space, then doing some kind of rendesvous with it at 0.01c with a spaceship measured kilometers in length? There's no free lunch. Every gram of mass that you want to get to interstellar space requires exactly as much fuel to get there as you'd have to add to the original spacecraft to just carry it. (thought experiment - have them fly side by side, then connect them by string, then shorten the string until they touch, then weld them together - the fuel required doesn't change at any point). And a shield + a resupply ship has a lot more grams than just adding the shield to the original thing.
Apocryphon 1y ago
I've played that game: http://irontowerstudio.com/colony-ship-news http://irontowerstudio.com/colony-ship-news
teiferer 1y ago
> It's entirely reasonable we'd have the will to make it happen "We" are not even able to sustainably inhabit our current planet. We have hundreds of millions starving every day, we have wars in many places, the threat of thermonuclear war looming as strong as ever, and are still using natural resources at an unsustainable rate even though we know that that's the case. Settling on other planets has all these problems plus the issue of getting there plus the issue that the environment you find there is more hostile than the most hostile desert areas here on earth. We currently live on paradise planet and can't even make things work well around here. Hard to see how you could make things work on Mars where you can't just go outside pick a leaf to eat and get some water to drink. Or just, you know, breathe.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  We are a life form that triggered major environmental crisis and is trying to adapt to it at unprecedented speed that no other life form achieved in the past. Our base line for being able to make changes isn’t science fiction but couple billions of history of life on this planet. Our goals are ambitious but we are doing surprisingly well. Just not as we want it to happen.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  We do not have hundreds of millions starving every day. And if we did, we don't have a large portion of industrialized/militarized missions starving every day anway. We'd send the best of the best, hand picked, with the best tech we can build. It's fine if you believe we should not go (but I disagree), but the state of the world is not evidence of failure of the mission.
  - teiferer 1y ago
    > We do not have hundreds of millions starving every day. Then maybe it's time you stop being ignorant. It's not even hard to google. Start with the WHO, over 700 million people faced hunger and malnutrition in 2023. [1] And I'm not particularly interested in how you will try to nitpick your way out of that. It's so easy in the west and in upper classes of the developing world to close your eyes to this. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stubbornly-high-for-three-consecutive-years-as-global-crises-deepen--un-report https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stub... > And if we did, we don't have a large portion of industrialized/militarized missions starving every day anway. We'd send the best of the best, hand picked, with the best tech we can build. Initially, sure. But that's not what I was talking about. Eventually you want to build a civilization there, right? Eventually you have millions there. And it's hard to see how you will be able to organize a society in large scale in a way that does not have the problems humankind currently has if you can't even fix that here which compared to all other planets is a nature paradise. Even after a thermonuclear war, earth is easier to live on than any other planet in this solar system. Time to leave your scifi bubble if you believe otherwise. > It's fine if you believe we should not go (but I disagree), but the state of the world is not evidence of failure of the mission. The state of the world is evidence of failure of a mission that is much easier than building a civilization on another planet.
dotancohen 1y ago
> your whole holy purpose is to survive and thrive and spread. Religion already covers that. Go forth, and multiply.
FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
Imperium of Man?

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> quite difficult to imagine it surviving even dust impacts for 400 years Whipple shields [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield

jvanderbot 1y ago
> up to 18km/s Vs > 0.1c Off by quite a bit
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  Where are you getting either of these figures?
  - jvanderbot 1y ago
    The up to 18km/s is from the linked shield. Up to 0.1c is from the interstellar spaceship competition "cruise" speeds (also used 0.01c) as presented in their deck. They're a few orders of magnitude difference. Also, there's plenty of resources around on interstellar travel that shows interstellar dust/debris is going to be a huge problem. For example Atomic Rockets, which has a bunch of good reference materials (albeit poorly organized), or the Astronomy Cafe https://sten.astronomycafe.net/at-what-speed-does-the-interstellar-medium-become-lethal-to-high-speed-flight/ https://sten.astronomycafe.net/at-what-speed-does-the-inters...
privatelypublic 1y ago
Whipple shields are consumed by impacts.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Whipple shields are consumed by impacts Everything is consumed on such a voyage. If we can send a generation ship at 0.01c, we can send replacement parts quicker and probes ahead to verify our estimates even faster.
  - jvanderbot 1y ago
    Are you just casually handwaving away sending a dockable resupply ship at 0.01c to somewhere in interstellar space, then doing some kind of rendesvous with it at 0.01c with a spaceship measured kilometers in length? There's no free lunch. Every gram of mass that you want to get to interstellar space requires exactly as much fuel to get there as you'd have to add to the original spacecraft to just carry it. (thought experiment - have them fly side by side, then connect them by string, then shorten the string until they touch, then weld them together - the fuel required doesn't change at any point). And a shield + a resupply ship has a lot more grams than just adding the shield to the original thing.

Apocryphon 1y ago

I've played that game: http://irontowerstudio.com/colony-ship-news http://irontowerstudio.com/colony-ship-news

teiferer 1y ago

> It's entirely reasonable we'd have the will to make it happen "We" are not even able to sustainably inhabit our current planet. We have hundreds of millions starving every day, we have wars in many places, the threat of thermonuclear war looming as strong as ever, and are still using natural resources at an unsustainable rate even though we know that that's the case. Settling on other planets has all these problems plus the issue of getting there plus the issue that the environment you find there is more hostile than the most hostile desert areas here on earth. We currently live on paradise planet and can't even make things work well around here. Hard to see how you could make things work on Mars where you can't just go outside pick a leaf to eat and get some water to drink. Or just, you know, breathe.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
We are a life form that triggered major environmental crisis and is trying to adapt to it at unprecedented speed that no other life form achieved in the past. Our base line for being able to make changes isn’t science fiction but couple billions of history of life on this planet. Our goals are ambitious but we are doing surprisingly well. Just not as we want it to happen.
jvanderbot 1y ago
We do not have hundreds of millions starving every day. And if we did, we don't have a large portion of industrialized/militarized missions starving every day anway. We'd send the best of the best, hand picked, with the best tech we can build. It's fine if you believe we should not go (but I disagree), but the state of the world is not evidence of failure of the mission.
- teiferer 1y ago
  > We do not have hundreds of millions starving every day. Then maybe it's time you stop being ignorant. It's not even hard to google. Start with the WHO, over 700 million people faced hunger and malnutrition in 2023. [1] And I'm not particularly interested in how you will try to nitpick your way out of that. It's so easy in the west and in upper classes of the developing world to close your eyes to this. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stubbornly-high-for-three-consecutive-years-as-global-crises-deepen--un-report https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stub... > And if we did, we don't have a large portion of industrialized/militarized missions starving every day anway. We'd send the best of the best, hand picked, with the best tech we can build. Initially, sure. But that's not what I was talking about. Eventually you want to build a civilization there, right? Eventually you have millions there. And it's hard to see how you will be able to organize a society in large scale in a way that does not have the problems humankind currently has if you can't even fix that here which compared to all other planets is a nature paradise. Even after a thermonuclear war, earth is easier to live on than any other planet in this solar system. Time to leave your scifi bubble if you believe otherwise. > It's fine if you believe we should not go (but I disagree), but the state of the world is not evidence of failure of the mission. The state of the world is evidence of failure of a mission that is much easier than building a civilization on another planet.

dotancohen 1y ago

> your whole holy purpose is to survive and thrive and spread. Religion already covers that. Go forth, and multiply.

FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago

Imperium of Man?