3 ms·

It's worth mentioning that one of the more sane ways to terraform a planet is to redirect specific comets to crash into the planet. It would be "free" in the se

It's worth mentioning that one of the more sane ways to terraform a planet is to redirect specific comets to crash into the planet. It would be "free" in the sense that redirecting an orbit is already actively being studied by NASA for planetary defense reasons. To actually terraform a planet in this method would be unreasonably affordable compared to anything else I've ever heard. edit: Plus, it's nice to split our eggs into multiple planetary baskets. And I suspect people would feel a bit happier living on the surface of a chilly Mars than to become mole people on Mercury, even if it is easier. Maybe summer and winter homes?

woopsn 1y ago
I didn't think reasonable really has a definition here. The rendezvous with these comets will take centuries or millennia even if we can get out there and kick them the right way (which is much harder than arranging a miss). Only then do we start terraforming, which takes thousands/millions of years in addition. Who/whatever we're preparing the planet for probably wouldn't be "people" anymore. :)
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Only then do we start terraforming, which takes thousands/millions of years in addition The methods we could realistically launch into in our lifetimes would take thousands of years, not millions (but also not hundreds) [1]. Projects of these timescales have precedent in human history, usually with a healthy dose of religious zeal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars
  - woopsn 1y ago
    My impression was that pulverized rock/iron is not actually "soil", so after forming the atmosphere you need lengthy biochemical processes playing out on the surface. I admit though, I don't know too much about this.
    - b112 1y ago
      I think that we should consider "the future". Yes, it's intangible but consider this; go back 2 centuries and ask someone if they could setup a business concern which produced millions of widgets a year. They'd think you daffy. Now beyond that, ask them to produce any manner of modern device with the precision and high consistency we have. Again, they'd think you mad, and think that such was impossible. Yet here we are. The next stage in our development via LLMs is not about AI helping humans. It's about robotics. Automated assembly. Robots (not Androids) able to interact with the environment and able to problem solve akin to say.. a mouse. Soon, entire factories will be entirely automated. Many almost are. We don't need Von Neumann machines to see this future, but we will certainly have robots capable of building entire factories, collecting resources and processing them, and further building machines to spec. And those machines will be able to self-drive, self-operat autonomously. Anyone playing typical resource games knows about bootstrapping, but once in the asteroid field we're basically resource infinite. Building engines to attach to asteroids, mining asteroids, building factories to create more robots and engines, all of it will be automated. We toil at self-driving cars, yet this same tech enables self-driving robotics of all types. So I honestly think that once we bootstrap in space, this sort of thing can happen fast, fast, fast. Decades to send hundreds of thousands of ice-rich resources to Mars. The soil? Ah, genetic engineering. Really, this is an entirely new field, and frankly is beyond the danger yet benefit of nuclear science. We have the bomb, yet we have nuclear energy and medicine. Well genetics can obviously be far more deadly, and research all over the world, and startups, are already working on employing bacteria and organisms as self-replicating machines to do our bidding. The dangers are in our face, but oh well! So if we presume survival, then once an atmosphere is produced we can seed the planet with organisms which can survive on rock and yet work with a mania to process it. It's OK if we immediately have moss like grass substitute everywhere. As long as it's working its magic, we get continued O2 production, and we can always create a rabbit pet or something that licks moss to survive. Or are tasty. My point is, there are indeed many barriers. But we need to view them with where we will be in decades, not where we are now.
      - eru 1y ago
        > Yes, it's intangible but consider this; go back 2 centuries and ask someone if they could setup a business concern which produced millions of widgets a year. To go off on a tangent: two centuries ago was the height of the first industrial revolution (at least in Britain). The first time in history when this actually became realistic. The Industrial Revolution was the first time we had sustained, broad based productivity growth year after year (even if only around 1%, which is quite low by modern standards). Weirdly enough, we can see sustained productivity growth in artillery and guns long before the wider industry. Another weird connection: sometimes people look at a toy 'steam engine' that the ancient Romans had access to (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile) and wonder if they could have had an industrial revolution. But, to make a proper steam engine you need a lot more than just the right idea. You need a lot of metallurgy and precise crafting. Specifically one thing you need is precision crafted cylinders that gas can expand in to move a piston. Well, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, European nations had just spent several hundred years locked in existential competition over who can make precision crafted cylinders that gas can expand in to move a bullet.
eru 1y ago
> Plus, it's nice to split our eggs into multiple planetary baskets. Multiple baskets is good, but why planetary?
- baq 1y ago
  Too many dickheads with a bright idea of putting nuclear warheads on submersibles with a dead man’s switch on this planet.
  - eru 1y ago
    I mean, we can build space habitats, we don't need to settle planets.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Too many dickheads with a bright idea of putting nuclear warheads on submersibles with a dead man’s switch on this planet If we're nuking each other on Earth, I find it unlikely we wouldn't aim a nuke or two at that group's colony on Mars. The only thing a Martian colony is a hedge against is ecological collapse on Earth. Because we did something exceptionally stupid accidentally. Or because a rock came by to say hi.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      > The only thing a Martian colony is a hedge against is ecological collapse on Earth. Because we did something exceptionally stupid accidentally. Or because a rock came by to say hi. Even then, Mars is colder than the Antarctic, drier than the Sahara, has lower air pressure than the top of Mount Everest, has soil poisoned like a superfund cleanup site, has no meaningful ozone layer, has no magnetosphere protecting against CMEs, has half our solar irradiance level, and occasionally has planet-spanning dust storms, so the bare minimum for colonising Mars must be able to survive worse than any possible thing we can possibly do to Earth and also some of the bigger rocks coming by to say hi.

woopsn 1y ago

I didn't think reasonable really has a definition here. The rendezvous with these comets will take centuries or millennia even if we can get out there and kick them the right way (which is much harder than arranging a miss). Only then do we start terraforming, which takes thousands/millions of years in addition. Who/whatever we're preparing the planet for probably wouldn't be "people" anymore. :)

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Only then do we start terraforming, which takes thousands/millions of years in addition The methods we could realistically launch into in our lifetimes would take thousands of years, not millions (but also not hundreds) [1]. Projects of these timescales have precedent in human history, usually with a healthy dose of religious zeal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars
- woopsn 1y ago
  My impression was that pulverized rock/iron is not actually "soil", so after forming the atmosphere you need lengthy biochemical processes playing out on the surface. I admit though, I don't know too much about this.
  - b112 1y ago
    I think that we should consider "the future". Yes, it's intangible but consider this; go back 2 centuries and ask someone if they could setup a business concern which produced millions of widgets a year. They'd think you daffy. Now beyond that, ask them to produce any manner of modern device with the precision and high consistency we have. Again, they'd think you mad, and think that such was impossible. Yet here we are. The next stage in our development via LLMs is not about AI helping humans. It's about robotics. Automated assembly. Robots (not Androids) able to interact with the environment and able to problem solve akin to say.. a mouse. Soon, entire factories will be entirely automated. Many almost are. We don't need Von Neumann machines to see this future, but we will certainly have robots capable of building entire factories, collecting resources and processing them, and further building machines to spec. And those machines will be able to self-drive, self-operat autonomously. Anyone playing typical resource games knows about bootstrapping, but once in the asteroid field we're basically resource infinite. Building engines to attach to asteroids, mining asteroids, building factories to create more robots and engines, all of it will be automated. We toil at self-driving cars, yet this same tech enables self-driving robotics of all types. So I honestly think that once we bootstrap in space, this sort of thing can happen fast, fast, fast. Decades to send hundreds of thousands of ice-rich resources to Mars. The soil? Ah, genetic engineering. Really, this is an entirely new field, and frankly is beyond the danger yet benefit of nuclear science. We have the bomb, yet we have nuclear energy and medicine. Well genetics can obviously be far more deadly, and research all over the world, and startups, are already working on employing bacteria and organisms as self-replicating machines to do our bidding. The dangers are in our face, but oh well! So if we presume survival, then once an atmosphere is produced we can seed the planet with organisms which can survive on rock and yet work with a mania to process it. It's OK if we immediately have moss like grass substitute everywhere. As long as it's working its magic, we get continued O2 production, and we can always create a rabbit pet or something that licks moss to survive. Or are tasty. My point is, there are indeed many barriers. But we need to view them with where we will be in decades, not where we are now.
    - eru 1y ago
      > Yes, it's intangible but consider this; go back 2 centuries and ask someone if they could setup a business concern which produced millions of widgets a year. To go off on a tangent: two centuries ago was the height of the first industrial revolution (at least in Britain). The first time in history when this actually became realistic. The Industrial Revolution was the first time we had sustained, broad based productivity growth year after year (even if only around 1%, which is quite low by modern standards). Weirdly enough, we can see sustained productivity growth in artillery and guns long before the wider industry. Another weird connection: sometimes people look at a toy 'steam engine' that the ancient Romans had access to (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile) and wonder if they could have had an industrial revolution. But, to make a proper steam engine you need a lot more than just the right idea. You need a lot of metallurgy and precise crafting. Specifically one thing you need is precision crafted cylinders that gas can expand in to move a piston. Well, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, European nations had just spent several hundred years locked in existential competition over who can make precision crafted cylinders that gas can expand in to move a bullet.

eru 1y ago

> Plus, it's nice to split our eggs into multiple planetary baskets. Multiple baskets is good, but why planetary?

baq 1y ago
Too many dickheads with a bright idea of putting nuclear warheads on submersibles with a dead man’s switch on this planet.
- eru 1y ago
  I mean, we can build space habitats, we don't need to settle planets.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Too many dickheads with a bright idea of putting nuclear warheads on submersibles with a dead man’s switch on this planet If we're nuking each other on Earth, I find it unlikely we wouldn't aim a nuke or two at that group's colony on Mars. The only thing a Martian colony is a hedge against is ecological collapse on Earth. Because we did something exceptionally stupid accidentally. Or because a rock came by to say hi.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    > The only thing a Martian colony is a hedge against is ecological collapse on Earth. Because we did something exceptionally stupid accidentally. Or because a rock came by to say hi. Even then, Mars is colder than the Antarctic, drier than the Sahara, has lower air pressure than the top of Mount Everest, has soil poisoned like a superfund cleanup site, has no meaningful ozone layer, has no magnetosphere protecting against CMEs, has half our solar irradiance level, and occasionally has planet-spanning dust storms, so the bare minimum for colonising Mars must be able to survive worse than any possible thing we can possibly do to Earth and also some of the bigger rocks coming by to say hi.