The Astronomy Thread

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Ukerric

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Lambourne said:
Ideally the colony has to be big enough to keep civilization going and growing, you'd want to have enough people to mine, manufacture and research, not just sit there growing and eating food. Musk's idea of a million people on Mars is based on this.
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And it's on the reasonable minimal size. Our civilization has advanced enough technologically that extreme specialization is useful and necessary for it to exist, and extreme specialists need a large number of other people to sustain their economic justification. A classic example is neurosurgery: there's one neurosurgeon for every 100k people in the USA, and if you want to keep the specialty of neurosurgery sustainable, then you need at least half a dozen of them so they can keep teaching. Hence, 1 million people. Less than that? You no longer have neurosurgery in your colony, it's a mostly general surgeon that will do basic neurosurgery and the rest is "well, that's too bad".
 
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Cybsled

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Venus does have the advantage of temperature, gravity, and pressure if they used the proposed floating settlement that is high enough in the atmosphere where the temperatures and pressures would be in the survivable range for the most part, in theory just need breathers or thin environmental suit when outside. . Solar and Wind power would also be much more viable options for power generation. The biggest hurdle is lack of water or event sufficient atmospheric oxygen to manufacture water. On Mars you at least have that as a resource available to you.

Access to sufficient quantities of water is the primary thing needed for any long term habitation outside Earth, just like it is required for any long term habitation on Earth itself.
 
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Tuco

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iannis said:
The idea of a star empire is, and I don't mean this in a rude way, supremely stupid.

It makes for good Sci-fi. But when you consider even just a few of the practical realities you have to realize it's an adolescent mythology. It's a story they told us when we were 13 to get us excited. It's a powerful story. It's a good story. The problem is that it's just a story. Even simple things like language drift, not to mention genetic drift, if you can bring yourself to honestly consider them, will show you that.

At what point in fixing solutions to these problems do we stop being human? And now the argument has nullified itself. There's a plot hole, bro's.

Hey, if we -can- colonize mars then why not? If it's profitable all the better. If it's not, it might happen more slowly but happen anyway. Life finds a way. But "a meteor might hit us" is not a very good reason to do so. If a meteor hits earth and we have a colony on mars and i'm on earth... I don't care. I just don't care. "A meteor might hit us" is a very good reason to do other things.

It is an irrational attachment to physical form masquerading as an intellectual argument. Anthrophillia. The argument should not be "the human race, our progeny". It should be intelligent life. Because as far as we know or are able to prove this planet IS unique and there IS a good argument for propagation of intelligence.

The things that colonize centauri you won't recognize as human. Continuation of the species misses the point. Continuation of the society makes the same mistake.

It's the love of life and the propagation of intelligence. Not the fear of death.

You're gonna die, dude. There is no immortality in that dream.

I don't like Transhumanism. But that's because i'm human.
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This is a bunch of loser talk.
 
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Aldarion

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iannis said:
There are solar system ending calamities too. A gamma ray burst fries everything within the area of a sphere.

The focus of a civilization should be the quality of life for its members, not the quantity.

Exploration and production expansion can serve that goal. Meteor impact s are not generally persuasive as a reason for expansion for root psychological reasons. That's a rationalization of something else. Which, I'm not calling anyone stupid, but I've seen frustration about the argument. What you think is absolutely self evident is not. It also does not address primal drives or needs.

None of that means I'm against the idea, personally I am for it. But I'll vote for Medicare first, and so will everyone else.

The way to approach it is not fear of death, the way to approach it is love of life.

Think about it this way. All of our explorers either already had a buck or they were looking to make one. Existential fear drove exactly 0% of them.
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First, the focus should obviously be quantity * quality, not quality alone. The more people, the better for all people and for the species, as long as new resources can be exploited to support the new people with adequate quality of life.

Second, I cant agree with quality of life as a way to sell this. "The space program brings us innovations!" is easily refuted with "fuck Tang, pay my Medicare instead". And adventure only drives adventurers, not governments. I am skeptical there are enough Elon Musks to get us off this rock.

The real underlying motivation for this is duty to our species, just like many things in life. I dont see why we cant sell it that way. Then again, I'll vote for space programs over Medicare any day of the week...
 
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BrutulTM

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Lambourne said:
It's small comfort for the billions that die but if you have to choose between going extinct or going extinct except for some small colony on Mars, the second option is clearly better.
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Why?
 
Lambourne

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Cybsled said:
Venus does have the advantage of temperature, gravity, and pressure if they used the proposed floating settlement that is high enough in the atmosphere where the temperatures and pressures would be in the survivable range for the most part, in theory just need breathers or thin environmental suit when outside. . Solar and Wind power would also be much more viable options for power generation. The biggest hurdle is lack of water or event sufficient atmospheric oxygen to manufacture water. On Mars you at least have that as a resource available to you.

Access to sufficient quantities of water is the primary thing needed for any long term habitation outside Earth, just like it is required for any long term habitation on Earth itself.
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Aside from water, you want to be able to mine iron and aluminium to build things with. This is much more difficult on Venus. Not just the mining but also carrying everything up a few dozen miles through a very thick atmosphere to get to the colony. If it's just a colony for a few people to live in you don't need that of course, but I think the long term objective should be to be self-supporting.


BrutulTM said:
Why?
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Not to be a smartass, but why not? Not going extinct seems better than going extinct, this seems self evident to me.
 
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C

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BrutulTM said:
Why?
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Reverse the proportionality. "I'm going to die, so why should I care if my kids or any of the other 7 billion people survive?"

If you have any non-nihilist sense of ethics, then the right thing to do is act in a way that maximizes the positive experience of sentient life.
 
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Tuco

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Captain Suave said:
Same argument works if you reverse the proportionality. I'm going to die, so why should I care if my kids or any of the other 7 billion people survive?

If you have any non-nihilist sense of ethics, then the right thing to do is act in a way that maximizes the positive experience of sentient life.
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Because while you're alive you'll enjoy the thought that life will continue beyond you, thereby maximizing your personal positive experience.
 
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C

Captain Suave

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Tuco said:
Because while you're alive you'll enjoy the thought that life will continue beyond you, thereby maximizing your personal positive experience.
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Right, that was a sloppily-worded counterpoint (now edited slightly). Presumably enjoying the thought of life continuing comes with non-nihilism.
 
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BrutulTM

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Captain Suave said:
Reverse the proportionality. "I'm going to die, so why should I care if my kids or any of the other 7 billion people survive?"

If you have any non-nihilist sense of ethics, then the right thing to do is act in a way that maximizes the positive experience of sentient life.
Click to expand...

If there's a truly self-sustaining population somewhere else that would be one thing, but there was mention of just a space station or a handful of people living in a sealed colony on Mars or something. I can see the desire to inhabit a new planet permanently, but that's so far from being practical at this point that you might as well say you want to build a spaceship to tow the earth out of the way of asteroids.

Even if you're talking about a colony of a couple hundred people that's capable of generating their own energy and food on Mars, that's hardly a society. They would have no hope of doing anything but surviving with zero quality of life and they're going to go backwards in technology very quickly. For society to advance or even break even, a large population that can sustain themselves based on the labor of a small percentage of the population is required. I don't think you have to be nihilistic to say that's not really a worthwhile existence.

I'm not against space exploration, but we're nowhere near becoming a species that can survive without the earth in any meaningful way.
 
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C

Captain Suave

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BrutulTM said:
If there's a truly self-sustaining population somewhere else that would be one thing, but there was mention of just a space station or a handful of people living in a sealed colony on Mars or something... I'm not against space exploration, but we're nowhere near becoming a species that can survive without the earth in any meaningful way.
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If they're on an inevitable slow slide into death, then perhaps, but given the right tech a group that is "small" relative to Earth population could certainly survive. Yes, we're not near that point yet but that's all the more reason to try now. We're definitely not going to develop the necessary tech without giving it a go and seeing what problems crop up.
 
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AladainAF

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LachiusTZ said:
Imo Mars is dumb. Cylinders > Venus > Mars.
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Venus is wild. Just the like 5 surface pics that have come out of it from the Varena missions are fucking rad. That yellow sky, yo. Shit's gotta be brutal.

1550287472484.png
 
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Cybsled

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Ya, surface of Venus is no bueno. Many 100s of degrees, acid atmosphere, crushing pressure, massive winds.

Unless you're the protomolecule, you aren't doing much down there
 
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Merrith

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Dom said:
I thought Europa was hailed as the most likely solution these days?
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Solution to what is the question. For human colonization? Hell no. One of the top candidates to have very simple life in the subsurface ocean, maybe.
 
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A

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Merrith said:
Solution to what is the question. For human colonization? Hell no. One of the top candidates to have very simple life in the subsurface ocean, maybe.
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Probably misremembering things, but I recall there being some talk about the potential for using geo-thermal energy under the ice to power habitats.
 
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Cybsled

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Plus the Outer Planets are -really- far away. With current tech, you'd be looking at a trip taking close to a couple years just to get to Jupiter.

Barring the discovery of a real life Epstein Drive, humans aren't going to that neighborhood any time soon.

Probably misremembering things, but I recall there being some talk about the potential for using geo-thermal energy under the ice to power habitats.
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Tidal heating due to Jupiter's gravity is presumed to be what makes it possible to have liquid oceans under the ice. But if you're going to Europe or Ganymede or whatever, you'd be using fusion/nuclear power at that point.
 
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LachiusTZ

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Cybsled said:
Ya, surface of Venus is no bueno. Many 100s of degrees, acid atmosphere, crushing pressure, massive winds.

Unless you're the protomolecule, you aren't doing much down there
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Don't think the plan is for the surface.

Isaac Arthur has me convinced on moon base then cylinders.

Doesn't matter, soon Kessler syndrome will kick in and we will be locked out.
 
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