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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Where are they going to go? They're just going to stay on the ship and study the planets they find? You're not going to be able to colonize other planets without long periods of geoengineering on each one, and they'll seldom be very nice even after that. Based on what? We still don't have a good grasp of how common Earth-like planets in habitable zones are, let alone whether they're actually habitable or not, or whether exomoons are common, etc. Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Aug 13, 2020 |
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Aug 13, 2020 15:30
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We evolved to live on the Earth. We’d need a planet identical to the Earth, which has an atmosphere that was caused by a bunch of random events involving different specific organisms making oxygen and carbon dioxide. Those events are unlikely to happen somewhere else in exactly the same way. There wasn’t even enough oxygen in the atmosphere of the Earth during the Triassic for humans to breathe without risking passing out from strenuous activity. It would have been like living on a mountain peak 24/7. “Habitable” as in capable of hosting life that adapts and thrives is very different from “we could live there without pressure suits and oxygen tanks.” I AM GRANDO fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 13, 2020 |
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Aug 13, 2020 17:08
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Why would we want to live in another gravity well? That seems like a losing proposition. Space colonies are where its at.
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Aug 13, 2020 17:19
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Dameius posted:Why would we want to live in another gravity well? That seems like a losing proposition. Space colonies are where its at. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTDlSORhI-k  
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Aug 13, 2020 17:24
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Any good scifi or even just theoretical pontificating on the idea of humans developing a technology to harness the power of the sun and use it to turn our solar system into a space ship. You know why leave earth behind when we can just use the power of the sun to drive it places. Would the solar system be the best spaceship after all? I like to annoy my wife by saying space travel is boring we are already doing it right now.
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Aug 13, 2020 17:52
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:We evolved to live on the Earth. We’d need a planet identical to the Earth, which has an atmosphere that was caused by a bunch of random events involving different specific organisms making oxygen and carbon dioxide. Those events are unlikely to happen somewhere else in exactly the same way. There wasn’t even enough oxygen in the atmosphere of the Earth during the Triassic for humans to breathe without risking passing out from strenuous activity. It would have been like living on a mountain peak 24/7. We absolutely don't need a planet identical to Earth. Humans can tolerate reasonable ranges in temperatures, oxygen concentration, atmospheric pressure and (probably) surface gravity, though not so much radiation exposure. We know basically nothing about terrestial/rocky exoplanet atmospheres and won't until JWST/30-meter telescopes come online so it's far too early to guess at how rare oxygen-rich atmospheres and/or water-rich exoplanets are.
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Aug 13, 2020 18:11
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I think planets are just the cheapest way to double your population 'overnight' and by overnight I mean like 5,000 years. However not being in a gravity well is also very good because then infrastructure setup is much easier because the transport cost of floatinfban object from space point A to space point Bbis much easier Think of the age of sailing transportation method. Lot of ways bottles of wine can be cracked or rats eat the goods. As in landing ships on a planet weekly to supplement things would have a big loss ratio due to reentry constraints. --- as a side question, How Big of a ship could land on a planet without causing horrific side effects? Like mega sonic booms etc? I know there's a star trek book I read like 10 years ago where they warped the enterprise into a planets atmosphere and it hosed poo poo up heavily.
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Aug 13, 2020 18:40
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GarudaPrime posted:Any good scifi or even just theoretical pontificating on the idea of humans developing a technology to harness the power of the sun and use it to turn our solar system into a space ship. Yeah there is some. The most obvious answer that comes to mind right now would be the stellar engine, as explored by Kurzgesagt. That actually spawned a white paper if I remember right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU
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Aug 13, 2020 22:18
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:And yet people do live there. The idea humans will only move to better “habitats” just doesn’t match real life. 
silence_kit fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Aug 13, 2020 |
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Aug 13, 2020 23:09
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I'm a little suspicious about the intent behind some of these posts but this is in my wheel house.Communist Thoughts posted:Everyone seems to be just ignoring the question of distance and assuming that interstellar travel is the same as sailing to an island so all you need is a will to do it While interstellar travel will perhaps be one of the most difficult and challenging feats of engineering to date; nothing about it from a theoretical perspective is at all all that difficult and well within reason as "something we can do really soon if we threw a lot of resources at it." This isn't a timespan of 5,000 years but perhaps something we could do if we dropped everything to focus on mainly this one thing, 30 to 50 years; but more likely within the next 100 to 150 years. Regardless of that whether or not there's "pressure" is I think not a reasonable assumption. We do a lot of expensive and challenging things despite there being no pressure. The Apollo space program and its decade long due date by JFK had no pressure behind it other than dick waving; however it was something we still did specifically because it was challenging. So the idea we can't or won't do something because it is merely challenging or there's no current existential pressures driving it, is just without any reason. The distances are long yes, but a generation ship carrying 5,000 to 50,000 people built inside an asteroid rotating to provide artificial gravity, propelled by some scaled up magnetodynamic thrust powered by a fusion reactor all theoretically plausible technologies just around the corner to varying degrees would make such a trip feasible. We'd probably want to send unmanned probes first to confirm the existence of a habitable planet or a planet easily terraformed first but the trip itself is possible. But really, in reality it all comes down to having a will, because when there's a will there's a way, period. I don't wanna get too side tracked by this as we're on the same side here, but I don't think space colonies will ever hold more than 1% of the total human population; and would be a long time before the infrastructure for their rapid and mass production becomes economically viable. For billions of people we want terra firma beneath our boots. We can begin colonizing mars within 12 years and have it terraformed perhaps in 100; while getting enough O'neill cylinders for even just a mere million people (out of a population of 9 billion currently) would take a LOT longer until we have much of the solar system established with the infrastructure and on Earth space elevators. Monglo posted:Thats why I used the silly comparison of Underwater Cities. Average person, I think, would be against living in dangerous and harsh conditions, if given the choice. "If you build it, they will come". There are several hypothetical designs for underwater archologies, see here:  Clearly there is a demand for all kinds of living arrangements, no matter how silly you in your subjectively narrow view point think of them; you shouldn't blindly discount them. I get the sense you didn't really research this topic because it's clear there's a lot of information out there that's easy to find you just didn't bother to find. People will live anywhere; especially anywhere that can be made comfortable for them. The 180 day trip to Mars can be made luxurious, living on Mars can be made to eventually be luxurious, as is the moon, or in space, or in another solar system. And you get the benefit of a new life, with a smaller section of people who think similarly to you, like living on the frontier in the wild west. Most people who strike out to colonize a new land aren't average people. The pilgrims who colonized America were fleeing religious persecution, many of the early settlers especially in new France were prisoners or wards of the state sent their against their will. The USSR solidified the states hold over Siberia via the gulags. Whether its because of grim authoritarian interest or because of tragedy, or because they're weird, people will settle anywhere for any manner of reasons. There are thousands of people who would line up around the block to be the first colonists on Mars; people who are dissatisfied with their current living condition and are looking for a new start. Many of the people leaving the Russian Empire or later the USSR for the west did so because of substantial incentivies providing by the Canadian and American governments at the time. But most importantly, you had massive waves of immigration to the Americas after centuries of hard work was already put in by the first colonists who struggled and died in large numbers to scrap together that foothold. Many of the early settlements of the Americas had mass die offs, or failed entirely, or would have failed if it weren't for the local natives who fed them and clothed them. The home countries of the era invested a lot of resources at great cost to set up those colonies, and it's doubtful they ever really profited from them. But they succeeded, and now the greatest superpower the world has ever known stands tall over those former colonial dominions. Our future descendents on Mars or some other planet in some other star system could stand so tall as to bask us in their shadow. It's not the average person who goes there to be the first wave, it's indeed exceptional people that choose to go. Or we force them at gun point either because they're prisoners or refugees fleeing oppression. Who knows what the future holds but there's loads of possibility. But once they did the hard work of establishing a functioning colony; then average people will have no qualms in going; because it's no longer a significant challenge to go and make a living there, the hard work in breaking new ground has already been done. As to your last part of your post; civilizations are incentivized to explore and form colonies for variety of reasons. The amount of resources on our planet is finite, eventually its going to be cheaper to blow up asteroids for their resources; especially if we develop and construct space elevators. And once the infrastructure in space exists and we're +1 and approaching +2 on the K-scale of energy consumption we're basically at the point that exploring other star system's isn't a considerable jump in our capability; we'd have a class of people by then who are very use to traveling alone in space for a long time over vast distances and loads of people living in crowded places who want a new start somewhere else and a lot of experience in building the large space structures that would be essential for the hive ships we'd be sending. Additionally it is always in our interest to explore, because exploring may introduce us to new resources and new science that can benefit us. Dameius posted:Yeah there is some. The most obvious answer that comes to mind right now would be the stellar engine, as explored by Kurzgesagt. That actually spawned a white paper if I remember right. Not only does this in theory work, it also in theory prolongs the length of our son by a *very* long time!
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Aug 13, 2020 23:22
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Dameius posted:Why would we want to live in another gravity well? That seems like a losing proposition. Space colonies are where its at. If we ever develop the tech to create stable, long-term and large-scale livable isolated environments, why'd we build them in space when we could just construct them on Earth?
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Aug 13, 2020 23:23
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Conspiratiorist posted:If we ever develop the tech to create stable, long-term and large-scale livable isolated environments, why'd we build them in space when we could just construct them on Earth? To get access to the infinite resources space offers, to off-world our industry that's unsustainable for our climate to maintain on Earth. Additionally perhaps we might not want to build more structures on Earth that destroys forests, habitats, and chews up nature when we probably want to be consolidating the population into archologies and leaving the Earth back to nature; while space is free, infinite, real estate.
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Aug 13, 2020 23:27
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On a rather grim note, I'd also like to point out that technologies and practices that are developed in order to cope with and perpetuate human life, whether it be on a space colony, moon base, or Mars base, will have direct applications for human survival in the coming centuries of climate change on earth, if worst-case scenarios play out. Hydroponic techniques needed for a permanent space settlement, for example, have found applications in vertical farming techniques that may become necessary for agriculture once arable land starts to dry up and human-habitable zones begin to creep northward. While the pace of global warming means that northern tundra areas will become more temperate, the soils of these areas are comparatively poor, and cannot sustain the kind of agriculture needed to support present human populations. Sealed habitat structures and environment suits designed to purify perchlorate pollution and keep out toxic atmospheres, and CO2 rebreathing technology, may find applications in future on-earth arcologies if it turns out that the ocean euxinia theory is correct and the atmosphere becomes toxic to human health. Life-support methods that are used to keep crews safe on a long Mars trip, or a moon base, may find application in shelters and small communities that are forced to down-size as populations flee equatorial cities and rural areas. I could also see advanced techniques of 3D printing, reusable, durable, modular technology, and that kind of thing, which will be necessary to maintain early Moon and Mars colonies, being critical to allowing manufacturing and maintenance activities to continue even in a breakdown of global trade networks. At the most extreme end of the scenario, we may actively need to colonize outer space if climate change makes Earth uninhabitable for the near future timespan. TL;DR: We have technologies today that can be applied to developing and sustaining off-world bases and stations. Actually applying them and developing the knowledge and skills learned in solving outer space challenges will be directly useful in solving on-earth climate survival challenges. Since space survival / Mars survival is orders of magnitude more difficult and challenging than it is on Earth, whatever we learn in the course of exploring space will make climate change survival that much easier in comparison. EDIT: I do not think that the 8-10C scenario is realistic in climate projections, and according to our best models at present, the range of climate sensitivity has narrowed to between 2.6-4.1C with a doubling of 560 ppm by 2060.. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 13, 2020 23:49
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DrSunshine posted:At the most extreme end of the scenario, we may actively need to colonize outer space if climate change makes Earth uninhabitable for the near future timespan. How could outer space ever be more habitable than Planet Earth? Maybe if the Earth was on a path to spiral into the Sun and totally get vaporized, it would make sense to leave the planet. Earth could get hit by an asteroid, be covered in nuclear waste, etc. etc. and it would still be a much better place for humans to live than anywhere else in space.
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Aug 14, 2020 00:17
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DrSunshine posted:EDIT: I do not think that the 8-10C scenario is realistic in climate projections, and according to our best models at present, the range of climate sensitivity has narrowed to between 2.6-4.1C. Well... when you combine the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios, which unlike the old RCPs account for the effects of land-use changes and sulfate emissions for their different narratives, with our next generation climate models showing an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity higher than previously considered for the IPCC's 5th Assessement Report, you get cool numbers like this on the first rounds of CIMP6:  Now, it's unlikely we go full SSP5 due to a variety of reasons, but our sociopolitical situation is looking between SSP3 and SSP4, and this is only contemplating end-century outcomes.
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Aug 14, 2020 00:25
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silence_kit posted:How could outer space ever be more habitable than Planet Earth? Maybe if the Earth was on a path to spiral into the Sun and totally get vaporized, it would make sense to leave the planet. Earth could get hit by an asteroid, be covered in nuclear waste, etc. etc. and it would still be a much better place for humans to live than anywhere else in space. Ocean anoxia leading to hydrogen sulfide release that makes the air toxic to humans, and ozone layer destruction. I've come around to the idea of a Permo-Triassic-like scenario possibly making Earth uninhabitable for humans in the medium-term. Not that I think it's very likely to happen within the next couple centuries, but it would be a situation where space colonization is a more attractive scenario from the aforementioned living space / energy and resource perspective.
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Aug 14, 2020 00:50
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I'm more of a domer myself.
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Aug 14, 2020 02:00
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silence_kit posted:How could outer space ever be more habitable than Planet Earth? Maybe if the Earth was on a path to spiral into the Sun and totally get vaporized, it would make sense to leave the planet. Earth could get hit by an asteroid, be covered in nuclear waste, etc. etc. and it would still be a much better place for humans to live than anywhere else in space. Market forces dictate that if its easier and more cost-effective to construct artificial environments in space, then we will do so, until the market stabilizes and this reverses such that it becomes more effective to build on Earth. A suitable carbon tax that disincentivizes further mining for rare earths could allow for in the future for cheaper extraction from asteroids and so on; and the technological innovation and development that occurs will have direct benefits on Earth and vice versa. It's not so much that a run away greenhouse gas effect will make O'neil cylinders better to live in; its that the amount of space on the planet that would sustain such ideal living conditions will be eroded to the point that space becomes more attractive and we become incentivized to abandon areas of the earth damaged by climate change instead of trying to reclaim those spaces. The point is on Earth we don't want to build arcologies in Antarctica or build a dome over Florida; we want to leave Antarctica be for the greater glory of mankind as a giant nature preserve and let Florida sink into the sea and let nature takes its course while switching our attention and imposing our will in outer space.
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Aug 14, 2020 02:00
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Conspiratiorist posted:I'm more of a domer myself. You can build a dome independent of a gravity well. You can even bore a hole in an asteroid and put it there.
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Aug 14, 2020 05:07
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Dameius posted:You can build a dome independent of a gravity well. You can even bore a hole in an asteroid and put it there. Asteroids don't have cheap and ready access to immigrant slave labor, a key element of avant garde construction projects.
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Aug 14, 2020 05:50
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Conspiratiorist posted:Asteroids don't have cheap and ready access to immigrant slave labor, a key element of avant garde construction projects. But if you are not boring a hole in an exotic location was the dome even worth it?
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Aug 14, 2020 14:20
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Conspiratiorist posted:Asteroids don't have cheap and ready access to immigrant slave labor, a key element of avant garde construction projects. 
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Aug 14, 2020 14:54
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Obviously we just import labour to work the asteroid mines; in the Expanse part of the incentive for people leaving Earth was that there was a lack of employment opportunities and ice mining tended to be while dangerous, the only shot for many at a decent life.
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Aug 14, 2020 21:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:Obviously we just import labour to work the asteroid mines; in the Expanse part of the incentive for people leaving Earth was that there was a lack of employment opportunities and ice mining tended to be while dangerous, the only shot for many at a decent life. in the first episode the viewer wonders in amazement at why anyone would be an ice miner when you see them casually dismembered and matter of factly discussing how the ships ancient life support systems may crap out and kill them all then a few episodes later you see that most of new york city is an open air homeless camp great series
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Aug 14, 2020 21:23
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:in the first episode the viewer wonders in amazement at why anyone would be an ice miner when you see them casually dismembered and matter of factly discussing how the ships ancient life support systems may crap out and kill them all Tbf, unlike the Martian operations which have newer more modern and safer ships, Holden's outfit was probably operating on an older ship that was likely cutting corners. Like people can get arms regrown in this setting but it was cheaper to go with the robot arm for one of the characters that episode. IIRC Earth/the UN in the Expanse has a UBI so no one is starving but there's also basically no jobs, probably because managing a whole planet and all of its institutional inertia and bureaucracy makes jobs programs difficult to administer. So people go to space for work.
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Aug 14, 2020 21:36
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So basically, I thought about it, and my long-belated reply to Raenir Salazar is that under a capitalist model, expansion into space doesn't make sense. You made a good argument about how capitalism creates new markets, but the framework of the free market only really makes sense with government participation and support. Free markets don't exist in a vacuum ( ) - they are established and fostered by government. If governments don't see a reason to go into space, they cannot and will not foster private capital ventures in space. The reason why SpaceX is successful, for example, is just because it was good at competing with rival launch providers for NASA contracts. For NASA money. If NASA didn't exist, there'd be no money for SpaceX, Boeing and others to compete "freely" for.Take asteroid mining for instance. You'd think it's a great free market venture, but it's an example of a self-defeating resource acquisition. The moment someone captures and mines an asteroid is the moment that the prices for whatever they exploit collapse because of massive oversupply. To be profitable, they would need to trickle the asteroid resources back to collect rent, but then... why even justify the cost of inventing the space infrastructure to capture it when you could've done the exact same thing here on Earth? Likewise, the "colonization of the 19th century" model of capitalist expansion doesn't map onto the context of space; in the 19th century, due to nationalism, and a culture of imperialism, nations actively conquered, settled, and exploited weaker nations and enslaved millions of people in the global South, and extracted their wealth. This was possible because the people living in these places already had wealth to take. It was also orders of magnitude cheaper for governments to invest in, say, rubber plantations, or copper mines, or build railroads across trackless expanse, because you don't need a spacesuit and expensive rockets carrying tiny payloads to colonize countries. There's air in the Midwest. There's water and food in Africa. There's cooperative and weak governments on the decline in Asia to exploit. There isn't anything like that in space - we have to create everything ourselves, from scratch. The only way it would be analogous is if, for example, Mars was an Earth-sized habitable planet with a native population of Bronze-Age tech Martians to invade and conquer. (Cynically speaking, if we had discovered this back in like the 50s I don't doubt that we'd already have invaded them and colonized them.) What are the only things that can invest in extensive space infrastructure long-term at no expectation for profit? Government. And no government that is dealing with the ravages of climate change will be willing to invest heavily in infrastructure that will take hundreds of years to pay off. At the very best we'll get situations like in Elysium, with billionaires fleeing justice on Earth to eke out a living in space. That's nowhere close to the mass space colonization and offworlding that I would define as true space colonization. You and I agree on the necessity for humans to offworld their industry and population long-term, both for our survival and for the preservation of the Earth's biosphere, but we disagree on whether it can happen under capitalism. I think it's only going to happen if we first achieve a socialist post-scarcity society on Earth, because only a society that has rid itself of the influence of money in politics, and solved short-term issues that prevent people from working on long-term issues like the survival and expansion of the species, can focus on space colonization and investment on the mass scale that it will take to get billions into space. In other words, I think the Posadists got it right, but backwards. We need to become the benevolent space traveling aliens, but only if we get socialism first. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 22:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:IIRC Earth/the UN in the Expanse has a UBI so no one is starving but there's also basically no jobs, probably because managing a whole planet and all of its institutional inertia and bureaucracy makes jobs programs difficult to administer. So people go to space for work. yeah, the ubi seemed to be meeting people's most basic subsistence needs, but it was pretty clear things like basic medicine was very hard to come by
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Aug 14, 2020 22:18
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DrSunshine posted:So basically, I thought about it, and my long-belated reply to Raenir Salazar is that under a capitalist model, expansion into space doesn't make sense. You made a good argument about how capitalism creates new markets, but the framework of the free market only really makes sense with government participation and support. Free markets don't exist in a vacuum ( Okay but, friend, this has *always* been the case that the free market exists off the back of government fiat. The early colonization of the new world, the subsequent lucrative trade by merchant ship captains to ship goods and people back and forth across the vast ocean; were off of a result of first, massive investment by the government and private individuals. I.e Christopher Columbus's voyage was funded partly by the Crown raising funds for it. Columbus in many ways is like an early Musk. Doing something risk and expensive off the back of the government and making it out like a bandit afterwards when it strikes literal gold. In the historical context it is absolutely the case that in order to further fend off the collapse of late stage capitalism capitalism must seek out new frontiers to exploit when it has exhausted its ability to more efficiently exploit the hinterland. In this case the fact that Musk and SpaceX are successful are evidence of this transitionary early period between the state footing the bill, and corporations paying the tab. Socialism doesn't really make sense as someone that would willingly go into space without some sort of pressure, i.e dick waving. You look at the movie Interstellar and how I think early in the film bureaucrats were discussing how we didn't need space, didn't need to explore, we needed more farmers and engineers at home because we're out of food. And well in the end the solution was space. The historical analogy here is the Ming Empire destroying all of its ocean going vessels and withdrawing Zheng He and turning inwards, banning anyone from living near the coast and so on because the bureaucracy didn't see the value in maritime trade and exploration. A socialist government could very well make the same utilitarian decision to turn its back on the endless frontiers of space and all efforts otherwise either face political or bureaucratic pressures to restrain it. Sure, if we had a one world socialist government that was determined to setup space gulags on Mars it would succeed at it, but there isn't really evidence that such a government would make the best possible decision and wouldn't be blind to various biases and cognitive dissonances to make a different policy decision. Many governments are looking very seriously at asteroid mining even now, and by the time it happens big corporations like SpaceX are going to be brought along for the ride and end up taking over those operations as governments switch to cutting costs by pushing those costs and risks onto the private sector. These companies are going to see massive oppurtunities off of the backs of lucrative contracts to take up and expand those operations which will in turn drive R&D (also off the back of government grants and investment) and innovation to make it cheaper as economies of scale kick in. The argument isn't that capitalism will independently go whole hog into space; its that capitalism will work in a complementary way with the state as its always had to parasitically feed off of those investments to continue to sustain and perpetuate its own existence as it sucks the Earth dry; and once the new frontier increases in investment, infrastructure, population and exploitation, the benefits and gains and innovation will in turn spur revolutionary innovation and development back home, which will refertilize the hinterland's capability for further more efficient exploitation by those economic forces. It fits hand and glove together; nothing about space requires socialism, it requires state investment to get the ground going and thats already has happened, the current wait is on for those forces to pick up in momentum and for things to enter their full swing. quote:Take asteroid mining for instance. You'd think it's a great free market venture, but it's an example of a self-defeating resource acquisition. The moment someone captures and mines an asteroid is the moment that the prices for whatever they exploit collapse because of massive oversupply. To be profitable, they would need to trickle the asteroid resources back to collect rent, but then... why even justify the cost of inventing the space infrastructure to capture it when you could've done the exact same thing here on Earth? I mean this can be easily reworded to be: quote:Take housing for instance. You'd think it's a great free market venture, but it's an example of a self-defeating resource acquisition. The moment someone buildings housing is the moment that the prices for whatever they exploit collapse because of massive oversupply. To be profitable, they would need to trickle the amount of housing back to collect rent, but then... why even justify the cost of inventing the infrastructure to making more housing when you could've done the exact same thing with existing housing? Because some of the money is notall of the money. Why be satisfied with some money from some of resources (that are in ever increasing rarity, see peak resource theory, we're rapidly approaching a gap to how much energy we can spend to acquire resources see the videos regarding resources from this largely suspect video series by what I think is a lolbertarian but he makes interesting arguments and is worth checking out. Most importantly this argument has already happened and occurred, with petroleum. We with fossil fuels suddenly acquired a massive and at the time nearly endless supply of cheap energy that was easy to extract, easy to store and transport, and spurred a massive economic expansion; until the market reached equilibrium, demand skyrocketed as the economy developed, and now we're having difficulties extracting enough cheap crude to fuel our economy and its made it cost effective to invest in solar, and so on. This also applies in a microcosm for any resources, the Americas, and other new frontiers provided a cheap and endless supply of various resources until the economy developed and fully exploited it. Similarly back in Ancient Rome, its many conquests were similar. Each conquest brought in a massive amount of gold, stolen wealth, and cheap labour that was like dumping kerosene on their newly developing economy; and then once they hit the climate and vegetation barriers to their conquests that ended them and this source of "energy" for their economy, they entered a decline and eventually collapsed because they lacked the technological ability to exploit new frontiers to continue endless growth. The fact that they will capture and asteroid and then start rent seeking on its basically post-scarcity amount of resources is the point of capitalism; why settle for some money when they could stake a monopoly on all the money and impress shareholders that they have an infinite money printing machine? quote:
I'm not in particularly a marxist but by basic 101 level understanding of Marx's writings in his works I am pretty sure that to him nationalism, imperialism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin. Everything you're describing here is what Marx understood as capitalism and economic forces acting according to capitalism. It did not happen independently of it but because of it. quote:The only way it would be analogous is if, for example, Mars was an Earth-sized habitable planet with a native population of Bronze-Age tech Martians to invade and conquer. (Cynically speaking, if we had discovered this back in like the 50s I don't doubt that we'd already have invaded them and colonized them.) The thing is due to modern technology, our context is different from the 19th century. In the 19th century Antarctica is like Mars; a place no one could possibly live on, maybe visit, for a very brief period of time, but technologically infeasible. Today it's shifted, Mars is more analogous to Australia or the New World than Antarctica. We can very easily go there, we can easily live there; with small settlements; and if/when a breakthrough in carbon fibre nanotubes happens such that a space elevator or sparring that, we decide to build a sky hook which doesn't require such a breakthrough, we could easily start seeing the beginnings of a migration as our technology base and infrastructure and innovation develops to further enable it. We don't need governments to think it'll pay off in 150 years, the didn't even think that back in the 1600's; it just needs to (a) make a profit for corporations via contracts and (b) provide some compelling incentive for governments. (b) is extremely easy. All China has to do is announce a Mars colony and the US will immediately pump 100 bn$ in response out of spite. The initial incentive for the perspective of the state is trivial. Whether it be nationalistic dick waving, a legitimate interest in advancing their scientific base, or because of future strategic resource acquisition. As an addendum, I think if China figured it could avoid all of the strategic headaches of having to import the resources it needs through waterways that could be blocked by the US and other geopolitical rivals by capturing an asteroid and having all the resources they need to a new golden age, I think that's all the incentive they'd need; and with that the US and EU will follow out of spite.
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Aug 14, 2020 23:05
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I sure hope Mars is not analogous to 1788 Australia because I'd rather skip the part with penal colonies and the slaughter of a large fraction of the indigenous life.
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Aug 15, 2020 00:06
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eXXon posted:I sure hope Mars is not analogous to 1788 Australia because I'd rather skip the part with penal colonies and the slaughter of a large fraction of the indigenous life. I mean we know there isn't life there. So you're good there.
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Aug 15, 2020 00:27
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:yeah, the ubi seemed to be meeting people's most basic subsistence needs, but it was pretty clear things like basic medicine was very hard to come by Amusingly that's only a thing in the show. In the books Earthers are seen as lazy and coddled by the spartan, dedicated Martians and the impoverished, oppressed Belters. There's no mention of particular hardship or poverty on Earth - lots of ecological destruction though.
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Aug 15, 2020 00:57
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean we know there isn't life there. So you're good there. Do we though, Raenir? Do we
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Aug 15, 2020 01:12
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Tighclops posted:Do we though, Raenir? Yeah... I dunno: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/ We should be really careful about what we do with Mars until we can sort this out by doing this experiment again.
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Aug 15, 2020 01:26
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Tighclops posted:Do we though, Raenir? If you mean, do we know there aren't a civilization living underneath the surface I think we can reasonably say yes we do. DrSunshine posted:Yeah... I dunno: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/ The entire point of the early settlement efforts would be studying things like that; that's why you start off with the small crew, because initially it's a science and research mission. By the time we're at the point where we can gear up and start building domes or digging roman style atriums that would be the idea time to have formulated the right amount of risk assessment for how to carry on the mission based on what we discovered and measure the pros and cons of different aspects of the mission in terms of its potential vs the risks which includes whether we run over a space amoeba or something.
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Aug 15, 2020 01:37
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Fair enough! I will reply to your longer post later after I've digested it, but the Mars thing reminded me of this absolutely fascinating interview that John Michael Godier did with a biochemist who worked on the Viking mission life signature experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykTxJCkJYwI She seems to really strongly feel like we discovered life there, so we really have to go back and see. We have to make sure.
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Aug 15, 2020 01:40
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DrSunshine posted:She seems to really strongly feel like we discovered life there, so we really have to go back and see. We have to make sure. Please don't nuke Mars from orbit, mister President 
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Aug 15, 2020 01:58
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You guys have no idea - none at all - how loving happy it would make me to know for sure that life exists elsewhere in this universe. I would be able to die a happy man if there was evidence of life around an exoplanet or like complex life on Europa or something.
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Aug 15, 2020 02:04
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Raenir Salazar posted:... governments ... pushing those costs and risks onto the private sector. This doesn't seem to be the way capitalism works, so it makes me question a lot of your statements.
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Aug 15, 2020 02:49
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DrSunshine posted:You guys have no idea - none at all - how loving happy it would make me to know for sure that life exists elsewhere in this universe. I would be able to die a happy man if there was evidence of life around an exoplanet or like complex life on Europa or something. For me, I'll always wonder until there's some kind of evidence of civilization, and then I'll go crazy not knowing about its history and culture, or what the inhabitants look like or how they communicate. The whole thing makes my brain itch and I'll never be satisfied because we can never know anything. Fish on Europa just makes me want that alien radio show more.
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Aug 15, 2020 02:53
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Wouldn't life on Mars that is seperate in origin from earth be a really bad data point on the general idea that life is uncommon, therefore the great filter is very likely in front of us?
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Aug 15, 2020 02:59
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