Hawkins and space colonization

[Don]

It seems like every couple of years Hawkins says this: http://bigthink.com/ideas/21570

I realize Hawkins is a smart guy, but I've done a good deal of reading on this subject and they usually require technology like Hyper Drives, Terraforming, antimatter energy generation, and self-aware robotics. In other words, stuff that'd be halfway up the tech tree of a sci-fi strategy game. It's pretty clear it requires technology we're nowhere close to achieving since if we're close to any of these technology we could use them at home too (for example, Terraforming Earth would be a lot easier than Terraforming Mars). The most inhospitable location on Earth is still way better than anywhere outside of Earth (at least we get oxygen, sunlight, radiation shielding, and probably water) but you don't see people throwing money at colonizing Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, and yet we try to colonize the moon or Mars? Sure space sounds more glamorous but I bet if you tried to colonize Antarctica you'd find that it's pretty tough even if you throw money at it, and yet it's way easier than colonizing Mars.

[Anarky]

It almost seems like science fiction writers have hacked into his computer and are writing this shit for him.

[Don]

I saw someone said maybe his voice synthesizer is programmed to say certain things at random.

I remember seeing some of the more *practical* solution involves sending some self-aware, self-replicating terraforming robots to Mars or Venus and then start doing stuff. I mean seriously if you could do this they can use those things here on Earth to deal with global warming. It's got to be a lot easier to change the global temperature by like 2 degrees compared to the 50+ you need to get either environments to be remotely habitable.

Now I know we can explore space. You can certainly in theory send a few guys to Mars (they might die on the way back from radiation or whatever) but then you can also just send robots there too (the Mars rover seem to be doing fine).

[Kupek]

I think I've linked to this before, but Charlie Stross, a science fiction author, on why we're never leaving the solar system: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-st ... redux.html

[Don]

Well you can get enough energy to do this stuff if you end up having, like I said, technology that's normally halfway up the tech tree of a sci-fi strategy game. I'm not ruling that out as an impossibility but we sure don't got self-replicating anything right now let alone anything more fancy than that.

Certainly the threshold needed for just human exploration is lower but then it's not obvious why we need to send a human (who is most likely going to die anyway due to radiation stuff) when we can send a robot instead. Can a human do better research than the Mars rover? Probably but we can get the rovers running for what, 6 years? Good luck trying to keep some human alive for 6 months there, assuming you got there alive in the first place.

[Julius Seeker]

One thing that always makes me cringe is when people say "well if we screw up earth too badly, we can always go to Mars. I hear there might be a moon around Jupiter we can go to as well.". I am not sure where people get the idea that a viable solution to polluting earth or overpopulation would be to terraform mars and send everyone there instead. Though the idea is not to disimilar to "well, I know things are very bad here, but at least we'll have heaven to go to."; essentially the same myth.

[Don]

One thing that always makes me cringe is when people say "well if we screw up earth too badly, we can always go to Mars. I hear there might be a moon around Jupiter we can go to as well.". I am not sure where people get the idea that a viable solution to polluting earth or overpopulation would be to terraform mars and send everyone there instead. Though the idea is not to disimilar to "well, I know things are very bad here, but at least we'll have heaven to go to."; essentially the same myth.

It'd be easier to figure out how to get people to live in the desert or Antarctica than getting anyone alive in Mars. I guess if you exhausted those territory too you might have to consider the ocean versus some other planet, though it seems like a domed environment or some kind of floating island would still be way easier to manage than an environment without oxygen.

What I find funny is the opposite when people says like "What rights do we have to mess up other planets". Well I don't think Mars care too much that we're polluting the planet if we can actually get there. It starts out with like 99.9% CO2 in the atmosphere and since raising CO2 is like some kind of sin against the planet entity clearly it can't get much worse for Mars.

[Julius Seeker]

I would guess that the expense in building a metropolis at the bottom of the ocean would cheaper and easier than creating and maintaining a small colony on mars. Antarctica would be a vastly better solution as well; it's warmer, atmospheric pressure is correct, gravitational pull is the correct level, and it's closer to aid if required; oh, and there is also an oxygen and nitrogen rich atmosphere.

I am sure space colonization would be interesting; but it would be significantly less costly to repair our problems here on Earth first. Why? For starters: it might not be possible to thrive anywhere except on the world we inhabit.

[Shrinweck]

This is bullshit - we shouldn't even be talking about space colonization until we at least have flying cars.

[Don]

I think the problem with flying cars is that they can build it but it wouldn't exactly be very safe.

[Shrinweck]

Many people would die, yes.

[Julius Seeker]

This is bullshit - we shouldn't even be talking about space colonization until we at least have flying cars.

Post of the month =P

[Shrinweck]

I would probably also settle for a hover board.