by "Honeybunchesofgoats" (honeybunche0fgoats)
Published 05/06/2017 at 17:48
by "Honeybunchesofgoats" (honeybunche0fgoats)
Published 05/06/2017 at 17:48
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STARS: 1
I’m not going to link to it, because I don’t believe in rewarding Forbes and Forbes is just Bloomberg for mouth-breathers.
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"facw" (facw)
05/06/2017 at 18:04, STARS: 3
That’s shortsighted. We do need to spread off of the planet at some point. You can argue whether we should be building self sufficient space stations or asteroid based habitations first, but something will screw over Earth eventually. His argument about interstellar travel if bogus too. Yes current probes are slow, but that is because they are not expected to travel to other solar systems. This doesn’t mean that we can’t make the faster. It would be expensive of course, but many things are. It sounds like 0.2c might be a practical limit, but that level of speed is not impossible given what we know about current tech. Still while we could do that for a probe, a colony might be too much. However, that means one of two things: 1. Longevity: Humans are living longer, and there are significant reasons to believe we can make great progress in stopping ageing. Ideas that sounds far fetched with a ~100 year lifespan become more feasible with a 1000 year lifespan (or even a 150 year lifespan.) And 2: Generation ships. Building a self sufficient colony on a comet and then shooting it out into deep space. It might not go very fast, but would have ample supplies to travel a very long time. It would need to be big enough to pass on knowledge to new generations, but that’s what you want to colonize another system anyway.
"For Sweden" (rallybeetle)
05/06/2017 at 18:09, STARS: 1
Even more reasons why airplanes > spaceships
Come at me space nerds
"MrDakka" (mrdakka)
05/06/2017 at 18:09, STARS: 2
You would think that as an economist, he would see the need for diversification and not putting all your eggs in one basket.
But what can you do? ¯\_()_/¯
History is littered with the short sighted
"AestheticsInMotion" (aestheticsinmotion)
05/06/2017 at 18:19, STARS: 0
Yeah, let’s just write off Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking as “nerds with sci-fi boners”
I wonder how many protein shakes this guy chugged in between writing—using the term loosely—this article and touching up his chinstrap beard.
"marshknute" (marshknute)
05/06/2017 at 18:48, STARS: 0
“We do need to spread off of the planet at some point.”
Why?!?
Sorry, but there’s no conceivable doomsday scenario that would render earth less hospitable than another known planet.
"My bird IS the word" (mybirdistheword)
05/06/2017 at 19:05, STARS: 0
Stephen hawking is full of shit. Right now, we should be funneling R&D money into robotics, energy, computers, and biotechnology. Colonization is a distant dream at best, unless FTL is invented it really isn’t useful, especially without terraforming.
"Nick Has an Exocet" (nickallain)
05/06/2017 at 19:37, STARS: 0
You won’t get faster airplanes without spaceships. Aviation is a stagnant industry. For forward progress, we need forward progress.
"Nick Has an Exocet" (nickallain)
05/06/2017 at 19:42, STARS: 1
More resources and better warning times for space-based disasters. He’s also wrong about no doomsday scenario being worse than Mars. An asteroid impact could potentially turn the face of Earth into liquid magma while eliminating all life. I’d say that’s worse.
You probably also won’t get his magical asteroid deflector without building the technology to get to another solar system. As a contributor for the Economist, he should know the danger of spending all your resources engineering buggy whips.
"jimz" (jimz)
05/06/2017 at 19:58, STARS: 0
there’s a big difference between making electric cars and putting stuff into orbit and actually building infrastructure for people to live on another world. There’s a reason Earth is considered to be in the “Goldilocks zone.” We have temperatures conducive to the formation of life, liquid water, an atmosphere, and a magnetosphere which both retains that atmosphere and protects us from being bombarded by ionizing radiation. We will at some point have small “colonies” or labs on the moon (a la the ISS) and maybe Mars. what we will not have is large-scale colonization of either, or any other body for that matter. Hyperspace/warp drive/any faster-than-light method of travel is simply a plot device for sci-fi.
"jimz" (jimz)
05/06/2017 at 20:08, STARS: 1
“Sorry, but there’s no conceivable doomsday scenario that would render earth less hospitable than another known planet”
This. Sorry folks, but Star Trek and Firefly are just TV shows. There’s no warp drive (not in reality, and not even in theory,) so we’re stuck within our own solar system. And the “best” candidates (the Moon and Mars) are so inhospitable that anyone living there would be doing so in the equivalent of a cramped hamster Habitrail laboratory. The moon has practically no atmosphere at all, so good luck breathing. even if someone found a way to generate enough oxygen up there, we’d still need to get said equipment up there. Plus, with no atmosphere you’d need a shit-ton of shielding to protect you from being bombarded by ionizing radiation. How’s death from cancer at age 30 sound to you? Even the worst case climate change projections don’t make this planet uninhabitable.
Even Enceladus- which apparently has a ton of water- only gets as warm as -324F.
will we get people to Mars? probably. Will we colonize Mars? doubtful.
"AestheticsInMotion" (aestheticsinmotion)
05/06/2017 at 20:35, STARS: 0
I’m just saying that writing off two of our arguably greatest living thinkers is about as unintelligent as it gets.
And yes, I certainly don’t expect to be living on Mars, but I wouldn’t say large scale colonization is impossible. The vast majority of major scientific breakthroughs were considered impossible at one point.
"jimz" (jimz)
05/07/2017 at 08:38, STARS: 0
“You would think that as an economist, he would see the need for diversification and not putting all your eggs in one basket.”
apples and oranges.
"MrDakka" (mrdakka)
05/07/2017 at 10:35, STARS: 0
How so?