Maybe there's an error in the authors assumption that we'd seriously try to evacuate the planet. I've always assumed that the point of colonizing Mars is just to have an off-world colony that's also like an ark. At least at first.
In Neal Stephenson's ‘Seveneves’ they actually do evacuate Earth and live in space for thousands of years until Earth becomes habitable again ⌘ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves
What about them? A GRB that takes out Earth would cook Mars even more thoroughly due to its smaller size.
I think in practice we will colonise mas but no more than we are colonising Antarctica. The ITS will make going to a Mars affordable and there are good scientific reasons for wanting to do so. But my most optimistic scenario is that we'll have small bases on Mars for at least a generation testing out technology before well even begin to be able to dream about making such a station in any way self sustaining, even just in food, air and water let alone anything more complex.
Yes, but what percentage of human life on earth is under 2 meters or more of soil?
Human life on mars is likely to be underground to avoid the extreme cold, vacuum, and radiation. So I could see a GRB taking out a hugely larger fraction of life on earth (with no warning) than mars (assuming a colony there).
"under almost no circumstances does is colonizing another planet the best way to adapt to a problem on earth...
...Even if an asteroid were to strike earth it would remain more habitable than mars. For example, consider the asteroid that struck the earth 66 million years ago creating the Chicxulub crater and wiping out 75% of plant and animal species on earth, including the dinosaurs. Well that disaster still left 25% of species that survived, all of whom would die instantly on the surface of Mars."
This insinuates that surviving the aftermath of a Chicxulub event is what threatens us - but it isn't the aftermath, it is the event itself.
Best quote: "Even though I am not an expert on space, physical sciences, or basically any relevant field, I can tell that this is obviously true. Maybe just it takes an economist to see through the nerd fantasies."
> This insinuates that surviving the aftermath of a Chicxulub event is what threatens us - but it isn't the aftermath, it is the event itself.
We have plenty of ways that a small group of humans could be isolated and fed for the time it would take to make humans survive. Humans would not go extinct due to an asteroid impact, rest assured.
There's even a few places that would have natural protection from most of the phenomena. And of course, there'd be a few weeks where, starting 500km from the impact site or so, there would be essentially nothing wrong on other than a stripe in the sky. That time can be used to prepare for what's coming, and as long as you only try to save 0.1% of the population, you could do that just fine.
And there's plenty of calamities that would affect mars just as much as they'd affect earth. A supernova within 50 lightyears or so of earth (depending on size can be a bit more) is not survivable. That would destroy the atmosphere in a matter of seconds and kill the power grid, and there would be no warning at all (it's like an earthquake, we would "know it's coming" give or take 100000 years or so, and yes, there's one "ready to blow" within that range). Within 20 light years or so and we'd see wind speeds on the surface would go absolutely insane within a few minutes, lasting a few hours (there'd be a VERY hot wind with speeds that'll probably exceed the speed of sound for a few minutes). Anything above the surface is gone. Hell, this will erode the himalayas by several hundred meters at least, maybe kilometers. Ocean water levels will drop dozens of meters and there'll be zero water left on land.
But, on earth, some installations would probably survive even this. It won't be pleasant, because life on earth will take decades to centuries to come back to the point that the planet is covered in green (depending on what it does to the soil, might even be hundreds of thousands of years).
For all these calamities, the same thing keeps coming back. What you need is
a) a huge, huge mass surrounding you (the earth counts as "surrounding" us since there's always 50% of the surface that's protected by the mass of the earth), preferably with lots of metal inside of it.
b) an energy source that isn't dependent on anything (which means: a nuclear reactor). Obviously solar panels won't do.
c) a way to grow food and scrub co2 directly using just energy.
d) we'll need to do this using extremely well established technology. For instance, we can probably use computers from, say, a 50nm process, but we can't really go higher than that as we wouldn't be able to replace them. Because these events would wipe industry from the earth that means we can only depend on technology that can be made within whatever base we use.
That will let us have large amounts of survivors on our planet. The biggest problem seems to me to be C. We can do it, sort of, but not very efficiently.
Also, once we leave earth, we shouldn't go to Mars. Once we escape Earth's gravity we'd be wise never to dive into a gravity well again. We should migrate populations into asteroids and use them with ion engines as spaceships. With the people living deep into the interior. They will be far, far safer than Mars or any planet.
The HN title is missing the rest of the actual title...
"Sorry Nerds, But Colonizing Other Planets Is Not A Good Plan"
Man, this article isn't even long enough to be considered a decent middle school book report.
In response: We're not trying to "evacuate" Earth for Mars within 100 years, obviously. Human life is important (which is clearly subjective, but doesn't seem that controversial) regardless of the Drake equation.
Pure clickbait.
Addendum: I find his frequent use of Wikipedia links very amusing.
With all due respect to Mr. Hawking and much less to none for Mr. Musk and the rest of the people peddling such bullshit, I hope someone with more common sense than them is able to relay to them what harm they are doing to actual technological advancement with their science fiction mental masturbation on issues like colonizing other planets and building strong AI. I understand Musk's goal--profit--and it's easy to see why he'd be peddling so much pseudoscience to distract his customers from the myriad of ways he abuses or plans to abuse them, but I cannot for the life of me understand how a brilliant and respected scientist like Stephen Hawking would espouse the same bullshit. To be blunt, it damages his credibility as a scientist and thinker and thus detracts from his attempts to promote actual science.
But hey, if we now only have a hundred years to get to another planet, at least we don't have to worry about global warming, mass surveillance, wars and politics, or any of the other real issues facing our world. I see why this appeals to people like Musk or Gates who have so much money invested in keeping the status quo and people fantasizing rather than thinking, but I don't see what Hawking's end game is. It seems he's just lost in fantasy and the world would be better off without his ramblings on this topic delaying real work on real problems.
The article is so wrong that I don't know where to start...
First there is a whole spectrum of people interested on adventure, breaking frontiers, understanding science from outside the conditions on Earth, not just N-E-R-D-S.
It reminds me when I was in the US and two very prominent politicians were arguing on TV against each other about who was less of a nerd, have no relationship with them, like they were a pest or something.
It was like the stereotype of empty brain US football player who gets all the chicks by downplaying all people smarter than them and caring only about looks.
The challenges and adventure of not having water, facing problems like living on Venus clouds, etc.. are exactly the main reasons to go there. Doing what no other person has done ever has lots of advantages for the individuals doing it and human society as a hole.
For example when the first vehicles were sent to the moon we were able to discover that most rocks or sand were not affected by erosion or air pressure so they had properties not seen on Earth.
Hmm, challenges and adventure are keywords. And they are exactly the primary reasons most _nerds_ seem to have. Sorry but I can't imply any of "lots of advantages" for human society although I can imagine some.
Observing and exploring the Galaxy definitely have a lot of benefit to science. I don't like Capitalism much but is it worth burning that size of budget or money that comes from somewhere ..? The point should be things have to be analyzed and measured, and what we would have in return.
> First there is a whole spectrum of people interested on adventure, breaking frontiers, understanding science from outside the conditions on Earth
That's also not what colonizing is about. Rocket energy costs mean we'll never, ever lift more than at most a few thousand people out of earth gravity. Never. Not even with reusable rockets. 99.99% of the human population, at minimum, can never leave the earth.
> The challenges and adventure of not having water, facing problems like living on Venus clouds, etc.. are exactly the main reasons to go there. Doing what no other person has done ever has lots of advantages for the individuals doing it and human society as a hole.
The whole point of colonization is never coming back. It won't be about science for at least a couple generations. It'll be about babies, food and building extremely basic structures.
Those babies, incidentally, will be thoroughly fucked compared with babies on earth : They'll be locked in a small structure that they can never leave. And of course the project is dependent on them having at least 5-6 babies per couple, preferably more. They can never go to earth, ever. Hell, they can't ever so much as talk to anyone outside of their society that will be tens of people for a generation (because of the delay).
> For example when the first vehicles were sent to the moon we were able to discover that most rocks or sand were not affected by erosion or air pressure so they had properties not seen on Earth.
We knew those properties long before humans ever set foot on the moon.
17 comments
[ 220 ms ] story [ 1929 ms ] threadTelling others to not to is deception
Always annoying when someone spins a narrative around something wrong (like "we do it because we are having to leave earth")
Once life went from the oceans to land. Now we go to Mars, that's it
I think in practice we will colonise mas but no more than we are colonising Antarctica. The ITS will make going to a Mars affordable and there are good scientific reasons for wanting to do so. But my most optimistic scenario is that we'll have small bases on Mars for at least a generation testing out technology before well even begin to be able to dream about making such a station in any way self sustaining, even just in food, air and water let alone anything more complex.
Human life on mars is likely to be underground to avoid the extreme cold, vacuum, and radiation. So I could see a GRB taking out a hugely larger fraction of life on earth (with no warning) than mars (assuming a colony there).
I don't know what the article deals with because the first two words put me off.
"under almost no circumstances does is colonizing another planet the best way to adapt to a problem on earth...
...Even if an asteroid were to strike earth it would remain more habitable than mars. For example, consider the asteroid that struck the earth 66 million years ago creating the Chicxulub crater and wiping out 75% of plant and animal species on earth, including the dinosaurs. Well that disaster still left 25% of species that survived, all of whom would die instantly on the surface of Mars."
This insinuates that surviving the aftermath of a Chicxulub event is what threatens us - but it isn't the aftermath, it is the event itself.
Best quote: "Even though I am not an expert on space, physical sciences, or basically any relevant field, I can tell that this is obviously true. Maybe just it takes an economist to see through the nerd fantasies."
LOL!
We have plenty of ways that a small group of humans could be isolated and fed for the time it would take to make humans survive. Humans would not go extinct due to an asteroid impact, rest assured.
There's even a few places that would have natural protection from most of the phenomena. And of course, there'd be a few weeks where, starting 500km from the impact site or so, there would be essentially nothing wrong on other than a stripe in the sky. That time can be used to prepare for what's coming, and as long as you only try to save 0.1% of the population, you could do that just fine.
And there's plenty of calamities that would affect mars just as much as they'd affect earth. A supernova within 50 lightyears or so of earth (depending on size can be a bit more) is not survivable. That would destroy the atmosphere in a matter of seconds and kill the power grid, and there would be no warning at all (it's like an earthquake, we would "know it's coming" give or take 100000 years or so, and yes, there's one "ready to blow" within that range). Within 20 light years or so and we'd see wind speeds on the surface would go absolutely insane within a few minutes, lasting a few hours (there'd be a VERY hot wind with speeds that'll probably exceed the speed of sound for a few minutes). Anything above the surface is gone. Hell, this will erode the himalayas by several hundred meters at least, maybe kilometers. Ocean water levels will drop dozens of meters and there'll be zero water left on land.
But, on earth, some installations would probably survive even this. It won't be pleasant, because life on earth will take decades to centuries to come back to the point that the planet is covered in green (depending on what it does to the soil, might even be hundreds of thousands of years).
For all these calamities, the same thing keeps coming back. What you need is
a) a huge, huge mass surrounding you (the earth counts as "surrounding" us since there's always 50% of the surface that's protected by the mass of the earth), preferably with lots of metal inside of it.
b) an energy source that isn't dependent on anything (which means: a nuclear reactor). Obviously solar panels won't do.
c) a way to grow food and scrub co2 directly using just energy.
d) we'll need to do this using extremely well established technology. For instance, we can probably use computers from, say, a 50nm process, but we can't really go higher than that as we wouldn't be able to replace them. Because these events would wipe industry from the earth that means we can only depend on technology that can be made within whatever base we use.
That will let us have large amounts of survivors on our planet. The biggest problem seems to me to be C. We can do it, sort of, but not very efficiently.
Also, once we leave earth, we shouldn't go to Mars. Once we escape Earth's gravity we'd be wise never to dive into a gravity well again. We should migrate populations into asteroids and use them with ion engines as spaceships. With the people living deep into the interior. They will be far, far safer than Mars or any planet.
"Sorry Nerds, But Colonizing Other Planets Is Not A Good Plan"
Man, this article isn't even long enough to be considered a decent middle school book report.
In response: We're not trying to "evacuate" Earth for Mars within 100 years, obviously. Human life is important (which is clearly subjective, but doesn't seem that controversial) regardless of the Drake equation.
Pure clickbait.
Addendum: I find his frequent use of Wikipedia links very amusing.
But hey, if we now only have a hundred years to get to another planet, at least we don't have to worry about global warming, mass surveillance, wars and politics, or any of the other real issues facing our world. I see why this appeals to people like Musk or Gates who have so much money invested in keeping the status quo and people fantasizing rather than thinking, but I don't see what Hawking's end game is. It seems he's just lost in fantasy and the world would be better off without his ramblings on this topic delaying real work on real problems.
First there is a whole spectrum of people interested on adventure, breaking frontiers, understanding science from outside the conditions on Earth, not just N-E-R-D-S.
It reminds me when I was in the US and two very prominent politicians were arguing on TV against each other about who was less of a nerd, have no relationship with them, like they were a pest or something.
It was like the stereotype of empty brain US football player who gets all the chicks by downplaying all people smarter than them and caring only about looks.
The challenges and adventure of not having water, facing problems like living on Venus clouds, etc.. are exactly the main reasons to go there. Doing what no other person has done ever has lots of advantages for the individuals doing it and human society as a hole.
For example when the first vehicles were sent to the moon we were able to discover that most rocks or sand were not affected by erosion or air pressure so they had properties not seen on Earth.
Observing and exploring the Galaxy definitely have a lot of benefit to science. I don't like Capitalism much but is it worth burning that size of budget or money that comes from somewhere ..? The point should be things have to be analyzed and measured, and what we would have in return.
That's also not what colonizing is about. Rocket energy costs mean we'll never, ever lift more than at most a few thousand people out of earth gravity. Never. Not even with reusable rockets. 99.99% of the human population, at minimum, can never leave the earth.
> The challenges and adventure of not having water, facing problems like living on Venus clouds, etc.. are exactly the main reasons to go there. Doing what no other person has done ever has lots of advantages for the individuals doing it and human society as a hole.
The whole point of colonization is never coming back. It won't be about science for at least a couple generations. It'll be about babies, food and building extremely basic structures.
Those babies, incidentally, will be thoroughly fucked compared with babies on earth : They'll be locked in a small structure that they can never leave. And of course the project is dependent on them having at least 5-6 babies per couple, preferably more. They can never go to earth, ever. Hell, they can't ever so much as talk to anyone outside of their society that will be tens of people for a generation (because of the delay).
> For example when the first vehicles were sent to the moon we were able to discover that most rocks or sand were not affected by erosion or air pressure so they had properties not seen on Earth.
We knew those properties long before humans ever set foot on the moon.