Things I Take For Granted: Part I

[John Dule]

I've recently been thinking introspectively with regards to certain assumptions I have about humans, humanity, and the future. These are assumptions that I have had for as long as I can remember, and it always alarms me when I encounter people who disagree with them because I take it for granted that these are self-evident truths. If anyone is interested in this type of poll, I might post another couple of these. No nuance allowed-- either agree or disagree.

Ever since I was a kid, I have assumed that every sane, intelligent, hardworking person on Earth is at least partially committed to ensuring that someday their descendants will live on Mars, Europa, and undiscovered planets far beyond our solar system. I would reflexively view anyone who disagrees with this proposition with suspicion-- but I'm curious to see what Atlas thinks.

Posting this on the R&P board because one's answer to this question is inherently philosophical.

[Utah Neolib]

Generally, yes. Humanity has always expanded outward from roots in one place to another place, often not through the best of means. I’d obviously expect humans to expand into the solar system as well as into the general Milky Way Galaxy. Humans have always expanded outward from where they had once been on Earth, so why won’t we if the oceans are much more vast and not filled with water?

[parochial boy]

Ignoring the « haha we’ll nuke ourselves to extinction first » (or cause whatever other civilization collapse) take, we do have the rather big problem that based on our current understanding of the laws of physics there is - quite a large- possibility that it is flat out impossible for us to. At least the ways that people have conceptualised how we might explore the galaxies based on our current understandings still end up highly implausible  using phenomenal levels of resources and taking dozens of generations to ever even get anywhere. Or if something does manage it, it’s human designed artificial intelligence, not actual humans. So it’s entirely possible that there not even a way of getting off the ground so to speak.

That said, if it is physically possible then I do think we will do it. Humans are just too curious and have just too much of a drive to explore, and the cultural and scientific interest tant we do have in the cosmos will probably lead us there, assuming it’s even possible

[Dr. MB]

I don't think you can maintain a space exploration society with the current level of stratification we have. Maybe Posadas was right. But space is also really cool.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think it's plausible, but I certainly wouldn't call that destiny. Aside from the "society will collapse first" take (which I don't think we can entirely discount) it seems worth noting that we're right now in the process of filling Earth's nearby space with junk at a rate that will soon make it impossible to conduct space travel altogether. That seems like something worth worrying about for people who claim to champion space exploration...

The purely physical barriers to distant space travel are actually somewhat overblown, though. It's not true that you need FTL travel in order to have a realistic prospect of humanity colonizing other planets. Once you start meaningfully approaching lightspeed, special relativity actually works in your favor with time dilation and length contraction making the experienced travel time much shorter than it looks to a static observer. So places that are 100, 200 lightyears away could in fact be reached within a human lifetime - at least if we could get to 90-95% of lightspeed. Which of course we're nowhere near, but is at least theoretically achievable.

[John Dule]

Disagree

I have assumed that every sane, intelligent, hardworking person on Earth is at least partially committed to ensuring that someday their descendants will live on Mars, Europa, and undiscovered planets far beyond our solar system.

Surprised you believe anyone on this web site will have descendants

I said "sane, intelligent, and hardworking." That eliminates 90% of Atlas right off the bat.

[Mopsus]

I believe that in, say, 1,000 years, the logistical problems that now prevent interplanetary colonization will seem as quaint as those that kept archaic humans from establishing intercontinental empires 200,000 years ago. I also strongly believe that interplanetary colonization should be spearheaded by the United States and Americans (after we annex Canada, of course).

[beaver2.0]

Yes.  Expansion is a central tenet of humanity and now that we've taken over most of the world we'll go to space.

[LabourJersey]

It's possible and perhaps probable, but it's not really humanity's "destiny" to colonize and expand so much as it's our destiny to explore. Exploration doesn't necessarily require mass migration of people to other planets.

[John Dule]

Imagine disagreeing with this.

[Person Man]

Here are my thoughts:

>Eventually and probably even if our society collapses, a new one will take its place and they will explore and settle deep space. I do not think people will go extinct anytime soon and I do not think people will give up technology for any more than a couple of generations. One thing I think is probably accurate about the game Fallout is the timeframe they have technology and civilization reemerging in a worst case scenario. All of this being said, I'm guessing people will have visited Mars by 2050, the Outer Solar System by 2100, and the Proxima system by 2400-2500 if our civilization is the one that does. If ours doesn't do it, maybe the next civilization will.

>Other things to consider besides being able to go far enough fast enough is that there are hazards in space such as solar radiation and the deleterious effects of microgravity on astronauts. These are hurdles that can probably be solved by getting spaceships big enough to have some sort of radiation shielding and some sort of centrifuge-based artificial gravity. Another way to protect against the rigors of space travel and to make the decades/centuries long missions feasible would be life extension technology regarding cellular repair, in vivos gene editing, and regenerative medicine. This would all be needed for people to actually be able to go some where. All in all, there IS a way to get to at least the closest 100 or 1000 stars to us. Which leads me to my biggest concern.


> Where will we go? Beyond Mars, the Asteroid belt, maybe the sky of Venus, or a large moon on Saturn or Jupiter, there really isn't anywhere that we know of that humans could visit. Maybe engineering projects such as JWST and the ELST will be able to finish the investigations started by Kepler and COROT and find actual planets that we can visit. There are, at this time, with our limited ability to find these planets, several dozen planets that could be habitable. If the next generation of space telescopes can confirm that these planets have a reasonable thick and stable atmosphere, maybe we know where can aspire to get to. Even if these planets don't necessarily have breathable atmospheres because they either don't have life, or very primitive or weird complex life. In fact, it would be less of an ethical and safety issue if we ended up on a dead world that averaged 0-100 F, a 90%+ CO2 atmosphere the same as either being at 25000 feet above sea level or 1000 feet underwater, than it would be to visit a planet that was not only perfectly habitable, but inhabited. So yeah. Finding a place to actually go is important.

> Even if we never figure out how to send humans past 1-100 AUs from Earth and we never find a planet interesting enough to travel a 1E14 miles to, there is still the opportunity to colonize space by building giant space stations, asteroid mining facilities, and orbital solar power stations. That would be a way our current civilization could solve its raw material and energy needs without causing a Malthusian resource depletion/environmental degradation issue.

> So TLDR-
1) People and one civilization or another will be around for thousands of years, if not more. Time is on our side.
2) There is technology that can make deep space colonization possible and some technology that is essential to deep space colonization that might be an easier reach than "warp drives".
3) We need to figure out what we want to do and where we can go.
4) There's other things we can do in our solar system if there is no reason to actually leave it.

[Mr. Smith]

Disagree because there are far too many unknown unkowns here.

[dead0man]

While I think we will colonize space, I have a problem with the word "destiny".

[Former President tack50]

In my opinion yes, it's basically "Space Manifest Destiny", albeit with basically the 2 caveats parochial_boy mentioned. There's a very real possibility that humanity kills itself before that can happen (whether through nuclear war, climate change or something else) and there's also the very real possibility that it might just be physically or practically impossible; in particular with regards to anything outside the solar system.

[Independents for Nihilism]

I think this discussion has already been done:

That is, some may say if we want to reach out and colonize the stars, we ought to get our house in order first. Of course, that may be an impossible goal: there may always be some degree of inequality or unfairness, and seeking new resources, or knowledge for knlwedge's sake, might be the only way to achieve better for all of us even if it means not making society perfect beforehand. Self-improvement is an ongoing journey.

[scutosaurus]

I don't think we should spend a second worrying about how to live on other planets for as long as we can't figure out how to live on this one.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Maybe if the Soviet Union had won. Now, I'm not so sure.

[John Dule]

I have to say I find it genuinely astonishing that almost half of this forum seems to think that humanity's future is limited to this planet.

1. The idea that we'll create a nuclear holocaust or ecological catastrophe of sufficient severity to wipe out all human life (or at a minimum, all meaningful human knowledge) is just not realistic. Even in the darkest prognostications of climate change, extinction is not on the table. Barring some kind of AI nanobots that turn us all into paperclips or whatever, human populations are too widespread-- and repositories of human knowledge are too securely maintained-- for this to be plausible.

2. The idea that the trash orbiting our planet will somehow keep us grounded to the Earth is absurd. When we reach the point-- technologically speaking-- where we are able to establish regular flights and missions to the Moon and other planets, we will almost certainly be capable of developing methods for clearing paths through debris fields, shielding ships, or tracking/eliminating space refuse.

3. Faster-than-light travel is probably not possible, but near-light travel probably is. It is wholly plausible that we will develop the ability to reach other solar systems within the span of an individual's lifetime (especially given that these individuals will surely be living longer than us). Another option is some type of stasis, which has been explored in dozens of sci-fi films dating back to the 50s. There is also the possibility of wormhole travel-- while I find this implausible, it is no more unthinkable to me than an iPhone would likely be to a Medieval peasant. Anyway, the point is that there are multiple potential ways for us to reach outside our solar system, none of which pose any more of an obstacle to the indomitable human spirit of adventure than the Rocky Mountains posed for the pioneers or the Atlantic Ocean posed for the conquistadors.

4. The innovation gap left behind by NASA defunding is already being filled by private (if subsidized) interests. This is how every new technology works: The super-wealthy adopt its early iterations as a status symbol, and their investments fund R&D that makes the product more accessible for the lower classes. We are already seeing this historical pattern replicate itself with spaceflight-- if you really think Jeff Bezos is humanity's final say in space exploration, you are an unbelievable pessimist.



Nonetheless, these poll results do help me to contextualize some of the political opinions I often see being expressed on this forum (and elsewhere). If you seriously think the Earth itself is humanity's final frontier, you are probably predisposed to wring your hands about billionaire spaceflights and minor ecological problems. Just know that to the rest of us, you sound like the people who said desktop computers would be "little more than a novelty."

[Mr. Smith]

With all due respect, you're not considering the other possible life forms and what they can or can't do.

[John Dule]

A lot of you are spending too much time thinking about about "getting to Mars" and not enough about "getting a job."

On the contrary, thinking about other planets is the only thing that keeps me sane at work.

[Person Man]

A lot of you are spending too much time thinking about about "getting to Mars" and not enough about "getting a job."

On the contrary, thinking about other planets is the only thing that keeps me sane at work.

I'm guessing if you were more competitive with continuous mathematics, you would have gone into Aerospace Engineering or Applied Physics? It's never too late to go back if you don't get the job you want. You appear to go to a good enough school that you will get a job, but if you don't like your job, and you don't have a family in 5 years, consider this.

"Just do it" isn't just a catchy phrase.

[Del Tachi]

Why go to space?  it seems there's nothing out there

[Person Man]

Why go to space?  it seems there's nothing out there

Except for all of the energy and “metals”(Included is stuff like Graphene)  we will ever need.

[Del Tachi]

Why go to space?  it seems there's nothing out there

Except for all of the energy and “metals”(Included is stuff like Graphene)  we will ever need.

And with robots we can mine the stars while our society stays squarely planted on earth

[DaleCooper]

I don't even take it for granted that other people know which planet we live on.