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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   30210 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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I respect the ambition of conquering space, but I think there’s also a clear and unspoken disconnect between what’s promised - which is a kind of romantic, sci-fi version of the age of exploration - and the reality.

There are no planets we’ve ever found that can likely support human habitation without terraforming. Certainly nowhere else in the solar system would support human habitation without terraforming, which mostly involves hypothetical technology and would take thousands of years, just to end up with a worse version of what we already have. What’s more, a multiplanetary species would likely still be at risk of pandemics / MAD / extinction-risk events. Sure, an asteroid can’t destroy us, but most other extinction scenarios would still be viable.

There is no major viable route to other habitable planets; we’d need to send probes to find them first, and we can’t do that at speeds fast enough to make that kind of search viable. Even if one was miraculously found, it would require thousands of years on a generation ship (involving mountains of uninvented and possibly impossible technology) or cryostasis (see above) to make work.

I’m all for exploring space, but I’m also 99% certain that human civilization, whatever becomes of it, will be tied to earth as the center of its story from beginning to end.

Sam Kriss is a notorious blowhard, but on just one thing, he was prescient:

Humanity will never colonize Mars, never build moon bases, never rearrange the asteroids, never build a sphere around the sun.

There will never be faster-than-light travel. We will not roam across the galaxy. We will not escape our star.

Life is probably an entirely unexceptional phenomenon; the universe probably teems with it. We will never make contact. We will never fuck green-skinned alien babes.

The human race will live and die on this rock, and after we are gone something else will take our place. Maybe it already has, without our even noticing.

If your response to this is to post the NYT quote from the early 1900s about man not flying for a thousand years, then I care not to argue.

Space is a black void with a few resources we can mostly find on earth. It can never replace the Wild West, the frontier. It is empty, and it can never be home to us. This is where we have evolved to live, and to die.

Yoda voice: and this is why you fail.

Or if you want to get spicey see that infamous Avatar-40k crossover copy/pasta that seems to make the rounds every few years

Spare us your pity, alien. You gush about your connection with nature, your primal wisdom, but what has it brought you? Where are your marvels of engineering? Your voyages of discovery? Your great insight into the nature of the universe? Even at our basest, when we dressed as you do, dwelt as you do, hunted as you do, lived as you do, we did more than merely survive. We built wonders. We made great journeys. We forged epics. You have not. You speak so proudly of the plugs dangling from your skulls, little realizing that they are but strings and you puppets. What little you have accomplished you attribute to the wisdom of your goddess, who is nothing but the voices of your dead echoing for all eternity. She moors you to the past, serving as a leash that keeps you as little better than apes, sad parodies of civilization that lack that special spark to become something more. We have come to your world in search of resources. Whether your actions drive us back or we take what we want and move on, the outcome is the same. We will depart from your wretched planet, leaving you behind. And in a thousand years, you will not have changed from this contact with another world. You will remain in your trees, hunting your prey, communing with your goddess, until your sun burns out and your world dies. And above your tomb, the stars will belong to us.

In the spirit of playful contrarianism:

‘But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin,’ said the sky-person.

In fact,' said the Na’vi, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent, the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow.' There was a long silence.

I claim them all,' said the human at last.

The Na’vi shrugged his blue shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.

I liked Semper Victoria if you’re into fic. It’s an Avatar sequel about humanity’s return that’s unabashedly pro-human without overly strawmanning either side. Very well written and very suspenseful.

I’m surprised at your lack of vision here, 2rafa. To me it’s more than obvious we can conquer space. We’ve already got people living in the ISS. If we don’t blow ourselves up it’s only a matter of time imo.

We went from having our home be sub Saharan Africa to living in the entire world. Space is just the next step.

I’m surprised at your lack of vision here, 2rafa.

That seems totally in character. The best rafa posts are a window into the Id of the beancounter, and many heuristics that really really almost always work are found there.

Welcome back.

Also, don’t be a jerk.

This is unnecessarily mean.

But why, though? The US was and is better in a lot of ways than Europe (more arable land, great scenery, natural resources). What does space have over earth? The view?

Habitation on Mars would be in radiation shielded bunkers underground, how is that even comparable to living on earth?

You have to think longer than a few generations. Or course it’s going to be terrible for the first century or two. Everyone on board with the mission knows that.

They are inspired by something far grander than their own small existence. I hope you are able to understand someday.

I think that you will be able to find first generation colonists. I also think that the rage of the second generation will be hideous to behold, and the relative immigration rates will make third-world immigration look like a trickle. I don't want to agree with @2rafa, I fantasised about colonising space when I was younger, but absent huge technological improvements living anywhere except a terraformed planet is going to be basically crap forever.

I also think that the rage of the second generation will be hideous to behold,

I suppose it depends on how much you believe in blank slatism. If the children of those who took the long view and volunteered for hardship, take the the long view and volunteer for hardship, what would they have to "rage" about?

I guess. They wouldn’t really be volunteering so much as being volunteered, and that might make a difference too.

What’s the endgame? I don’t think I’m blinded by my small existence, I think they’re blinded by science fiction; they fantasize about playing golf on an alien world with candy cotton trees, about going on space liners around the rings of Saturn, about going where no man has gone before. They imagine a universe of earth-like worlds with breathable atmospheres, each full of its own mysteries, cultures, fertile soil for new civilizational growth. Is it they who are lying to themselves. Space is a black void. It is strictly worse than earth in every way. Better to be done with the delusion now (which, again, is not to say I’m against exploring it, only doing so honestly).

All of what you’re talking about is possible, relatively easily in my opinion. Do you think scientific advances will stop?

We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible. You aren’t thinking big enough, still. In 10,000 years, assuming we don’t collapse our society and technology continues to progress, we will be powerful beyond belief. Space will be a cakewalk to master.

If you want some serious reading on this I recommend Beginning of Infinity.

Do you think scientific advances will stop?

Eventually, yes.

We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible.

How do you know that? How do you know we haven't already accomplished ~90% of what's possible?

In 10,000 years, assuming we don’t collapse our society and technology continues to progress

I, for one, think these are both big, unsupported conjectures.

“Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with rudimentary wings, or ten thousand for one with started with no wings at all and had to sprout them ab initio, it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years — provided, of course, we can meanwhile eliminate such little drawbacks and embarrassments as the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials.”

Heh, nothin personal kid.

There are no planets we’ve ever found that can likely support human habitation without terraforming. Certainly nowhere else in the solar system would support human habitation without terraforming, which mostly involves hypothetical technology and would take thousands of years, just to end up with a worse version of what we already have.

This is true, but the implication isn't that we can't conquer space, just that we should assume we'll have to mostly build our own habitable volumes. There's enough matter and energy in the solar system to support at least hundreds of billions of humans this way, in the long run.

So Musk might be a little off-target with his focus on Mars. Still, at this point we don't really need to make that decision; SpaceX is working on general capabilities that apply to either approach. And maybe it's not a bad idea to start with Mars and work our way around to habitats as AI advances make highly automated in-space resource extraction and construction more viable.

What’s more, a multiplanetary species would likely still be at risk of pandemics / MAD / extinction-risk events. Sure, an asteroid can’t destroy us, but most other extinction scenarios would still be viable.

Many forms of x-risk would be substantially mitigated if civilization were spread over millions of space habitats. These could be isolated to limit the spread of a pandemic. Nuclear exchanges wouldn't affect third-parties by default, and nukes are in several ways less powerful and easier to defend against in space. Dispersal across the solar system might even help against an unfriendly ASI, by providing enough time for those furthest from its point of emergence to try their luck at rushing a friendly ASI to defend them (assuming they know how to build ASI but were previously refraining for safety).

There are no planets we’ve ever found that can likely support human habitation without terraforming. Certainly nowhere else in the solar system would support human habitation without terraforming

I don't think this is true at all. It's possible we never colonize Mars, or wherever, or that if we do it's just basically a scientific research outpost.

But Mars has water. So humans would be able to breathe and grow food. From what I can tell - although I am happy to be corrected - colonizing Mars is much more of a logistical challenge than anything else. The technical challenges seem solved or solvable with current technology.

colonizing Mars is much more of a logistical challenge than anything else. The technical challenges seem solved or solvable with current technology.

Pretty much, in fact NASA concluded that it was largely solvable with 1970s technology, the issue was that it was estimated that (assuming a reliable source of water could be found) a self sustaining lunar colony of 50 - 100 people would require something on the order of 10,000 tons of seed mass. Not all that much in the grand scheme of human endevour, but there was no way congress was going to give budgetary approval for 650 Saturn V launches over the course of 10 years.

That later bit is what makes "Starship" so exciting. If SpaceX actually manages to deliver even half of thier advertised payload capacity and flight rate, an ISS-scale space station will be something a decent sized university or tech company can afford, and a permanent Lunar colony will be within the means of most nation states, not unlike arctic and antarctic stations today.

IMO Mars doesn't necessarily seem like it will be the most interesting destination: It seems likely that once we have the technology for extended in-space habitation to get there, the bottom of a large gravity well seems a relatively boring place to hang out. What does the planet get you? Gravity? Spinning habitations seem easy enough. Meteorite protection? We'll need to have figured that out anyway. Land? Is it really easier for farming than in-space?

The asteroid belt looks a lot more tempting to me because even if resources are scarcer (unclear), they are easier to move elsewhere.

Radiation resistance is a big deal.

Of course, the irony is that radiation resistance works against Mars, because what you want is either a) a thick atmosphere (Earth, Venus, Titan*) or b) low-enough gravity that you can go deep underground easily (for which asteroids and even Luna beat Mars handily).

*Not discounting Venus because its CO2 atmosphere permits cloud cities. Discounting the giant planets because their H2 atmospheres don't.

Do they not? Isn't the hydrogen atmosphere of Jupiter rather dense due to how cold it is? I'm not sure what the math would look like on a Hot Hydrogen Balloon. (Edit: like 2-1 density ratio between 100C hydrogen and -100C hydrogen, you'd only have 1/6th the buoyant force of a hydrogen balloon on earth. But double check my napkin math before trusting it for your Jupiter colony please)

Edit: like 2-1 density ratio between 100C hydrogen and -100C hydrogen, you'd only have 1/6th the buoyant force of a hydrogen balloon on earth. But double check my napkin math

As a less-relevant point, I did double-check your maths and I think you did make a mistake somewhere.

Hydrogen at (old) STP (0 C, 1 atm) has a density of 0.08988 g/L. Assuming ideal gas, that's a density of 0.0658 g/L at 100C and 0.1418 g/L at -100C, for a buoyancy of 0.0760 g/L for your hot hydrogen balloon in cold hydrogen at 1 atm.

Air at (old) STP has a density of 1.2922 g/L (representing an average molar mass of slightly under 29, due to contributions from N2 at 28, O2 at 32, Ar at 40 and H2O at 18, whereas H2 is 2). As such, a non-heated hydrogen balloon in 0-degree 1-atm air has a buoyancy of 1.2023 g/L, which is 15.8x the buoyancy of your hot hydrogen balloon (or 14.5x if your "hydrogen balloon on Earth" comparison is at 25 degrees and 1 atm).

I think you might have divided the density ratios of air/hydrogen vs. hot/cold hydrogen, but the relevant criterion for determining how big a balloon you need is the absolute difference of the densities. You need 15.8x as big a balloon to support a given weight with your setup as you would at STP with a hydrogen balloon in air (actually somewhat more, because the lifting gas has to lift the balloon as well as the payload and the skin of a balloon with 15.8x the volume weighs 6.3x as much for a given material/thickness).

(Jupiter's atmosphere does have about 14% He, which makes the numbers a little better than with pure H2, but not much. And yes, that does bring up the possibility of using a pure-hydrogen balloon without heating, but between the buoyancy per litre being even worse than in your example at ~0.0192 g/L and the thick balloon walls needed to keep He and H2 apart in the long-term (they're both notoriously-difficult gases to contain), I think you again wind up in "theoretically possible and could totally let an atmospheric probe float for a few hours, but not practical for long-term holding up a city" land.)

Thanks. I got as far as 0.076, but not sure where I made the math error after that.

It's theoretically possible, but a) it's still weak (particularly since it's not breathable, whereas a cloud city on Venus counts all the air toward lifting gas), b) it's an active system which kills everyone inside a day if it's turned off, which generally falls under the heading of Bad Ideas.

(On Earth, the slow buoyancy failure of a hot-air balloon usually produces a survivable if bumpy landing. But, of course, that's no help on a giant planet.)

I actually think there's a good chance the moon does very well for exactly these reasons - there's water ice there, there's enough gravity for useful things but barely enough to stop you from traveling, and we could make a space elevator from conventional materials. Basically has most of the benefits of a space habitat but doesn't require space infrastructure assembly.

One thing that I think planets have that space habitats don't is more room for error. If you are building on Mars it's pretty easy to build e.g. a "panic room" for a colony - food stockpiles, an extra reactor, etc. (And if something does go badly wrong you at least have resources on hand that don't have to be flown to you.) You can build redundancy on a space colony as well, but I imagine it as the difference between designing a ship with that versus a land-based colony. Both are doable, but it's probably going to have a marginal impact on the ship's cost moreso than that of the colony.

This isn't to say that space habitats won't be a thing, though - they seem plausible to me.

Space is a black void with a few resources we can mostly find on earth. It can never replace the Wild West, the frontier. It is empty, and it can never be home to us. This is where we have evolved to live, and to die.

The Earth vs. Moon and African Plains vs. far Arctic are differences of degree, not kind. Both the moon and the arctic are inhospitable environments that will quickly kill unprotected humans, and lack easy access to essential resources. And yet, with sufficient adaptation and technology, we've managed to create self-sufficient populations in the far north.

We've gone beyond "where we have evolved to live, and to die" once already. I wouldn't count us out yet.

Some may ask why we aren't building cities in Antarctica now before going to Mars. Building life support systems and growing food is easier there than it will be on Mars. Mars will be colonized first, though, and Antarctica may never be colonized. The reason is because international treaties prevent Antarctica from having sovereignty. But sovereignty can be attainable on Mars. The pursuit of sovereignty is what makes space exploration worthwhile. Sovereignty is unobtainium—the resource more abundant in space than on Earth. Men will endure bitter poverty, cold isolation, drink piss and eat lichen just for a chance to be free from the tyranny of the United Nations.

This looks like one of the cases where being more realistic is not more useful. Even if Sam Kriss is 99% right, what is the use of following his earthly wisdom instead of gambling for the 1%?

If there’s energy, (whether from solar panels, a greenhouse or a nuclear reactor) people can live there. I’m positive star entrepreneurs could find lots of people willing to live in a cage, eating reprocessed gruel facing fearful odds for a hundred generations, because I’m not far from considering it. A lot of polynesians drowned, but in the end they got to most of the pacific.

No need for terraforming, just dig the equivalent of an antarctic base. Who needs fresh air anyway. Modern youth’s predilection for browsing dank memes over going outside will pay off on mars.

Yeah. Elon has explicitly stated that “if it’s not against the laws of physics it’s not impossible”.

This attitude has proven to be enormously valuable.

Mars colonization is not impossible just because we don’t know how to do it yet.

That may be true, but what actually matters is that Elon himself does not believe this.

It's true that designing some kind of vault system to survive a meteor strike would be vastly easier and cheaper than trying to do something similar on another world. At least here we have air and water, and transportation costs are comparatively nil.

A vault system is okay for a meteor strike, but if planet Earth gets taken over by robots, a human colony on Mars has a better chance of escaping extermination.

I think I'm in camp "If the robots can take over earth they can and will probably get to Mars too." Guess one never does know.

IIRC a novel called 'Moving Mars' deals with such a scenario.

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