Space Travel

[Chuck Naill]

Imagine signing up to go to Mars and changing your mind 18 months in. Too late, I guess.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

All space travel thus far (for humans) is based on us taking our environment with us. Unless we can terraform another planet to have more or less the same microbial ecology I cannot see this ever working out that well. So, it seems to me and has done for a long time, that the only way we are likely to expand from this planet is if we adopt/adapt a form that does not require such a specific environment for survival.

BTW, check out the story Man Plus by Frederik Pohl, because it speaks directly to this idea, is set, ultimately, on Mars, and was written nearly 50 years ago!



Edit: to add. I decry the fact that pioneering has become so risk averse. Kind of not really in the spirit of the thing. I suggest to some friends a while ago that there are no doubt many single retired engineers (for example) who would jump at the chance to go out blazing a path to the future. Solves a couple of problems right off the bat (getting volunteers AND reducing care burden). I know, I know, that's controversial, but is it not true?

[Robalone]

It sure does seem to me that the cost of looking for 'planet B' is being financed by the wanton desecration of 'planet A' and the callous disregard of the plight of a vast number of our species.

At the moment, I'm pretty sure ....our membership into the Federation would be declined lol !

I'm all for the Gene Roddenberry vision for the future, but I reckon it must be done concurrently with looking after this place and it's species , which is definitely not happening .

[Chip]

Given the enormous cost and physical difficulty of getting a few human beings off the earth surface to space, the movement of a sufficient number to establish a viable colony on a hospitable planet would be a tremendous challenge. On an inhospitable planet (e.g. Mars) it would be not only difficult but likely to fail.

Besides the lack of resources and emergency help, there would also be long-term troubles with disease, genetic diversity, and getting along with one another.

[Chip]

The fictional device that underpins nearly all space opera/colonisation stories is the discovery of the means for faster-than-light travel. Which is quite likely impossible.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

You didn't read my post then? Given the scale of the universe there are, in my opinion, only three options.

1. Stay here - and be eventually exterminated by solar expansion if not sooner.
2. Bootstrap - seeding progressively more distant colonies, on the understanding the those colonies will effectively become isolated due to lack of FTL travel.
3. Adapt/evolve to the environmental conditions of space.

#3 is by far our best option (IMHO). At our current lifespan and requirements we cannot individually explore the universe. Even with FTL this would require decades to get anywhere meaningfully far. Theoretically, being adapted to be able to draw on the energy directly from structure of space would allow us live indefinitely and explore endlessly. Don't know if our minds would be able to cope with that in their current state though.

[Chip]

Your options don't seem to be based in any present knowledge of physics or sound grasp of the logistics involved.

Given the sad history of colonisation and resource exploitation on Earth as well as the greed-and-grab behavior of Musk, Bezos and other space privateers, I think the universe is better off without us.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

Actually, my options are firmly entrenched in a good understanding of problems facing us due to the scale of the off-earth environment. I guess you didn't really understand my option #3 or I didn't explain it very well. As a species we do not live on our planet, we are a part of it inextricably and in unfathomably complicated ways. We cannot go anywhere without taking our environment with us. For relatively short trips that means just air and some food, but for longer trips we would run into the problem of the missing microbiome. It is vast and complex and we would have to replicate it elsewhere and while our planet provides this we have no clue how to do so ourselves. Until then we are stuck here... in our present biological form. If our form (and subsequently our requirements for life) changed then we would have a better chance.

[TSherbs]

I watched "Don't Look Up" last night, just to make sure that I had the right frame of mind going into a new year. Space has all sorts of surprises waiting for us!

[Empty_of_Clouds]

Watched it a few days ago. Hilarious if a bit disturbingly similar to current behaviour in some sectors.

[Chip]

3. Adapt/evolve to the environmental conditions of space.

Adapt to an airless, cold, semi-vacuum that lacks virtually every human necessity? Even in a sealed earthlike vessel (such as the present space station) there seem to be physiological problems with prolonged occupation. We certainly can improve our technology for providing artificially maintained earthlike conditions. But that isn't the same as adapting to space itself, or to a hostile planetary environment.

You ought to swot up on evolution. The process depends on exposure to a set of environmental conditions which over long periods/many generations favours some genetic combinations over others. But an environment that will kill earth organisms in a very short time doesn't allow natural selection. To evolve, there must be reproduction.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

When I say adapt to another form I am not talking about a biological form. I should have made that clearer, sorry. I am referring to a non-biological substrate for our consciousness that does not require anything other than a power source and the ability to self-repair given access to resources.


I understand natural evolution perfectly well enough, thanks.

[Chip]

In that case, your use of the word evolution is neither accurate nor precise. You're talking about something else.

Which raises the question: what part of you can exist without a human body? Is an AI simulacrum you?

Just read a sci-fi novel with lots of AI interest, a bit better than the average.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

It's a conversation, casual, I don't feel the need to be overly precise when the intent should be obvious. And yes, you raise a very interesting question about which part is really 'me'. If we accept that conscious thought only arises from brain matter then it's a matter of transferring the processes to non-wetware. Obviously it's not as simple as that, but we're only talking ideas here, and that uploading is (for now) possibly more likely than FTL. Pairs of electrons affect each other's behaviour instantaneously at great distances. This suggests that information is not bound by the c-limit. I don't understand that at all well so just guessing.

[Chuck Naill]

Good grief, Chip. Like EOC said, it's just a casual conversation. I do think being able to last long enough to evolve on Mars is farfetched.

[Chip]

No offence intended. I might be strict about definitions, perhaps as a result of editing a great many scientific papers. I do respond poorly to people heaving in a word or two in order to sound authoritative, when it doesn't serve.

I can't imagine cyber or electronic copies of humans (given a complete lack of bodily processes) resembling us as we now exist. So much of my memory, motivation, and emotion arise from my senses and location in a body, subject not only to pain, injury and death, but to pleasure, calm, sleep, hunger, satiety, etc. that I'm not sure I'd want to live in a disembodied state.

No food, no wine, no sex, no fresh air, no fun.

[Chuck Naill]

No offence intended. I might be strict about definitions, perhaps as a result of editing a great many scientific papers. I do respond poorly to people heaving in a word or two in order to sound authoritative, when it doesn't serve.

I can't imagine cyber or electronic copies of humans (given a complete lack of bodily processes) resembling us as we now exist. So much of my memory, motivation, and emotion arise from my senses and location in a body, subject not only to pain, injury and death, but to pleasure, calm, sleep, hunger, satiety, etc. that I'm not sure I'd want to live in a disembodied state.

No food, no wine, no sex, no fresh air, no fun.

Fuck sakes, Chip!! You were offensive!! Own yourself!! Grow some!! Otherwise, take your solar panels and fuck off!!

[Chip]

Fuck sakes, Chip!! You were offensive!! Own yourself!! Grow some!! Otherwise, take your solar panels and fuck off!!

Rude and uncalled for.

[Chuck Naill]

Fuck sakes, Chip!! You were offensive!! Own yourself!! Grow some!! Otherwise, take your solar panels and fuck off!!

Rude and uncalled for.

Whatever, Dude. Grow up.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

No offence intended. I might be strict about definitions, perhaps as a result of editing a great many scientific papers. I do respond poorly to people heaving in a word or two in order to sound authoritative, when it doesn't serve.

I can't imagine cyber or electronic copies of humans (given a complete lack of bodily processes) resembling us as we now exist. So much of my memory, motivation, and emotion arise from my senses and location in a body, subject not only to pain, injury and death, but to pleasure, calm, sleep, hunger, satiety, etc. that I'm not sure I'd want to live in a disembodied state.

No food, no wine, no sex, no fresh air, no fun.

Bolded above, I find that quite offensive indeed. Implies a motive that just didn't exist. I don't need or want to sound authoritative in a casual conversation about various imaginative scenarios involving space travel.

I get your personal animus to potentially losing sensory connection, but why do you think an uploaded consciousness would not have sensory input? We are just riffing on the subject here, an android form (for example) could embody the same sensorium and associated paths for input as the biological form. It could incorporate different spectra of senses beyond what we currently have.

Bottom line is that the world will eventually end for us, either as an uninhabitable world or swallowed by the sun, whichever comes first. So we either stay or we go, but we cannot go as we are. It may be that in my android futurescape the human brain will need to change or be augmented to cope with heightened streams of data.

Imagination has no limits, and I am reminded of the quote from a 1902 edition of the magazine Puck: 'Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.'

This should be a fun conversation. Please let it be so.