Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species | Hacker News Reader

Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species

online.liebertpub.com

34 pointstaylorbuley9 comments

Nice to have it in a paper but nothing much new from the talk that it came from.

Not to diminish it at all, I could read about Musk and SpaceX all day. I find it a great hangover cure / distraction from the Clown Shoes shitshow of American politics. Such hope in the future at times like this is awesome.

I would love to hear more technical information about some challenges like what is needed for second stage recovery to work? How far along are we in building tech to be able to create the fuel on Mars? and on a lighter note - which other species should come with us first? I vote dogs, I mean let's be honest, they already got to space before us and they would be an awesome morale builder for a one/two year journey...Cats however....

The argument about doomsday asteroids etc is the wrong argument to take, it would still be much easier to survive on the earth even after several killer asteroids than to survive on Mars or another planetary body.

Even if you build your mars base here tomorrow, lets say in Antarctica, nobody has yet got the closed loop environment problem solved as far as I'm aware and supplies will still be required from outside.

Saying that I'm bullish the Human race will become inter-planetary in the next 50 years and wish those working to make it happen the best of luck.

"We have, in terms of nearby options, Venus, but Venus is a high-pressure—super-high-pressure—hot acid bath, so that would be a tricky one."

That "acid bath" doesn't reach the soil, Mr. Musk! The temperature and the high pressure are a problem indeed. For humans though, Venus is the only sane option, considering the Earth-like gravity alone. (There's also the induced magnetosphere and a bunch of other good stuff, as bonus.) A high speciation risk comes from living for long (like in the span of generations) time in unnatural environments, and I'd say that from all places outside Earth, Venus bears that risk on its lowest levels.

One author? Honestly?

Besides that, I'm not sure, where to even start, so let's start here:

    "I do not have an immediate doomsday prophecy, but 
    eventually, history suggests, there will be some
    doomsday event".

For the sake of my children: Overly pessimistic and unscientific.

Flying to Mars can be done. For sure. By the work of many.

Then. I have trust, that humans will first clean up the dirty mess in their current habitat ahead of polluting any other.

Humans have never cleaned up one mess before starting a new one. What makes you think multiplanetary civilisation will be any different?

Humankind has to. On smaller scales, they did many times. There are plenty of examples. Here one I really like: https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/air:

    In Europe, emissions of many air pollutants have
    decreased substantially over the past decades,
    resulting in improved air quality across the region.

In the other corner we have Exxon Valdez, BP Deep Horizons, Aliso Canyon, rednecks driving "coal rollers", the Koch brothers campaigning against EVs, and the Australian government using the drug dealer defence in relation to coal mining.

Many Europeans see this and are afraid that it will get worse in the US. In my opinion, that's the reason for the strong resistance against TTIP/CETA.

However, we're heading off topic. :-)

Although the paper could have provided a more quantative introduction, like with the doomsday part, however the math on these kinds of things have been done and done again over and over in so many papers, approaching from geological (looking at the rock layers and looking for the frequency of layers that indicate poor living conditions like embedded soot, certain rock types that suggest high energy impact, etc.), archeological (looking at the number of species from fossils in rock layers and looking for large decreases), and physical (solar system asteroid simulations, mathematical study, etc.).

In the end it's been done and the scientific community are well aware of the evidence. They don't need to re-invent the wheel be summarising/repeating this research...

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