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Comment by cptaj | Hacker News Reader

And to think that there is likely an Easy Mode system out there.

A habitable planet on the low end of the mass spectrum needed for a stable atmosphere with other habitable planets in-system. And all that close to another star with habitable planets, possibly in the sub-lightyear range.

Basically everything ripe for a spacefaring civilization to grow without too much trouble and with plenty of motivation.

The Earth is hard to leave and everything else in our system is dead rocks with hellish environments as far as we know with the nearest alternative at least dozens of lightyears away

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Or perhaps that’s ultra-hard mode. Multiple fantastically different independent intelligent species evolving on planets within shooting range of each other with basic industrial technology.

If you’ve ever played civilization, it is a helluva lot harder to get started in Europe than in North America.

You consider 12 light years to be within shooting range?

Good luck with that.

Well, that’s just a matter of time. But I was referring to the parent comment’s system.

It's also a matter of space. Maybe you are unfamiliar with the concept of space-time and what a light year really measures.

You misinterpreted the comment. They were discussing a single star system with multiple habitable planets.

If more than one planet in the system gave rise to an intelligent species that develops a civilization, things would likely get very interesting very quickly.

Not likely. Even traveling to a planet as "nearby" as Neptune by conventional means would take 12 years. Hardly within shooting range, and who knows whether our civilization will survive long enough for us to make it to even the edge of our solar system.

And the OP was referring to a nearby star system, within "sublight year" range. Even < 1 light year could mean very, very far away.

They are referring to a single system... Here is the quote:

>> And to think that there is likely an Easy Mode system out there.

>> A habitable planet on the low end of the mass spectrum needed for a stable atmosphere with other habitable planets in-system. And all that close to another star with habitable planets, possibly in the sub-lightyear range.

Yes, they mentioned another star system as an additional point, but that wasn't the main idea.

> Hardly within shooting range

Mars is only 6 months away. We have the technology today to launch boulders weighing hundreds of tons to Mars. Those make for pretty good weapons.

>We have the technology today to launch boulders weighing hundreds of tons to Mars.

You must be joking, or you are completely unaware of Tsiolkovsky's equation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFR_(rocket)

100+ tons to Mars. Doesn't require any major technological breakthroughs. It's just really big.

If you want a rocket that has already been built, the Saturn V could have launched a ~50 ton boulder to Mars. Not quite hundreds of tons, but that was also built 50 years ago.

If the Earth was suddenly facing interplanetary war with Mars, I imagine we would start building some very impressive rockets quite quickly. And they would all obey the rocket equation :)

BFR is unproven, no one knows whether it could take a payload of hundreds of tons.

But yeah, in theory you could just build a bigger rocket. But even going from 50 to 100 tons increases the size significantly, let alone going to hundreds of tons like you said. Maybe that's not possible with today's technology, multi stages and all.

Imagine an easy mode planet in a system with multiple habitable planets. Now that I've typed that I'm also considering how Mars would look from 12 light years away.

Is establishing a colony 12 light years away easier than transforming mars into a habitable planet?

Harder, I think. We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it). We have some ideas from physics about how to get to a planet 12 ly away, but not the technology. Nor, I would argue, do we have the social and political setup required for such a project, which would most likely take hundreds of years to get to a basic colony.

> We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it).

I'm not convinced this is true intergenerationally without a maternity ward in a centrifuge; the low gravity mouse embryo experiments don't look promising. Maybe 1/3rd earth gravity is enough, but I'm doubtful. If we're granting centrifugal habitats as something doable with current technology, an Orion/Daedalus style nuke-propelled spacecraft seems in the same ballpark. It's been sketched out and tested with models, it's clearly possible, but nobody has really made one yet and it's a hell of an engineering problem still.

We should be colonizing the moon first, then Phobos or Deimos. Then, once established, we can conquer the martian gravity well with local resources.

I like Musk's plan of using Mars as a fuel-planet, I just don't expect a self-sufficient colony for some time. Mars is like an oil rig or a mineshaft; no place for children.

In fact it's cold as hell.

And there's no one there to raise them if you did.

Phobos and Deimos are very, very tiny.

The diameter of the Moon is 2,160 miles. The diameter of Phobos is 14 miles. Deimos is 8 miles.

(For scale, Mars' diameter is 4,200 miles).

That is the point. It's easy to land and get off a tiny moon and there is material to make a habitat out of rather than sending it all from Earth.

mouse embyro zero-G experiments being referred to: https://www.wired.com/2009/08/spacebabies/

> Harder, I think. We have the technology to live on Mars (not to terraform it, just to survive on it).

There is a chance that nuking the polar caps would terraform Mars, I think we already have the technology for basic terraforming.

edit: wrong quote :/

On interstellar travel realities: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high... - aka it’s not happening soon.

And for terraforming Mars, Isaac Arthur’s YouTube channel has many related videos, and he posits that by the time your civilisation could do it, it would be a wasteful use of Mars when it could be better disassembled and turned into O’Neill cylinders or something.

But coming over a crater or valley on Mars and transforming it into something habitable would be enormously easier than travelling 12 ly.

From that distance, Venus and Mars both look potentially habitable.

Maybe the Great Filter is real and screwing up a system is as easy as screwing up a planet ;)

...why the winky face?

Why not ? Maybe sentient / intelligent life is thriving everywhere but 99.9% of time, climate change or nuclear annihilation happens. Even in "easy mode" with several planets. I find it ironic and somehow poetic.

I believe (like many people) sentient/intelligent life to be intrinsically valuable, and the suffering or extinguishing of that life to be bad.

Our own species suffers and harms itself far too much already. I like to think that we're doing relatively well, solving problems and navigating bad Nash equilibria and local optimizations with social systems and technology to make the world a better place. In as little as the last century, we've made huge strides in solving problems of hunger, illness, education, freedom of expression, and more. Even with the huge efforts needed to escape our heavy planet's gravity well with chemical rockets, and the limited habitability of other planets in our system, we're exploring the possiblity of colonizing other planets.

To imagine that this is a hopeless fight, even at the best of odds - that sentient/intelligent life is not only unable to succeed but is actively continuously exterminating itself across the universe - is a ghastly, horrific, tragic nightmare.

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