Depressing. Earth is clearly already on a death spiral. I consider it only natural for humanity to spread, and stagnation leads to issues like we are dealing with now. Resource shortage, climate change, pollution.
All our eggs in one basket is a bad idea. In a just world, NASA or rather any space agency would have 10x or more the funding they do now. A lot of the data we have on the changing climate comes from these agencies.
And absolutely fuck having any psychopathic CEO use his resources to force humans into Mars before it's ready in the name of profits or some stupid show of force.
Mars can't be terraformed now, so we should be focusing on how to mitigate the dangers to earth, get better at going to space with less cost, and getting more people into careers that actually contribute to humanity like engineering, medicine and no more fucking "Business degrees".
No matter how bad things get on earth, they will be much, much easier to improve to habitable conditions than Mars. The difference in resource investment required is so many orders of magnitude as to be almost unquantifiable in terms that relate to any real world economic activity. Like, 1000 years of the entire productive capacity of the Earth to even begin to meaningfully change the climate of Mars to something where we could live there.
I consider it only natural for humanity to spread, and stagnation leads to issues like we are dealing with now. Resource shortage, climate change, pollution.
Why is it natural for humanity to spread? All three of those issues on earth are extremely solvable through a different economic system. We don't even need new technology. Population growth is obviously not going to continue for ever - it's already declining. Our planet has more than enough resources to live here sustainably until the sun burns out in a few hundred million years. We simply need to stop allowing a parasitic class to destroy things for their own short-term gain. You might scoff at the infeasibility of that task, but I promise you it is far easier than shipping billions of people through space and all the resources necessary to sustain them on a planet where not only are they not evolved to live, but where the conditions for life are worse than literally any spot on Earth. It simply doesn't make sense.
Humanity has 3 purposes in my opinion. 1- make and consume art (in whatever form that may be). 2- protect life. 3- explore. We have always wanted to visit new places, go to new frontiers. Yes, we can lessen the strain on earth by better resource management, moving away from destructive practices.
We aren't going to stay just on this rock. And whoever gets their first might have a bigger say in what life is like beyond earth. The Soviets, Americans, China, they all knew the value in ensuring we aren't just stuck here and we actually progress.
It's probably what I'm most passionate about. And it upsets me when someone casts aside an entire academia because "we don't need it" or "it's too hard". What do they want? Just to be stagnant and have the same life as previous generations? What's the point?
China needs to step it up, fuck really any government needs to step it up. Because if not China, it's going to be the US or some billionaire loser who will set up slave camps and ensure Raytheon gets their money for installing missile launchers on the moon or something stupid.
I don't think you have any understanding of just how hard it is. I did the math: https://hexbear.net/comment/5484726
To summarize, at our current energy output, it would take 4.7 billion years to create a sufficiently massive atmosphere on Mars for human habitability.
Current energy output. We are getting closer to fusion energy every day. I'm also literally never taking a hexbear users "I did the math" comment as scientific fact.
Don't have to terraform mars, just have to get a decent population off of one rock.
How much more energy production is there to hit? If you increase it by a thousand times (you won't) then it will only take about 5 million years! And again, what about the energy we need on earth? The math is not complex. The energy to complete the task at hand simply isn't available to us and, on any timescale that matters, never will be.
Don't have to terraform mars, just have to get a decent population off of one rock.
Where are you going to put them that won't be like living in the worst prison on earth but 100x more dangerous and 10000x more isolated?
Depressing. Earth is clearly already on a death spiral. I consider it only natural for humanity to spread, and stagnation leads to issues like we are dealing with now. Resource shortage, climate change, pollution.
All our eggs in one basket is a bad idea. In a just world, NASA or rather any space agency would have 10x or more the funding they do now. A lot of the data we have on the changing climate comes from these agencies.
And absolutely fuck having any psychopathic CEO use his resources to force humans into Mars before it's ready in the name of profits or some stupid show of force.
Mars can't be terraformed now, so we should be focusing on how to mitigate the dangers to earth, get better at going to space with less cost, and getting more people into careers that actually contribute to humanity like engineering, medicine and no more fucking "Business degrees".
deleted by creator
No matter how bad things get on earth, they will be much, much easier to improve to habitable conditions than Mars. The difference in resource investment required is so many orders of magnitude as to be almost unquantifiable in terms that relate to any real world economic activity. Like, 1000 years of the entire productive capacity of the Earth to even begin to meaningfully change the climate of Mars to something where we could live there.
Why is it natural for humanity to spread? All three of those issues on earth are extremely solvable through a different economic system. We don't even need new technology. Population growth is obviously not going to continue for ever - it's already declining. Our planet has more than enough resources to live here sustainably until the sun burns out in a few hundred million years. We simply need to stop allowing a parasitic class to destroy things for their own short-term gain. You might scoff at the infeasibility of that task, but I promise you it is far easier than shipping billions of people through space and all the resources necessary to sustain them on a planet where not only are they not evolved to live, but where the conditions for life are worse than literally any spot on Earth. It simply doesn't make sense.
Humanity has 3 purposes in my opinion. 1- make and consume art (in whatever form that may be). 2- protect life. 3- explore. We have always wanted to visit new places, go to new frontiers. Yes, we can lessen the strain on earth by better resource management, moving away from destructive practices.
We aren't going to stay just on this rock. And whoever gets their first might have a bigger say in what life is like beyond earth. The Soviets, Americans, China, they all knew the value in ensuring we aren't just stuck here and we actually progress.
It's probably what I'm most passionate about. And it upsets me when someone casts aside an entire academia because "we don't need it" or "it's too hard". What do they want? Just to be stagnant and have the same life as previous generations? What's the point?
China needs to step it up, fuck really any government needs to step it up. Because if not China, it's going to be the US or some billionaire loser who will set up slave camps and ensure Raytheon gets their money for installing missile launchers on the moon or something stupid.
I don't think you have any understanding of just how hard it is. I did the math: https://hexbear.net/comment/5484726
To summarize, at our current energy output, it would take 4.7 billion years to create a sufficiently massive atmosphere on Mars for human habitability.
Current energy output. We are getting closer to fusion energy every day. I'm also literally never taking a hexbear users "I did the math" comment as scientific fact.
Don't have to terraform mars, just have to get a decent population off of one rock.
How much more energy production is there to hit? If you increase it by a thousand times (you won't) then it will only take about 5 million years! And again, what about the energy we need on earth? The math is not complex. The energy to complete the task at hand simply isn't available to us and, on any timescale that matters, never will be.
Where are you going to put them that won't be like living in the worst prison on earth but 100x more dangerous and 10000x more isolated?
Hey you know what isnt hard? Not replying to every user on this thread so you can hit them with an "ackshully"