Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

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Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Marcuse » Thu Jun 13, 2013 7:13 pm

Hey everyone! Hey listen!

I think we can all agree that space is cool beans, but where do you think that human space exploration is going from here? Do you expect a Mars colony? Moon base to build long range craft? Absurd space elevator?

I personally believe that human exploitation of Earth's resources can only be solved/reduced by the colonisation of another planet. At least one, but preferably the ones with the cool stuff on them. Like Titan, or Eris. Either way, there's a lot of cool and new stuff out there and I think we should be going to get it, for study or use.

I also believe that space exploration is the gateway to a new ecosystem. If we have irreparably ruined this ecosystem then it makes sense to work now towards creating a new one that we can control without the historic screw ups our ancestors made. I would like to see new colonies created in a sustainable fashion that would impact much less on their respective environments than we do here.

So: let the exploration begin!
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby DashaBlade » Thu Jun 13, 2013 7:46 pm

I think that if we're going to terraform/colonize another planet, Europa would be a good choice - except that it's frozen, of course. If we had the technology to tow it closer to the Earth and make it our second moon, it might be perfect.

As such technology only exists in science fiction, however, our better option would be continuing to research methods of propulsion so that we can seek out a planet in a nearby solar system to colonize. My favorite scientist, Michio Kaku, doesn't think this will happen until we've become far more efficient at harnessing energy than we are right now, but that it could, theoretically, happen. Personally, I think it won't happen until we've reached the next stage of human evolution.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Ganymede314 » Thu Jun 13, 2013 8:25 pm

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!!

Well, I love me some space, obviously. I would absolutely love to see further human exploration of space, and if I EVER get the chance to go to space I am so there, even if it's a one way trip. I'm pretty for reals about all this.

But......
As much as I would love to see more human missions going into space, I think that the real developments in the near future will not involve manned space excursions. I think, from the way NASA and ESA are talking these days, that robotic missions will be our best bet for possible colonisation of other planets (I vote for Titan!). We will certainly need to send robotic missions before we even think of sending humans, and manned missions are a thousand times more complicated to complete successfully. So I'd say that the emphasis will be on robotic missions primarily, for at least the next fifty years.

Even though our technological advances with human space travel have been totally awesome and everything, at this stage humans would just hold back advancement with our stupid squishy delicate meat-bag bodies. Now that's not to say that we shouldn't send any humans to space, not at all. The ISS and possible manned missions to the Moon and Mars will prove invaluable in determining how well humans can cope during space travel. But over the next fifty years, the big advancements will be primarily from robotic missions.

We need significant advances in energy use and ship design before we will be able to get anywhere exciting in any reasonable length of time, with humans involved.

But, I am deadly serious when I say that if I get half a chance to go into space, I will be on it like a bonnet.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Jun 14, 2013 6:05 am

DashaBlade wrote: Personally, I think it won't happen until we've reached the next stage of human evolution.

Human evolution tends to take, at a minimum, tens of thousands of years. Some of the most recent estimates for when Homo Sapiens Sapiens first evolved into its modern form put that evolution at about 100,000 years ago. Considering that we went from "not flying" to "robots on mars" in a century, I really doubt it would take us hundreds of times longer than that to go from "robots on mars" to "interstellar travel", particularly as NASA hopes to have an interstellar craft by 2100 and we're already trying to create small warp bubbles.

The next step is a manned mission to Mars. I can't say exactly why this is, but it appears to be the stance of several spacefaring governments, including the US and Russian ones, so that's almost certainly our next step. If we actually dedicated sufficient resources we could start working on that mission right now and probably have it done within a couple decades, but because we have more expensive fish to fry, our budget is understandably not focused too much in that direction.

Long term I'm hoping for the warp drive. I'm not enough of a physicist to say whether this is the most feasible idea for speedy interstellar travel, but right now it looks like a reasonably feasible idea, enough so that it's one that physicists and NASA are investigating.

The first physicist to propose the mechanism behind a warp drive did so in the 90s, but generating the warp bubble required about the energy equivalent of the mass of Jupiter (which, using the formula E=mc^2, is about 1.7 x 10^44 Joules, or 170 quintillion yottajoules). However, more recently, a physicist discovered a warp bubble geometry that could move a craft at about 10c (ten times the speed of light) using 6.5 x 10^19 Joules (65 exajoules), which is about half the amount America produces each year, meaning that this is an amount that we can actually make (though it'd probably be hard to store that in a spacecraft). Here's a video on the subject, made by an actual scientist:

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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Marcuse » Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:59 am

I think that an important area is the search for extra-terrestrial life. There's already a theory that methanogenic life exists on Titan and I think it would be really cool if we could find life that exists on different terms to ours.

Hypothetical forms of biochemistry are a fascinating concept that opens up the possibility of life being present in conditions we would not be able to survive in. It also poses interesting religious and social questions, if life is discovered on another planet, how does this affect fundamental creationist worldviews?

Certainly people who can accept that evolution could be the work of the divine would be able to cope, but to me the existence of extra-terrestrial life would debunk entirely the anthropocentric creationist position. At the very least they would be forced to adopt and ad-hoc auxiliary hypothesis that would devalue their argument to the point of absurdity.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:55 pm

Marcuse wrote:I think that an important area is the search for extra-terrestrial life. There's already a theory that methanogenic life exists on Titan and I think it would be really cool if we could find life that exists on different terms to ours.

I hadn't heard that one before! I was curious about Europa in particular (especially if there are hydrothermal vents capable of heating oceans underneath the ice layer).

It also poses interesting religious and social questions, if life is discovered on another planet, how does this affect fundamental creationist worldviews?

Excuse me for saying so, but I don't find that an interesting question. Actually, the really interesting questions would arise from the existence of intelligent life, particularly regarding racism if we were ever to interact with them to a reasonable degree: at what point do biological differences actually warrant discriminatory behaviour? Certainly we've (correctly) decided that the difference between races is insufficient basis, but between entire trees of life? Actually, now that I think about it, we've already solved this question by (justifiably) treating other sapient beings (dolphins, chimps, and gorillas) differently.

At the very least they would be forced to adopt and ad-hoc auxiliary hypothesis that would devalue their argument to the point of absurdity.

Isn't this essentially what they've already done with existing biological and cosmological evidence?
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Marcuse » Fri Jun 14, 2013 4:51 pm

aviel wrote:I hadn't heard that one before! I was curious about Europa in particular (especially if there are hydrothermal vents capable of heating oceans underneath the ice layer).


Europa is also an interesting potential subject for extra-terrestrial life. It seems like the more we look at even the solar system it seems like it would be possible for at least rudimentary life to exist in a variety of places. Cold Seeps might be an even more likely phenomenon, since they appear in more regular and long term ways.

aviel wrote:Isn't this essentially what they've already done with existing biological and cosmological evidence?


Who are we kidding? We all know it'd end like this
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Eternauta » Sat Jun 15, 2013 8:06 am

What do you guys think is more likely? FTL travel or hibernation for colonizing other planets. Also what did the Universe do wrong to deserve the spreading of the human virus?
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Jun 15, 2013 3:32 pm

Eternauta wrote:What do you guys think is more likely? FTL travel or hibernation for colonizing other planets.

FTL. I really doubt you could ever get people to consent to hibernation, you'd still face the problem of the fact that you need mission control to stay awake, and I don't even think this technology is really being looked into. It's a massive inconvenience.

Also what did the Universe do wrong to deserve the spreading of the human virus?

I don't like it when humanity is framed as a virus. First, it's clearly technically not. Second, even if we were to so thoroughly destroy our environment that it couldn't sustain us (which has yet to happen), overconsumption of resources isn't a trait specific to humans. One famous example that comes to mind: locusts.

Also, it's not that the universe failed to kill us, it's that it succeeded in creating us: we're part of the universe. And as part of the universe, we came into existence because the conditions of the universe were necessitated it.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

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He tested with Turing,
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and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Blackfish » Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:25 pm

The next stage of human evolution doesn't necessarily have to come about through natural selection. It could simply be from us tinkering with our own genetic code, which would not take thousands of generations.

aviel wrote:
Eternauta wrote:What do you guys think is more likely? FTL travel or hibernation for colonizing other planets.

FTL. I really doubt you could ever get people to consent to hibernation, you'd still face the problem of the fact that you need mission control to stay awake, and I don't even think this technology is really being looked into. It's a massive inconvenience.

To be fair, FTL technology isn't really seriously being looked into either. Why is some people consenting to hibernation in exchange for participating in a great leap forward (Maoist allusion not intended) less plausible than faster-than-light travel, when FTL in the most literal sense is a paradox?

Plenty of sci-fi has tackled the mission control issue - either an AI warden or a human one that the ship wakes up periodically for routine checkup and repair. Personally, while FTL travel is far more romantic, I think the slower-than-light kind is far more likely, either with hibernation or generation ships.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Ganymede314 » Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:33 pm

Yeah, I must agree with Blackfish. While FTL travel sounds super awesome and would be totally great, there are huuuuuge problems in developing any FTL technology. The main problem being the whole "Faster Than Light" thing, and the pesky laws of physics getting in the way of that! I have seen proposals drawn up for both hibernation-style long distance space-travel ships, and also for the generational-style ones, but there really isn't a huge amount of research being done on any of these yet. We first need to perfect travel within our own solar system before we head off to others!
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Marcuse » Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:36 pm

My bet is on generational ships. Large communities of discontented people building and setting off in massive colony ships that seed humanity across the stars in a great sci-fi-esque exodus. It would also be super interesting to see the kind of cultures that this would produce, as we've never really been able to study or observe isolated human development.

The closest is probably Japan, but we all know how that ended up.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:41 pm

Blackfish wrote:The next stage of human evolution doesn't necessarily have to come about through natural selection. It could simply be from us tinkering with our own genetic code, which would not take thousands of generations.

Potentially, though I'm not exactly sure I'd classify that as "evolution".

To be fair, FTL technology isn't really seriously being looked into either.

Except for scientists investigating the efficiency of warp bubble geometries and trying to create warp bubbles?
Plenty of sci-fi has tackled the mission control issue - either an AI warden or a human one that the ship wakes up periodically for routine checkup and repair. Personally, while FTL travel is far more romantic, I think the slower-than-light kind is far more likely, either with hibernation or generation ships.

For hibernation, you'd need to find people willing to go to sleep and then wake up when everyone they know is dead.

Here's the thing about both generational ships and hibernation: even if we created those, we'd still want to create FTL travel because those are so damn slow. I may accept that hibernatory ships could exist as an intermediary step to FTL travel (though I find that unlikely), but ultimately I don't think we're going to settle until we've invented FTL travel, because the other methods take too long.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
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He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Marcuse » Sat Jun 15, 2013 11:35 pm

aviel wrote:For hibernation, you'd need to find people willing to go to sleep and then wake up when everyone they know is dead


They'd also be well beyond communication range of Earth either way. But that's why I think generational ships would be more viable, people would move as family groups which could continue to exist and function aboard colony ships even if they were slow. It would be like booting a small ecosystem off Earth and sending it towards a new planet. I don't think it would be too hard to get volunteers if they were going to be the leaders of an entirely new human civilisation, at least initially.
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Re: Spaaaaaace Exploration and Human Progress

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Jun 15, 2013 11:38 pm

Generational ships probably are more viable, but they'd be rather difficult to make (you'd have to construct them in space, of course), and they have severe failures that FTL ships don't, in that you can't do anything fast or regular with them. Any hibernatory or generational ship design would be an intermediate design until FTL travel is invented.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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