Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense
by palata on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @08:30AM
(#37306752)
If you can't realize that we won't make it to that kind of science-fiction idea before we manage to survive on Earth (if ever), then I don't know what to say :-).
Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense
by chriswarbo on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @10:37AM
(#37308606)
I assume you mean "survive sustainably on Earth"? That's certainly our most important issue; we'll all be long dead before any off-world settlement could be self-sustaining, either planetary or space-based.
Those things aren't mutually-exclusive though.
Re:Silicon Valley faces a crisis of nonsense
by palata on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @04:12PM
(#37313259)
> Those things aren't mutually-exclusive though.
Well space research is not a problem, as long as it is research. My problem is that it is becoming a business ("we want to launch a lot of rockets and make money out of it") behind the excuse of "saving the human species and making colonies on Mars".
The space business is a problem for our objective of "surviving sustainably on Earth" (which at this point is synonymous with "surviving on Earth".
The spaceship we're currently on makes very inefficient use of material: its shape gives the least surface/livable area; and its density is the highest in the solar system. The resulting gravitational pull makes it very hard to leave: chemical rockets will just about work, but need multiple stages.
In contrast, a more efficient design, like a spin-gravity cylinder inside a hollowed-out asteroid, is much easier to leave (in fact, we'd be flung away, if the floor weren't accelerating us inwards; say, by stepping over a trapdoor!). Whilst such a ship would certainly be more maneuverable than the Earth, it would probably be easier to leave in a convenient orbit (e.g. as a cycler), and use smaller, leaner ships for bespoke travel around the solar system (no point wasting fuel to keep accelerating/decelerating all the gardens, farms, factories, schools, etc. if they're not needed en-route!)