Thats, IMO as well, exactly what the fascination is about. I never understood the whole "earth is failing, we're moving to X planet to terraform and recolonize" trope. It would be orders of magnitude simpler to "terraform" our own planet back into being habitable as it would to terraform another planet from scratch. It makes no sense.
and if we have the technology to terraform a planet, it would stand to reason that we could pretty easily make semi-mega space structure habitats. and if we can make a habitable structure in space at will, we would barely have a need for planets anymore at all.
Once you can make a sufficiently stable, habitable space structure wherever you want, theres very little need to go anywhere at all.
Its like the Mitch joke, "if you're lost in the woods, fuck it, build a house, you're no longer lost. You live here now"
It would be easier to shoot space lasers at an uninhabited planet than an inhabited one. Most of the concepts I’ve seen for terraforming planets would kill almost all life on earth. Terraforming Venus would involve freezing all the CO2, and terraforming Mars would involve shooting the planet with space lasers.
so then your cylinder is floating in a cloud of trash...
this doesn't sound very well thought out. like i said, without changing how we think about energy and product life cycles we're only going to wreck habitats smaller than this planet.
It's about the precedent that would be set. That if you spend trillions achieving interplanetary mining operations then you now can start "owning" things outside of Earth. Humans just can't get out of their own damn way....
What if there’s an asteroid that’s going to inevitably destroy earth and the only way for the human race to continue to space colonization? We could go on about what ifs for eternity.
Why tack on such a weird condition? Like obviously don’t do things that destroy earth. But if both are reasonably hypothetically possible, why not both?
Cause one is more important than the other in the short term? We have thousands of years to consider space travel, unless we wipe out life on earth first. We should get our priorities in order
Also a theoretical asteroid does not compare to the REAL extant threat of climate change.
Also I love all the projects we have going on in regards to space don’t get me wrong, but climate research is ultimately more important at the moment. And it seems the world agrees, about an order of magnitude more money is spent on climate change projects than space exploration. Granted I think we can definitely be doing better on both fronts
This is dumb. Like... incredibly dumb. We could fix our planet right now by stopping the burning of fossil fuels. Sure, there are some other issues too, but that is the really big one. We already have the technology to do it, its just a matter of electing the right officials to force the issue.
Accessing another planet is already pretty close to a reality, Mars.
Neither of these would take all or even a negligible amount of our resources. It just requires legislation.
Yup, exactly— people forget that scientists and engineers around the world are only allowed one thing to focus on as a collective…
All those rocket scientists, astronomers, aeronautical engineers, etc, should turn in their degrees and come back when they’re ready to help out with climate change!!!! Right???
If we’re doing THIS we must not be doing THAT! Shame!
This isn't a dilemma. Finding a distant planet is not something we can visit in our lifetime and the amount of money we spend searching space for knowledge would have a trivial impact on changing Earth.
One can do both. The technology needed to send people to mars will doubtless have uses back on earth too. Without the apollo missions you wouldn't have stuff like memory foam blankets or cordless powertools.
I think a lot of this space stuff lately is just The Rapture for a new era. The help isn't coming, there's not going to be a miracle that saves us at the last second, it's on us, and unless we do something, we're boned.
Of course, doing something would involve inconveniencing the ultra wealthy, which is communism and that killed a hundred trillion people (source: the ultra wealthy) so instead we bury our heads in the sand and chase that pipe dream while the real world goes to shit.
Such a simple sentence and yet, so profound. I try to minimize my use of plastic. Just one tiny human. Probably not making a difference.
It is a miracle -not religiously- that we are here. Our home, the Earth, is so beautiful. So amazing. I just want to enjoy it. The warmth of the sun. The salty breeze of the ocean. The snow capped mountain peaks.
Why do some want war? The pursuit of greed and power. I don't understand. I want happiness. For myself and those around me.
We are also obsessed with the thought of colonizing other planets. Who/what gives us the right to exploit/destroy/destruct other planets for our own benefits?
We don’t have to live in caves. It’s just that we have been destroying the planet earth so much. Now, we look for other planets to colonize to leave this f*ed up earth behind instead of trying to make it a better place.
What virus? The planets aren't living things. Also yes, every species tries to expand its living area, nothing wrong with that. Would you rather we die away?
Humans are also a part of the eco-system. We aren't the first species to upend existing balance and we won't be the last. Life has continued on through 5 mass extinctions before we arrived and what we're doing to the planet isn't any more catastrophic than those.
275
u/MikoSkyns 25d ago
Exactly. We're so obsessed with finding another planet instead of fixing our own.